YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1945

BIBLE CHARACTERS

BY

CHARLES READE, D.C.L.
AUTHOR OF
"it is neyer too late to mend'' "a WOMAN-HATER ':
"loye me little, love me long" etc.

NEW YORK
HAEPEE & BEOTHEES, EEANKLIN SQUAEE
1889

CONTENTS.

I. A LITERARY MARVEL -
II. AIDS TO FAITH
III. NEHEMIAH
IV. NEHEMIAH'S WORK ,
V. JONAH -
VI. DAVID -
vii. Paul's peeseveeance

PAOB 1
10
21
3958
8286

evidences op revelation -
monumental evidence and documental

99
105

BIBLE CHARACTERS. i.
A LITERAEY MARVEL.
The characters in Scripture are a literary
marvel. It is very hard to write characters in one
country to be popular in every land and age.
Especially hard in narrative. (Drama parades
characters by numberless speeches, and auto
graphs them by soliloquy — an expedient false in
nature, but convenient in art.)
Hardest of all to create such world-wide and
everlasting characters in few words, a bare record
of great things said and done.
One test of difficulty is rarity : number, then,

2 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
the world-wide characters — if any — in Thacy
dides and Herodotus, and observe whether
Josephus, when he leaves watering the Bible and
proceeds to supplement it, has added one death
less character to the picture-galleries of Holy
Writ. Shall we carry the comparison higher,
and include poetic narrative ? then go to the top
of the tree at once, and examine the two great
epics of antiquity.
The 'iEneid' — what a stream of narrative!
what fire of description! what march and music of
words ! But the characters ? — iEneas mediocre,
his staff lay figures. Dido just interesting
enough to make one angry with iEneas. Per
haps the strongest colour is in the friendship
and fate of Nisus and Euryalus ; and there a
Jewish pen had shown the way.
The less polished but mightier Homer has
achieved the highest feat of genius; he has
made puny things grand, and fertilized pebbles.
He has bewitched even scholars into thinking
his Greeks wiser and braver than the Trojans ;
whereas, if you can shut your ears to his music,

A LITERARY MARVEL. 3
his Greeks were barbarians besieging a civilized
city for a motive and in a manner incompatible
with one ray of civilization. The motive : from
the first dawn of civilization no country with in
dependent states ever got those states to unite in
leaving home and besieging a distant city to
recover the person of a solitary adulteress. The
manner: the first dawn of civilization showed men
that cities placed like Troy can always be taken
by one of two methods, blockade or assault. But
Homer's Zulus had neither the sense to blockade
that civilized city and starve it out, nor the
invention to make ladders, covered ways, and
battering-rams, nor the courage to scale walls,
nor even to burn or break through a miserable
gate. The civilized Trojans had a silver currency,
the Tyrian shekel, called by scholars with Homer
on the brain ' the Homeric shekel.' Homer never
mentions it, never saw it. The uncivilized
Greeks had no currency but bullocks ; no trade
but exchange of commodities. The attack and
defence of Troy were of a piece with the two
currencies : the civilized Orientals, with a silver

4 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
currency, barred out the Zulus, with a bullock
currency and calves' brains, like a pack of school
boys, and showed their contempt of them by
coming out and attacking them in the open with
t*heir inferior numbers. Yet the genius of Homer
could dazzle men's eyes, and bewitch their ears,
and confound their judgments, and sing black
white. So behold the barbarians gilt for ever,
and the civilized people smirched. Carent quia
vate sacro.
But turn from the glories of the wondrous tale
this magician has built on a sorry subject — fitter
for satire than epic — to his characters, and he is
no longer supreme.
To be sure, he does not dose us with mono
tonies, abstractions, lay figures ; fortemque Gyan,
fortemque Gloanthum : he discriminates the
brute courage of Ajax and the airy valour of
Tydides, the wisdom of Nestor and the astuteness
of Ulysses. But his gods and goddesses ? — mere
human animals ; blue blood for red, and there
ends his puerile invention in things divine. His
leading heroes are characters, but not on a par

A LITERARY MARVEL. 5
with his descriptions, his narrative, and his
music. They are the one ephemeral element in
an immortal song. Achilles, with his unsoldier-
like egotism, his impenetrable armour, his Zulu
cruelty to his helpless foe, and his antique tender
friendship, is a brave Greek of the day, but he
is not for all time ; two-thirds of him no modern
soldier would deign to copy.
The twenty-four books devoted by so great a
poet to Ulysses have not engraved ' the much-
enduring man ' on the Western heart. In short,
the leading heroes of Homer's epics are immortal
in our libraries, but dead in our lives.
Now take the two little books called Samuel.
The writer is not a great master like Homer and
Virgil ; he is artless, and careless to boot; forgets
what he had said a few pages before, and spoils
more than one good incident by putting the cart
before the horse — I mean by false transposition,
by presenting events out of their true and
interesting sequence : a sad fault in composition.
But the characters that rise from the historical
strokes of that rude pen are immortal : so solid,

6 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
and full of colour, too, that they stand amidst the
waves of time hke rocks, carved into statues by
Phidias, and coloured by Apelles.
Yet this writer has no monopoly of the art in
ancient Palestine; he shares it with about sixteen
other historians, all Hebrews, though some of
them write Hebrew and some Greek.
In our day character-painting is much at
tempted by certain writers of fictitious narrative;
but their method excludes them from a serious
comparison with Homer, Virgil, and the sacred
historians. They do not evolve characters by
simple narration. They clog the story with a
hundred little essays on the character of each
character. They keep putting their heads from
behind the show, and openly analyzing their pale
creations, and dissecting them, and eking them
out with comments, and microscoping their
poodles into lions. These are the easy expedi
ents of feeble art. They succeed with contem
poraries, and, indeed, are sure to be popular for a
time, because most readers have slow or lazy
minds, and love a writer who will save them the

A LITERARY MARVEL. 7
trouble of studying and penetrating character by
doing it for them in the very text of the story.
But it would be paying this false method — which
microscopes real mediocrity into false importance
— too great a compliment to compare its fruits
with the characters that are self-evolved in the
sacred writers, and, indeed, in Homer and Virgil,
for their method was, at all events, the true one,
though its results in the single particular of
character were inferior.
In further support of my present position let
me submit a few truths to be taken in conjunc
tion. First. Moderate excellence in writing is geo
graphical ; loses fifty per cent, in human esteem
by crossing a channel or a frontier.
Second,. Translation lowers it ten per cent.
Third. But when you carry into the West a
translation of a work the East admires ever so
much, ten to one it will miss the Western mind.
Eastern music is a dreamy noise to a Western
ear, but one degree beyond the sweet illogical
wail of an iEolian harp. Eastern poetry is to the

8 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Western a glue of honeyed words, a tinkling
cymbal, or a drowsy chime. The sacred Koran,
the Bible of a hundred million Orientals, is to
your Anglo-Saxon the weakest twaddle that ever
drivelled from a human skull. It does not shock
an Occidental Christian, or rouse his theological
ire. It is a mild emetic to his understanding, and
there's an end of it.
Fourth. The world is a very large place: Pales
tine is a small province in the East.
Fifth. What the whole world outside Palestine
could very seldom do at all, this petty province
did on a very large scale. About seventeen
writers, all Israelites, some of them with what
would nowadays be called a little learning, some
without, some writing in Hebrew, some in Greek,
all achieved one wonder. They sat down to
record great deeds done, and great words spoken
in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine,
which districts united are but a slice of the East,
and they told them wondrous briefly, yet so that
immortal and world-wide characters rise like
exhalations from the record.

A LITERARY MARVEL. 9
Written in the East, these characters live for
ever in the West ; written in one province, they
pervade the world ; penned in rude times, they
are prized more and more as civilization ad
vances ; product of antiquity, they come home to
the business and bosoms of men, women, and
children in modern days.
Then, is it any exaggeration to say that ' the
chakacters of Scripture are a marvel of the
mind ?

II.
AIDS TO FAITH.
Of a remarkable phenomenon the cause or
causes must be remarkable. Any humdrum
explanation of a marvel denounces itself ; in the
matter of solution ' inadequate ' means ' un
scientific' Perhaps the wisest plan will be not to hurry to
an explanation, but examine the phenomenon in
detail, and that may give us glimpses of a real
and sufficient solution.
The characters of Scripture are a part
of its truth, and aids to reasonable faith
in a matter where faith is a boon and
disbelief a calamity.
The Bible contains many things that were
hard to believe at the time, and many things

AIDS TO FAITH. u
that are very hard to believe now. It was the
prophecies, I think, that encountered the most
reasonable incredulity at the date of their de
livery ; but now it is the histories, or portions of
them ; for in our day so many of the prophecies,
minute and improbable at the time, have been
fulfilled to the letter, that old prophecy tends to
convert the reason to faith. Well, in a minor
degree the close study of character in Scripture
commends to our reason the truth of many
strange incidents with which these true charac
ters are indissolubly united.
This is mere preliminary discourse, so an
example or two must serve. Many more will
follow, if God should enable a broken old man to
complete the work he has had the hardihood to
begin. Well, then, we are told in Judges, chapter xiii.,
that an angel, in the likeness of a man, foretold to
Manoah, and also to his wife, that they should
have a son, who should deliver Israel. The hos
pitable pair desired to feast this friendly prophet
with a kid. But he declined, and advised them

12 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
to offer it to God. So they offered the kid as a
burnt-offering. Lo ! as the fire rose high, their
visitor went up in the flame, and then melted
into the air. They fell trembling on their faces,
quivering with terror.
This is a miracle ; we never see miracles nowa
days ; and as it is natural, though fallacious, to
think our narrow experience is the experience of
all time and place, we find it very hard to believe
them. But please follow this narrative into character.
'And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall
surely die, because we have seen God. But his
wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased
to kill us, he would not have received a burnt
offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither
would he have shewed us all these things, nor
would as at this time have told us such things
as these." '
A great emergency always reveals people's
characters, and here are two characters suddenly
developed in a pair that looked alike till then ;
but now one is all blind superstitious terror, the

AIDS TO FAITH. 13
other all clear logic and good sense. Was this
invented, and blind superstition assigned to the
male, clear logic to the female ? And that in the
East, where women were deemed inferior, and by
sure consequence made inferior.
Youth has its difficulties ; but so has scep
ticism. Learned reason cannot readily believe
that an Oriental writer invented this un-Oriental
dialogue. Reason suggests that this character-dialogue
was really spoken by some superstitious man and
logical woman.
Well, but if so, a propos of what were both
speeches spoken ?
Clearly it was a propos of something strange
and thrilling that had stirred these two charac
ters to their depths, and elicited the hitherto
unsuspected superiority of the wife, though
Oriental. It is hard to find a fact that could fit this
character- dialogue so thoroughly as the recorded
miracle does with all its details ; yet the charac
ter-dialogue bears Truth engraved on its face,

14 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
and so it becomes one of the aids to Faith — a
humble one, of course.
John relates that Mary Magdalene told Peter
and the other disciple Christ's sepulchre was
open, and His body risen again, and immediately
both those disciples ran to the sepulchre ; the
other disciple outran Peter, and got there first, but
hesitated at the entrance ; then Peter came up and
rushed in at once, and the other followed him.
Now, John did not trouble himself to account
for this apparent inconsistency in the rapidity of
those two disciples ; he merely recorded the
facts. But we, who study his lines far more than
he ever studied them, come to this passage with
the knowledge (1) that Peter was not a youth,
and (2) that he was the most ardent and impe
tuous of all the Apostles. We therefore see what
John does not indicate, the true significance of
the two seemingly incongruous facts he records
so simply ; it was just this — the younger legs got
first to the outside of the tomb ; the more ardent
and impetuous character rushed first into the
awe-inspiring place where his Lord had lain.

AIDS TO FAITH. 15
This stroke of character, unconsciously revealed
by simple statement of fact, lays hold of our
reason, and aids it — so far as it goes — to believe
a thing that would be utterly incredible but for
the weight and variety of the evidence, cotem-
porary, continuous, and monumental.
Mary and Martha of Bethany are presented to
us in three fragments of narrative — one by Luke,
two by John, and no apparent concert between
the writers — indeed, a clear absence of it.
In the first passage, which is by Luke, they
appear, one as a bustling housewife, the other a
pious student ; very distinct characters, though
both thoroughly feminine ; and there Luke leaves
them (Luke x. 38-42).
In the second passage, which is by John,
bereavement effaces their superficial distinction
for a time, and they are both tender women (John
xi. 21-25).
In the third passage the keynote, struck by
Luke, is returned to by John, and the women
seem to differ entirely in his page as they had
done in Luke's (John xii. 2, 3).

16 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
BEFORE THE SICKNESS OF LAZARUS.
' And a certain woman named Martha received
him into her house. And she had a sister called
Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his
word. But Martha was cumbered about much
serving, and came, to him, and said, Lord, dost
thou not care that my sister hath left me to
serve alone ? bid her therefore that she help
me ' (Luke x. 38-40).
Mary, not a word.
WHEN LAZARUS WAS LYING DEAD.
Martha, who was the greater gossip, and heard
news soonest, ran to meet Jesus outside the
village, and at sight of Him, the first cry of her
true woman's heart was, 'Lord, if thou hadst
been here, my brother would not have died.'
An hour later Mary heard He was in the
village, and she ran, the gentle Mary, and clung
passionately to His knees ; and what was the first
cry of her woman's heart ? ' Lord, if thou hadst
been here, my brother would not have died.'

AIDS TO FAITH. 17
The very words Martha had spoken; and if
you ask me why such opposite characters said
the same thing, I must reply out of Moliere :
' Ne voyez-vous pas que c'est la Nature pure qui
vous parle V
Calamity effaces even broad distinctions, if
they lie above the hearts. Behold the bustling
housewife and the gentle student equally merged
in loving, trusting woman! (John xi. 21-32).
AFTER LAZARUS WAS RESTORED TO LIFE.
Jesus came to Bethany, and supped with that
family He had made the happiest in Judsea.
Lazarus was amongst those who sat at meat.
Martha served.
Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard —
very precious — and anointed the feet of Jesus
(John xii. 2, 3).
Now, did physician Luke sit down in one
place and coin these two names, and invent their
characters, so opposite in household matters ?
Did fisherman John sit down in another place,
and adopt Luke's names, yet out of his own in-

1 8 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
vention present Luke's bustling housewife and
his absorbed student as one woman in the depths
of the heart ?
Did this same John afterwards go back in his
invention, Heaven knows how, to Luke's key-
note, and present his one-hearted mourners as
women differing greatly in every-day life, and
especially in their way of honouring a beloved
guest ?
This solution is incredible, and no man sees its
absurdity more clearly than a veteran writer of
fiction ; such a man knows the artifices of art
and the limits of art. Now, here the artifices are
absent, and the limits surpassed.
No ; the sisters of Bethany were real creatures,
written about piecemeal by two independent
writers, who each recorded what little he knew
about them.
Thus handled, they differ from each other in
domestic character, but agree in the deeper affec
tions, and they never differ so much from each
other as they both do from the male of our
species.

AIDS TO FAITH. 19
But in truth nobody doubts that these were
real characters that differed, and real hearts that
agreed. What has not been universally observed is that
the reality of the characters is inseparable from
the truth of the narrative, and stands or falls
with it.
The whole record occupies only five verses in
Luke and fourteen in John, and the characters
are not created on the modern plan ; they exist
only by the facts. Try to believe the characters,
yet doubt the facts; you will find you cannot
really do it. If you are as honest and resolute
as the thing deserves, you will come to this:
either both the characters are a daring fiction
concocted miraculously by a fisherman and a
doctor, writing in different places and at different
times, or else the facts, which exhale the charac
ters like a rose its perfume, are as true as those
characters are.
If the Old and New Testament, looked into,
should be found to teem with examples of this
sort, was I wrong to say that ' The characters of

20 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Scripture are a part of its truth, and aids to rea
sonable faith in a matter where faith is a boon
and disbelief a calamity ' ?
But if the characters of Scripture are both a
marvel of the mind and also aids to faith, surely
we ought to give up skimming them, and study
them. Put them at their lowost, and they are
a gold-mine ; and in that mine surface-washing
has been productive ; but to dig is better.
I begin purposely with one of the smaller
characters. A place is not vouchsafed him in
the old collections of Bible characters, and even
of late he has been disposed of in a page or two
as one of ' the lesser lights.' But who knows ?
we may rate him higher if we study, not skim,
him.

III.
NEHEMIAH.
Once in the history of mankind a mortal man
told a nation its history in detail, predicting the
near and the distant future so distinctly that
both seemed to lie equally close to his eye
on one map of events. (Deuteronomy xxviii.,
xxix., xxx.)
In our little (so-called) predictions we go by
two guides — experience of the past, and shrewd
calculation of the future founded on that ex
perience. But this diviner had no help from
either of those guides to the future ; on the con
trary, the things he foretold were unprecedented,
inconsistent with each other, incredible, and to
human reason absurd.
(1.) You shall drive out all the nations that

22 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
now inhabit Canaan; shall take that land and
hold it.
(2.) If you keep the divine law I have just
promulgated, you shall enjoy that country, and
its soil shall teem with fruitfulness.
(3.) If you do not keep this divine law, that
land and you shall wither under every curse
that can strike man, beast, and soil, and at last
you shall be driven out of it.
(4.) If after that you shall repent, and turn
again to God and His commandments, He will
pity you, and turn your captivity, and restore
you, and punish your enemies, who have afflicted
you with His consent, but with no good motive
on their part.
Now, here was a string of inconsistent impro
babilities. (1.) The land of Canaan was held by warlike
tribes, with cavalry, chariots of war, and walled
cities. The Hebrews were a half-armed infantry, en
cumbered with a mob of women and children.
They had no strongholds, but must advance on

NEHEMIAH. 23
the Canaanites from tents, and retreat to tents
whenever worsted, either in skirmish or drawn
battle. (2.) To conquer Canaan and its cities from
tents, they must by degrees master the art of
war so thoroughly that, with their proved supe
riority as soldiers, and the fortresses acquired by
that conquest, no nation could dispossess them,
still less transplant them to a distance.
(3.) Suppose, as a wild hypothesis, the im
probable conquest and incredible transplantation
of such a people accomplished: that expatri
ated mass would then, as a matter of course,
blend with the greater nation that received
them. (4.) In two more generations the absorbed and
absorbing people would be so compact, that it
could not possibly be decomposed, and the
Hebrew multitude return spontaneously by
miracle as they had been exported by miracle.
Yet every tittle of the incredible and contra
dictory romance Moses foretold came true.

24 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
That half-armed infantry drove out the war
riors of Canaan, and took their land, and obeyed
God's law there, and reaped the promised
blessings till Joshua and the elders who knew
him and survived him were all dead : a remark
able fact, which merits profound study, and has
been skimmed accordingly. But they left a few
idolaters, and these leavened them, so that in
time idolatry and the true worship flourished
side by side. Sometimes one had the upper
hand, sometimes the other. Neither was ever
extinct. Now, nations are not like individuals ;
they cannot be judged at all in the next world,
and even in this world they must be judged by
their majorities. This people, then, were judged
in this world by their fluctuating majorities,
and alternately cursed and blessed for about
nine hundred years. Yet, though the double
prediction of Moses was all this time recorded,
and read out at times to the people, and though
alternate blessings and curses were its running
comment and illustration, they could never
make up their minds unanimously whether to

NEHEMIAH. 25
worship the God of Israel and be blessed, or
false gods and be cursed.
At last, when they were proved incurable in
Canaan, the long-predicted chastisement fell on
them. Israel, being the greater idolater, was
carried away captive first. Judah soon followed,
and her desecrated Temple was despoiled and
destroyed. Part of the nation was slaughtered
in battle or famished on the road ; a few thou
sands of the lower sort remained at home, but
without their Temple, their rites, their national
existence. The cream of Judah and Israel were
really transported to Babylon and its neigh
bourhood, by a monarchy which had long
practised that prodigious kind of transplan
tation. (See Herodotus, passim.)
Even now, according to Moses, this people
might repent; and if so, they would return to
their own land, and their captors suffer in
turn. But humanly speaking, what chance was there
that Israelites or Jews would unlearn idolatry
at Babylon ? Why, what had all their idolatry

26 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
come of? — Imitation. Under the early Judges
they could not as a nation withstand the ex
ample of a few conquered idolaters, who wor
shipped false gods in groves for want of temples
In the height of their glory their wisest king
was decoyed into idolatry by the example of his
intellectual inferiors, his wives and concubines.
Imitation and example set them bowing at one
time to a contemptible fish-god ; at another to a
fiend whose worship entailed the burning of
their children. Now, at Babylon idolatry was
example and authority into the bargain. At
Babylon idolatry was glorious, sublime; had
every charm and seduction to win the sensual
understanding and divert it from the unseen
God. If you and 1 and an archangel had been en
dowed with absolute power, but left to our own
wisdom, human and angelic, I am persuaded
that neither that archangel nor you nor I should
have sent the Hebrews to Babylon to unlearn
idolatry ; so wide and impassable is the gulf be
tween the sagacity of created beings and the

NEHEMIAH. 27
genuine prescience that marks their Creator —
for constant prescience implies omniscience.
Babylon, bright centre of captivating idolatry,
commenced an everlasting cure of Jewish idol
atry, which punishments, blessings, miracles,
could never effect in the land of Canaan. I
keep in reserve a comment or two on this his
torical curiosity.
Meantime, ' sweet were the uses of adversity '
The captivity roused great examples of faith, re
vived the necessity for miracles — and so miracles
came — reawakened the lyre of Judah, which had
slept since the days of David, and stirred up the
noblest army of prophets that ever preached in
any period of Hebrew story.
The Book of Daniel, the most sustained and
grandest of all the prophetical and historical
books, was written in Babylon itself, and partly
in the Chaldaic tongue.
Ere long that impregnable city, Babylon,
falsified its past history, defied all human
probability, and bowed to Hebrew prophecy.
Behind its enormous walls, it had laughed in-

28 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
vaders to scorn for centuries ; yet it was taken
a few years after it had torn that suffering people
from their land. %
Cyrus, descendant of the conqueror, had no
sooner succeeded to the throne of Persia, to
which Babylon and Palestine were now equally
subject, than he issued a most remarkable edict ;
he alleged Divine inspiration, and by order of the
Most High — as he declared — invited the Jews to
go up to Jerusalem and build the Temple to Him
whom he, Cyrus, proclaimed to be the true God.
He restored to the Jews their sacred vessels, and
assisted them with his vast resources.
The leader of this return was Zerubbabel.
When the returned captives laid the foundation
of the new Temple, there came a touch of
nature which never, whilst books endure, shall
pass from the memory of mankind. The young
and the middle-aged praised God with shouts of
joy; but many of the priests and Levites, who
were ancient men, and had seen the first Temple
in its glory, wept with a loud voice; sb that
such as stood apart could not discern the noise

NEHEMIAH. 29
of the shouts of joy from the noise of the
wailing of those aged men.
Yet the leaders of the heathen nations that
were settled in Judea baffled this good work by
their intrigues for twenty-one years, and then at
last the Temple was built and dedicated. But
none of those poor old men lived to weep again,
comparing the finished Temple with Solomon's
in all its glory.
Besides the new Temple and its services, the
restored Jews had prophets, especially Haggai
and1 Zachariah, and no doubt there was a great
revival. But it is clear that in the course of
years there was a decline ; and fifty-seven years
after the rebuilding of the Temple, Ezra went
up from Babylon to purify the degenerating de
scendants of those pious patriots.
The support Ezra had from Artaxerxes, king
of Persia, and consequently of Babylon, his
touching gratitude to that monarch and to Him
who ' is enthroned in the heart of kings,' the
abuses he found rampant, his tears and ardent
prayers to God, his temporary success, and the

30 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
great revival of the law he inaugurated, Dei
gratia, are written in the last four chapters ot
the book that bears his name.
About fourteen years after this revival, and
ninety-two years after the edict of Cyrus, Single-
heart stepped upon the scene. He was a Jew,
born probably in Persia, and rose, in spite of
his origin, by rare ability, to a high place in the
service of Artaxerxes. His title was cup-bearer;
but all such titles are misleading. He was a
statesman and a courtier, and it was only one
of his duties to taste the wine before he poured
out for the king, and so secure him at his own
risk against poison. This royal favourite, bred
in soft Persia and lodged in those earthly
paradises, the summer palace and winter palace
of his monarch, had yet 'Jerusalem written on
his heart..'
It was what they call winter in Persia, but
what we should call balmy spring. Singleheart,
better known as Nehemiah, was leading a life
of delights with the king at Shushan, when

NEHEMIAH. 31
Hanani, a pious Jew, who had gone with a
company to visit Jerusalem, returned from that
journey. Nehemiah questioned him eagerly
about their city and countrymen.
Then Hanani and his fellows hung their
heads, and told Nehemiah that the remnant of
the captivity in that land were in great affliction
and reproach ; the wall of Jerusalem, also, was
broken down, and the gates burned with fire.
See now how Jerusalem was beloved by her
exiled sons ! Born, bred, and thriving in soft,
seductive Persia, the true-hearted Jew Nehemiah
was struck down directly by these words. He
who had a right to stand on the steps of the
greatest throne in the world sat down upon the
ground, and fasted and wept and prayed before
the God of heaven; and this was his confession and
his praj'er: ' 0 Lord God of heaven . we have
dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not
kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor
the judgments, which thou commandedst thy
servant Moses. Remember, I beseech thee, the
word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses,

32 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad
among the nations : but if ye turn unto me, and
keep my commandments, and do them ; though
there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part
of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence,
and will bring them unto the place that I have
chosen to set my name there. ... 0 Lord, I
beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the
prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy ser
vants, who desire to fear thy name : and prosper,
I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him
mercy in the sight of this man.'
Public men are slaves as well as masters, their
consciences seldom their own, their time never.
Neither their pleasures nor their griefs can be
long indulged. The bereaved statesman is not
allowed to be quiet and to mourn ; he must leave
the new grave and the desolate home for his
arena, sometimes must even take part in a public
festivity with a bleeding heart. This very thing
befell Nehemiah. Like the poor actor who must
go from a home with a coffin to play his part in
comedy, and laugh and fool with the rest, sad

NEHEMIAH. 33
Singleheart had soon to rise from his knees, and
don his gay raiment and mingle in a brilliant and
jocund scene.
Great Artaxerxes gave a superb banquet to his
nobility: the queen was there — no every-day
event. You may let loose your imagination with
out fear ; it will not go beyond the splendours of
the Persian court on that occasion. Gold plate by
the ton, gorgeous silk dresses of every hue, marble
pillars, fountains, music, lights to turn night into
day, slaves, sultanas, courtiers resplendent as
stars, and all worshipping their sun Artaxerxes ;
smiling when he smiled, laughing when he
laughed, applauding him to the echo, and think
ing it little to say of this king of monarchs what
Eastern adulation could say later on of a little
trumpery prince, ' It is the voice of a god.'
It was Singleheart's duty to present the cup to
this earthly divinity. So he took up the golden
goblet, filled it ceremoniously, and offered it with
a deep obeisance, as he had often done before ;
but now for the first time with a sorrowful face.
This was so strange a thing in him, or indeed

34 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
in any courtier, that the king noticed it at once ;
even as he took the cup his eye dwelt on this sad
face, and he said directly, * Why is your counte
nance sad ?'
Nehemiah was too much taken aback to reply.
The king questioned him again. ' You are not
sick ?'
Still no reply.
' This is sorrow, and nothing else.
Then Nehemiah was sore afraid, and I will tell
you why. His life was in danger. Even a
modern autocrat like Louis XIV. expected every
body's face to shine if he did but appear, and how
much more an Artaxerxes ! What, wear a
sorrowful face when he was presiding over joy
and gaiety, and gilding them by his presence ! If
he had ordered this melancholy visage away to
prison or death, it would have been justified by
precedent, and loudly applauded on the spot by
all the guests.
But though Nehemiah felt his danger, yet the
king's actual words were not menacing, and the
courtier found courage to tell the simple truth.

NEHEMIAH. 35
He salaamed down to the ground. ' Let the king
live for ever !' After this propitiatory formula
he replied, ' Why should not my countenance be
sad, when the city, the place of my fathers'
sepulchres, lieth waste, and its gates are burned
with fire V
These are brave words, and can be read aggres
sively; only that is not how Nehemiah spoke
them. It was his to propitiate, not to offend,
and his tones were broken-hearted and appealing,
not contumacious.
You must read the words so, if you would be
one in a thousand, and really understand them.
The king answered him accordingly. ' What
do you ask of me ?' said he.
Then Nehemiah set us all an example. He did
not answer the king out of his own head, and
pray for wisdom six hours afterwards, because it
was bed- time. He prayed standing on the spot,
and, like a skilful gunner, shot the occasion fly
ing. Strengthened by ejaculatory prayer, the
soul's best weapon, he said, 'If it please the king,
and if thy servant has found favour in thy sight,

36 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
pray send me to Judah, unto the city of my
fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it.'
The king's answer was rather favourable. He
was unwilling to lose a good servant for ever, and
asked him how long he wished to be away; but
this was as much as to say he should go upon
conditions. When that one point was settled, and leave of
absence conceded, Nehemiah got bolder and
bolder. He asked for passports where needed,
and an order on Asaph for timber, etc. The
liberal monarch granted all, and even volunteered
a cavalry escort to see him safe to the end of that
long and perilous journey. In recording the
first of these petitions the autobiographer, Nehe
miah, suddenly informs us that the queen was
sitting by the king's side. This looks as if he.
connected her somehow in his own mind with
his petition and the king's bounty, and rather
favours the notion that she was the famous
Esther, and sympathized then and there with her
sad countryman by look or gesture.
So Singleheart left the lap of luxury and rode

NEHEMIAH. 37
with his escort from Shushan to Jerusalem.
This ride passes for nothing in the Biblical
account ; whether it is so we can best ascertain
by doing it ourselves.
He reached Jerusalem, and showed rare
wisdom the first day. Instead of proclaiming
himself and his credentials, and going boldly to
work, he lay quiet three days, doing nothing and
learning everything, especially who would be
likely to support him, who to oppose him.
On the third day, in the middle of the night,
he rose and took with him, not his Persian
escort to make a clatter of hoofs and a parade,
but a few trusty men on foot, and even to them
he did not reveal 'what God had put into his
heart to do at Jerusalem.' So, with his secret
locked at present in his breast, he passed out by
the gate of the valley and round the city, and
under the silver light of the moon and stars
viewed the clean gaps, the burned fragments of
the gates, and the jagged breaches in the walls
of the holy city. It was the right time to gaze
on a great and fallen city : such a ruin is sad but
beautiful in that tender light.

38 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
The same stars that shone above it and upon
it had glittered upon Solomon's Temple, his im
pregnable walls, his imperial power.
As Nehemiah looked on this contrast, piteous
yet lovely beneath those unchanging stars, he
wept, he prayed, he drank in the scene ; and
methinks it never left his mind in the good fight
he fought thereafter by night as well as day.
Nehemiah was a layman, and had a layman's
good sense in religion ; walls were necessary to
the safety and glory of the city. They were
also necessary to true religion. Idolaters must
be kept out of the city, or idolatry could never
be kept out of the Jewish mind. The whole
history of the nation showed this.
Fresh from that starlight picture Nehemiah
went to the Jewish nobles, priests, and princes,
showed the powers he held under the hand of
Artaxerxes, and urged them to rebuild the walls
and revive the national glory. He has not told
us what he said ; but it is clear he found words
of rare eloquence; for they all caught fire
directly, and cried out, ' Let us rise and build.'

IV.
NEHEMIAH'S WORK.
SINGLEHEART, BUILDER.
Then this wise man strengthened zeal with
method. Under his advice each powerful man
took his own piece of the dilapidated wall, and
repaired it with his people.
This may seem a small thing to hasty readers,
but it was a master-stroke of genius. Not only
was it a grand division of labour, but it animated
the work with a noble emulation and a personal
pride. ' See how fast my work goes on !' ' See
how well my piece is done !' ' Now, my sons,
gird up your tunics, or Rephaiah the son of Hur
will get ahead of us.'
There were forty-six building parties, and
leading women amongst them, the daughters of

40 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Shallum, a powerful man. I apprehend the
individual builders were not less than three
thousand ; so the walls began to rise like an
exhalation. The good cannot monopolize foresight. Evil
men soon see when their interests are threatened.
The heathen leaders showed their teeth at once ;
but at first they underrated the power of zeal
under a wise and earnest leader. Their weapon
was scorn. SanbaUat, Tobiah, and Geshem in
quired ironically whether Nehemiah meant to
take the place of Artaxerxes. Nehemiah replied,
' I am God's servant, and mind your own busi
ness; you have no portion, nor right, nor
memorial in Jerusalem.'
When the walls began to rise as if by magic,
SanbaUat got frightened, but still brazened out
his anxiety with ridicule. ' What are these
feeble Jews up to ? Will they fortify them
selves ? Will they set up their sacrifices again ?
Will they turn the rubbish back into stones to
build with ?'
' A stone wall,' says Tobiah, ¦ ay, the sort of

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 41
wall a fox couldn't clamber over without knock
ing it down.'
We writers get used to this sort of criticism
after some great exhausting labour ; and I
should not have thought Nehemiah would
have much minded such sneers.
But ridicule is wonderfully stinging to those
who are not hardened to it by use, and he felt
it bitterly; he appealed to God to judge these
scorners, and went on building.
Then the heathen leaders dropped their sorry
jests, and prepared to attack the builders with
armed men, and so crush the work with violence
and blood. So sure of the result were they that
they let out their tactics. They said : ' These
builders shall not see us, nor know at what part
to expect us; in a moment we will be in the
midst of them, and slay them, and cause the
work to cease.' singleheart, captain.
Forewarned, forearmed. Nehemiah instantly
withdrew a number of men from the works, and

42 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
armed them to the teeth, and disposed them in
stations as for the defence of a city. He also
girt a sword on every builder, and put a javelin
into one of his hands. Then he took a lofty
station, with a band of warriors round him, and
a trumpeter by his side. He circulated an order
that wherever the trumpet should sound, thither
all his men should run, with their weapons, from
every side.
So wrought they, trowel in one hand, javelin
in another, swords by their side, and a great
leader's eye over all ; and one-half their force
paraded with shield and spear ' from the rising
of the morn till the stars appeared at eve.' At
night they all watched under arms, and no man
put off his clothes except to wash them. Night
and day were one to these gallant men till the
mighty work was done : so can the spirit of a
great leader animate a host, and make each
pawn a knight, each mason a hero.
The heathen leaders swallowed their boast,
and never made a single attack. By that means
they saved their skins, for if they had attacked

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 43
a weak part of the walls, Nehemiah would have
seen them from his elevation, and run to meet
them with his picked men, sounding the trumpet
as he ran. Then his soldiers and armed builders
would have run in upon the foe from every side,
and cut them to pieces in a moment. So the
heathen leaders did not fight, but tried assas
sination. SINGLEHEART, POLITICIAN.
SanbaUat and Geshem sent a friendly message
to decoy Nehemiah to his death. ' Come,' said
they, ' why should we quarrel over the matter ?
No doubt we can come to some friendly arrange
ment. Meet us in the plains of Ono ; there are
several villages there ; choose which you like for
this amicable meeting.'
Sorry schemers ! Fancy these shallow traitors
sending this to an Oriental statesman-! — a bare
hook without a bait. He did not condescend to
be angry, or show them he saw through them.
He parried the proposal with cool contempt.
' I am doing a great work ; why should I leave
it and interrupt it to come to you f

44 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
They sent a similar message four times. Then
Nehemiah did a first-rate thing. Instead of
varying his reply in the least, he sent the
same formula four times, and I am all ad
miration at this; for, after all, when you have
given a good answer, why admit even a shadow
of imperfection in that answer by altering a
word or two ? And then, how like a rock it
makes a man seem, to give the waves but one
answer : immovability, whether they surge up or
ripple up, come at him smiling or foaming.
Irritated by this granite contempt, SanbaUat
deviated from the Oriental into the ruffian ; he
did what corresponds in our day to sending an
abusive post-card. He actually sent a letter,
wide open, for everybody to read before it
reached Nehemiah, and thus ran this ill-bred
pagan's lines :
' It is reported among the heathen, and
Gashmu confirms it, that you and the Jews
mean to rebel against Artaxerxes, and that you
have built the wall with this object, and to be
king yourself; and that you have bribed pro-

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 45
phets to say there is a king in Jerusalem. We
shall report all this to Artaxerxes unless you
meet us as invited, and come to terms with
us.' This open letter was well calculated to alarm.
Lies of the sort sent from Jerusalem had ere
now poisoned the monarch's mind in Persia, and
arrested a good work in Judea for many a long
day. Nehemiah sent him back an open letter in
return. ' There are no such things done as you
pretend ; you are feigning them all out of your
own heart.1
From that hour the enemy resigned all direct
attacks on him, but still endeavoured to detach
a few friends from him; and here they had
some success, having intermarried with Jewish
families. HIS, CHIVALROUS SPIRIT.
The worst trap of all was now laid for him : a
singularly wicked one, to catch him by means of
his piety, and his desire to know God's will in

46 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
all things. The prophet Shemaiah and the pro
phetess Noadiah foretold a great danger, and
that he could escape it only by shutting himself
up in the Temple and closing the doors. This
time, with all his sagacity, he did not divine
treachery. Not his wisdom, but his high spirit,
saved Singleheart from this trap.
' What !' said he ; ' shall such a man as i am
flee? And what man, intrusted with God's
work, would skulk into the Temple merely to
save his life ? 'I WILL NOT GO IN.'
Talk of lines like the sound of a trumpet:
why, this was to speak thunder-bolts and act
lightning. Here we see in action what the
heathen poet taught in noblest song :
' Summum orede nef as animam prasferre pudori
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'
After Singleheart had escaped this trap by
his courage and his fidelity to a single purpose,
he found that these prophecies came from lying
prophets suborned by Tobiah and SanbaUat.

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 47
Then in the spirit of his dispensation he in
voked on their heads the curse of that God
they had blasphemed.
After a feeble attempt to work upon the Jews
they had intermarried with, Tobiah and San
baUat disappear from the narrative.
The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in fifty-
two days, and Singleheart gave the glory to
God. Taking the work and the time together,
is there a parallel to this achievement ? The
Chinese Wall and the great Pacific Railway are
far greater works, and much of the latter was
built with the pick in one hand and the revolver
in the other. But then, these vast works took
years to complete.
Looking at the size of the city, the great
height and breadth of the walls, it was an
enormous work ; much greater than the London
Law-Courts, that have taken a dozen years to
build — greater than the cathedral of Cologne,
which has been centuries in hand. And when
you consider that these walls were built
in the teeth of an armed and implacable foe,

48 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
built with the trowel in one hand, the javelin in
the other, and that the sleep of the work
men was broken with watching, and their
clothes never taken off except to wash them,
and flung on again half dry, it was an un
rivalled feat of labour, zeal, judgment, courage,
and piety, and will so remain to the end of
time. NEHEMIAH, REFORMER.
Ezra came to Jerusalem fourteen years before
Nehemiah ; he left the holy seed of Judah pure
at Babylon, but found it at Jerusalem mingled
with that of idolaters.
When he discovered this he rent his garment
and mantle, and plucked off the hair of his head
and beard, and sat down astonied until the
evening sacrifice.
But during that solemnity he rose and threw
himself down at the gate of the Temple, and
prayed and wept and confessed the sins of his
people. His sorrow and his eloquence touched many

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 49
hearts, and led to a public confession and to
solemn pledges of reformation, especially from
such of the offenders as belonged to Levi, Ezra's
own tribe.
But it is clear from Nehemiah's own account
that intermarriage with heathen, and other
abuses, proved too strong for Ezra in the long-
run. Nehemiah found this malpractice and many
others at Jerusalem. Indeed, his great enemy,
the heathen Tobiah, owed much of his power to
having married a Jewess of good family. Nehe
miah set himself to reform this, but not this
alone. He was not a better, but a greater, man
than Ezra, and made wiser refbrms, and kept
them alive, which Ezra failed to do.
One thing that shocked him much was the
usurious practices of the wealthier Jews, and
their cruelty in seUing their poor debtors into
bondage. ' What !' said he ; 'we have redeemed
our brethren that were sold unto the heathen,
and wiU ye sell your brethren ?' and they found
nothing to answer.
Then he reminded them he had power to levy

50 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
large exactions upon them,, and besought them
to imitate his moderation.
Such was the power of his example and his
remonstrances that he actuaUy induced the
creditors to restore to the ruined debtors their
houses, vineyards, and olive-yards, and a little
of the forfeited produce to keep them alive
through the famine.
When the relenting creditors had bound
themselves to this by oath, he took his tunic in
both hands and shook it, and said, ' May God
so shake out every man from his house and
from his labour who performeth not this
promise.' This was a master-stroke, and shows the man
of genius. Such appeals to the senses as weU as
to the conscience take the whole mind by assault,
and fix the matter for ever in the memory.
His hearers cried ' Amen !' and praised the Lord,
and — kept their promise.
All preceding governors of Jerusalem had
acted on their powers and bled the people them
selves, and even let their servants oppress and

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 51
pillage them. Not so Nehemiah; with him it
was more blessed to give than to receive. He
kept a noble table, and entertained one hundred
and fifty Jews every day from the city, besides
hungry souls from the villages ; but all this at
his own expense; the governor's aUowance he
never touched, because, as he said, the people
were burdened enough without that. His mind
runs forward, and he relates this a little out of
place — chapter v. 13-19. I have but placed it
in its true sequence. It is a noble trait, and
every generous heart goes with him, when with
honest simplicity he bursts out, ' Think on me,
my God, for good, according to aU I have done
for this people.'
Though he was nominal governor of Jerusalem
for twelve years from the date of his first visit, it
would seem, on a careful comparison of all his
statements, that Hanani and Hananiah acted
for him by his own appointment during a portion
of that time as well as after it had expired.
But as Ezra, both before and after Nehemiah's
arrival, was unable to cope persistently with the

52 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
abuses of the day, so Nehemiah's own lieutenants
failed to withstand them.
Probably Nehemiah himself felt there was no
one in whom he could place a blind confidence ;
for, twelve years after his first visit, he came
back to Jerusalem with enlarged powers, and
this time he showed priests as well as laymen he
was not a man to be trifled with.
Eliashib the priest had given his kinsman
Tobiah the heathen an apartment in the Temple,
and Tobiah had furnished it.
Nehemiah bundled out aU his furniture and
effects, and had the rooms purified after him.
He found a priest, grandson of this very
Eliashib, married to a heathen. He chased him
out of the Temple.
On the other hand, he found that certain lay
rulers, whose business it was to see the tithes
paid to the priests and Levites, had so neglected
them that many of that sacred tribe were work
ing in the fields for a bare subsistence.
Nehemiah rebuked these negligent officials,
and established storehouses for the tithes of corn,

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 53
new wine, and oil; and to secure the Levites
against any future neglect in the distribution
of these stores, he selected Shelemiah, a priest,
Zadok, a scribe, and Pedaiah, a Levite, as almon
ers or distributors of these stores, and associated
with them one Hanan, a man of approved fidelity.
Both priests and laymen had become loose in
observing the Sabbath day. He found Jews
treading the wine-presses, gathering in the
harvests, and trading on the Sabbath day, and
men of Tyre bringing fish and other wares into
the markets of the city.
He treated natives and aliens alike, stopped
the home trade, and closed the gates of the city
against the Tyrians.
But the Tyrians were hard to deal with ; they
lodged outside the wall, and offered their wares
outside. ' Do that again,' said Nehemiah, ' and I
will lay hands on you.' This frightened them
away for good.
Then came his worst trouble, the persistent
intermarriage with heathen.
Ezra had withstood this for years in vain.

54 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Nehemiah had combated it with partial success ;
yet now Nehemiah found Jews who had married
wives of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, and their
children could not speak Hebrew, but naturaUy
spoke their mother-tongue.
Then he came out in a new character. He
contended with them, and cursed them, and
smote certain of them, and plucked off their
hair, and made them swear by God not to give
their daughters to heathen husbands nor their
sons to heathen wives again.
After this outburst of impassioned zeal, which
at first takes the student of his mind a little by
surprise, he returned to his grave character, and
reasoned the matter with those he had terrified
into submission.
' What Jew/ said he, ' was ever so wise, so
great, so beloved of God, as King Solomon ? Yet
outlandish women could make even him sin
against God, and commit idolatry.'
Nehemiah prevailed, and there is reason to
believe that idolatry received its death-blow
under his rule.

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 55
He ends his brief but noble record with his
favourite prayer, ' Remember me, 0 my God, for
good.' That prayer has long been granted.
But the children of God on earth have not seen
all his value. Do but enumerate the various
parts he played, the distinct virtues he showed,
the strokes of genius he extemporized — and aU
to serve, not himself, but his country and his
God. Faithful courtier, yet true patriot ; child
of luxury, yet patient of hardship; inventive
buUder, impromptu general, astute politician,
high-spirited gentleman, inspired orator, resolute
reformer — born leader of men, yet humble before
God. He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem ; he restored
the law of Moses. Tradition says he lived fifty
years after the events he records; he probably
returned to Persia ; but if he did, he was not the
man to stay there half a century and leave the
city and the law to take care of themselves.
Character is a key to facts ; and it was not in
Nehemiah's character to live and desert the two
great works of his life for fifty years or so.

56 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
When, after two centuries of small events,
small men, and no history, big events and the
big men they generate came again to Judea and
raised history from the dead, we find the stamp
of Nehemiah and his pupils marked on the
Jewish mind so plainly that the story of the
Maccabees seems but a natural sequence of
Nehemiah's chronicle.
Nehemiah fought tooth and nail for all the
law of Moses, and especially the Sabbath day.
Nehemiah tore the holy seed out of the embraces
of the heathen, and ended the moral influences
of idolatry.
This was sure to drive the idolater, sooner or
later, from the bloodless weapons that alone can
conquer the mind, to persecution and brute
force; and accordingly, in the next Hebrew
record, behold those weapons levelled against
constant souls, and the sword of heroic Judas.
Nehemiah, then, is not what hasty judges have
called him, ' one of the lesser lights.' He is a
gigantic figure that stalked across the page of
history luminous, then glided into the dark abyss

NEHEMIAH'S WORK. 57
of time, but scattered sparks of historic light, and
left, not one, but two immortal works behind
him. As to the character of his piety, he relies on
God, seeks His glory, and is unceasing in good
works for his nation. But then, he despised
lucre, and sought not the praise of men for those
works. It is no small matter to look to God alone,
with much light or little. He lived under a
covenant of works, and thought accordingly ;
yet methinks he needed but a word or two from
Christ's own lips to be a Christian saint.

JONAH.
Jonah, the son of Amittai, figures amongst the
prophetical writers, but he was not one ; he was
only a seer, like ^Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, the
prophet that came out of Judah, and many
others. Like them, his inspiration was occa
sional, but taught him something of the mind
of God (Jonah iv. 1). His other predictions
are lost for want of a chronicler, but a master-
hand has recorded his great prophecy and the
strange events that preceded and followed it.
This little Hebrew seer suddenly received a
grand and startling commission — to go to the
banks of the Tigris and threaten the oldest,
largest, and wickedest city in the world with
speedy destruction for its sins. That still, small
voice, which no mortal had ever defied, thrilled

JONAH. 59
Jonah's ear. * Arise, go to Nineveh, that great
city, and cry against it ; for their wickedness is
come up before me.'
Here was an honour for a petty seer. His
betters would have received it with pious exulta
tion. * Samuel, or Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, John
the Baptist, or Paul, would have risen like lions,
and gone forth with strong faith and pious pride
to thunder against great Nineveh. But this
strange man received the order silently, and
suently evaded it. He did not hang his head
and object like poor crushed Moses, when the
hot patriotism of his youth had been cooled into
apathy by exile, famUy ties, and forty years'
intercourse with Midianitish bullocks. Jonah
received the Divine command, quietly turned
his back upon it and on Nineveh, fled to the
seaport Joppa, and sailed in a ship for distant
Tarshish. So imperfect was his inspiration at this time
that he thought the hand of the God that he
served could not reach him pn a foreign sea.
They got into blue water, and such was his

60 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
confidence that he told the ship's company he
was flying from the tutelary God of Palestine.
His hearers, no more enlightened than himself
received his communication with no misgivings.
But presently a mighty tempest from the
Lord fell upon the sea, and the ship Was in
mortal danger. The mariners were terrified,
and cried every man to his God, and, not trust
ing too much to that, threw the cargo overboard.
But there was one man who did not share their
apprehensions. He went quietly to sleep, and
neither the roaring sea, the whistling wind, nor
the poor, creaking, labouring ship disturbed him.
And of all the people whose lives were in such
peril, who was this one calm sleeper ?
It was Jonah.
But the shipmaster came to him, and shook
him, and insisted on his caUing on his God.
But lo ! the peril increased, and from the
suddenness and violence of the storm, they
began to suspect the anger of the gods against
some person in that doomed vessel. So they
cast lots to learn who was the culprit, and the

JONAH. 6 1
lot fell on Jonah. Then they questioned him
as to his country and occupation, hoping, some
how or other, to gather how he had offended
heaven. Then Jonah, who now realized his folly and
the narrow views he had taken of Him who is
omnipresent and almighty, replied, ' I am an
Hebrew ; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven,
who hath made the sea and the dry land.'
Then the quaking mariners remembered he
had told them he was flying from his God ; and
now behold that God, by his own confession,
was not a local divinity, but the creator of sea
and land.
Connecting this new revelation with the sud
den tempest and their increasing peril, the men
were in mortal fear, and put a terrible question
to Jonah : ' What shall we do to you to save our
own lives ?'
Then Jonah, faulty as his character was, shone
out like the sun. No shirking ; no craven sub
terfuges. He looked them in the face and said :
' What you must do is, lay hold on me, and

62 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
cast me into the sea, so shall the sea be calm to
you; for I know that for my sake this great
tempest is upon you.'
Thus did Jonah show himself a prophet and
a man. Though terror-stricken, murderous eyes
glared on him, and the fearful sea yawned and
raged for him, he was so true and so just that he
delivered his own doom unflinchingly.
NobUity begets nobility ; and the partners of
his perU could not bear to sacrifice a man in
whom they saw no evil, but, on the contrary,
justice, heroism, and self-sacrifice. The poor,
honest feUows said, ' Anything but that,' and
chose rather to be wrecked on shore. Their
ship, after all, was but a galley lightened of its
cargo, so they got out their long oars and made
a gaUant effort to row their trireme ashore, and
there leave her bones, but save their own lives
and that self-sacrificing hero. This was not to
be. Sixty hands labouring at those oars could
not prevail against the one hand that hurled the
raging sea at that labouring galley and drove
her from the land.

JONAH. 63
Then these doomed men resigned themselves
to the will of Jonah's God. They cried to Him
most pathetically, 'We beseech thee, 0 Lord,
we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's
life.' And on the other hand, they begged that
if Jonah was innocent his blood might not be
laid on them, since they had done all they could
to learn the Divine will. And when they had so
prayed, they took up Jonah and cast him into
the sea.
No doubt, as that pale but unflinching face
went down without a cry or murmur, they
looked on awhile with horror and misgiving ;
but not for long ; the sea subsided as if by magic.
The waves were calmed, the wind abated, the
vessel was saved. The rescued mariners wor
shipped the God of Jonah.
To his late companions Jonah was lost for
ever. But God chastises His rebeUious servants
— not destroys them. Some monster of the
deep was sent to that ship's side, and swaUowed
up Jonah as he sank

64 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
It was a terrible punishment. Think of it !
For all these things are skimmed so superficially
that they never really come home to the mind,
least of all to the mind that is bent on preach
ing doctrines and not on comprehending facts.
The man found himself in a place cold as death
and dark as pitch; no room to move hand or
foot. After the first shock of utter amazement,
the sliminess, the smell, the water rushing
through the fish's gills, must have told him
where he was. Oh, then conceive his horror !
So he was not to die in the sea and there an
end ; but to lie in the belly of a great fish tiU
he rotted away; or to be brought up within
range of the creature's teeth and gnawed away
piecemeal and digested in fragments.
Take my word for it, the poor wretch passed
many hours of agony, expecting a slow death of
torment, and would have given the world to be
vomited into the raging sea and perish by drown
ing — a mild and common death.
But as the hours rolled on and death came no
nearer, he began to hope a little, and to repent

JONAH. 65
more and more. The man was soon crushed
into that state of self-abasement and penitence,
out of which a forgiving God often raises His
faulty servants to great honour and happiness.
He prayed to God out of the fish's belly, and
said: ' I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the
Lord, and he heard me ; out of the belly of hell
cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou
hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the
seas ; and the floods compassed me about : all
thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then
I said, I am cast out of thy sight ; yet I will look
again toward thy holy temple. The waters com
passed me about, even to the soul : the depth
closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped
about my head. I went down to the bottoms of
the mountains ; the earth with her bars was
about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up
my Ufe from corruption, 0 Lord my God. When
my soul fainted within me I remembered the
Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into
thine holy temple. I wiU sacrifice unto thee

66 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
with the voice of thanksgiving : I will pay that
that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited
out Jonah upon the dry land.'
Who was now the happiest man in aU the
world ? Why, this forgiven sinner ; this pun
ished, humbled, rewarded rebel.
To' him life was ten times sweeter; the sun
shine, the shelly beach, the purple sea, with its
myriad dimples and prismatic hues, ten times
more lovely than to other men.
Lazarus was happy, returning from the grave
to his beloved Master, and his darling sisters
that wept on his neck for joy.
Happy was the widow's only son, whom the
Master, mighty yet tender, deUvered with His
own hand from his coffin to his bereaved mother,
wild with amazement and maternal love. But
both these men came back from the neutral state
of mere unconsciousness to daylight and the joys
of life.
Not so Jonah. He had been buried alive, and

JONAH. 67
came back from the sickening horror of a living
tomb, from a darkness and a death that he felt,
to the warm bright sunshine, the glittering sand
painted with radiant shells, the purple sea
smiling myriad dimples and rainbowed with
prismatic hues.
WhUst he gazed at these things with a rapture
they had never yet created in him, and poured
out his soul in gratitude, there came to him
once more the stiU, small voice of his Master,
clear, sUvery, dispassionate, and divinely beau
tiful. 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and
preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.'
Jonah now obeyed with alacrity and went to
Nineveh, strong in his Divine commission.
Nineveh having perished about two centuries
before Herodotus visited the Tigris, we have no
better authority as to its size and population
than the words of the Book of Jonah. We may,
however, rely on the universal tradition that it
was a city of vast size and magnificence, and
three days' journey in circuit by Jewish com-

68 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
putation, or 480 Greek stadia, which two measure
ments agree, being sixty English miles.
It was a briUiant and luxurious city, at the
head of the world in general magnificence and
in the fine arts.
A rude Hebrew seer came from a country
inferior in every mental quality but knowledge
of God, and threatened this magnificent city
with destruction in forty days, if the people did
not repent their sins and turn to the true God.
The thing to be expected was that the towns
people would laugh at him for a day or two, and
then drag him through their gutters, or whip
him through the streets with his prophecy
pinned to his back in cuneiform letters.
But Jonah, inspired by God, and being, so to
speak, a prophet raised from the dead to do a
great work, preached with supernatural power,
and bowed these Assyrian hearts, from the throne
to the cabin. The King of Nineveh, the greatest
monarch of the day, rose up from his throne at
the preaching of Jonah, laid his royal robe in
the dust and sat on the ground in sackcloth and

JONAH. 69
ashes, a picture of lowly penitence, and an ex
ample which all his people followed. They
fasted, not by halves, but to the confines of
torture. They tasted neither food nor drink,
and they kept food and drink from their herds,
their flocks, and their beasts of burden. They
covered themselves and their cattle with sack
cloth ; they abstained from the sins that Jonah
had denounced, and cried for mercy to the God
of this Boanerges. Then God saw, pardoned,
and spared.
Here was a triumph for Jonah — alone, and
with no human help, he had terrified and con
verted the greatest city in the world. Even
egotism, if humanized by benevolence, could
have found gratification in this. But poor
Jonah was aU egotism. A witty Frenchman
has defined an egotist as a character who will
burn down another man's house to cook himself
two eggs. Jonah was quite up to the mark of
this definition. He would have burned down a
populous and penitent city to enjoy his one egg,
the amour propre of a seer.

70 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
He was sore displeased, and complained to the
Lord. He even said — though I cannot say I
quite believe him — that this was the only reason
why he had fled to Tarshish. He knew his
prophecy would prove an empty menace, for
said he, ' I know that thou art a gracious God,
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kind
ness, and repentest thee of the evil. / wish I
were dead.'
Now, if any one of us had been allowed to
speak for God, we should have come down on
this egotist like a sledge-hammer.
What ! do you cast in God's teeth that quality
by which alone you have yourself escaped de
struction ? Return, then, to the belly of that
shark, and there, in the darkness of your eyes,
let light visit your soul blinded by egotism.
Come, now — shall penitent Jonah and penitent
Nineveh be destroyed for their repented sins ? or
shall both be saved, and God be consistent,
though man, Jonah included, is not ?
But God never talks like that. He is better
than man at man's best. Man forgives, but re-

JONAH. 71
members, and sometimes even alludes. God,
when He forgives, obliterates. It is so through
out the sacred books, and although neither the
Hebrew writers nor any other writers can com
prehend or describe the infinite God, yet they all
reveal this fragment of His infinite nature with
a consistency that bears the stamp of truth and
excludes the idea of invention.
When Jonah stood by the seaside saved from
death, God did not say to him, ' See what comes
of resisting my wiU !' He obliterated what He
had forgiven, and merely repeated His command
about Nineveh without an unkind word. And
now that His wayward servant reproached Him
with His weakness in forgiving penitent Chal
deans, He only said to him with more than
maternal sweetness, ' Doest thou well to be
angry ?'
This did not melt the angry Jonah. He
turned his back on the city, which he hated
for not fulfilling his prediction punctually. He
went out into the fields and sat down to see
whether God would really be so cruel as to

72 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
mortify Jonah and save 600,000 people, not one
of whom was Jonah.
God pitied His servant exposed to the mid
day heat, and prepared a gourd to comfort
his aching head, and afterwards instruct his
heart. Then Jonah enjoyed great happiness. All the
day he looked upon a wonder of nature. A lovely
gourd came up from the ground, growing slowly
but perceptibly, and reared and expanded its
huge succulent leaves till they formed a thick
canopy over the head of the favoured prophet.
Then Jonah rejoiced in the impenetrable
shade of this lovely plant, and began to be half
reconciled to the prolonged existence of Nineveh.
Then the gourd entered on its second office.
The Almighty had planted a worm in the gourd,
and the worm was enabled to destroy it as
rapidly as it had grown.
Then did the sun and the hot wind beat on
Jonah's head, and he cried once more, as our
foolish women do when things go wrong, ' I wish
I were dead.'

JONAH. 73
Then God said to Jonah, tenderly, ' Doest thou
well to be angry ?'
Ungracious Jonah replied roughly, ' I do well
to be angry, even unto death.'
Then came the still, small voice, sweet yet
clear, gentle yet mighty and penetrating, which
no patriarch but Jonah ever resisted so long ;
and even he must yield to it at last. ' Thou hast
had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast
not laboured, neither madest it grow ; which
came up in a night, and perished in a night :
and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
wherein are more than six score thousand persons
that cannot discern between their right hand and
their left ; and also much cattle V
Now, if the reader of Jonah is curious to know
whether he left Nineveh as great an egotist as
he entered it, I can only give him one man's
opinion, but it is not a hasty one. In the first
place, the Omniscient is not to be defeated ; why
should Jonah's egotism resist Him to the end'
any more than Jonah's flight baffled Him for
more than a day or two ?

74 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Primd facie, the Almighty must conquer the
heart of Jonah, since He knows the way to
every heart.
Starting from this safe position, I ask myself
why so faulty a man as Jonah was so honoured ?
Clearly it was not because of his rebeUious spirit,
nor his egotism ; but in spite of them.
Probably he was a man of pure life and morals ;
certainly he was the soul of truth. Why should
not the God of truth select as a vehicle of
prophecy the brave, truthful man, who, facing
desperate men with the sea raging on him at
his back, could say, ' The truth is, you must
take me up and fling me into the sea ; for with
my just execution the storm will abate.'
Jonah did not write the book, but he must
have communicated the facts and the main par
ticulars of the dialogue.
Now, no unconverted egotist tells a tale so
fairly throughout, and the concluding dialogue
so thoroughly against himself, as it is done in
this book. You read this dialogue between God
and a man ; and the writer is a man. A man

JONAH. 75
yourself, you are shocked at the man, and you
bless God.
Moreover, he has given God the last word and
the best. Now, no unconverted egotist ever did
that, nor ever will. The unconverted egotist is
to be found in a thousand autobiographies ; catch
him giving an opponent the last word, or the
best! I have little doubt, therefore, that Jonah went
home a converted egotist, and that when he
came to think quietly over it all, he yielded to
Divine instruction, and that his character kept
improving to the last day of his life.
Of course I reject the conventional theory
that Jonah, being a prophet, had no personal
weakness under his skin, and wished penitent
Nineveh to be destroyed only because he feared
for his own nation if it was left standing. If he
foresaw the captivity at all, he must have known
that the danger was to be from Babylon, after
Nineveh had been centuries extinct. Long after
Jonah, Nahum threatened Nineveh, but did not
fear it.

76 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
These skimmers forget that, if Jonah was
faultless, God must have been imperfect, since
God and he were in direct opposition ; and that
not once, but twice. The Book of Jonah is
generaUy underrated ; one reason is, it is judged
by commentators, who have never tried to tell an
immortal story, so they underrate a man im
measurably their superior, since the able nar
rator is above the able commentator, and high
as heaven above the conventional commentator,
who is mad after types, and who follows his
predecessors, who follow theirs, ' ut anser trahit
anserem.' The truth is, that ' Jonah ' is the most beauti
ful story ever written in so smaU a compass.
Now, in writing it is condensation that declares
the master; verbosity and garrulity have their
day, but only hot-pressed narratives live for
ever. The Book of Jonah is in forty-eight verses,
or one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight
English words.
Now, take one thousand three hundred and
twenty-eight words in our current narratives:

JONAH. 77
how far do they carry you ? Why, ten to one,
you get to nothing at all but chatter, chatter,
chatter. Even in those close models, ' Robinson
Crusoe,' the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Candide,'
'Rasselas,' one thousand three hundred and
twenty-eight words do not carry the reader far ;
yet in the one thousand three hundred and
twenty-eight words of Jonah you have a wealth
of incident, and all the dialogue needed to carry
on the grand and varied action. You have also
character, not stationary, but growing just as
Jonah's grew, and a plot that would bear vol
umes, yet worked out without haste or crudity in
one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight
words. Then, there is another thing. Only the great
artists of the pen hit upon the perfect propor
tions of dialogue and narrative. With nineteen
story-tellers out of twenty there is a weary excess
of dialogue. Nor are all the sacred narratives
so nicely proportioned as Jonah. In Job the
narrative is so short as to be crude and uninter
esting compared with the events handled, and
4*

78 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
the dialogue is excessive, and in some places
false, since similar sentiments and even similar
words are given to different speakers. In the
Apocrypha, ' Judith ' and ' Tobit ' are literally
massacred by verbosity and bungling; not so,
however, in ' Susannah and the Elders ' — that is
a masterpiece as far as it goes.
To my mind, speaking merely as an artist, the
Acts of the Apostles eclipses all human nar
ratives, ' Stellas exortus uti iEtherius sol ;'
and in the Old Testament, Genesis, Samuel,
Jonah, and Ruth stand pre-eminent, and Jonah
above sweet Ruth by the greater weight of the
facts and the introduction of the Deity. And
oh, the blindness of conventional critics, groping
Hebrew records not for pearls of facts, but peb
bles of dogma ! They have failed to observe
that the God of Jonah is the God of the New
Testament. Yet it is so, and this great book
connects the two Bibles, instead of contrasting
them and sore perplexing every honest mind
with a changeable Deity.

JONAH. 79
No doubt the God of the New Testament can
be found, or heavenly glimpses of Him, in the
Hebrew prophets. But how about the historians ?
The truculent writers of Joshua, Judges, and
Samuel have surely now and then coloured the
unchangeable God from their own minds and
their own state of civilization.
The Book of Jonah is not a book of prophecy,
but just as much a history as Samuel ; yet in the
history of Jonah, written long before Isaiah, God
is the God of the New Testament ; the God we
all hope to find in this world and the next.
Were there no other reason, every Christian
may well cling to the Book of Jonah. As to
the leading miracle which staggers some people
who receive other miracles, these men are surely
inconsistent. There can be no scale of the mi
raculous. To infinite power it is no easier to
pick up a pin than to stop all the planets in
their courses for a time and then send them
on again.
Say there never was a miracle and never wiU be,
and I differ with, but cannot confute, you. Deny

8c BIBLE CHARACTERS.
the creation and the possibility of a re-creation
or resurrection ; call David a fool for savins'.
' It is he that hath made us and not we our
selves,' and .... a wise man for suggesting that,
on the contrary, molecules created themselves
without a miracle, and we made ourselves out of
molecules without a miracle ; and although your
theory contradicts experience as much as, and
staggers credulity more than, any miracle that
has ever been ascribed by Christians or Jews
to infinite power, I admit it is consistent, though
droll. But once grant the creation of a hundred
thousand suns and a million planets, though we
never in our short span saw one created ; grant
the creation of men, lions, fleas, and sea ane
mones, though all such creations are contrary to
our experience ; and it is a little too childish to
draw back and say that our Creator and re-
Creator is only the Lord of flesh, and that fish
are beyond His control.
Clearly, infinite power can create a new fish
in Jewish waters, or despatch an old fish in the

JONAH. 81
millionth of a second from the Pacific to the
shores of Palestine.
Now to go from power to wisdom, is this
miracle a chfldish one ? does it smack of human
invention ?
What were the objects to be gained by it** A
rebellious servant was to be crushed into sub
mission, yet not destroyed. He was to feel the
brief agony of death by drowning, then to be
laid in a horrible dark prison tiU he repented,
then to. be restored to the world in a fit state of
mind and body to take a long journey and
threaten the greatest city in the world.
Tackle all those difficulties, effect all those just
and wise objects, invent your own miracle, and
perhaps when you compare it with Jonah's, you
wUl think very highly of the latter, and not so
highly of the whole army of skimmers, who
have discredited and sneered at a record they
have never tried hard to comprehend :
'Facile judicat qui pauoa considerate

VI.
DAVID.
This is the widest character on record. Of course
there are other famous men who fill more pages.
But, remember, three lives of David, written in
his own time, are lost ; and the books that
survive give only the man's cream. Had his
chroniclers pursued the modern method, our
shelves would have groaned under their tomes.
But in their age, if pure discourse was sometimes
diffuse, narrative was always severely concise :
they sank a thousand minor details that would
be sure to interest us now, and kept strictly to
those great deeds and words which seemed
peculiar to David, and indeed remain so to this
hour. History thus compressed is a crucible of

DA VID. 83
character : in it mediocrity evaporates, and even
celebrity shrivels. In Holy Writ, Moses, Elijah,
and Paul : in profane history, Solon, Alexander,
Csesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and others, ex
celled David greatly in one quality or another.
David presents a greater number of distinct and
striking features than any one of those great
men; and that is why I style him the widest
character on record — a shepherd, a soldier, a
courtier, a famous friend, a fugitive, an actor, a
marauder, a general, a king, a statesman, an
exile, a priest, a prophet, a saint, a criminal, a
penitent : and nothing by halves.
This boy killed a lion hand to hand, and
knocked down a mail-clad giant like a sparrow.
This man was hunted for his life like a wolf, and
spared his pursuer like a lamb. This warrior
conquered armies, and even his own passions, yet
one day unruly desire laid him low. He became
the heartless assassin of a husband he had
abused. This hero invented chivalry two thousand
years before the knights who have gained the

84 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
credit for it. This bard versified the sorrows
of his soul, and sang them to boot, long before
we were told of poets that
' They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'
This magnanimous minstrel lauded and be
wailed his dead foe in deathless lines ; this
tuneful preacher, in an Eastern province and a
bygone age, has comforted bleeding hearts
throughout the globe, and will while earth shall
last. Merciful in an age of blood ; yet sometimes
extremely hard and cruel. Brave, generous,
meek, irritable, forgiving, vindictive, pious,
sensual, criminal, contrite — greatest of all in
penitence, man's most redeeming quality; for his
repentance had no limit but his light. He never
saw a sin in himself that he did not mourn and
weep for it heart, soul, and body.
And, to conclude the chapter of his anomalies,
he foretold the Saviour of the world, and lived,
upon the whole, as if he knew Him. Yet when
he came to die, far from forgiving his enemies, he
drew back his pardon from those he had forgiven,
and left his own son a legacy of blood — a sad

DAVID. 85
heathen act for a dying saint, to whom the
Great Forgiver had pardoned worse crimes than
Shimei's ; yet as profitable to the upright reader
as anything in all his strange, eventful history,
since here he left mankind an exemplary proof
how much Christ's personal teaching was
needed, and how groat a boon it was, and is, to
mortal man.

VII.
PAUL'S PERSEVERANCE.
'And with these sayings scarce restrained they the
people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them. And
there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and
Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned
Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been
dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him,
he rose up, and came into the city ; and the next day he
departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had
preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many,
they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and
Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, and
exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we
must through great tribulation enter into the kingdom of
God.'— Acts xiv. 18-22.
Scripture is so full of heavenly food, that often
a single text furnishes more than one sermon.
In these cases the text is generally a precept.
In the narrative portion matters are of necessity
not so condensed as all that, and a whole passage,

PA UL'S PERSE VERANCE. 87
containing several verses, takes the place of a
text. For example, here are four verses it would be
unwise to separate for the purposes of discourse,
and wise to read them all four with care, and
consider what they reveal: what a picture of
human nature, and of God's grace !
These marvellous passages of Divine story are
so briefly and so simply told, compared with
other narratives, that people too often read them
and hear them read, without discovering all that
lies in them for our edification. They require
intelligent and prayerful study, and they repay
it, as a mine repays the spade.
Now and then these gems of narrative are lost
in part, through a mistaken notion in the mind
that they record prodigies — acts we are to
admire at a distance, but not try nor hope to
imitate them, even at a distance.
Many people look on the Apostles and Saints
as superhuman creatures, or as so upheld by the
ever-present arm of God that they did their
great work, and suffered their great trials, with

88 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
none of that difficulty and pain we should have
encountered in their place, and are bound to
encounter if necessary.
Now, it is wise to revere Apostles and Saints ;
but it is most unwise to take them for prodigies.
For no man imitates a prodigy— he feels it would
be useless. But it is our duty to imitate, to
follow the steps of Apostles and Saints, and, more
than that, it is our duty to follow them exactly,
though it be at ever so humble a distance.
And in this Scripture encourages us. It tells
us that our Lord Himself was tempted in all
things as we are, though without sin, and it
shows us that He actually suffered much inno
cent sorrow, grief, mortification, and one dark
hour of despairing agony.
We are not invited to believe that, when He
wept over Lazarus and the sorrows of his
bereaved sisters, He did not feel as brave men
feel when they weep for others ; we are not to
assume — without a word to justify it — that when
He was scourged, buffeted, and spat upon, His
poor cheek did not burn with shame ; that when

PA UL'S PERSE VERANCE. 89
beaten, and fastened with cruel nails to a cross,
His whole human frame did not quiver with
pain; nor that when the disciples, whose faith
He had so carefully armed for the trial with His
earnest, loving words and the commemorative
supper, all forsook Him and fled, a sword did not
pierce His human heart.
How much more His Apostles, who were en
tirely human, must have felt their trials just as
we should, though grace gave them the victory !
Now, first realize this simple truth, and then
put yourselves in the place of Paul at Lystra,
His good work among the heathen began
hopefully at Iconium; but by-and-by it was
baffled by the unbelieving Jews. Men who wor
shipped one God actually sided with idolatry
through mere hatred of Christ, and, though they
never troubled their heads to correct the worship
of devils, stirred up the heathen against the
ministration of the Gospel, and nearly succeeded
in putting those two Apostles to death by ston
ing, which was the punishment of blasphemy.
They prevailed in part. Paul and Barnabas,

go BIBLE CHARACTERS.
the two greatest benefactors that ever entered
Iconium, were compelled to slink out of the place
like criminals, or die the death of the blasphemer.
Here was mortification and disappointment, all
the more bitter that their hopes had been raised
at first.
Well, they retired, and did not lose heart, as
most of us would have done. They carried their
great, rejected boon to Lystra.
Paul was an extempore preacher, and there
fore his eye was never on the wrong place, a book
or manuscript, but always on the right place, his
hearers. He preached to the heathen at Lystra,
and observed his hearers keenly — habit of all
real orators. Presently he noticed two eyes fixed
on him with faith. The great orator saw that
those eyes were drinking in the Gospel in
earnest. He also observed that this man, who
heard so eagerly, and believed, was a cripple.
Paul stopped in his discourse, and said, with a
loud voice : ' Stand upright on thy feet.'
To the amazement of the audience, the man
stood up, leaped, and walked.

PAUL'S PERSEVERANCE. 91
Lystra was not a large place ; doubtless this
man, a cripple from his birth, was known ; the
miracle was evident ; the heathen were not — like
the Jews — fortified by prejudice against the
evidence of their senses. They took the Apostles
for gods, the imaginary gods they had been
accustomed to worship, and they proceeded to
offer sacrifices to them ; the very priest of Jupiter
claimed his part in the ceremony.
Now, this was a temptation of the evil one.
We ought not to underrate it merely because it
faUed. There is no other recorded instance of
its failing. Alexander the Great accepted flat
tery in this impious form. So did Augustus
Caesar and his successors. So did Herod, to his
cost. But Paul and Barnabas were struck with pious
horror ; they ran in among the people and rent
their clothes, and declared their common
humanity, and diverted the blind piety and
gratitude of these poor heathen to the true
God. So much for grace.

92 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
Now for human nature.
This same fickle mob were presently talked
over by the Jews, and made to believe the
Apostles were'impostors.
Impostors ! — and they had cured the lame.
Impostors ! — and they had refused divine
honours !
This fickle heathen mob acted in concert with
these stiff-necked Jews, and amongst them they
actually stoned the man they had proposed to
worship, and dragged his breathless body out
side the city. Lystra was not to be defiled by
dead Paul.
A monstrous act, yet perfectly natural. The
unwise always run from one extreme to the
other, and probably the vanity of these unstable
men was wounded at the very thought that they
had been on the point of worshipping a couple
of Jews, whom their own countrymen now came
and denounced as impostors.
Now, stoning a man did not mean flinging
small stones at him from a distance. Their way
was to drag the victim to his knees, and raise

PA UL 'S PERSE VERANCE. 93
heavy stones with both hands, and hurl them
down on his back, his loins, his neck, his head,
tiU the life was battered out of him.
So was that holy man crushed and pounded to
death. He was breathless — he was insensible.
So far as the pain of dying was concerned, his
poor body suffered all and more than it did a few
years later at Rome, when one swift blow of a
sword— the most merciful of all his foes, and
indeed his kindest friend — released him at once
from the burden of the flesh and the battle
with sin.
This battered body — the body of the greatest
benefactor that ever visited their paltry city —
the men of Lystra dragged outside the gates
with ignominy, and then returned in contemp
tuous triumph.
Now realize the scene that followed, ye skim
mers of Bible facts, and divers into Bible guesses,
and quibblers of dogmas. The murderers are
gone. There lies the body of Paul, crushed,
bloody, ghastly pale, dirty, deserted by all but a
few disciples who stood sadly round, and being

94 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
new converts, their faith is oozing fast out of
them as they look on that pale and battered
saint, who could heal the lame, but could not
defend his own life.
But stay — what is this ? The body stirs — the
crushed one sighs — he moves — he rises feebly,
with a little aid. He utters no word of com
plaint ; blames neither his foes for their cruelty,
nor his friends for their cowardice. He is unable
to travel — he is assisted back into that murder
ous city : and there he lies racked in every joint.
How long? Six months ? WeU, then, three ?
One afternoon. The next day he limped to
Derbe. What for ? For medical advice prob
ably ; for repose, if he could not afford a physi
cian; for a soft couch to lie on and ease his
aching frame ?
No — to preach the Gospel.
We read his fortitude and his zeal. What it
cost him we must le'arn from our own common-
sense. No man is nearly killed by many violent
blows and not much hurt. After such cruel

PA UL 'S PERSE VERANCE. 95
usage pain may intermit, but it does not leave a
man in a day, nor yet in a week. Let the saints
of this our day, who do God'swork in spite of
pain, and disease, and weakness, take comfort by
example, and be assured that many a throe
wrung Paul's stout heart, long after he was
stoned and left for dead at Lystra, yet neither
pain nor threat could quell him; with aching
body, but undaunted heart, he preached God's
word at Derbe.
After some bitter trial God often rewards His
soldier, even in this world. The Apostles
preached at Derbe with great success, and made
many converts.
This done, they marched into a neighbouring
town. Its name was Lystra.
What Lystra ? No doubt there are two
Lystras. That was no uncommon thing. This
was doubtless some Lystra a hundred miles
distant from the Lystra that stoned Paul and
dragged his body outside the walls.
No ; it was the Lystra that stoned him. He
returned to it, not from a tour of towns, but

96 BIBLE CHARACTERS.
direct from Derbe, with the pain still in his
body, but the Gospel in his indomitable heart,
Iconium had tried to stone him, so he will go
there soon, we may be sure ; but Lystra had
already stoned him, so he will go there first ;
and, if not kiUed there, he will go to Iconium
and Antioch, the very centres which sent forth
those very Jews who all but destroyed him at
Lystra. He will beard those very men in their
own dens, with the sword of the Gospel and the
shield of Faith.
Was this premature return to Lystra bravado
or desperation ?
It was neither. It was courage and wisdom.
Religion, like philosophy, can teach by examples.
Paul had a great lesson to teach in those three
cities. He had, as the sacred narrative informs
us, to confirm the souls of the disciples in those
cities, and exhort them to continue in the faith,
and teach them that we must through much
tribulation enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Now,
Paul could do more than preach this lesson at
Lystra; he could show it as powerfully in his

PAUL'S PERSEVERANCE 97
own person, as he had shown the power of God
in healing their lame citizen.
Just imagine, for one moment, how the men of
Lystra stared with amazement when these two
Apostles walked back into their market-place
and resumed their preaching, as if no serious
interruption had ever occurred.
No details are given of this second visit ; but
the result speaks for itself. Reaction reigned
their lame fellow-citizen had been walking those
streets, showing his limbs, and speaking his mind,
we may be sure. No Jews ventured a second
experiment upon heathen credulity. Faith, Pa
tience, Fortitude, were more than conquerors
even at vile Lystra.
In that terrible conflict of spiritual powers, of
which this world is the arena, Satan often wins
the skirmish and God the battle.
Now, this great heroic story, told in four
verses, reveals nothing absolutely new in Scrip
ture history, and nothing that will ever become
obsolete, least of all the great lesson that we must
enter Heaven by the Gate of Tribulation.

EVIDENCES OF REVELATION*
In the summer of 1880, some fanatics having
revived the notion that the pseudo-Tichborne im
postor is an iUegitimate son of Roger Tichborne's
father, I wrote some letters in my nephew's
weekly publication Fact, entitled ' The Doctrine
of Coincidences.' The leading position in them
is that the force of unforeseen coincidences is
great, and increases in a prodigious ratio when
they are multiplied and point to one conclusion ;
and I also there showed that fifteen independent
and unforeseen coincidences aU point from
different points of the compass to one central
fact, that this impostor is Arthur Orton, of
Wapping. I mentioned this in outline to my dear friend
* Apparently the notes for a further statement of the
eubjeot. 5*

i oo E VIDENCES OF RE VELA TION.
the Rev. Charles Graham, and he said that
unforeseen coincidences were among the evi
dences of the truth of Scripture. I then remem
bered that Paley uses them in the 'Horse Paulina?.'
I was not aware they had been applied to the Old
Testament also. Mr. Graham, however, lent me
a volume entitled ' Undesigned Coincidences in
the Old and New Testament,' by the Rev. J. J.
Blunt. The writer in his Preface refers to Paley
as the writer who had worked this vein the most
remarkably; and to Doddridge on 1st Thessa-
lonians, and Biscoe's ' History of the Acts of the
Apostles,' as predecessors who — to use my own
phrase — had fingered the idea before him.
Dr. Blunt extends Paley's method to the Old
Testament, and observes many unstudied coinci
dences of statement in the books of Moses.
These he caUs generally coincidences; I myself
am not quite clear that they are all coincidences.
Many seem to be rather subtle consistencies, or
statements accidentally corroborative of each
other. A coincidence I should define as two indis-

EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 101
putable facts pointing to one conclusion. If so,
there are three parts in a coincidence, but only
two in a corroborative statement.
If I am right in this distinction, Dr. Blunt
discovers (pages 9-21) many coincidences
which, taken in conjunction, point clearly to a
Patriarchal Church long before Moses, with
(1) places of worship; (2) forms consecrating
such places ; (3) priests, tithes, and a Sabbath,
circumcision, moral enactments against murder,
robbery, fornication, adultery (in the limited
sense Moses himself understood it), false swear
ing, disobedience to parents, marriage with
idolaters. Also ceremonies: purification, clean
and unclean animals (Noah), sacrifices, circum
cision. — (Pages 1-23.)
Incidental proofs of the promised Christ he
finds in the early sacrifices. And here I would
venture to throw in that Cain's sacrifice, which
could not typify Christ, was rejected; in the
wild eagerness of the women for offspring — a
desire that overcame jealousy defied, nature.
And aU this with no design on the part of

102 E VIDENCES OF RE VELA TION.
Moses to elevate those who lived before the
law it was his mission to promulgate. This,
says the author, is my master-key, explaining
and justifying details that are trivial and even
offensive without it. Witness the conduct of
Sarah, Jacob's wives, Onan, Tamar, etc.
Pages 24-93 are occupied with what I should
not call-coincidences, but undesigned consistency
— one statement unobtrusively confirming an
other : —
Abraham's intercession for Sodom, and his
leaving off at ten.
Lot and his family at Sodom, and Abraham's
hope that there would be righteous in that home.
Isaac marrying into a generation below him.
Great age at which Sarah had borne Isaac.
Jochebed, daughter of Levi, marrying a grand
son of Levi. Jochebed turns out to have been
born in Egypt — child of Levi's old age.
Identity of Jacob's character in so many
incidents.

E VIDENCES OF RE VELA TION. 103
The freight of the camels that carried Joseph
into Egypt.
The sepulture of the Egyptians.
The many offhand indications that Egypt was
a great corn-grower.
The historical fact that it was so.
The proportion of oxen and waggons assigned
to the descendants of Levi.
The apparent fate of Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram and their families. The subsequent
statement that Korah's children died not.
The original account, more closely examined,
admitting this solution.
Miraculous water at Horeb.
Altars of Amalekites.
Death of Zimri.
Diminution of the Tribe of Simeon.
The fondness of Joseph for his father, and the
way his brothers appeal to it unconsciously. —
(Pages 24-93.)

1 04 E VIDENCES OF RE VELA TION.
The character of Jacob, a cowed man. Its
consistency. To these I beg to add :
(1) That the ark is built, or begun, more than
one hundred years before the deluge ; and the
deluge does not come tUl Methuselah, the son
of righteous Enoch, is just dead. Yet the writer
does not observe this, and the reader only dis
covers it by arithmetical computation.
(2) That Rebekah's trait, parental partiality,
is found in her favourite son, yet not noticed by
the author. And that Jacob, the younger son,
blesses the younger son of Joseph before the
elder. Yet the writer seems only to notice the
bare fact.
(3) That the typical offering of Abel was
accepted, but the non-typical offering of Cain
rejected. Yet the writer has no theory on the
matter. Balaam slain among the Midianites. Compare
with the invitation just given to him.

MONUMENTAL EVIDENCE AND
DOCUMENTAL.
Monumental, by physical destruction after its
existence has been recorded in words, may pass
into mixed evidence ; or documental evidence
of a quondam monumental.
Example: The writer of Genesis points his
readers to the pillar of Rachel's grave, on the
way from Bethel to Ephrath, but he does not
refer to the piUar of salt that once was Lot's
wife, as stiU existing (Joshua iv. 21).
The period of time, a week, and its universal
existence, is a monumental proof of the truth of
Moses. Years, months and days are derivable
from the sun and moon; but the week is an
unnatural division. Yet there never was an age
when it did not prevail in India, China, Assyria,
Egypt, and it migrated to Greece and Rome.

106 MONUMENTAL EVIDENCE.
The world is large, and fuU of conflicting
opinions. How many solutions exist of this
arbitrary division — seven days ! There is only
one known to creation, and that is adequate, for
it says the parents of all mankind were taught it
by their Creator.
Now try any other solution and it wiU be
found inadequate, and evidently to accept an
inadequate solution of an undeniable fact is
credulity in one of its weakest forms.

THE END.

Stereotyped by Billing & Sons, Guildford.

CHARLES READE'S NOVELS.

LIBRARY EDITION.
12mo, Cloth.

A PERILOUS SECRET, 75 cts.
A SIMPLETON, and the WAN
DERING HEIR, $1 00.
A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION,
$1 00.
A WOMAN-HATER, $1 00.
FOUL PLAY, $1 00.
GOOD STORIES, $1 00.
GRIFFITH GAUiSIT; or, JEAL
ousy,$i oo.
IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO
MEND, $1 00.

HARD CASH, $1 00.
LOVE ME LITTLE, LOVE ME
LONG, $1 00.
PEG WOFFINGTON, CHRISTIE
JOHNSTONE, and Other Sto
ries, $1 00.
PUT YOURSELF IN HIS
PLACE, $1 00.
THE CLOISTER AND THE
HEARTH; or, MAID, WIFE,
AND WIDOW, $1 00.
WHITE LIES, $1 00.

14 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $12 00 per Set. ( Volumes sold separately.)

FIRESIDE EDITION.
14 vols, in 7, 12mo, Ornamental Cloth, $7 00 per Set. (Sold in Sets
only.)
Also in 3 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $6 50 per Set. (Sold in Sets only.)

Charles Reade's Novels can also be obtained in Paper Covers, at
prices varying from 15 to 50 cents per volume.

MEMOIR OF CHARLES READE.
Charles Reade, D.C.L., Dramatist, Novelist, Journalist. A Memoir
compiled chiefly from his Literary Remains. By Charles L.
Reade and the Rev. Compton Reade. With Portrait. 12mo,
Cloth, $1 25 ; 4to, Paper, 25 cents.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.
W Any of the. above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the
United' States or Canada,, on receipt of the price.

BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST.
By Lew. Wallace. New Edition from New Electrotype
Plates, pp. 560. 16mo, Cloth, $1 50; Half Calf, $3 00.

Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of
this romance does not often appear iu works of fiction. . . . Some of
Mr. Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The
scenes described in the New Testament are re-written with the power
and skill of an accomplished master of style. — N. Y. Times.
Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at
the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and brill
iant. . . . We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes ; we
witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman
galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the
tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the hannts of dissipated Roman
youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of ex
citing incident; everything iB animated, vivid, and glowing  N. Y.
Tribune. From the opeuing of the volume to the very close the reader's in
terest will he kept at the highest pitch, and the novel will be pro
nounced by all one of the greatest novels of the day. — Boston Post.
It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and
there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc.,
to greatly strengthen the semblance: — Boston Commonwealth.
" Ben-Hur " is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong.
Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is
laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to real
ize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life iu Jerusalem and Ro
man life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.— Examiner,
N.Y. It is really Scripture history of Christ's time, clothed gracefully and
delicately iu the flowing and loose drapery of modern fiction. . . . Pew
late works of fiction excel it in genuine ability and interest. — N. Y.
Graphic. One of the most remarkable and delightful books. It is as real and
warm as life itself, and as attractive as the grandest and most heroic
chapters of history. — Indianapolis Journal.
The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with un
wonted interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional
novel and romance. — Boston Journal.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.
HEP** The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the
United States or Canada, on receipt of the price.