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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

When the
Judges Ruled

When the Judges Ruled
Mission Addresses
on the First Chapter of
The Book of Ruth

By the Rev.
H. Armstrong Hall, B.D.

London
Skeffington and Son, Piccadilly, W.

Prefatory Note.

The Book of Ruth was obviously written many years
subsequently to the events which its pages record : " the
days when the judges ruled " appear to have long since
passed, and the customs of those olden times need to be
stated and explained (iv. 7). At the same time the genealogy
with which the Book closes, and which is claimed by some
as an evidence of its comparatively modern composition,
forms no essential portion of the original record, and may
have been added in later times, and when David and his
family had reached a position of national importance.
Although therefore the literary dress of the Book may
belong to the days of Solomon or of Hezekiah (Dr. Driver
believes it to be pre-exilic), the story which it tells dates
from the events themselves, and was doubtlessly handed
down from mouth to mouth from the time when Ruth's
child was born, in almost the identical form in which we
read it to-day.
The following pages do not pretend to be in any sense a
commentary upon the Book of Ruth. Their one object is
to insist upon certain facts in connection with Spiritual Life
to-day, but which as it appeared to me are illustrated by
the events of this touchingly simple and picturesque story.
I trust the reader will keep clearly in view the distinction
between an illustration and the thing illustrated, and

VI.
remember that in this case at any rate it is the latter — the
Christian Life — and not the former — the Idyll of Bethlehem
— which is of importance. Had I been aiming at a Com
mentary upon the Book I should have proceeded of course
upon a very different plan.
The Addresses were delivered as Instructions in the
Spiritual Life, at St. Mary Abbot's, Kensington, during
the Mission just concluded, and were composed for that
purpose. Previous to the Mission I had no intention of
publishing them, but I now do so at the suggestion of
some of those who heard them delivered ; I have endeavoured
to reproduce them as nearly as possible in their original form.
That these Instructions may prove helpful to those to
whom they were spoken and who may now care to glance
at them again, and that perchance they may be the means
of awakening to a more earnest desire to serve God some
who in this printed form may meet them for the first time,
is the humble prayer with which I now lay this little
volume at the Feet of our Lord.
H. ARMSTRONG HALL.
St. John's Rectory, Perth, N.B.,
Fourth Sunday in Lent, 1895.
Postscript. — The general reader will be surprised that
there is no allusion to the Holy Communion in these
Addresses, and especially in the last Address. Those who
were present at the Kensington Mission will remember
that there was a special course of Addresses, reported else
where, upon that most important subject, and that that is
the reason for what would otherwise have been a serious
omission on my part. — H. A. H.

Contents.

PAGE
I. INTO A FAR COUNTRY  i

II. EMPTY AND AFFLICTED  i5
III. I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER .. 2g
IV. UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS .. 43
V. THIS PRESENT WORLD  55
VI. HERE IS THE PATIENCE AND THE FAITH OF
THE SAINTS  69
VII. THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY .. 81
VIII. LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION .. .. 93

Ento a dFat Country .

" now it came to pass, in the days when the judges
ruled, that there was a famine in the land. and a
certain man of bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the
country of moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons. and
the name of the man was elimelech, and the name of his
wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons Mahlon and
Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem-Judah. And they came
into the country of moab, and continued there."
— Ruth i. i, *.

I.
INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

FAMINE in the land ! in the Land of Promise,
and in Bethlehem, the House of Bread ! A
famine of so severe and prolonged a character
that an Israelite — we may assume him to have been
a godly Israelite — with his wife and two sons, leave
home and take refuge in Moab, the territory of Israel's
traditional enemies. Not, of course, that Elimelech had
ever any intention either of abating one jot of his devotion
to his country and his country's God, or of making any but
a short stay in a land which was connected with one of the
bitterest and most degrading experiences in the history of
his people. He was bowing, so he thought, to the iron law
of necessity, and he even dared to hope that he might have
the merciful blessing of God (Who would appreciate his
difficulty as no one else could) on the step that he was
taking. It may have occurred to him that Lot had once
acted in a somewhat similar fashion, and with results that
were far from happy, but no doubt he persuaded himself
that there were material differences between the two cases,
and that, should the worst come to the worst, God would
protect him and his, even if Moab were to share the

INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

fate of Sodom. At any rate, "they came into the country
of Moab, and continued there."
No doubt the state of affairs in Bethlehem constituted a
severe trial of faith to Elimelech and his family and neigh
bours. It is hard, very hard, to see the meal growing less
and less in the barrel, and the oil sinking day by day in the
cruse ; it is even harder for those who have enjoyed times
of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and seasons of
genuine delight in His service, to lose the experience of the
Divine love and care, to find prayer becoming a burden and
the Word of God lifeless and unhelpful ; but can either the
one condition of things or the other be any excuse or justifi
cation for forsaking the Land of Promise ? For, to begin
with, how can a change of front help us under the circum
stances ? If corn be scarce in Canaan, where God has
pledged Himself to feed us, is it likely that better things
will be found in a land upon which, as we shall see, His
curse is resting ? If from any cause our sense of the
presence and approval of Jesus seems to have lost something
of its distinctness, even in that circle of Church life and
Christian society with which we have been associated, is it
probable that we shall obtain truer solace and renewal in
that "world" the friendship of which is declared to be
enmity to our Lord ?
And, after all, what is the province of faith if it be of no
service to us under such circumstances as these ? Christ,
as we well know, changes not : He is immutable ; if there
be a change in our experience of Him, the causes lie with

INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

us, and not with our Lord — the clouds are earth-born ; what
we need is more sun, not less, and this we shall never obtain,
as indeed in our heart of hearts we well enough know, by
turning our back upon Him from Whom every blessing of
spiritual experience, as well as of earthly enjoyment, flows.
We have seen the face of Jesus, we have tasted His love,
we know that He is, and that He is the Rewarder of those
that diligently seek Him ; now let us call in faith to our aid,
and instead of going back from Him let us seek His help,
that we may be willing to wait His time, however long it
be, and to stand firm and patiently until it please Him to
manifest Himself to us.
It is pretty certain that, like Elimelech, those whose
, hearts are growing colder, or who for any reason are casting
longing eyes towards the world, would protest almost with
indignation that they have no intention of any permanent
abandonment of Christ. They are suffering from famine —
from a loss of spiritual enjoyment. To what may this
unhappy state of things be due ?
Some, perhaps, would frankly aver that they never have
found enjoyment in Christ and His service from the very
commencement ; they have sought to follow Him, and have
endeavoured to serve Him purely as a matter of duty : for
their pleasure they have looked to the world. It is true
that they did not go to the world for it at first — the sense
of duty was so strong as to overcome, or at any rate to
silence, the craving for other things — but eventually they
began to desire something in addition to and somewhat

6 INTO A FAR COUNTRY.
different from that which Christ was giving them, and they
thought they would find it, and that God Who knew their
weakness would not blame them for seeking it, in that world
which was constantly assuring them of its interest and
sympathy, and which did not appear to be as black as it
was sometimes painted.
Some, again, would admit that there are both food and
enjoyment in the divine life for those who desire to follow
Christ, and that at one time they themselves hoped that it
would prove permanently satisfying ; but they confess that
they got tired of it after a time, and it seemed rather hard
to them that they should be required to limit themselves to
that which, however good in itself, appeared to be somewhat
restricted in character.
Now, our Bread is Christ, and dissatisfaction with our
Bread is dissatisfaction with Him, and confessions such as
those to which we have been listening simply mean that the
Lord Jesus has either ceased to be, or more probably has
never been in any very real sense, everything to us ; such
persons as those whose cases we have imagined have not
actually given up serving and loving the Lord, or at any
rate do not think they have done so, but into a heart which
has never been completely surrendered to the Master they
have admitted other objects of regard, and these later affec
tions, competing with that earlier one, have dimmed its
lustre and loosened its hold upon us. It is the old story of
the Garden of Eden over again. Has God really said that
we are to love Him with all our heart and mind and

INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

soul and strength, and to serve Him and Him alone ? and
if He has said so, is it not rather exacting and unreasonable
of Him ? so exacting and so unreasonable that He will not
be surprised if we do not take Him literally ? There are
pleasant fields and a life which is very far removed from
being godless in the Moab of our fancy : why should we not
go there, at any rate for a short time ?
And are there not others who, whilst desiring after a
fashion to lead a Christian life, deliberately place themselves
beyond the reach, so to speak, of the nourishing and fructify
ing grace of God by the very character of the circumstances
by which they elect to surround themselves ? Their friends,
their amusements, their books (not to mention other matters)
seem to be chosen almost with a view to hindering instead
of assisting their growth in Christ. But the Holy Spirit is
Sovereign ; He is the Lord of life as well as the Giver of it,
and He feeds the souls who seek Him in accordance with
His own will, not in accordance with theirs. Now, if we
who profess to have surrendered our wills to God are so
fatuous as to determine still to exercise them in important
matters such as those just alluded to, and even to prefer
the suggestions of these wills of ours to those of our Divine
Guide, we must not be surprised if we find ourselves by
degrees excluded from the feast which we had but begun to
enjoy. It is not to be supposed that we are at liberty to
take that wondrous gift of life which God has bestowed upon
us into the far country, and to spend it there as we please ;
the gift is not a thing, but a Person, Christ, and if we seek

INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

to live under circumstances which He cannot approve, the
inevitable consequence will be that He will withdraw from
our heart, and leave us until, possibly through not a little
sorrow, we return to His allegiance, and confess that after
all His was the better and the wiser way.
And the famine in Bethlehem took place "in the days
when the judges ruled." It is impossible to read the
historian's account of those days (Judges ii. n, etc.) without
realizing that the times were very bad indeed, and just such
as we should expect to be characterized by famine and dis
tress of all kinds. For, to begin with, they were days of
religion by fits and starts — days in which the Israelites
served God when they were in trouble, and forgot Him as
soon as their circumstances improved. When their enemies
appeared on the hill tops they cried unto the Lord for
protection, but as soon as the worst of the danger was over
" they would not hearken unto their judges," " they turned
quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in," "they
ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn
way." Is it likely, is it possible, that such a condition of
things and such a fashion of living can succeed ? Will God
bless those who, blind to His long-suffering and utterly
regardless of His patience and mercy, set every law of
gratitude and right behaviour at defiance in this hopeless
kind of way ? But is not this precisely what some of us are
constantly doing? Let us remember that our baptismal
undertaking was to serve God not on Sundays only, or
during Lent, or in mission seasons, but all the days of our

INTO A FAR COUNTRY.

life, and that it was on this condition that He made us the
promises upon the fulfilment of which we are so fond of
insisting. No, religion by fits and starts cannot possibly be
a happy state of affairs : it must involve us in that separation
from God which results in famine. We shall not improve our
circumstances, however, by turning our backs upon God ;
let us understand that our want is due to our own conduct,
not to God's unfaithfulness, and let us seek so to amend our
lives that He may yet be able to make our land flow with
milk and honey.
Moreover, the days when the judges ruled were obviously
days of intermittent government : the arrangement was but
a makeshift at the best. We are scarcely surprised, there
fore, to find that one of the most frightful crimes recorded
in history took place in these days (Judges xvii., xviii.),
and that the inspired writer, endeavouring to account for the
terrible events, tells us twice over in the course of his brief
narrative that " there was no king in Israel," adding in one
place that " every man did that which was right in his own
eyes." In our own case it is the absence of the autocratic
rule of the Lord Jesus, or rather our fretful murmuring
against that rule, which lies at the root of most of our
spiritual sorrow. We acknowledge the Lord as our Saviour,
but do we sufficiently recognize Him to be Christ our King ?
As long as life is conducted on the slipshod principle of
serving God just when and for so long a time as it shall suit
our inclination or convenience to do so ; as long as we pro
fess to be ruled by the Divine Master, but as a matter of

10 INTO A FAR COUNTRY.
practice take the direction of our life into our own hands ;
as long as we rebel against the gentle dominion of Him
Who, if He be King at all, will demand a complete sur
render and an absolute obedience ; so long will it be
impossible for us to have that peace and satisfaction which
are the lawful heritage of the child of God — so long will
there be a famine in the land. The firm government of a
strong king is absolutely essential to a condition of peace
and plenty. It is impossible for us to fear the Lord and
serve our own gods, and be happy — try as we may.
That there are times in the experience of all Christian
people when the pasture which once was green fails some
what of its peaceful restfulness, and when the waters which
once were still seem to have lost something of the calm and
refreshment which were theirs of yore, no one who knows
anything of life will for a moment deny. But this is neither
starvation nor a breaking of faith on the part of our covenant
God. Elimelech left Bethlehem in a moment of panic, or a
fit of despondency or of world-hunger, but others remained
and trusted the God of their fathers ; and when ten years
later Naomi, the solitary survivor of the little band, returned,
she found her friends alive and well and in the enjoyment of
barley harvest. They had been tried, indeed, but never
forsaken. It was she, not they, who was so aged by the
experience of one decade in an alien land that men laid
down the sickle, and women rose from their gleaning to ask
each other in whispered and pained astonishment, " Is this
Naomi ? " To us into the wilderness, whither God in His

INTO A FAR COUNTRY. 11
providence may perchance have led us, that there in loneli
ness we may learn that which in brighter days we failed to
appreciate, and also to gain strength and inspiration for the
ministry which in the near future He would have us fulfil —
to us, as to our elder Brother, comes the Tempter with his
suggestion at once impious and insolent, " If thou be the
son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
Thy Father hath left thee : provide for thyself : if He
permit famine to meet thee, it is high time for thee to take
thy life into thine own hands and trust Him no longer."
" If ? " It is because we are the sons of God that we cast
from us unhesitatingly the suggestion of the Evil One,
knowing that our sonship implies God's Fatherhood ; that
if for the present He would have us live in the wilderness,
it can only be for His glory and for our own ultimate good ;
that He is pledged to provide for us, and that He most
certainly will do so even here ; that the Lord is my Shep
herd, and that therefore I shall not, cannot want : that all
around us, though all unseen, are the messengers of His
will, and that as soon as the period of our probation is over
they will minister to us as they did to our Lord.
It was sad enough that Elimelech should have left the
Land of Promise and the House of Bread : it was worse
that he should have selected Moab as his new home. It
was not merely that the people of the country were heathen,
and that, as Elimelech must have known, if he and his
family were to remain true to God they would have to lead
lives of trial and to face unpopularity and perhaps persecu-

12 INTO A FAR COUNTRY.
tion, but Moab had acted with extraordinary bitterness to
his ancestors in times past, and in consequence were under
a very terrible curse. Moab had sought to bar the advance
of the Children of Israel when they were drawing near to
Canaan (Deut. xxiii. 3-7 ; Numb. xxii. 4), just as the world
in every age, sometimes politely, sometimes with force of
arms, but always by the means most likely to succeed,
loses no opportunity of endeavouring to hinder the progress
of the soul which is seeking to serve God ; and on account
of this wrong done to His people — there is no greater
wrong than this — God declared that whilst there was hope
for the Edomite, and even for the Egyptian, there was
none for the Moabite; for his sin there seemed to be no
expiation, there was no place for him or his descendants at
the feet of the God of Abraham. Nor was this a merely
passing cry of righteous indignation, with no actual fulfil
ment in history ; centuries passed away, and the curse was
still brooding over the unhappy land : there the prayer of
the agonized soul should find no answer, and thence should
all the early glory pass away (Isaiah xvi. 12, 14, etc.). It
was into such a country that Elimelech the Israelite and
servant of Jehovah came for refuge on account of the famine
at Bethlehem — " they came into the country of Moab, and
continued there."
Are we in no danger? Are there none of us who are
beginning to turn our heads, and our hearts too, in the
direction of those old associations and those old surround
ings which did us so much injury in the past — the scars of

INTO A FAR COUNTRY. 13
.whose wounds, the fascination of whose attractions, have
not yet passed away ? Are we wise in venturing where
stronger men than we are have fallen, where we ourselves
fell not so long ago ? God help us, and keep us true to
Him and to ourselves ! It is better to have but a little
together with the blessing of Christ, to face famine itself so
He be with us, than to have all the glories and consolations
of Moab with the sad memory that we have broken plighted
faith, and have lost the loving approval of tbe Lord Jesus.

©mptg antr nfflicW.

"And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was
left, and her two sons. and they took them wives of the
women of Moab ; the name of the one was Orpah, and the
name of the other ruth ; and they dwelled there about
ten years. and mahlon and chilion died also both of
them ; and the woman was left of her two sons and her
husband. and she said, call me not naomi, call me
mar ah : for the almighty hath dealt very bitterly with
me. i went out full, and the lord hath brought me home
again empty : why then call ye me naomi, seeing the lord
hath testified against me, and the almighty hath afflicted
ME ? " — Ruth i. 3, 4, 5, 20, 21.

II.
EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.

O the little band of weary pilgrims arrived at
last at their destination — we will not call
it their home, for there is but one home for
the soul, and by God's great mercy we can never be
truly happy or at home away from Him. We are
told nothing of the journey, how long it took them to
traverse the intervening regions, or how they fared by the
way. Just as in the case of the Prodigal Son, whose story
in the New Testament reminds us so forcibly of this one in
the Old, they " realized " their effects and went into the far
country. It was a long way off, and no doubt it took them
a long time to reach their goal. It is always so in the
history of the soul's departure from God ; the heart does
not grow cold, and the man does not grow careless, in one
day or even in fifty : the operation is slow but none the less
steady, and it is terribly uniform in its results. A little
carelessness about prayer, a little less trouble about our
Bible, a little irregularity about the work which we have
undertaken to do for God, a little indulgence of self, a little
dissatisfaction with the life or the circumstances which the
Father has allotted to us, a little drifting carried on for a

B

18 EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.
little time, and we wake up some morning to find that many
weary miles intervene between ourselves and home. And
the worst of it is that we so rarely notice what is taking
place until we have actually reached the far country.
It is wonderful how soon and how easily one gets used to
a change of circumstances when the change itself is brought
about gradually. The country of Moab, into which Elimelech
and his family had journeyed, had of course its own language,
its own fashions, and its own religion too, and these were
as dissimilar as possible from those of the country which
they had just now left. Yet the new-comers were in no
serious sense shocked by what they saw and heard — had
they so been they would have retraced their steps without
delay ; but each day brought its own novelty, and they
managed to accustom themselves to the new things of to-day
before it became necessary to face those of the morrow.
Looking calmly at our fashion of living and way of acting
now, some of us are compelled to admit how much we
have changed in recent years ; we never guessed that the
alteration was so great or so complete ; we never meant to
have come so far. Worst of all we never thought we should
have felt the change so little. We remember well the
qualms of conscience by which we were troubled when first
we commenced to wander : we recollect now how the protests
of our heart became fainter and fainter day by day until
they ceased to be anything more than a hardly audible
whisper. We went to sojourn in the country of Moab : we
came into the country of Moab, and continued there.

EMPTY AND AFFLICTED. 19
It is well worth our while to spend a moment in
retrospect — in endeavouring to remember what were our
intentions, so far as we had any very definite intentions,
when first we left home.
To begin with then, our intentions were purely selfish, as
selfish as were those of Lot when he elected to pitch his tent
toward Sodom. We were going to get what we could out of
Moab ; they who lived there had something that we coveted,
and we determined to make them share it with us. And more
over, we had no serious intention of giving Moab anything
in return. It is, indeed, just possible that at one time we
may have possessed, or have persuaded ourselves that we
possessed, the Quixotic idea of remodelling life in Moab to
suit our own ideas, but if so we soon abandoned the idea ;
for on the one hand we found that Moab was not willing to
be remodelled — indeed, when we faintly suggested something
of the kind, they said to us, as Sodom had said to Lot, and
with not a little point, " Stand back ; this one came in to
sojourn, and he will needs be a judge ; " and on the other
hand, our own opinions were neither sufficiently clear in our
own minds or dear to our own hearts to enable us to graft them
upon others. No, we thought we were badly off at home ;
-we pined for greater freedom, more enticing food ; we longed
for the life and the opportunities of Moab, and we went to
seek them, the consequences notwithstanding. We were
somewhat surprised it may be, and a little pained, at the
way in which our new neighbours received our well-meant
attempts, in the early days of our life in Moab, to bring

20 EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.
before them the advantages of a life of obedience and
surrender to God. If Bethlehem was such a charming
place, and the life there so delightful, why did you exchange
it for our country ? they not unnaturally enquired ; If
Bethlehem did not satisfy you, how can you suppose that it
will satisfy us ? No, our wandering was prompted by
motives as selfish' as they were personal. We had forgotten
the words of the Apostle, " Be not deceived, God is not
mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also
reap : " we had forgotten that we had elected to sow to the
Spirit with a hope of reaping life everlasting, and we were
disappointed that we were not also reaping of the flesh
corruption ; we fancied that we could sow one kind of seed
and reap both kinds of harvest. But when we entered the
the service of the Lord Jesus we resigned our right to the:
harvest of this world, thinking, and rightly, that the glories,
of the eternal gain far more than compensated for any earthly
loss : "we had respect unto the recompense of the reward : '"
have we repented of our bargain? Christ will have no>
unwilling soldiers in the ranks of the army of Heaven, and
you can obtain your discharge if you desire it : but is it not
worth your while to pause and ask yourself whether there is-
not truer joy, more satisfying Bread, in despised Bethlehem.
than anything that you can obtain in Moab ?
Nor may we forget that in leaving the Land of Promise
the wanderer never intends to be absent for other than a.
short period. Lot did not propose, we may well imagine,.
to die in Sodom ; the Prodigal Son had no idea of growing;

EMPTY AND AFFLICTED. 21
old in the far country. Our farewell was not " Adieu," but
" Au Revoir ; " we were coming back ere long ; the step we
were taking was only a temporary measure adopted in order
to meet a temporary emergency. If, on parting from our
true home, anyone had suggested that we should have been
found in Moab to-day, we should have denied the imputation
with indignation. " Is thy servant a dog," we should vehe
mently have demanded, " that he should do this thing ? "
Yet here we are still ; and here in His great mercy the
Good Shepherd has found us, and hence He desires to carry
us home again, — to our home and His.
So they came into the country of Moab, and appear to
have been received there with courtesy and hospitality.
The world is always glad when those who have been
making a somewhat definite profession of devotion to God
show signs of a desire to relax the strictness of their
behaviour ; it is always willing to meet such persons more
than half way, and to do its best to enable them to quiet the
still struggling conscience with as little delay as possible.
If the world would only persecute us when it finds us on its
own ground, there would be some hope that our stay in
Moab would prove short indeed, but the frank honhommie of
those into whose arms we are throwing ourselves takes us
by surprise, and sooner or later reconciles us to the change.
Not that the world is any more prompted by unselfishness
in its reception of us than were we ourselves in our journey
to Moab ; our new friends rejoice that, by our change of
front, another protest against their way of life has died a

22 EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.
natural death, and they are only too glad to be present and
assist at its obsequies; they are, moreover, clear-sighted
enough to see without being told that our surrender is a
tacit victory for the world and indifferentism, and pro tanto
a defeat for the Gospel and a discredit to the life of faith
in Christ.
And may we not look upon Naomi herself as a type of a
very large class of persons, and be warned by her experi
ences ? Her name means " pleasant ; " she was essentially
a " sweet " woman — one of those kindly, tender-hearted
creatures to whom and to whose self-denying gentleness we
owe so much of the brightness and peacefulness of life ; one
of those angels in human guise upon whom we are always
laying our crosses, and who bear them for us without a
murmur or reproach. But the beauty of Naomi's character
constitutes in itself a very great danger, both for herself and
for those to whom she is so inconsiderately considerate.
Your rough, brusque, unpleasant person, who never for a
moment pauses to consider your feelings or what effect his
proposed conduct will have upon them, is neither himself in
the peril which is always before Naomi, nor, since he will
never mince matters with you, is he likely, at any rate out
of respect to your sensitiveness, to cry " Peace " when he
does not believe that it exists. You don't like Micaiah, the
son of Imlah, because he has a way of blurting out his views
as to your duty in an extremely unpleasant fashion — he will
not speak good concerning you, but evil, you say, by which
you mean that he speaks what he believes to be the truth,

EMPTY AND AFFLICTED. 23
without caring in the slightest whether you will appreciate
it or not ; but he is a much safer companion than sweet
Naomi, with all her- pleasantness. Micaiah's methods are
doubtless capable of improvement — a little of Naomi's
society would do him all the good in the world, and in all
probability enhance his usefulness enormously — honesty
must never be a cloak for rudeness; but when trouble
comes or difficulty, and you want an arm on which you can
really lean, it is Micaiah to whom you will turn, and not
Naomi ; and it is the discovery of this fact which will in
itself constitute the greatest sorrow of Naomi's later years.
She has sacrificed herself throughout life to gain an
influence and a confidence which have never been given to
her after all.
Naomi has two special dangers. The first is a tendency
to conceal truth the revelation of which may prove un
pleasant hearing to those who are dear to her: she loves
them earnestly, devotedly, and yet she has never yet learnt
that concealment of truth which it is essential that we
should know is a fearful wrong, and an outrage upon that
love which she professes, and to the emotional side of which
she is keenly sensitive. How often we find Naomi hiding
her light under a bushel, because she cannot bear to vex
by her definite Christianity those dear to her— husband,
brothers, or perhaps children— to whom she thinks her
consistent Ufe would be a standing reproach ? Yet her
honest belief concerning them is that they are in darkness,
and that it is her duty to let her light so shine before them

24 EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.
that it may give light to all that are in the house, that they
may see her good works, and glorify (not her) but her
Father which is in Heaven. Has it ever occurred to her
that these souls from whom her mistaken love is hiding the
light are dependent upon that light for their discovery of
Christ ? Has she ever meditated upon the fearful respon
sibility she is incurring in defrauding them of the beacon
fire which by Christ's appointment is to guide them home
to Him ?
The second danger inherent to the character of the
Pleasant Woman is one that follows naturally upon the one
just mentioned, namely, her disinclination to oppose those
whom she loves, or indeed any with whom she comes in
contact. Does Elimelech propose to go to Moab ? she is
ready to sacrifice her own views and preference in the
matter ; do her sons desire to form matrimonial alliances
with heathen women ? she cannot find it in her heart to say
them nay. The decisions of husband and sons cost her a
good many private tears perhaps, but she is careful to dry
her eyes before she meets either the one or the others ; she
may earnestly cry to God to overrule the mistakes of those
who are so dear to her, but the cry which enters into the
ears of the God of Sabaoth is that which is associated with
honest action, and we have no right to expect that God will
reward our cowardice. It is very easy to pray, and it does not
cost us very much to do so, but the prayer which God blesses
is that which rises from the heart which has earnestly sought
to do its duty, and which loves and trusts Him so well that

EMPTY AND AFFLICTED. 25
it knows that no sorrow can possibly ensue from the faithful
confession of our duty to Him. It is all very well for Eli in
his old age to cry out to his sons "Why do ye such things? "
He ought to have asked the question years before : now, it
is too late, and holy man as he is he must go to the grave
with the consciousness that he has failed in his duty towards
God in failing in that towards those whom God had placed
under his influence — " thou honourest thy sons above Me."
God help Naomi ! A sweet disposition is a heavenly gift
and one which may bring great glory to God ; but like all
great gifts it has great dangers peculiar to itself, against
which the Pleasant Woman has need both to watch and
pray. We are now in a better position to understand how it
came to pass that the little family of Israelites whose
fortunes we are following having come to Moab, continued
there : it was a pleasant place inhabited by pleasant people,
and the new arrivals were pleasant too. The Moabites,
with no faintest intention of becoming servants of Jehovah
themselves, yet rather liked the aroma of holiness which the
presence and worship of Elimelech and his family cast
around them, and Elimelech and his family fully appreciated
the larger and less restricted life into which they had
entered : they were Israelites still, and to the Land of
Promise they always intended to return, Now, they
determined to start homeward next spring, and when spring
came they had excellent reasons for deferring their move till
the autumn ; and so year succeeded year, and they continued

26 EMPTY AND AFFLICTED.
in Moab, becoming more and more attached to it and less
willing to part from its fascinations every day.
" And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died." It was the
first blow, and a fearful blow it was. We shall not be
letting imagination run riot if we fancy that the lonely
widow pined for her own country as she had not done for
long, and possibly even suggested to her sons that they
should at once undertake that return which had already
been too long delayed. But it could not be. Naomi had
herself set the example of affectionate intercourse with those
into whose midst she had come to dwell ; she had no
rational protest to offer when, soon after their father's death,
her sons announced their engagements to "women of Moab."
At the same time she knew full well that the impending
alliances would bind them more closely to Moab than ever ;
her sons would never now return to that Land of which they
only remembered that their parents had left it, and she
loved them so well that she could not tear herself from them :
like Eli, she honoured her sons above God.
Yet God, Whom Naomi was so dishonouring, loved her
still. Is there anything to be compared with the patience
of God ? How long and how lovingly He waits for the
soul's return, using every means of gentle entreaty and the
pleading of His Holy Spirit which shall induce us to retrace
our steps. It is only when all such means are exhausted
that the Father Who loves us so well that He will not leave
us, although we have persistently declined to see " that the
goodness of God leadeth us to repentance," at last allows'

EMPTY AND AFFLICTED. 27
sorrow to attempt that which mercy has failed to effect.
One blow has fallen, but still Naomi holds out against her
truest interests : again the hand of God falls — " And Mahlon
and Chilion died also both of them ; and the woman was
left of her two sons and her husband."

$ totil arfee antr go unto mg dfatfjer*

"Then she arose, with her daughters-in-law, that she
might return from the country of moab : for she had
heard in the country of moab how that the lord had
visited his people in giving them bread. wherefore she
went forth out of the place where she was, and her two
daughters-in-law with her : and they went on the way to
RETURN UNTO THE LAND OF JUDAH." — Ruth i. 6, 7.

III.
I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.

iHIS then was to be the end of the journey to
Moab, this the result of seeking their own
fortunes and taking their lives into their own
hands. Could they have believed that so it would
have been they would have endured the famine and
trusted to the promises of the God of Israel than rather
court so fearful a disaster. And this tragic end to their
wandering, was it worse for those who had died in the
strange land, or for Naomi who was left ? They were at 1
rest,- their bodies in alien soil indeed, but their spirits in the
Presence of the All-Merciful, and Naomi felt she could, she
must, leave them there. But for herself life continued
still ; she, the weakest of the little band, ten years older now
than when she turned her back on Bethlehem, she has
tolive and to remember. Oh, if she could but forget ! if
she might but quaff the waters of some Lethe stream and
so be delivered from the memory of her folly and its
consequences ! Is death a mercy ? Sometimes it seems so
to the bereaved heart, but surely life and its opportunities
for contrite service is an infinitely greater mercy still. The
past indeed is beyond our power, and cannot be mended,

32 J WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.
much less obliterated, but the present God gives us that we
may devote it to Him, and show by means of it the reality
of our repentance and our earnest desire to serve Him.
What a melancholy collapse it all had been ! Forjihose
so dear, to her, death ; for herself, solitude — the woman was
left of her two sons and her husband. And yet what a
marvellous blessing bereavement not only may be but often
{ ' is. Surrounded by those who make up to us our world, we
: are slow to raise our eyes above or beyond them, or to
realize that we have any need which they are incapable of
supplying ; but when they are taken from us, these beloved
ones upon whom alone we have leaned and to whom alone
we have been in the habit of looking for strength and
consolation and advice, then it sometimes is that the soul
looks up as she hears the Master calling her by name, and
through her tears recognizes for the first time the patient
Lord Who has ever been her truest Friend. Bereavement
comes to us all — in the nature of things it must come — and
its coming must not be looked upon as of necessity either
punitive or even disciplinary, though sometimes it may be the
one or the other : but when it does come, God give us grace
to see that its lesson, which is quite a distinct thing from its
reason, is that we shall cling closer to Him — that we shall
lay up treasure in Heaven where no loss can take place and
where parting is unknown. God would not have us love
our dear ones one whit the less, but He would have us learn
to put Him first and^to trust Him implicitly about them no
less than about themselves.

/ WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER. 33
Poor desolate Naomi! she had come to Moab to gain,
and she had experienced nothing but disaster. To begin
with she had lost her self-respect ; it was not that
she had been suddenly overtaken in sin, and in tears had
come back to the feet of God : with her eyes open she had
turned her face to Moab, had gone there, had continued
there, aye and had preferred life as it was conducted there
to the old-fashioned life of Bethlehem. She had had many
opportunities of returning, but had declined to avail herself
of them. If she went home now, as she was beginning to
feel she must do, it would be with shame and confusion of
face. What would they say to her, those friends whom she
deserted ten years ago ? would they receive her, renegade
as she was, and permit her to settle down upon the sacred
soil again ? And that long journey, could she hope at her
time of life, heart-sore and feeble of will and purpose as she
knew herself to be, to retrace those weary miles and to
reach that peaceful village whose kindly shelter she had so
wantonly misvalued ? She had gone out full, she must
return empty. She left home hand in hand with husband
and sons; where were they now? how should she answer the
enquiries which would surely be made respecting them ?
Self-respect was gone, but that was but a small loss
compared with that other the very thought of which was
breaking her heart. She had nothing left but memory, and
the sepulchre in the land of Moab ; from the first she can
never hope to part, to the second she must bid farewell for
ever. Had she never possessed anything her case would

34 / WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.
not have been so lamentable ; but she once had so much,
and now has lost it all.
Life is full of responsibilities, but there is no responsibility
so great as are those connected with the souls over whom
God has given us influence. " Is it well with thy husband ?
is it well with the child ? " These are questions which
should indeed make life serious, and cause us to ponder not
once or twice before taking any step which will involve
mothers besides ourselves in its consequences. How can
Heaven be an altogether happy place if some who are bone
of our bone and flesh of our flesh fail to attain its blessedness
because we lacked in duty or courage ? It is important
of course that our children should "get on" in the world,
and for this object we lavish upon their education and start
in life no small amount of money and pains. Would to God
we took half the trouble about their spiritual welfare that
we think it incumbent upon us to take about their temporal
prospects. It is not considered creditable to have a son who
is a failure, or a daughter who is but half-educated ; no one
unfortunately thinks the worse of us if those nearest to us
have no interest in spiritual things. It must be well-nigh
; heart-breaking to be left absolutely alone on earth ; it
must be infinitely worse to discover one's self to be alone in
Heaven. Sorrows such as those through which Naomi had passed
can never be forgotten — perhaps it is not well that they
should be, for the recollection of a painful past may bring
great strength to a weak soul. Naomi could not put from

I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER. 35
her the thought of what had been and of what might have
been — " I went out full," she plaintively tells us, "and the
Lord hath brought me home again empty." The Lord ?
but was it not her own doing ? is she right and just in asking
us to call her " Marah ; for the Almighty hath dealt very
bitterly with" her ? If we have been right in the estimate
we have made of her conduct Naomi ought to be humbly
thanking God that she has come home at all, not blaming
" the Almighty " (the very word used by her shows how far
she is from rightly appreciating what has taken place — " He
might have done so much," she implies, " and averted so
much more if only He had not forgotten to be gracious ") for
the consequences of her own acts. Godly people need ever
to remember that there is one law of sowing and reaping for
themselves and for godless people too ; that our God is a
jealous God and a consuming fire, and that he who sows the
wind has no right to be surprised if he duly reap the whirl
wind. We like to take credit to ourselves for our successes
and to blame God when things go less pleasantly, but if we
only tried to be as just to Him as He in His loving kindness
is to us we should see that goodness and mercy in one guise
or another are following us all the days of our life, and we
should be more willing than alas ! we now are to dwell in the
House of the Lord for ever. It was the Almighty Who in
His compassion had brought Naomi home, and her return
under any circumstances was a sufficient evidence of His
Almightiness ; but it was Naomi's own doing that she came
back empty. Notwithstanding our story however, men and

36 / WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.
women still persist in learning the painful lesson in their
own sad experience ; life in the far country is bound to end
in loss ; you may ride there on a camel, but you will certainly
have to find your way back on foot. Heaven send you
home not only a poorer but a wiser and a humbler man !
It is in the hour of Naomi's solitude and overwhelming
need that the gentle Voice of God sounds again in her
ears. "Behold I stand at the door and knock," says our
Lord to that Church the frightful danger of which arose
from the fact that it was neither cold nor hot, " if any
man hear My voice and open the door, I will come
in to him and will sup with him, and he with Me." What
is to prevent us from hearing His Voice ? With some of
us it is the consciousness that if we listen we must open
the door to this patient King, and that if we admit Him
we shall be compelled to expel other guests of whose
society we are not yet weary. But the day comes when
those other guests forsake us, fair weather friends all of
them, and then thrice happy we if above the storm of
disappointment and bitter regret we hear once more the
gentle knock and the tender pleading of the Saviour. Yet
even now it is for Naomi to open the door of her heart,
her sovereignty over which God Who gave it to her
respects, and in self-abasement and contrition to seek that
absolution which He alone can bestow.
It was in such an hour then that Naomi hears " how that
the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread." Not
that she hears this for the first time to-day : the news had

/ WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER. 37
often reached her before : they had not been without bread
for ten long years, the faithful people of Bethlehem-Judah :
but now for the first time does the message seem to have
any significance for, any reference to herself. It is dawning
upon her to-day with a conviction that is irresistible that it
was for bread that she came to Moab, that the bread that
she obtained there cost her too great a price — her dear ones
have eaten manna in the wilderness and are dead — that she
is now too old to work for bread, and that the bread which
men give in exchange for labour is a bread which perisheth ;
she longs for a bread which cometh down from Heaven,
whereof a man may eat and not die, and the oft-repeated
intelligence that God has visited His people and has Him
self brought them bread — a bread which must be from
Heaven since He has brought it — appears to be precisely
the message for which her weary heart is craving. How
often, and how strangely, a man will hear the Gospel
preached fully, clearly, from Sunday to Sunday and from
year to year, without being affected by it in the slightest : it
brings about, it may be, the conversion of his wife or his
child; the very words which are falling upon his ears
without awakening the slightest emotion or even interest in
his heart are bringing about a revolution in the lives of some
close to his side ; his heart is so deafened by the clamour of
business, the intoxication of pleasure, the anxiety of life,
that he has no slightest consciousness that the Lord is
speaking to him ; the music of the Gospel calls forth no
responsive chords from his own spiritual being, it simply

38 I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.
does not appeal to him in the least degree. And then a
crisis comes in his life — some great trouble happily averted,
some frightful disaster mercifully driven aside, or more sadly
it may be, some whirlpool of difficulty into which he has
drifted — and the man crushed, not only by the proximity of
danger or his nearness to it, but by the humiliating realiza
tion of his utter weakness and insufficiency to avert it, his
failure or his loss, now hears what ? something that he has
never heard before ? no ! the same Gospel of rescue and
strength, from the same lips it may be, and couched in
almost identical terms : he hears that God has visited His
people, and has given them— without money and without
price — that for which all his life long he has been fruitlessly
striving — Bread. The message is precisely that which at
this particular juncture his weary heart needs, and he grate
fully avails himself of that to the claims and blessings of
which he has till now been blind.
So then it was with Naomi ; she arose, that " she might
return from the country of Moab," and " she went forth out
of the place where she was." There is surely something to
note in the language which is employed to describe Naomi's
action : it reminds us at once of the similar and parallel
passage in the story of the Prodigal Son — " he said ... I
will arise and go to my father . . . and he arose and came
to his father." It is one thing to form good resolutions and
quite another to carry them into effect. How many a man
has arisen from his carelessness or his sin; has declared
with shame and tears that he will lead a new life, that the

I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER. 39
old associations, the old friendships, the old temptations shall
see his face no more, and after calling Heaven and earth to
witness the sincerity of his confession, has cast himself upon
the ground once more and has continued to feed swine, post
poning the execution of his vows until a more convenient
season. When will men learn that repentance is not mere
sorrow for sin, but is such a sorrow (a " godly sorrow,"
St. Paul calls it) as leads a man to forsake his sin and to
return to God ? The inconvenience of sin and its unpleasant
results, its awkward way of dogging our footsteps, and the
certainty that some day or other it will find us out, all these
things make us regret sin when we have fallen into its
meshes ; but he only repents of sin who, recognizing its
degrading character and his own helplessness, and touched
by the wondrous Love of God in Christ, rises in the power
of the Holy Spirit and turns from his tormentor to God his
Saviour and his Rest ; such a man will not wait to strip off
his rags ; he will recognize that the Lord Jesus alone can
accomplish his cleansing as He alone can pronounce his
pardon, but he will arise that he may return from the
country of his humiliation, and he will go forth out of the
place where he is. What most of us need is grace, not only
to have good desires (which are worse than valueless if they
remain desires and nothing more), but to bring our desires
to good effect. It is not enough to say, " I know I ought
to do this," or, " I ought not to do that"— "To him that
knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin " — we
must cry to the Almighty, by Whose help alone we can

40 I WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.
stand ; y?e must draw the sword and throw away the scab
bard ; and heartily ashamed of the misspent years that are
past, must seek by that Help which is never denied to the
humble suppliant to be that faithful soldier and servant unto
our life's end which at our Baptism and our Confirmation we
promised we would be.
Naomi then determines to make a fresh start. She had
foolishly left home in bygone years, but home is the only
place where she can be either happy or at rest now. She
does not expect to get there all at once ; it took her a long
time to come to the far country. She cannot hope to reach
her journey's end immediately ; but the Lord Who has
visited His people will be with her, and she dare not doubt
but that she will arrive at last. Forgiveness is one thing ;
the sense and realization of forgiveness are quite different.
The former is the gift of God, assured to us the moment we
comply with His requirements and appeal to Him for His
pardoning Grace, but the latter are our own views and feel
ings with regard to that gift of God. It is obviously the gift
that we want, and not primarily a realization of the gift ; it
is the former, not the latter, by which our rescue from the
curse and power of sin is effected. And it is quite easy to
understand that after long years spent in the country of
Moab, in denial of, and ingratitude towards God, the very
recollection of our baseness and our folly will for some little
time prevent our feeling, thinking, or speaking in any way
but the very humblest about the new life into which the
Grace of God has brought us. Feelings, too, are largely

/ WILL ARISE AND GO UNTO MY FATHER. 41
physical, and therefore liable to be transitory ; it is upon the
facts of Christ's Death, and of our cry to God through faith
in that all-prevailing Sacrifice that we must rely. He loved
me, and gave Himself for me, whatever I may think or feel
about it : He said, " Come unto Me, and him that cometh
I will in no wise cast out ; " and in obedience to His invita
tion I came, a poor, helpless sinner, and I believe, although
I cannot always realize it, that His Word is true, and that,
unworthy though I be, He has received me, and put away
my sin.

Wlnto fjer people, an& unto t)ev €SrOtr$*

' ' and naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law, go,
return each to her mother's house : the lord deal kindly
with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with
me. The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of
you in the house of her husband. then she kissed them ;
and they lifted up their voice, and wept. and they said
unto her, Surely we will return with thee unto thy
people. And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters, why
will ye go with me ? Turn again, my daughters, go your
way. Nay, my daughters ; for it grieveth me much, for
your sakes, that the hand of the lord is gone out
AGAINST ME. And THEY lifted up their voice, and wept
again ; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law. And Naomi said,
Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people,
and unto her gods." — Ruth i. 8-16.

IV.
UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.

STFralE have already laid some stress upon the genial
kwvfll anc* pleasant character of Naomi. It was one
MffwWI of the results of that character that she should
attract people to herself. This is no particular credit to
Naomi ; persons of her temperament are always happier
when those around them are happy, and, for their own sakes,
therefore bring as much sunshine as is possible into the lives
of those with whom they mix. People love sunshine, and
therefore love Naomi, who is the means of their enjoying it.
Besides, after all said and done, there are not many Naomis
in the world, and it is best to make the most of them when
you are privileged to meet them.
We are not surprised, then, to find that Elimelech's
widow had drawn to herself in bonds of what was obviously
close affection the Moabitish maidens who became the wives
of her sons ; the tie naturally became a closer one when
they, like their mother-in-law, were left childless and alone.
It may have been, of course, that the affection of Orpah and
Ruth for Naomi was antecedent to their regard for her sons ;
that it was from loving her that they came to love those
who were so dear to her, and who not improbably inherited
something of her fascinating character. It may be that,

46 UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.
sundered during the lifetime of Mahlon and Chilion by the
knowledge on the part of Naomi that the alliance was one
upon which it was impossible for her to ask God's blessing,
but for the contracting of which she was herself not a little
responsible, their common bereavement brought the three
sad hearts together, and gave them a mutual attachment
that they had not previously possessed. We cannot tell ;
but the word "then," with which the story of Naomi's
exodus commences, following immediately, as it does, upon
the sad record of her triple loss, seems plainly and closely to
connect the fellowship of suffering into which the three
women had been allowed to pass with their united departure
for a land of brighter memory: " Wherefore she went forth
out of the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law
with her ; and they went on the way to return unto the land
of Judah."
When Christian set out from the City of Destruction, he
too, for a short part of his journey, was attended by two
companions : the first indeed, Obstinate, only went with
him in order to try and bring him back to what he con
sidered wiser courses, but the other, Pliable, was absolutely
sincere in his desire to reach the Celestial City. " I intend
to go along with this good man," he said, " and to cast in
my lot with him ; " he might have availed himself of the
words of sincerely meant devotion in which Orpah joined
with Ruth, and have declared, " Surely I will return with
thee unto thy people." Yet, as we know, when the pilgrims,
" being heedless " (how many of the pilgrim's sorrows may

UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS. 47
be accounted for in similar phrase !) fell into the Slough of
Despondency, poor Pliable, his virtuous intentions notwith
standing, " gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of
the mire, on that side of the Slough which was next to his own
house. So away he went, and Christian saw him no more."
There are one or two particulars in which the behaviour
of Orpah was not unlike that of well-meaning Pliable. To
begin with, there can be no question but that she had a
sincere affection and regard for Naomi, and would genuinely
have liked to spend the remainder of her days in her society ;
but the attachment was purely personal, and in all such
friendships there is a breaking point, a limit to the extent
to which others are prepared to follow us. For it is only us
whom they are following, and our path may lead us into cir
cumstances more trying than they are prepared to undergo
whose hearts are not buoyed up by the hope which animates
our own. Orpah's interest and affection were for Naomi,
and not for the Land of Judah : had she cared for the latter
she would have gone forward, even if Naomi had failed, but
alas ! she got as far as her regard for her mother-in-law could
take her. It should matter little or nothing to those whom
we may be influencing to travel with us to the Land of
Promise what actually happens to ourselves ; but should
our fall involve their own, or should they turn back before
the goal is won, there is grave reason to doubt how far our
influence was a wise one or was rightly exercised.
Another somewhat sad reflection respecting the history of
Orpah springs from the fact that she actually started for the

48 UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.
Better Land, and indeed went some considerable way on the
journey. The thought of those fellow travellers of ours who
set out so cheerily with us and yet failed after all to per
severe is one of the saddest that comes into our memory
when we review our pilgrimage. Their monuments, like that
of Lot's wife, mark all the road from Moab to Bethlehem.
We call to mind their fervour, their enthusiasm, their kindly
interest ; we shall never forget how our heart sank within us
when they announced their intention of turning back.
And in the case of Orpah our feelings are the more
regretful because we bear in mind that she was full of the
best possible resolutions of going further still. " Surely,"
she said, no less earnestly than did Ruth herself, " Surely we
will return with thee unto thy people." But, as we have
already noticed, the desire in her mind was to be, as she put
it, "with thee;" it was the personal element in her relation
to Naomi which, however charming in itself, constituted the
weakness of her position — it was on this rock that her frail
vessel was wrecked at last. Or to put it in another way, her
regard for Naomi was the rope holding her to what we may
term her salvation, and it was incapable of bearing the
strain which circumstances would eventually put upon it.
When her people and her gods were drawing her in one
direction and there was nothing but her affection for Naomi
to draw her in the opposite one, it could never be a matter
of serious doubt how things would ultimately turn out. But
we mourn her decision none the less sincerely ; we have
become attached to Orpah, have valued her society, and

UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS. 49
have not seldom been indebted to her for true sympathy and
comfort ; it is a great blow to us when she leaves us at last.
We feel now something of the pain which the Divine Master
must Himself have experienced when some of the most
influential of the little band of early disciples, stumbling and
offended at what they thought an unnecessarily hard saying,
" went back and walked no more with Him."
Further, if Orpah's decision pains us, can we remain
unmoved at Orpah's tears ? She is quite clear in her own
mind that she can go no further ; she is equally sure that
the recollection of the parting that is now taking place will
be a sorrow only less great than the parting from her people
and her gods would have been ; she will leave no inconsider
able portion of her heart behind her when she says farewell
to Naomi ; she lifted up her voice, and wept ; she lifted up
her voice, and wept again. Alas for the impotence of tears !
There are many people, sentimental and easily moved, who
weep copiously at the recollection of their sins or at the story of
the Redeemer's Passion, but who can never bring themselves
to leave the sin which is tormenting them and for their salva
tion from which the Master paid so dearly : there are many,
on the other hand, less emotional and of tougher fibre, who
have never in their lives shed a tear with reference to
spiritual things, but who have truly repented notwithstand
ing and have given themselves in all sincerity to God. The
question for each to ask himself is, not, What have I felt ?
but, What have I done ? Herod feared John, knowing that
he was a just man and an holy, and observed him ; and
D

50 UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.
when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him
gladly, and yet amazing as it seems, ordered his execution
soon afterwards. Felix, of whom we are told that he had
" more perfect knowledge of " the teaching of the followers
of Jesus, and who " trembled " as he listened to a personal
appeal from the ambassador of Christ, did all in his power to
prevent his uneasy heart from being troubled by the sound
of the Gospel — postponing till a " more convenient season "
that further reasoning " of righteousness, temperance, and
judgment to come " which he feared, if he entered upon it,
might result in his conversion to God ; Orpah loved Naomi
dearly, and wept bitterly at the prospect of parting from her,
but returned to her people and her gods nevertheless.
And here we must pause to enquire how far Naomi was
to blame for the failure of Orpah. We recognize the
honesty with which the older woman points out to her
companions the sacrifice which they will be called upon to
make if they elect to go further with her. It is in the same
way that the Gospel never veils the fact that in some way
or other they that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution ; they are engaging to be servants, they must
expect to work hard and long; they are enlisting as soldiers;
they must expect to fight, and to be wounded too. This is
all true, and we admire the candour of Naomi and her
unwillingness to take her daughters into circumstances of
which they knew nothing ; but is there not a duty on the
other side ? She must have known, she evidently did know,
that by turning back Orpah was losing her reversionary

UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER &l g3
interest in the property of her deceased husband, yet we do
not find Naomi telling her of this. Warn people by all
means that life in the Kingdom of Heaven is the life of a
servant and a soldier, but tell them too that their entry into
the Kingdom has made them inheritors of a possession
greater and more real than anything that the world can
offer, and which it would be the most fearful madness to
throw away. Love had brought Orpah a long way towards
the land of Judah : might not a little affectionate entreaty
have brought her further still — far enough to enable her to
see for herself that to go forward was to avail herself of her
rights as an heiress of Judah, whilst to retrace her steps was
to cast away her crown ?
It is very difficult for us with our Western instincts, with
our Northern blood, to speak to those who are nearest to us
about the things which belong unto their peace, but it is
solemn to think that we sometimes fail to win souls for our
Redeemer through a false modesty or a culpable cowardice.
But when the soul that we love is taken from us, or is
placed for ever beyond our reach, the thought may come
over us and cause us something not far removed from agony.
" If I had but spoken when God gave me the opportunity
how different it might all have been." A little loving
pressure, a little tender entreaty — which Naomi was so well
fitted to give, and which Orpah would have received from
her in such grateful good part, and Naomi might have had
the joy of bringing both her daughters-in-law to Bethlehem,
instead of only one. Did she ever think in her declining

50 UNV HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.
years of that receding figure as she last had seen it, wending
its solitary way back to that Moab from which it had been
so nearly rescued ? Did it ever sadden her to reflect that
perhaps she, Naomi, was to some degree to blame ? Did
she ever ask God to forgive her for not being more faithful
to the widow of her son ? God save our old age from being
embittered by any such reflections.
It is important that before passing away from the story of
Orpah we should try to realize what it was that she lost by
turning back. We have already seen that she had a rever
sionary interest in her husband's property ; but she appears
to have been the wife of the eldest son — her name always
precedes that of Ruth — and as the widow and representative
of Chilion (iv. 10), whose name is placed next to that of Elim
elech in the formal deed of conveyance in iv. 9 — Mahlon's name
preceding his in i. 2, 5, because it was as representing Mahlon
that Boaz married Ruth, and so became the progenitor of
David. She was heiress to the property of her father-in-
law as well as to that of her deceased husband. She for
feited this otherwise inalienable right of hers by preferring,
as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews would have put
it, the pleasures of sin for a season to suffering affliction with
the people of God ; she had no respect unto the recompense
of the reward ; it meant nothing to her, created no sort of
longing in her breast ; she had never learnt from Naomi or
from others to take interest in matters which were so far
beyond her horizon, as she considered, that she could admit
them to no position amongst the influences of a practical life ;

UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS. 53
faith was to her but a gaudy bubble, never capable of be
coming either the substance of things hoped for, or the
evidence of things not seen. Was it not in a similar way
that well-meaning Esau threw away his birthright, and
earned for himself that fearful title of " profane," which is
for ever associated with his name ? And if when he came
to wiser years, and to years when the fleeting joys of the
world were falling from him, he began to pine in his desolate
heart for the more substantial blessings which were his by
inheritance, but which in his flippant sensuality he bartered
for a mess of pottage ; if, then, in that dread " afterward,"
when he longed to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, and
found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully
and with tears, must we not suppose that Orpah too, in her
more serious age, hearing from that Better Land, as doubt
less she did, of the blessedness and rest to which her sister
had attained, mourned with infinite bitterness her own folly,
and which it was now too late to rectify or repair : Orpah
had chosen, and by her choice she is compelled to abide.
And with the inheritance, redeemed as it was by Boaz,
Orpah had also lost the honour — Ruth's chiefest glory in the
ages yet to come — of being the ancestress of David and of the
Messiah. Of all the promises to Abraham, that upon which
in all probability the patriarch set the greatest store was
God's pledge that in him all the nations of the world should
be blessed. Whatever we may say about a selfishness
naturally inherent in the Semitic character we must
remember that in the Sacred Record which the Church of

54 UNTO HER PEOPLE, AND UNTO HER GODS.
the Old Covenant so jealously and so zealously preserved
for the mankind it was graven in letters of adamant and of
gold that the chiefest honour of the Jew should spring from
his becoming the means and origin of a redemption which
in the providence of God should be world-wide : that they
may share in bringing about this wonder of grace is still the
daily prayer of every faithful Jew and Jewess. To be an
inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven is in itself a marvel of
Grace, the true meaning of which we shall never fully know
here, but to have it in one's power to bring Redemption
within the reach of others, surely this is an infinitely greater
marvel still. Orpah has not only herself and her own
prospects to consider as she stands hesitating as to what
her decision shall be ; on her choice, for ought she knows to
the contrary, is hanging the destiny of many a soul besides
her own ; she may think lightly of Life Eternal as a personal
possession, but can she lightly decline to be the means of
bringing salvation to the perishing world ?
Is he selfish who seeks to save his soul alive? Is not
the term more rightly applied to him who to gratify present
passion or the passing whim of indolence refuses to share in
the Divine work of the rescue of souls ?
God offers us salvation as the satisfaction of the needs
of our own heart ; but He also offers it to us in order that
we may be qualified as the possessors of it to work with
Him in plucking from the burning those who are the
bondsmen of Satan and of sin. What answer shall we give
to him that speaketh ?

'mom 1U303J& *}§&

"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she
became a pillar of salt." — Gen. xix. 26.
"And Jesus said, Therefore said I unto you, that no
man can come unto Me, except it were given unto him
of My Father. From that time many of His disciples went
BACK, AND WALKED NO MORE WITH HIM." — St. John vi. 65, 66.
" DEMAS HATH FORSAKEN ME, HAVING LOVED THIS PRESENT
WORLD." — 2 Tim. iv. IO.

V.
THIS PRESENT WORLD.

) T seemed as if the sorrows of Naomi were never
to come to an end. She had left home full
indeed, and was returning empty, but it would
have been some consolation to her if, having lost husband
and sons, she might at least have brought out of the house of
bondage the two who had been so dear to her children, and
who for the sakes of those children as well as for their own
sakes had become dear to her. And they had come some
way with her. It is quite true, as we have seen, that Naomi
herself appeared to dissuade them from accompanying her
any further, but underneath her loving expostulation we
cannot fail to be conscious of a lingering hope that possibly
after all they might think it worth their while to end their
days in her country and to give themselves to her God. And
now one of them has decided to return ; the influence which
was not sufficiently strong or decided to discourage Elimelech
from leaving Bethlehem not unnaturally fails to bring Orpah
to a new and untried home. It can have been with no
enviable feelings that Naomi watched the receding figure of
the daughter who had forsaken her, as Demas did the
Apostle, because like him she loved this present world.

58 THIS PRESENT WORLD.
But after all, what is the world, and how are we in danger
from its assaults ? Where is our Moab, and of what does
it consist ?
To answer these questions, at once the most practical, and
perhaps the most difficult to reply to in very clear terms, we
must begin by remembering that each of us possesses a
spiritual nature, called in Scripture and in popular theology
a heart ; that it is the possession of this heart that dis
tinguishes man from the lower animals, and that it is by
means of this heart and in consequence of it that man is able
to apprehend and in any sense to serve God ; that it was
this wondrous faculty for Love and Worship which the
great Father gave us when He breathed into our nostrils
the breath of Life and we became, that which the lower
animals in that sense never have been and never can be,
living souls.
Now, to possess this spiritual nature is a great responsi
bility ; the heart cannot remain unoccupied or unemployed ;
it is constantly yearning for someone stronger than itself to
whom it may subject itself, and in whose government and
dominion it may find rest ; it is conscious of its inability to
rule itself, and it naturally seeks a Governor whose laws
will bring about what it considers to be its own happiness
and advantage. Further still, when God made man in His
own Image, He entrusted to him his own destiny ; He under
took, indeed, to be his Father, if man would look to Him as such ;
when man fell, He came in the Person of the Lord Jesus to
redeem him from his sins, and He has ever vouchsafed to

THIS PRESENT WORLD. 59
him the warning and guidance of the Holy Spirit, through
Whose loving admonitions he might be led to forsake evil
and to find his peace, as well as his highest development, in
the service of God, his only true Friend. He did all this, but
He left man free, respecting the Divine nature which He
Himself had given Him, to choose and decide whom he
would serve, and to whom he would obey. At our Baptism
we professed to settle this matter once and for all ; we
would belong to God, and to Him alone ; at our Confirmation
we ratified and confirmed the promises which in earlier years
had been made in our name and on our behalf. At a sub
sequent crisis in our spiritual experience, through which
most of us perhaps have passed, and which we call our
Conversion, we came anew to the same determination, and
more unreservedly than ever handed ourselves over to God,
to be and remain His alone, convinced that we could find
no lasting satisfaction or happiness elsewhere.
Now, the claim of God to which we assented on these
historic occasions was of a very large and all-embracing
character ; it was nothing less than that we should give our
selves to Him without reserve, to love, serve, and follow
Him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength ; to
accept His will as our law, His honour as our glory, and
communion with Him as the inspiration of our life. But
though the claim is a great one, the difficulty in carrying it
out arises not from its proportions, but from the existence
of a rival power which, although we have rejected its
solicitations as unworthy and as inimical to our best interests,

60 THIS PRESENT WORLD.
loses no opportunity of pressing its allurements upon our
attention, and of endeavouring to draw us aside from the
allegiance to which we have pledged ourselves. This rival
power we call the world, both because the name is a con
venient one, as suggesting that which is in opposition to the
Kingdom of Heaven, and also because its temptations are
more usually connected with our life here in the body, and
operate through that life upon our spiritual relationships.
To put it in another way, the world is that great principle
within and around us which is constantly offering itself to
us in the place of God to Whom we are pledged, suggesting
that it is able to make our life much brighter and happier
than He is able, or, if able, willing to do. Whatever in any
way suggests this to us is the world.
The world then is not theatre-going and dancing — the two
amusements with which its name is most usually but very
superficially connected — it is much wider and more subtle
than these : if this were all the world, it would be simple
indeed to escape from its toils. The pauper in the work
house, the nun in the convent, may both of them be
the victims of worldly-mindedness, although neither of them
possibly has ever been inside a theatre or has seen a
ball-room ; whatever tempts us to relax somewhat of the
strictness of our love to Christ, or in any degree by its
absorbing interest draws us away from that service of God
to which we have pledged our life and our devotion;
whatever is coaxing us to allot to it attention and regard
which we can only give to it at the expense of our allegiance

THIS PRESENT WORLD. 61
to the Saviour ; whatever is dimming our consciousness of
God's approval, or interfering with the simplicity and
thoroughness of our work for Him ; whatever is influencing
us to relegate God and His glory to the second instead of
the first and chiefest place in our heart and affection — that
is the world to us, that is the Moab from which we need to
be rescued if we are ever to know the joy of a consecrated
life. It follows from this that the world influence may be
connected with things which, apart from their harmful and
absorbing fascination, would be and in themselves are
absolutely innocent : our books, our business, and even our
Church work may become the world to us if we so hand
ourselves over to these occupations as thereby to lose sight
of our Lord.
It is as illustrating this that St. John in his First Epistle
describes " all that is in the world " as capable usually of
being classed under one or other of the headings, Lust of the
flesh, Lust of the eye, or Pride of Life. What do these
expressions convey to us ?
The Lust of the Flesh is the craving on the part of the
body to be humoured or exalted at the expense of the soul.
We must not forget that our bodies are holy, God's handi
work and God's Temple, and that we are bound to expend a
considerable time on the care and nourishment of them. All
active service of God too is carried on through the medium
of the body, and we are therefore responsible for maintaining
them in the highest possible condition of efficiency. But the
body is a servant and only a servant, existing not for its

62 THIS PRESENT WORLD.
own sake but for the sake of that which the soul can accom
plish through its agency ; so long then as it remains content
with the place of a servant, well and good, but the moment
it begins to " lust " or crave for a higher position or greater
consideration, the moment that the flesh suggests that it and
the soul shall change places and that life shall be devoted to
ministering to the wants or amusements or interests of the
body to the detriment of the spiritual nature and the mission
which God intended it to accomplish, that moment the
world-spirit is at our gates — he may find us in the ball-room
or the theatre it is quite true, but he might find us in many
another place besides — and we need to act decisively if we
are to maintain our peace. Half measures are of no service
at a time like this. It was for this reason that St. Paul tells
us that he subjected his body to two seemingly hard treat
ments ; he brought it under (literally, he knocked it down),
and then he led it after him as a slave. He recognized the
value of his body, he could not preach the Gospel without
its aid, and he was aware of the extent to which it was
capable of serving God, but whenever it sought to get the
upper hand, to claim indulgence, to rule him instead of being
satisfied to be ruled by him, he interfered at once and
brought his body so to speak upon its knees, conscious that
if he failed to do so it would not be long before he himself
would be led away by its dissimulation.
Next to the Lust of the Flesh, as an active agent on
behalf of the world and against which every pilgrim needs
to be put upon his guard, St. John places the Lust or desire

THIS PRESENT WORLD.

of the Eye. Here again we are warned against the evil
into which we may drift by surrendering too much authority
to a useful servant. The eye is given us that we may
discover and serve God by means of it, yet like the flesh
it has its lusts or desires, and if we give way to them
we shall place ourselves in a position of great peril. There
are two dangers to which through the lust of the eye we are
more especially liable, two flood-gates through which the
worldly spirit may enter and overwhelm the soul. The first
of these is the covetous spirit, the longing to possess that
which others have but which God has not seen fit to give
to us. Covetousness is at the root of course of every felony :
would that we could remember that the attempt to possess
ourselves of that which God has withheld is a spiritual
theft, from the consequences of which we shall most
certainly suffer. And the second is like unto it, the longing
to seem or look like that which we admire in the more
opulent or prosperous circumstances of others, or so to deck
and arrange ourselves or our houses and property that we
shall call forth the admiration of those who are less wealthy
than ourselves. For one or other, or both these objects,
half mankind are wearing out their spirits and turning their
hair gray. God meant them to be one thing, they long to
be, or if that is quite impossible, at least to seem to be,
another. And this is for them the world and Moab, from
which they will one day pine to return and wherein they will
find themselves empty and afflicted.
And close upon the heels of the Lust of the Eye comes

64 THIS PRESENT WORLD.
the Pride of Life. But Life, like the Flesh and the Eye, is
God's gift to us, in itself good and capable of being employed
altogether to His glory, in other words to our own good ; it
is also God's trust to us, to be guarded, watched over and
expended to His Honour, as a man's estates are managed
by an honest steward. But the Pride of Life ? The word
is used by St. James (iv. 16 " boasting") with reference to
the confident and half insolent view of our life which we are
always in danger of taking, and in accordance with which it
is our own to do what we like with, whereas, as St. James
reminds us, our life is entirely in the hands of God to be
recalled with or without notice just as and when He thinks
best. The Pride of Life then is that view of it which
tends to exclude God from the management or control of
it — the " swagger " which the fool assumes as he either
loiters or struts through life, fancying that he is at liberty
to spend as he pleases that which is in reality the property
of Another. And in addition to this distorted and ignorant
view the Pride of Life manifests itself in that passion for
getting on, honestly if possible, but by some means or another
and at all costs, which is such a feature of the times in which
we live. It is quite right to try to get on ; the instinct is one
which God has given to us, and we are bound to endeavour
to do all in our power for those who are dependent upon
us, but the desire to get on is never a safe one unless it is
distinctly subservient to that seeking first the Kingdom of
God and His Righteousness which our Lord tells us is
characteristic of the conduct of the true child of God. It

THIS PRESENT WORLD. 65
was the desire to get on at all costs which took Elimelech to
Moab, and which was at the root of all the sorrow of the
story we have been reading. For after all the passion of the
Pride of Life means that we have a mistaken idea of the
value and position of that which we call Life ; we are regard
ing it as an end in itself, instead of as a means to an end. If
this life be all, by all means spend it in the fashion which
will most minister to your fleshly and bodily enjoyment, but
if it be nothing more than the preparation for and intro
duction to a Life which is not only spiritual but eternal also
you will lay it out if you are wise so as to reap in the life to
come the best possible harvest. So viewing it you will ever
regard this life with its wondrous possibilities more and more
seriously, since the income of the future depends upon your
investment of the principal of to-day.
The danger of the world and the things of the world, then,
springs not from the fact that these things are wrong in
themselves, for, as has been said, this is frequently not the
case, but because it is possible for things in themselves
innocent so to occupy and pre-occupy us that our highest
interests of all become first neglected, and then forsaken.
The world takes up time ; it must do so. But it must not
take up time which belongs to God. The moment that it
commences to do this, or to exert a fascination or an interest
in our hearts which causes us to regard the service and
worship of God, or our communion with Him, as in even
the slightest degree irksome, that moment the worldly spirit
is at work in our heart, we are beginning to complain of a
E

THIS PRESENT WORLD.

famine at Bethlehem, and to pine for the brighter fields of
Moab. And as the world is in danger of taking up time which
we have no right to expend upon it, so it is ever craving
from us love which we may not devote to it. Our heart is
a very little vessel, and only capable of containing one
object of supreme affection. God claims our heart in its
entirety ; when He gave us the power to love, it was in
order that we might love Him first and best of all. " My
son, give Me thine heart," asks God, both because He only
has a right to it, and also because only as it is committed
to Him can we hope that it will be guarded from other
enticing affections. It is absurd and untrue to say that the
world is unattractive or void of beauty ; it appeals to each
and all of our senses, and it is only as God Himself protects
our heart that we can hope to be delivered from the sorrow
of misplaced affection. It is often only by what appears to
be accident that we discover where it is that our heart is
really fixed : goodwill, as in the case of Orpah, fear, as in
the case of Lot's wife, cause us to go a long way from Moab
or from Sodom, but there comes a time when, if we are to
advance any further towards the land of Judah, it must be
because we recognize salvation and the service of God to
be the true goals of life. Unhappy he who discovers only
then and all too late, like Orpah or the wife of Lot, that
his heart is hopelessly involved in Moab or in Sodom, and
that he must return to his old life, much as for many a
reason it pains him to do so. Alas for the hearts which

THIS PRESENT WORLD. 67
once were flesh and blood, beating warm and true, and ever
responsive to the influences of the Spirit of God, but which
now, under the dread storm of worldliness, have turned to
their own destruction — beacons of self-inflicted disaster,
monuments of disappointment, pillars of salt.
"And the world is passing away and the lust thereof : but
he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

Here i$ t$e patience anti tfje dpattf)
of tfje Saints.

"And Naomi said, Return thou after thy sister-in-law.
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return
from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I will
go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall
BE MY PEOPLE, AND THY GOD MY GOD ; WHERE THOU DIEST, WILL I
DIE, AND THERE WILL I BE BURIED : THE LORD DO SO TO ME, AND
MORE ALSO, IF OUGHT BUT DEATH PART THEE AND ME. SO THEY
TWO WENT UNTIL THEY CAME TO BETHLEHEM." — Ruth i. 15, 16, 17, 19

VI.
HERE IS THE PATIENCE AND THE FAITH
OF THE SAINTS.

[E are not told what route Elimelech had adopted
when with his family he travelled from Bethlehem
to Moab, nor in what part of the latter country
he eventually settled ; we cannot tell therefore in what
direction Naomi and her companions turned their faces
when they started to return to the Land of Promise.
Bethlehem lies to the West of the Dead Sea, and the pilgrims
would strike to the north or the south of the latter as might
best suit that district of Moab in which they had been
residing. But in either case they would have the River to
cross, and when they had climbed its western bank they
would still have many miles to travel before they could see
home ; by the northern route Bethlehem was at least twenty
miles from the River as the crow flies, and the wilderness of
Judah and a range of bare limestone hills had to be traversed ;
by the southern route the distance from the River to
Bethlehem was twice as great.
Where was it that Orpah parted from her companions ?
She went with them as we have seen some way, possibly a
great way, but at last they reached a point in the journey

72 HERE IS THE PATIENCE
which was geographically so to speak one of decision, one
beyond which no one could pass without committing herself
to new things and a new life, and at this point Orpah made
up her mind to return. What more likely than that this
point was the River itself, which if they adopted the southern
route would form the boundary between Moab and the land
of Judah ?
Up to this point Orpah's companionship had meant nothing
more than goodwill ; she was still in her own country, she
was still under allegiance to her own gods ; she was with the
servant of Jehovah, but she was not a servant of Jehovah
herself. Now however she is compelled to make up her
mind as to the future ; she can go no further without com
promising herself ; every step that she now takes will mean
something ; she has come to the brink of the River, but
she has not yet left Moab ; if now she pass the narrow
stream which flows at her feet she will have committed her
self to a new order of things, and have cut herself off once
and for all from the old associations and her former life.
Alas, we know how she decided.
The River flows still, and each pilgrim has to make up his
mind whether or not he shall cross it. Within certain limits
it is quite possible for us to look well and behave well and
mean well without being actually involved in the service of
God — we have been travelling towards Canaan but we have
not yet crossed the boundary line, — ultimately, however, we
must decide definitely which side we will be upon, and with
which of the rival powers we will be associated. It is hard

AND THE FAITH OF THE SAINTS. 73
to have to make up our minds, but it has to be done ; it is
harder still to have to announce to the world by a changed
life that we have sworn fealty to the King of kings, but it
is our Lord Himself Who says " Whosoever therefore shall
confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My
Father Which is in Heaven, but whosoever shall deny Me
before men, him will I also deny before My Father Which
is in Heaven."
There then flows the River : shall we cross ? Sometimes
it seems to us to be the River of Surrender. Can I give
myself wholly and unreservedly to God ? and can I give up,
or consent to His taking from Me, whatever is contrary to
His will and therefore to my happiness, love it as I may ?
In other words, can I trust God to do better for me than I
possibly could do for myself ? can I believe Him to be my
Father ? " Giving up " sounds hard, but he who stands
at the brink of the River of Surrender must bear in mind
that God only asks us to empty our heart in order that He
may fill it with the best things, and that it is inconceivable
that God should take from any child of His anything that
can possibly minister to his true happiness.
Sometimes the River is one of Confession. We have
travelled thus far without our life or our relation to the
world being appreciably affected or altered : and God Who
is infinitely tender in His dealing with the returning soul
often postpones the necessity of or the occasion for a definite
confession of our allegiance to Him until we are strong
enough to make it. Yet sooner or later the River has to be

74 HERE IS THE PATIENCE
crossed, and the more definitely the Confession is made the
better it always is for the soul. " Go home to thy friends,"
f said Jesus to one whom He had healed, " and tell them
how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had
compassion on thee." He is surely the meanest of all men
who is unwilling to acknowledge a kindness or a benefaction,
and if we once realize something of what we owe to the
Saviour for His wondrous love to us we shall surely not be
slow or unwilling to confess Him before men. And the
grace of confession is the Presence of Christ : it is when the
soul, conscious of her own weakness and of the strength of
the world to which she is opposed, seeks notwithstanding to
glorify Jesus by a humble but earnest confession of her
indebtedness to Him that the Lord stands by her side as
He did by that of the Apostle saying, " Fear not; thou must
be brought before Caesar : and, lo, God hath given thee all
them that sail with thee."
And sometimes the River is that of_a Consistent Life. I
would not shrink from throwing in my lot with that of the
people of God, says many an one, if only I could hope to
lead a consistent life : I will make no profession unless I
can carry it out, and I fail to see how under my circum
stances that can be possible. Certainly God requires that
those who follow Him shall follow Him fully, as Caleb did,
but God asks no one to lead the life of faith in his own
strength or trusting to his own resources. A new life lies
before you ; but to enable you to live it, God offers you new
strength. There is nothing more dishonouring to God or

AND THE FAITH OF THE SAINTS. 75
more harmful to the cause of Christ than an inconsistent life,
but there is no reason why the life of any one should be in- .
consistent. Morning by morning you will find grace for the i
day, as the Israelite found the day's manna lying at his tent
door ; hour by hour you will find the strong Arm which j
carried you in safety through the difficulties of yesterday \
prepared to support you in the anxieties, perplexities, and \
temptations which you are called upon to meet indeed, but I
under which there is no reason in the world that you should
fall. Remember that God " is able to keep you from falling,
and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy."
It was at the River then quite possibly that Orpah turned ;
but Ruth went on with Naomi ; what was it that enabled
the one to persevere where the other had failed ?
In the first place it is not unlikely that the personal
influence of Naomi meant more to Ruth than it did to Orpah ;
both of the young women were attached to their mother-in-
law, but the attachment was of a different character in the
two cases. Orpahjoyed jJaojni ; Ruth was devoted to her.
Orpah enjoyed Naomi's society, Ruth found life unendurable
without it. JDrpah's feeling was one oLappreciative regard ;
Ruth's was an absorbing passion. And the consequence of
the dlfferenceTnlhT feelings of the two was that Ruth had
crept more into her mother-in-law's confidence than Orpah
had done, and had learnt much more of the true character
of her spiritual life and hopes than Naomi would have found
it possible to communicate to any but the most sympathetic

76 HERE IS THE PATIENCE
listener. We have already noticed the unsatisfactory results
of an influence which draws others to ourselves and does no
more than this ; it is well to observe what may be accom
plished by an unreserved disclosure of the secret springs of
our truer life. Naomi had drawn Orpah a long way ; she is
able to draw Ruth further still, and we cannot doubt that
this power of hers arose from the fact that she permitted
Ruth to see that, appearances and inconsistencies notwith
standing, she did really love the God of Israel, and had no
hope except from Him.
For it is Jehovah, the living personal Lord, Whose subtle
influence has wrought the change in Ruth's heart and life ;
" Thy God," she cries, " shall be my God " — my God because
He is thine and because through thee I have learnt to trust
and follow Him, but my God too because my heart tells me
that He and He alone is God and that as for the gods of my
fathers they are but idols ; the Lord made the heavens ! It
was a noble confession of faith, and Ruth clinches matters
in the ears of the astonished Naomi, who it may be had
long prayed for this but had never dared to hope that it
could be so definitely accomplished, by declaring with holy
zeal "Jehovah," Whom here and now I take to be for ever
mine as I have given myself to be for ever His, " Jehovah do
so to me, and more also if ought but death part me and
thee." It is of the first importance that we should realize that it
was this new relationship to God into which Ruth had entered
that enabled her to go forward into the great unknown.

AND THE FAITH OF THE SAINTS. 77
Times have changed since then, but this and only this will
give us strength sufficient to cross the River and to venture
along a way which we have not passed heretofore. It was,
it cannot have failed to have been, an infinite consolation to
Ruth that Naomi was going to Bethlehem also ; her com
panionship would drive away many a terror of the journey ;
but Ruth was herself going because God was there : Naomi
was no longer young, and her life was at the best uncertain :
it was on the promises and faithfulness of Jehovah that Ruth
was adventuring her life. " A full reward," says Boaz
(ii. 12), "be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under
Whose wings thou art come to trust."
And it is impossible for us to overrate the magnitude of
the Great Renunciation which Ruth was now undertaking.
Behind her lay her people and her gods : before we are loud
in our blame of Orpah let us at least be sure we should not
have acted as she unfortunately did. Behind her every
endearment of memory, every patriotic sentiment, every
affectionate recollection, every link with youth and home ;
her mother's house, the associations of her childhood, the
grave in which lay buried no small portion of her heart — it
was all behind. And before her ? Nothing that she knew
or had seen. Reason_suggests that Ruth like her sister-in-
law shall go back ; it^ijjgve that impels her to go forward ;
and acting on the impulse of love she does that which
modern thought is never tired of condemning, but by means
of which most of the movements and achievements to which
the world or the individual is indebted have been accom-

78 HERE IS THE PATIENCE
plished, she closes her eyes to the dangers of the future, puts
her fingers in her ears, and goes forward in simple childlike
faith and in obedience to an inner voice about which she is
quite powerless to reason, but the Divine origin of which is
not doubtful to her for a moment. It was a Great Renuncia
tion, a triumph of Faith unsurpassed in the records of the
Church of God, but a triumph of faith of the same character
as that which the Saviour demands of His disciples — of
ourselves — when He says " He that loveth father or mother
more than Me is not worthy of Me : and he that loveth son or
daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that
taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of
Me. He that findeth his life shall lose it : and he that loseth
his life for My sake shall find it." " It hath been fully showed
me," said Boaz, "how thou hast left thy father and thy mother,
and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which
thou knewest not heretofore."
But Naomi and Ruth are not yet home. Nor are we.
For them many a weary mile stretches from the River to
peaceful Bethlehem, and for us it may be there is many a
cross to be borne, many a victory to be won, before we can
hear the welcome of the Master, " Well done, good and
faithful servant : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Can
we hope to persevere ? Is it possible for us not only to fight
the good fight, but actually to finish the course and to keep
the faith ? Why not ? Of Naomi and Ruth we read, " So
y they two went until they came to Bethlehem." They " went
\ until " they reached home ! How wonderfully descriptive of

AND THE FAITH OF THE SAINTS. 79
the Christian life this expression is : there is no mystery about
it, it consists of nothing more nor less than Going on. We
call it Perseverance, and, having swelled it out into four
syllables, we puzzle ourselves quite unnecessarily as though
we had lighted upon some infinitely abstruse doctrine. But
even twelve letters are powerless to make anything more
recondite of the following of Christ than this, that it is i
simply " Going until " — " going " in the path of life which
He our Guide will shew to us, and " until " we reach that
presence where is fulness of joy and stand at that right hand
which contains pleasures for evermore. Wise old Thomas
a Kempis tells us that " When one that was in great anxiety
of mind, often wavering between fear and hope, did once,
being oppressed with grief, humbly prostrate himself in a
Church in prayer before an altar, and said within himself,
Oh, if I knew that I should yet persevere ! he presently
heard within him an answer from God, which said, What
if thou didst know it ? what wouldst thou do ? Do now
what thou wouldst do then, and thou shalt be secure."
Yes, perseverance is Going on, but it is going on by and
in reliance upon the grace of God. We were enabled to
cross the River on account of our faith and trust in the
presence of our Saviour : we only dare to go forward because
we do so in dependence upon His promise, " Lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world." Why should
we doubt as to the future ? the Lord Jesus enjoins us to
live one day at a time ; we have nothing to do with to
morrow — we may never see it. " Grant that this day we

80 HERE IS THE PATIENCE, ETC.
fall into no sin," is our prayer morning by morning ;
" Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night," is
our cry at Evensong. The same grace that enabled us to
leave the City of Destruction is at our disposal for the needs
of the journey : the Lord Who brought us out of Egypt
travels with us through the wilderness ; the Pillar of Cloud
goes before us by day, and the Pillar of Fire by night ; and
even if our Captain call upon us to face the terrors of the
Valley of the Shadow of Death, even there we need fear no
evil, for He has promised Himself to be with us and that
His rod and His staff shall comfort us.
Going on ? The journey may be a long one, and the
pilgrim will at times be faint and weary : let him then
remember that if home be not actually in sight at least he is
already in the promised land, and under the protection of
the Lord of the Country : that God is responsible for pro
viding him with the needed strength and provision for the
journey, that the Lord Jesus in Whose Love we are
confiding has Himself said to us " Fear not, little flock, for
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom,"
and that the pledge of our reaching home at last is His
glory, not our cleverness — " He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for His Name's sake."

tRfyt former ®f)iw$ are
pas^eti ^toajh

¦¦And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the
people, ye are witnesses this day, that i have bought all
that was elimelech's, and all that was chilion's and
mahlon's, of the hand of naomi. moreover ruth the
moabitess, the wife of mahlon, have i purchased to be
MY WIFE." — Ruth iv. 9, IO.
" Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine
ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house;
so shall the King greatly admire thy beauty ; for He is
thy Lord; and worship thou Him." — Ps. xlv. 10, n.
"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God, out of Heaven, prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out
of Heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with
men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be hls
people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their
God. ' — Rev. xxi. -zt 3.

VII.
THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.

jT last, however, the weary pilgrimage was over,
and the two women arrived at the little town
of Bethlehem. But with what different feelings
the two regarded it. To Naomi, who at first, we may
be sure, could hardly distinguish its familiar features
through the mist of her tears, every building, every street in
it spoke of all that she had lost — it was through that very
gate that she had once passed full, it is through the same
that she must now re-enter her old home empty. To Ruth
all was new, as new as Moab had been ten years ago to
Naomi, but she had no feeling of misgiving: God, Who
had been with them on the journey, seemed in very deed to
be at their side now, and despite the sobs of her companion,
sobs with which her woman's heart was quick to sympathize,
she was able to thank God and take courage : there really
was a Bethlehem after all, and so the faith she had plighted
on the brink of the River was founded upon a very rock.
What different stories too the women had to tell, illus
trating each of them the wondrous and sovereign grace of
God. Naomi the wanderer is brought back again : it is the
marvel of Restoration. Ruth the Moabitess is won for God :
this is a Conversion indeed.

84 THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.
It is the willingness, we do not doubt the power, of God
to bring home the child who has wandered from Him with
regard to which some of us perhaps would like to be
persuaded. Our case seems such an unworthy one ; we had
every advantage, we had tasted and seen that the Lord is
undoubtedly gracious, we had been engaged in His service,
had received His pay, we had made a profession and even
perhaps been the means of leading others to Him, and then
we went away into the far country and wasted our substance
in riotous living. It does not much matter what that was
which took us from God and induced us to leave home ; the
fact is that we deserted in the presence of the enemy,
frightfully, shamefully, and we do not see how God can take
us back again.
It is quite true that we could not possibly treat our
brother, even our repentant brother, as God treats us, but
that is because we have not God's heart. When man sins
against his fellow man, it is conceivable that he may receive
pardon — though that is by no means certain — but he cannot
hope for restoration : employment he may by chance obtain
and an opportunity of regaining his lost character, but in his
wildest dreams the convicted felon can never hope that his
former master will reinstate him. And why ? Man can
forgive; he cannot forget. God, however, declares, "their
sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." When
man speaks of forgiving, he usually means no more than
that he will cease to hold the offender liable for the wrong
that he has done : God means much more than this — He

THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY. 85
will cast our " sins into the depths of the sea " (whence no
accuser can dredge them to our undoing), " behind His back "
(where not even His eye can detect them). And just as
man can only forgive in a very partial sense, so his powers
of trusting, and especially of trusting those who have once
deceived him, are extremely limited : his own interests are
constantly reminding him that it is unwise to confide in
those who have fallen from honour, and he is conscious that
he is himself ignorant of the depth and reality of his brother's
repentance : he has been taken in so often that he shrinks
from risking such serious matters again. But to God all
hearts are open, all desires are known, and from Him no
secrets are hid : He therefore can trust where it would be
impossible and perhaps undesirable that we should do so,
and He loves the sinner even when he is dead in sins : —
" For the Love of God is broader.
Than the measures of man's mind ;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind."
Hence it is that God rejoices and triumphs in restoring
the soul that has wandered from Him, however far, however
grossly, however inexcusably. " He restoreth my soul," and
then " He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His
Name's sake ; " and it is this leading of the soul by God that in
itself constitutes its preservation from similar sin in the future.
The fact that we are children of God makes it impossible
that we should ever be happy away from Him ; the fact that
He is our Father makes it as impossible that He should ever

86 THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.
be at rest until He has brought us to His home again in
peace. And when the soul returns it will be as son still
and not as servant ; it will be as son that the Father will
welcome us even in our rags, and will call all Heaven to
rejoice with Him saying, " This my son was dead, and is alive
again ; he was lost and is found."
And if the restoration of a soul is wonderful, what shall
we say of the conversion of Ruth the Moabitess ? We have
already seen what a terrible curse had been pronounced upon
that unhappy nation — to the tenth generation no descendant
of theirs should enter the House of God ; their position was
worse, far worse, than that of the Edomite or the Egyptian.
" But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound ;
that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace
reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus
Christ our Lord." Nothing is clearer in Scripture than
God's wrath, His implacable wrath, against sin ; the Cross
of our most dear Lord is a perpetual witness to this. But
the same Cross tells us of the marvellous and unchanging
Love of God for the sinner, however abandoned he may be.
That Cross is all-conquering, and the sinner who trusts in
the Blood with which it is stained has forgiveness of all his
sins, even though the accursed blood of Moab be flowing
in his veins.
But as for Ruth forgiveness and welcome are to be
obtained through the appointed Sacrifice alone, so it is only
through the same Sacrifice that sad-hearted Naomi can hope
to be received. The son who has wandered, the alien who

THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY. 87
has never known the peace of God — there is but one way
for them both, and that way is the Blood of the Lamb.
" God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you ; " for Christ's sake,
because Christ has taken your place and suffered in your
stead ; for Christ's sake, because you have pleaded the work
that Christ has accomplished on your behalf; for Christ's
sake, because " the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth
us from all sin;" for Christ's sake, because " if any man
sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous ; and He is the propitiation of our sins."
So they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley-
harvest, and the active temperament of Ruth plunged her at
the earliest possible moment into the work which was going
on around her. She was already at heart a Jewess ; she
would soon become one in fact by her alliance with Boaz.
But had she no regret ? Did her memory never turn back
with tender longings to all that she had so bravely left
behind ? Did the song of the nightingale never find
" A path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ? "
She would have been less than human, much less than
woman, if she ever succeeded in wholly obliterating the past.
No one of us can. Some of it we remember to our shame,
some as a warning, some from the deep, deep hold it had
upon us, some on account of the rootlets that still lie in the
soil. To remember it is one thing, to long for it is another ;

88 THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.
yet long for it we most certainly shall unless we take steps,
brave and determined steps too, to overcome the affection
from whose thraldom the love of the Lord has so far emanci
pated us. For the past was sweet in its way, and dear to us
on account- of many a recollection, and more than one
tragedy perhaps. We cannot possibly obliterate it from our
memory, or pretend that it was wholly without enjoyment.
Ruth admits all this, but she is convinced that she is now on
the best, on the only good side ; that the old life seemed to
be, but that the new life really is, good ; that to be in Beth
lehem, even though poor, is better than to remain rich in
Moab ; and that God will provide for her in His own, and
therefore in the best way. She has gone into God's harvest
field as she has gone into that of Boaz, and she is conscious
that whatsoever is right that shall she receive.
But did Ruth take no steps, are there none that we can
take, to overcome the natural tendency on the part of the
soul to turn back to the things of yore ?
Unquestionably. And to begin with, Ruth must be pre
pared to fight against the old temptations and the special
attractions of the days gone by. Now, we know something
of our hearts, and of their special weaknesses : there is no
excuse for us if from idleness or half-heartedness we allow
the former things to resume their sway. We are warned,
and "to be warned" ought to be "to be armed." Do not
despise your enemy, or fancy that you are so strong that it
will not now have its old attraction for you ; your heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and unless

THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY. 89
you are on your guard you will certainly, and to your lasting
shame, be overthrown. And old temptations are overcome
not only by fighting against them when the moment of conflict
arrives, but much more frequently by preparing for the battle
beforehand. There is some excuse for the man who is taken
unawares ; there is none for him who was defeated although
he well knew that the assault was about to be delivered.
Now, we usually do know when we are going into perilous
circumstances, or when we shall be subjected to trials of
faith, or temper, or consistent behaviour ; it is before meet
ing the enemy that we must prepare for him, and he who
goes into battle fully armed and relying upon the grace of his
Captain for victory need have but little fear of the conse
quences. Ulysses was persuaded of the power of the Sirens,
and that if he and his men heard their sweet singing they
would be powerless to resist them, and so, before coming in
sight of the fateful rock, he stopped the ears of his com
panions with wax, and ordered them to bind him fast to the
-mast, and on no account to listen to any commands which he
might give in the moment of his weakness ; and he was
wise, for when the death-bearing music reached his ears he
implored his companions by passionate signs to release him
and to stop the vessel ; but they would not consent to do so,
and consequently both he and they were saved.
But in addition to a brave stand against the fascinating
and baleful influences which proyed so harmful to us in the
past, we need some positive and powerful affection to take
the place of those which we have renounced ; without this,

90 THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.
our unoccupied heart, swept and garnished, but alas, empty
too, will fall a prey to the first company of evil influences to
which we may be exposed : " the last state of that man is
worse than the first," for the new tenants will not only enter
in, but dwell there.
But where is this new affection to be found ? Ruth found
it in her marriage with Boaz.
Now the marriage relationship is that upon which St. Paul
loves to dwell, as being a standing parable of the mutual
obligations of Christ and His people : "I have espoused
you to one husband," he says, " that I may present you as
a chaste virgin to Christ." And in his Epistle to the
Ephesians (v. 23, etc.) he insists not only that Christ is the
Head of the Church, and that, therefore, the Church is
subject in all things to Him, but he points out that Christ
loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and that this
great act of self-surrender and love is at the root of all our
duty to our Lord. He further tells us that Christ had three
special objects in view in the work that He accomplished,
(1) To sanctify and cleanse the Church, (2) To present the
Church to Himself, and (3) To render it holy and without
blemish ; and to these three great intentions St. Paul
adds a declaration of the Lord's care for His Church — He
" nourisheth and cherisheth it." And all this, so the
Apostle tells us, is symbolized and proclaimed by every
holy marriage contracted in the fear of God. Now what is
true of the Church is true of the individuals of whom the
Church is composed. The wondrous love of the Lord Jesus

THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY. 91

and His gift of Himself for the soul — my soul — is that which
compels me to give myself unreservedly to Him : I am able
to do this without anxiety, for the fact that He stands to
me in the relationship of Husband obliges Him to care for
me — to nourish and to cherish me — and I can ask no
greater proof of His love than that which He has already
given me. But I must give myself to Him, and this done, I
am no longer my own, but His. " Ruth, the Moabitess,"
said Boaz, " have I purchased to be my wife ; " "Ye are not
your own," says the Apostle, "for ye are bought with a
price." And the object which the Lord had in purchasing us
with His Blood was that we should be holy, — holy by being
cleansed from our old sins, holy by His imputed righteous
ness, holy by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, Who little
by little transforms us until at last we are conformed to the
image of the Son. " Now are we the sons of God ; and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that
when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall
see Him as He is." You are Christ's : His only, His
wholly, His for ever: live as those should do who are
conscious of the wondrous mercy which has been showed
them in committing to them so high a destiny : live as those
may do to whom the Father, Who better knows their needs
than they themselves can possibly do, has made " partakers
of the divine nature."
It is union with Christ then, union with Him not only as
Saviour but as Husband and as Friend, that will prove our
chiefest defence against the tendency to return to Moab.

92 THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY.
But to this new relationship, and as indeed flowing from it,
he is a wise man who earnestly desiring to be and to feel at
home in the Land of Promise, adds human friendships flow
ing out of that Divine one. It was love for a human friend
that first drew Ruth towards the good things which God
had in store for her ; it was in love for other human friends
that she found the satisfaction and repose which crowned
her pilgrimage. It was in human love — the love of the little
household of Bethany, the love of His disciples, the love of
the noble women who followed Him from Galilee and
ministered to Him of their substance — that our Blessed
Lord found some rest, however slight, amid the awful storm
of His Life. It is in human love and friendship and sympathy
that He Who has given us these good things would have us
find, next to our love to Him, the antidote to the cravings
for the Moab of our bondage. Make friends : good friends,
wholesome, clear-headed, unaffected, practical friends, but
above all friends who are themselves animated by a sincere
love to Christ, and who desire to subordinate all their life to
His glory. There are not a great many such people, but
probably many more than we suspect, and God has a won
derful way of bringing together those who are likely to help
each other in spiritual things. Make Christ your chief
Friend — the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother — no
friendship will be of service to you unless it is based upon
this — and ask God day by day to choose your friends for
you and to bring you and them to know each other, as He
first gave Naomi to Ruth, and then Ruth to Boaz.

Het u$ eo on unto perfection*

"Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this
DAY WITHOUT A KINSMAN." — Ruth iv. 14.
"Behold, I come quickly; hold that fast which thou
HAST, THAT NO MAN TAKE THY CROWN." — Rev. Hi. II.

VIII.
LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION.

jjENIUS, it is said, is an infinite capacity for
taking pains, and if it is unlikely that a man
can rise to fortune who does not devote all
the pains in his power to the business career upon which
he has embarked, it is quite certain that no one can advance
in the Spiritual Life who fails to devote to it his best
energies. " The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence,
and the violent take it by force."
Ruth in her new life was not satisfied, we may be sure,
with having won the love of Boaz ; she had now to keep
it : and as the sum total of personal history is composed of
a series of little things, it stands to reason that his life is
the brightest and the best who spares no pains to render
the minutiae of his daily conduct glorifying to God — who
day by day, and in matters small as well as great, seeks
to " please Him Who hath chosen him to be a soldier."
There is no more fatal error than to suppose that because
we are converted we may live as we prefer, and do as we
like ; Conversion is but the gate of the Christian Life.
It must now be our daily endeavour to discover both how
we " ought to walk and to please God," and also by what

96 LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION.
processes of personal pains we may hope, by the help of
the Holy Spirit, to " abound more and more." Such
would have been Ruth's constant anxiety.
We have dwelt at some length upon the Friendship of
our Lord as being in itself the foundation of all holy living,
and have pointed out the importance of forming wise friend
ships as following from that greater one. We pass now to
notice some characteristics of the Christian Life, with all
of which in general terms we are familiar, but which it
may be in the past have failed to be connected with much
interest or power in our lives because we have never
devoted to them that pains, without which success is
impossible. And the first of these is Active Service. The initial result
of the possession of life lies in the power which it confers
of being able to do something ; the infant can at least move.
What is it that distinguishes the living man, however
humble, from the most wonderful statue that was ever
given to the world ? the man can move, the statue cannot.
His arm is extended in life-like pose, his eyes appeal to
heaven, but he can neither withdraw the one nor close the
others ; he cannot descend from his pedestal, and mix
with those who live ; no Simon Stylites was ever in so
sorry a case as he. The man may be ignorant, unheard-of,
in rags, but he lives and moves and has his being ; nothing
would induce him, however great his sorrows, to change
places with the statue.
Now the first revelation which we have of God is as a

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Workman : He is making — the universe, and this world of
ours which is to be the theatre of human history, and then
the creatures of His Hand, who are to be the actors in the
drama of the world's fortunes. And when man, the final
outcome of the Creator's power, stands before Him, it is
as a workman that he too is sent into Paradise — " to dress
it and to keep it." And even when man falls, and is driven
from that nearer and closer Presence of his Father, which
in the days of his innocence he had been permitted to enjoy,
he has at least this remnant of the Divine nature spared to
him that he still goes out into the stonier garden which God
permits him to occupy, " to till the ground from whence he
was taken."
This is not bare history on the one hand or mere picturesque
detail on the other : it is the great lesson of life which God
desired from the very first to impress upon the mind of man.
It is in the active service of our Lord that we shall find
both scope for the powers which our heavenly origin has
conferred upon us, and also rest and refreshment from the
troubles and temptations of our own life. When St. Paul
impressed upon the Thessalonians " that if any would not
work, neither should he eat " he was teaching them a law
of spiritual history no less than of ecclesiastical discipline.
The " unemployed " are notoriously the most miserable
persons in the community ; a lazy Christian is a disgrace to
the Church and to his Master, and cannot by any possibility
be genuinely happy. Did Ruth resign herself to a life of
idleness when once her marriage had taken place ? did she
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not on the contrary, now devote herself hand and foot to
him who had shown her such unexpected love ? Well may
our Lord say to us who profess to follow Him " Why stand
ye here all the day idle ? "
If then you wish to be happy you will get something to
do for God, and you will seek occupation not primarily
because you wish to be happy, but because you desire to
shew your gratitude to Him Who has done such great things
for you. But what will you do ? In the first place you
will now do your daily work "as unto the Lord and not unto
men ; " the work itself will remain just the same, but you
will do it from a different standpoint and with a new purpose.
This will help to make you contented. Your daily occupation
may be hum-drum, possibly almost menial, if regarded as
something that your fellow-man requires you to do and as
the means to your daily bread — it will be making bricks
without straw — but if now you will regard it as something
which Christ has given you to do for Him, as an integral
portion of the work of the Kingdom of Heaven which your
Lord cannot afford to have left undone, the irksome duty
will appear to you that which indeed it is, a trust from the
Captain of your Salvation, the execution of which the Angels
are envying you.
But whilst the Divine Nature of which we have been made
partakers will enable a man to sweep a crossing or to amass
a fortune to the glory of Jesus — if God call him to the one
pursuit or the other — it was never intended to be limited in
its energies to works of this kind ; the Divine Nature is

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primarily a Spiritual Nature ; there is no work of life which
has not a spiritual side, and so there is no department of our
everyday interests into which the Divine Nature does not,
or at any rate ought not to penetrate ; but it is obvious that
there are some sides of life which belong to it exclusively.
A Divine Nature can only find its highest development in
work which is primarily spiritual. Hence it is of the greatest
importance that those who desire to live to the glory of God
should be engaged in spiritual work. In olden days it was
imagined that unless one had the time and the gifts for
Sunday-school teaching or for District Visiting there was no
place for one in the ranks of the Workers for God. Thank
God those days are past. The Church at home is appealing
for work of every conceivable kind and for the help of men
and women of all classes of society and of all grades of " gifts,"
whilst the Mission Churches abroad are stretching out their
hands in irresistible entreaty and crying to us to go over
and help them. There is work to do for every one who is
in earnest in seeking it. We must of course remember that
the vineyard is the Lord's, and that it is He and not we
Who must decide what work we are to perform, but subject
to this the obligation to work for God rests upon us all,
from the man who has only half an hour a week at his dis
posal to him who is prepared to devote his life to(the service
of the Gospel. " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? "
let this be your prayer, and doubt not but that in God's time
and God's way the answer will be made clear to you.
Work is, then, the outcome of life. But spiritual work

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causes spiritual waste, just as physical work causes physical
waste, and no work can continue unless there is going on
concurrently with the work a process of rest and repair.
The Good Shepherd " maketh me to lie down in green
pastures " first, and only then, and not till then, does He
ask and expect me to follow Him in the paths of righteous
ness. Life has been bestowed upon us ; we have now to be
careful that that life is maintained. But how ?
In general terms it is enough to say, that as life came to
us in the beginning by our being brought into relationship
with Christ, so our life can only be maintained by com
munion with Him. Is communion with Christ however,
automatic, — the result of processes over which we have no
control ? or are we in any sense responsible in the matter ?
It is quite true on the one hand that the Holy Spirit, and
He alone, can take of the things of Christ, and show them
unto us ; but it is also true that He only works thus in the
hearts of those who are seeking with every energy the gifts
which it is in His power to bestow, and who spare them
selves no pains to obtain and to maintain His approval and
His blessing. It is in the taking of infinite pains that the
genius of the Christian life lies.
Now, there is a very important respect in which Christ
differs from all human friends, and communion with Him
from communion with them ; and it is this. Them we have
seen, and them we know. When we speak to them we not
only know that they are present, but we see them before us ;
and when we address them we fix our eyes on their faces,

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we observe that they are listening, and we hear them speak
to us in reply. On the other hand, who is there of us that
does not continually mourn his inattention and wandering
thoughts in prayer ? Who is there who does not continually
feel, to his shame and regret, that Bible reading is ever in
danger of degenerating into a purely formal exercise ? And
why ? Simply because we fail to realize God's Presence
with us in our devotions. We know, of course, that He is
there, but we do not feel or see Him, and the consequence
is, that we not only fail to receive a blessing, but our work
loses all its interest and power (because proceeding from an
unrefreshed heart), our communion becomes an unreal per
formance, and our interest and our faith flag, and are at the
point to die.
Whilst the difficulty and the temptation are common to us
all, there are one or two simple rules, the observance of
which may possibly aid us in our search for a more devo
tional spirit and truer communion with God.
The first is, Never attempt an act of devotion (whether it
be the perusal of your Bible or your prayers) without having
made a determined effort to realize God's presence. It is
clear that if you have ten minutes at your disposal, it will be
better to spend five of them in endeavouring to bring your
self into conscious relation to the Lord, and then the other
five in speaking to the Friend Who is not only present, but
consciously present, than to exhaust the ten in reading of, or
speaking to One Who, at the moment, has no very real
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102 LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION.
axe aware. But this endeavour to make the presence of
God real to us is hard work, and that, perhaps, is why we
shirk it. It means a battle, and often a very hard battle,
too, with our thoughts and our unbelief. It is none the less
necessary on that account. Kneel down, then, and before
you say a word of your prayers, or read a word of your
selected passage, cry to God to clear away the mists which
lie between your face and His, and to manifest His presence
to you. Perhaps you will find it help you to do this if you
read over on your knees, very slowly, such a passage as
Isaiah vi. 1-9, or Rev. i. 12-17, an(l endeavour to imagine
the scene and the appearance of our Lord. Perhaps it will
help you if you try to think of some familiar and beautiful
picture of our Master — as the Light of the World, for
instance, or as the Good Shepherd. Whatever will
aid you in attaining this object do without scruple ; and
bear in mind that what helps others will not necessarily
be of service to you, and that you must not be surprised
if that which helps yourself does not assist them in the
slightest. Moreover, we are such creatures of routine, that
what answers your own purpose to-day may have lost
its power in a month or two, and then you will have to try
something else ; and especially that these things are only
means to an end, and only of importance as, by God's help,
they enable you to feel that He is with you at your seasons
of communion with Him.
A second point is, Remember that the object of all devo
tion is to bring Christ nearer to you, and to feed upon Him

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in your heart by faith with thanksgiving. Now your heart
is of limited capacity, and can assimilate only a limited
quantity of the Divine Food. Hence, — we may take our
Bible-reading as an illustration — do not attempt more than
you can do profitably. Thank God for all societies and
unions for encouraging people to read their Bibles ; they
have a weak side however, and that is that they assume that
all people are endowed with equal capacity for absorbing
truth, and that on all days of the week our capacity is
identical : some indeed go further, and appear to regard the
division of our Bible into chapters as almost of Divine
obligation. Now if God be our Father He will Himself
portion out to each child his own food and as much food as
the child is capable of digesting, and it is much better that
you should allow God to do that for you than to settle for
yourself before commencing the feast of good things how
much you will partake of. The Church's Lessons form an
invaluable course of Bible study for those who have the
leisure to read them or to hear them read, but they are not,
and are not intended to be, devotional reading — they are far
too long for that purpose. Devotional reading demands
first a devotional frame of mind, and a devotional frame of
mind often links itself with a devotional attitude. Being then
on your knees with your Bible open before you, and having
endeavoured, as has already been suggested, to make God's
presence real to you, read your portion clause by clause and
sentence by sentence, turning it, if you can, into prayer as
you proceed: you will be surprised at the fresh thoughts

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which will crowd one after another into your mind, and at
the way in which the inspired words will burn themselves
as it were into your memory. It may be that when the
time at your disposal has expired you will not have read
more than two or three verses, but your object in the devo
tional study of Holy Scripture is not the mere reading of the
Bible but the assimilation of the living Christ Who is
therein revealed.
Once more, bear in mind that even spiritual impressions
are conveyed to us so far as we know through physical
channels, and more especially through our brains. From
this it follows that if our devotion is to be profitable, it
must be engaged in at a time when our brain, and indeed
our whole body, are capable of properly carrying out the
functions for which we depend upon them in the matter.
They were wise people to whom morning and evening
prayer first suggested themselves. Who would dare to
begin the day, who would care to close it, without the
assurance of God's blessing ? But do not let us allow the
rigid observance of a good custom to rob us of any of the
joy of communion with our Lord. Who does not know
what it is to be so tired when night comes, that real prayer
is an impossibility ? who has not experienced the shame of
falling asleep upon his knees ? Is there no cure for this ?
Well, at least there is a way of avoiding the difficulty, and
that is to make a point of having our evening time for
devotion at such an hour as that we shall not be disabled
by sheer physical fatigue from worshipping God. We

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usually know beforehand, for instance, of evening engage
ments; if before going to these we were to retire to our
rooms for spiritual refreshment we should not only secure
the grace of communion of which we should otherwise have
been robbed, but we should also obtain a balance, and
reposeful strength, which might prove of no little service
to us amid the occupations of the evening. Then, before
actually retiring to rest, we could commend ourselves to
the care of the Father, and bless Him that we had lost
nothing of the mercy which He had reserved for us.
But all these are only hints illustrative of the infinite pains
at which we must be in order to conserve the grace of life
which the Love of Christ has purchased for us. If the
Crown be worth winning, it is worth taking pains to win.
Nothing worth the having is to be obtained without some
sacrifice, and he who would possess the pearl of great price
must be prepared to sell all that he has in order to raise
sufficient money to buy it. It is more blessed to give than
to receive, because blessing comes from giving, and giving
ends in receiving. It is he who casts his bread upon the
waters who shall find it after many days, and only he who
loses his life for Christ's sake shall find it, and keep it
unto life eternal.
Thus Ruth the Moabitess was rescued from her heathenism,
and brought to God ; thus she found rest in the house of a
husband better, kinder far than any that her own land
could have provided her with. Thus Naomi was brought
back from her life of wandering, poorer indeed in one sense,
H

106 LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION.
but richer in the fact that in her affliction she had learnt
that it is only the blessing of the Lord which maketh rich,
and that He addeth no sorrow with it.
And we ? Some of us too have been brought to God :
some of us have been brought back to Him. It now only
remains for us to follow on to know the Lord ; to be honest
— honest in our devotion to Him, the better Boaz, to Whom
we owe our redemption ; honest in the stand we make
against the seductive influences of the world which we
profess to have left behind us ; honest in the earnest pains
we take to keep close to our Lord and to honour Him ;
honest in our endeavours to lead others to become the
servants of our gracious Master. Passing out then to this
life of honest endeavour, of cross-bearing and conflict as
we know it must be, of crown-winning and victory, as our
faith assures us it will be also, we hear in our ears the
loving promise of the King Who is ever in the midst of His
people, " Behold, I come quickly ; and My reward is with
Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be."
God give to each of us grace to answer, " Even so, come,
Lord Jesus."

The End.

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