From the edge of the city the hill held its magnificent burden of columns and towers and temples (one thousand slaves waiting at one shrine), and a citadel so thoroughly impregnable that Gibraltar is a heap of sand compared with it. Amid all that strength and magnificence Corinth stood and defied the world.
Oh, it was not to rustics who had never seen any thing grand that Paul preached in Corinth. They had heard the best music that had come from the best instruments in all the world; they had heard songs floating from morning porticos and melting in evening groves; they had passed their whole lives among pictures and sculpture and architecture and Corinthian brass, which had been molded and shaped until there was no chariot wheel in which it had not sped, and no tower in which it had not glittered, and no gateway that it had not helped to adorn.
Ah, it was a bold act for Paul to stand there amid all that and say:
“All this is nothing. These sounds that come from the Temple of Neptune are not music, compared with the harmonies of which I speak. These waters rushing in the basin of Pyrene are not pure. These statues of Bacchus and Mercury are not exquisite. Your citadel of Acro-Corinthus is not strong, compared with that which I offer to the poorest slave who puts down his burden at that brazen gate. You Corinthians think this is a splendid city; you think you have heard all sweet sounds and seen all beautiful sights. But, I tell you, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for themthat love Him.” Following up Paul’s line of thought, we may say the Bible, now, is the scaffolding to the rising Temple, but when the building is done there will be no further use for the scaffolding.
One of the most intensely interesting things I saw in Egypt was Pharaoh of olden times—the very Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. The inscription on his sarcophagus and the writing on his mummy bandages prove beyond controversy that he was the Pharaoh of Bible times. All the Egyptologists and the explorations agree that it is the old scoundrel himself.
Visible are the very teeth with which he gnashed against the Israelitish brick makers. There are the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the over-burdened people of God. There is the hair that floated in the breeze off the Red Sea. There are the very lips with which he commanded the children of Israel to make bricks without straw.
Thousands of years afterward, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration; but his skinny bones can not again clutch his shattered scepter. He is a dead lion.
At about seven o’clock in the morning, up the marble stairs of a palace and across the floors of richest mosaic and under ceilings dyed with all the splendors of color and between snowbanks of white and glistening sculpture, passes a poor, pale and sick young man of thirty-three years, already condemned to death, on his way to be condemned again. Jesus of Nazareth is His name.
Coming out to meet him on this tesselated pavement is an unscrupulous, compromising, time-serving and cowardly man, with a few traces of sympathy and fair dealing left in his composition—Governor Pontius Pilate.
Did ever such opposites meet? Luxury and pain, selfishness and generosity, arrogance and humility, sin and holiness, midnight and midnoon.
The bloated-lipped governor takes the cushioned seat, but the prisoner stands, his wrists manacled. In a semicircle around the prisoner are the Sanhedrists, with eyes flashing and fists brandished, prosecuting this case in the name of their religion.
The most bitter persecutions have been religious persecutions, and when Satan takes hold of a good man he makes up by intensity for brevity of occupation. If you have never seen an ecclesiastical court trying a man, then you have no idea of the foaming infernalism of those old religious Sanhedrists.
Governor Pilate cross-questions the prisoner, and he finds right away that he is innocent; so he wants to let him go. His caution is also increased by some one whocomes to the governor and whispers in his ear. The governor puts his hand behind his ear, so as to catch the words almost inaudible.
These whispered words are a message from Claudia Procula, his wife, who has had a dream about the innocence of this prisoner and about the danger of executing him, and she awakens from this morning dream in time to send the message to her husband, who was at that hour on the judicial bench.
And what with the protest of his wife, the voice of his own conscience and the entire failure of the Sanhedrists to make out their case Governor Pilate resolves to discharge the prisoner from custody.
But the intimation of such a thing brings upon the governor an equinoctial storm of indignation. They will report him to the emperor at Rome. They will have him recalled. They will send him up home, and he will be hanged for treason, for the emperor has already a suspicion in regard to Pilate, and that suspicion does not cease until Pilate is banished and commits suicide.
So Governor Pontius Pilate compromises the matter, and proposes that Christ be whipped instead of assassinated. So the prisoner is fastened to a low pillar, and on his bent and bared back come the thongs of leather, with pieces of lead and bone intertwisted, so that every stroke shall be the more awful.
Christ lifts Himself from the scourging with flushed cheek and torn and quivering and mangled flesh, presenting a spectacle of suffering in which Rubens, the painter, found the theme for his greatest masterpiece.
But the Sanhedrists are not yet satisfied. They havehad some of the prisoner’s nerves lacerated; but they want them all lacerated. They have had some of his blood; now they want all of it, down to the last corpuscle.
So Governor Pontius Pilate, after all this merciful hesitation, surrenders to the demoniacal cry:
“Crucify him! Crucify him!”
But the governor sends for something. He sends a slave out to get something. Although the constables are in haste to take the prisoner to execution, and the mob outside are impatient to glare upon their victim, a pause is necessitated.
Yonder it comes—a wash basin. Some pure, bright water is poured into it, and then Governor Pilate puts his white and delicate hands into the water and rubs them together, and then lifts them dripping, for the towel fastened at the slave’s girdle, while he practically says:
“I wash my hands of this whole homicidal transaction. I wash my hands of this entire responsibility. You will have to bear it.”
Behold in this that ceremony amounts to nothing, if there are not contained in it correspondences of heart and life.
It is a good thing to wash the hands. God created three-fourths of the world water, and in that act commanded cleanliness; and when the ancients did not take the hint, He plunged the whole world under water, and kept it there for some time.
Hand washing was a religious ceremony among the Jews. The Jewish Mishna gave particular directions how that the hands must be thrust three times up to thewrist in water, and the palm of the hand must then be rubbed with the closed fist of the other.
All that was well enough for a symbol, but here is a man in the case under consideration who proposes to wash away the guilt of a sin which he does not quit and of which he does not make any repentance. Pilate’s wash basin was a dead failure.
Ceremonies, however beautiful and appropriate, may be no more than this hypocritical ablution. In infancy we may be sprinkled from the baptismal font, and in manhood we may wade into deep immersion, and yet never come to moral purification. We may kneel without prayer and bow without reverence, and sing without any acceptance. All your creeds, liturgies, sacraments, genuflections and religious convocations amount to nothing unless your heart-life go into them.
When that bronzed slave took from the presence of Pilate that wash basin he carried away none of Pilate’s cruelty, wickedness or guilt.
Nothing against creeds; we all have them—either written or implied. Nothing against ceremonies; they are of infinite importance. Nothing against sacraments; they are divinely commanded. Nothing against rosary, if there be as many heartfelt prayers as beads counted. Nothing against incense floating up from censer amid Gothic arches, if the prayers be as genuine as the ceremony is sweet. Nothing against Epiphany, Lent, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Good Friday, Whitsuntide or Palm Sunday, if these symbols have behind them genuine repentance, holy reminiscence and Christian consecration.
But ceremony is only the sheath to the sword; it is only the shell to the kernel; it is only the lamp to the flame; it is only the body to the spirit. The outward must be symbolical of the inward. Wash the hands, by all means; but, more than all, wash the heart.
Behold, also, as you see Governor Pontius Pilate thrust his hands into his wash basin, the power of conscience. He had an idea there was blood on his hands—the blood of an innocent person, whom he might have acquitted if he only had the courage.
Poor Pilate! His conscience was after him, and he knew the stain would never be washed from the right hand or the left hand; that, until the day of his death, though he might wash in all the lavers of the Roman Empire, there would be still eight fingers and two thumbs red at the tips.
Alas for this Governor Pontius Pilate! That night, after the court had adjourned and the Sanhedrists had gone home and nothing was heard outside the room but the step of the sentinel, I see Pontius Pilate arise from his tapestried and sleepless couch and go to the laver and begin to wash his hands, crying: “Out! Out, crimson spot! Tellest thou to me and to God and to the night my crime? Is there no alkali to remove these dreadful stains? Is there no chemistry to dissolve this carnage? Must I to the day of my death carry the blood of this innocent man on my heart and hand? Out, thou crimson spot!”
Against the disappointing and insufficient laver of Pilate’s vice, cowardice and sin I place the brazen sea of a Savior’s pardoning mercy!
What is that long procession approaching Jerusalem? I think, from the pomp of it, there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry the news up to the palace:
“The Queen of Sheba advances.”
Let all the people come out to see. Let the mighty men of the land come out on the palace corridors. Let King Solomon come down the stairs of the palace before the Queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon and the saffron, the calamus and the frankincense, and pass it into the treasure house. Take up the diamonds until they glitter in the sun!
The Queen of Sheba alights.
She enters the palace.
She washes at the bath.
She sits down at the banquet.
The cup bearers bow. The meat smokes. The music trembles in the dash of the waters from the modern sea. Then she rises from the banquet, walks through the conservatories, gazes on the architectural marvels, and asks Solomon many strange questions. Thus she learns about the religion of the Hebrews, and then and there she becomes a servant of Jehovah.
The Queen of Sheba is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the spices that she brought, and all the precious woods which are intended to be turned into harps and psalteries and into railings for the causewaybetween the Temple and the palace and the $1,800,000 in money—she begins to think that all these presents amount to nothing in such a palace; and she is almost ashamed that she has brought them, and she says within herself:
“I heard a great deal about this place and about this wonderful religion of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest anticipations. I must add more than 50 per cent to what has been related. It exceeds every thing that could have been expected. The half was not told me.”
What a beautiful thing it is when social position and wealth surrender themselves to God! When religion comes to a neighborhood, the first to receive it are the women. Some men say it is because they are weak minded. I say it is because they have quicker perception of what is right, more ardent affection and capacity for sublimer emotion.
After the women have received the Gospel, then all the distressed and the poor of both sexes—those who have no friend except Jesus. Last of all come the greatly prospered. Alas, that it is so!
Do you know where Sheba was? Some say it was in Abyssinia; others say it was in the southern part of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a great way off from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem the Queen of Sheba had to cross a country infested with bandits and go across blistering deserts.
Why did not the Queen of Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire about this new religion, and have the delegates report in regard to that religion andwealth of King Solomon? She wanted to see for herself and hear for herself. She could not do this by work of committee. She felt that she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba, and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by Oriental shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the jewels of eternity.
Bring out the camels. Put on the spices. Gather up the jewels of the throne and put them on the caravan. Start now—no time is to be lost. Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan—dust-covered, weary and exhausted—trudging on across the desert and among the banditti until it reaches Jerusalem, I say: “There is an earnest seeker after truth.”
This is the anniversary of Herod’s birthday. The palace is lighted. The highways leading thereto are all ablaze with the pomp of invited guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and all the mighty men of the land are coming to mingle in the festivities.
The table is spread with all the luxuries that royal purveyors can gather. The guests, white robed and anointed and perfumed, come and sit at the table.
Music! The jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartee is indulged. Toasts are drank. The brain is befogged. The wit rolls on into uproar and blasphemy. They are not satisfied yet. Turn on more light. Pour out more wine. Music! Soundall the trumpets. Clear the floor for a dance. Bring in Salome, the beautiful and accomplished princess. The door opens, and in bounds the dancer. The lords are enchanted. Stand back and make room for the brilliant gyrations. These men never saw such “poetry of motion.” Their souls whirl in the reel and bound with the bounding feet.
Herod forgets crown and throne and every thing but the fascinations of Salome. All the magnificence of his realm is as nothing compared with the splendor that whirls on tiptoe before him. His body sways from side to side, corresponding with the motions of the enchantress. His soul is filled with the pulsations of the feet and bewitched with the taking postures and attitudes more and more amazing.
After a while Herod sits in enchanted silence, looking at the flashing, leaping, bouncing beauty, and as the dance closes and the tinkling cymbals cease to clap and the thunders of applause that shook the palace begin to abate, the enchanted monarch swears to the princely performer:
“Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee, to the half of my kingdom.”
Now, there was in the prison at that time a minister of the Gospel by the name of John the Baptist, and he had been making a great deal of trouble by preaching some very plain sermons. He had denounced the sins of the king and brought down upon him the wrath of the women of the royal household.
At the instigation of her mother, Salome takes advantage of the extravagant promise of the king, andsays: “Bring me the head of John the Baptist on a dinner plate.”
Hark to the sound of feet outside the door and the clatter of swords! The executioners are returning from their awful errand. Open the door. They enter and present the platter to Salome.
What is on this platter?
A new glass of wine to continue the uproarious merriment? No. Something redder and far more costly—the ghastly, bleeding head of John the Baptist. The death glare is still in the eyes; the locks are all dabbled with gore; the features are still distressed with the last agony.
Salome, this enchantress who had whirled so gracefully in the dance, bends over the awful burden without a shudder. She gloats over the blood, and with as much indifference as a waiting maid might take a tray of empty glassware out of the room after an entertainment Salome carries the dissevered head of John the Baptist, while all the banqueters shout with laughter. They regarded it as a capital joke that in so easy and quick a way they have got rid of an earnest and outspoken minister of the true Gospel.
Well, there is no harm in a birthday festival. All the kings from Pharaoh’s time had celebrated such occasions, and why not Herod? No harm in kindling the lights. No harm in spreading the banquet. No harm in arousing music. But from the riot and wassail that closed the scene of that day every pure nature revolts.
The Amalekites thought they had conquered God, and that He would not carry into execution His threats against them.
They had murdered the Israelites in battle and out of battle, and had left no outrage untried. For four hundred years this had been going on, and they said: “God either dare not punish us, or He has forgotten to do so.”
Let us see.
Samuel, God’s prophet, tells Saul to go down and slay all the Amalekites, not leaving one of them alive; also to destroy all the beasts in their possession—sheep, ox, camel and ass.
Hark! I hear the tread of two hundred and ten thousand men, with monstrous Saul at their head, ablaze with armor, his shield dangling at his side, holding in his hand a spear, at the waving of which the great host marched or halted.
The sound of their feet, shaking the Earth, seems like the tread of the great God, as, marching in vengeance, He tramples nations into the dust.
I see smoke curling against the sky. Now there is a thick cloud of it, and now I see the whole city rising in a chariot of smoke, behind steeds of fire.
Saul has set the city ablaze.
The Amalekites and Israelites meet; the trumpets of battle blow peal on peal, and there is a death hush.
Then there is a signal waved; swords cut and hack; javelins ring on shields; arms fall from trunks and heads roll into the dust. Gash after gash, the frenzied yell,the gurgling of throttled throats, the cry of pain, the laugh of revenge, the curse hissed between clenched teeth—an army’s death groan. Stacks of dead on all sides, with eyes unshut and mouths yet grinning vengeance.
Huzza for the Israelites! Two hundred and ten thousand men wave their plumes and clap their shields, for the Lord God has given them the victory.
Yet the victorious warriors of Israel are conquered by sheep and oxen.
God, through His prophet, Samuel, told Saul to slay all the Amalekites, and to slay all the beasts in their possession; but Saul, thinking that he knows more than God, spares Agag, the Amalekitish king, and five droves of sheep and a herd of oxen that he can not bear to kill.
Saul drives the sheep and oxen down toward home. He has no idea that Samuel, the prophet, will discover that he has saved these sheep and oxen for himself.
But Samuel comes and asks Saul the news from the battle. Saul puts on a solemn face—for there is no one who can look more solemn than your genuine hypocrite—and he says: “I have fulfilled the commandment of the Lord.”
Samuel listens, and he hears the drove of sheep a little way off. Saul had no idea the prophet’s ear would be so acute.
Samuel says to Saul: “If you have done as God told you, and have slain all the Amalekites and all the beasts in their possession, what meaneth the bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen, that I hear?”
Ah! One would have thought that blushes would have consumed the cheeks of Saul. No, no! He says the army—not himself, of course, but the army—saved the sheep and oxen for sacrifice; and then they thought it would be too bad, anyhow, to kill Agag, the Amalekitish king.
Samuel takes the sword, and he slashes King Agag to pieces; and then he takes the skirt of his coat, in true Oriental style, and rends it in twain—as much as to say:
“You, Saul, just like that, shall be torn away from your empire, and torn away from your throne.”
In other words, let all the nations of Earth hear the story that Saul, by disobeying God, won a flock of sheep but lost a kingdom.
A hypocrite is one who pretends to be what he is not, or to do what he does not. Saul was only a type of a class. When the fox prays, look to your chickens.
Do not be hypocritical in any thing; you are never safe if you are. At the most inopportune moment, the sheep will bleat and the oxen will bellow.
What is that building out yonder, glittering in the sunshine? Have you not heard?
It is the House of the Forest of Lebanon. King Solomon has just taken to it his bride, the princess of Egypt. You see the pillars of the portico and a great tower, adorned with a thousand shields of gold, hung onthe outside of the tower. Five hundred of the shields of gold were manufactured at Solomon’s order, and five hundred were captured by David, his father, in battle. See how they blaze in the noonday sun!
Solomon goes up to the ivory stairs of his throne between twelve lions in statuary, and sits down on the back of the golden bull, the head of the bronze beast turned toward the people.
The family and attendants of the king are so many that the caterers of the place have to provide every day one hundred sheep and thirteen oxen, besides the birds and the venison. I hear the stamping and pawing of four thousand horses in the royal stables.
They were important officials who had charge of the work of gathering the straw and the barley for all these horses.
King Solomon was an early riser, tradition says, and used to take a ride out at daybreak; and when in his white apparel, behind the swiftest horses of all the kingdom and followed by mounted archers in purple, as the cavalcade dashed through the streets of Jerusalem I suppose it was something worth getting up at five o’clock in the morning to look at.
Solomon was not like some of the kings of the present day—crowned imbecility. All the splendor of his palace and retinue was eclipsed by his intellectual powers. Why, he seemed to know every thing. He was the first great naturalist the world ever saw. Peacocks from India strutted the basaltic walks, and apes chattered in the trees and deer stalked the parks, and there were aquariums with foreign fish and aviaries with foreignbirds; and tradition says these birds were so well tamed that Solomon might walk clear across the city under the shadow of their wings as they hovered and flitted about him.
King Solomon had a great reputation for the conundrums and riddles that he made and guessed. He and King Hiram, his neighbor, used to sit by the hour and ask riddles, each one paying in money if he could not answer or guess the riddle.
The Solomonic navy visited all the world, and the sailors, of course, talked about the wealth of their king, and about the riddles and enigmas that he made and solved.
Solomon had at his command gold to the value of £680,000,000, and he had silver to the value of £1,029,000,377. The Queen of Sheba made him a nice little present of £720,000, and King Hiram made him a present of the same amount.
If Solomon had lost the value of a whole realm out of his pocket, it would hardly have been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up.
He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost every thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and fishes.
No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on the hunter’s trappings, and went out with his arrows to bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then with his fishing apparatus he went down to the streams to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into the forestand found the rarest specimens of flowers. He then came back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the science of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science of birds; about botany, the science of plants.
Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man?
His fame spread abroad, and Queen Balkis, away to the south, heard of it. She sent messengers with a few riddles that she would like to have Solomon solve and a few puzzles which she would like to have him find out.
She sent to King Solomon, among other things, a diamond with a hole so small that a needle would not penetrate it, asking him to thread that diamond. Solomon took a worm and put it at the opening in the diamond, and the worm crawled through, leaving the thread in the diamond.
This queen also sent a goblet to Solomon, asking him to fill it with water that did not pour from the sky, and that did not rush out from the earth. Immediately the wise man put a slave on the back of a swift horse and galloped him around and around the park until the horse was nigh exhausted, and from the perspiration of the horse the goblet was filled.
She also sent King Solomon five hundred boys in girls’ dress and five hundred girls in boys’ dress, wondering if he would be acute enough to find out the deception. Immediately Solomon, when he saw them wash their faces, knew from the way they applied the water it was all a cheat.
Queen Balkis was so pleased with the acuteness of Solomon that she said: “I will just go and see him.”
Yonder it comes—the cavalcade—horses and dromedaries, chariots and charioteers, jingling harness and clattering hoofs, and blazing shields, and flying ensigns, and clapping cymbals.
The place is saturated with perfumes. She brings cinnamon, saffron, calamus, frankincense and all manner of sweet spices. As the retinue sweeps through the gate the armed guards inhale the aroma. “Halt!” cry the charioteers, as the wheels grind the gravel in front of the pillared portico of the king. Queen Balkis alights in an atmosphere bewitching with perfume. As the dromedaries are driven up to the king’s storehouses and the bundles of camphor are unloaded, and the cinnamon sacks and the boxes of spices are opened, the purveyors of the palace discovered, so the Bible relates: “Of spices, great abundance; neither was there any such spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”
Well, my friends, you know that all theologians agree in making Solomon a type of Christ and making the Queen of Sheba a type of every truth seeker, and I take the responsibility of saying that all the spikenard, cassia and frankincense which the Queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon are mightily suggestive of the sweet spice of our holy religion.
It was a Sabbath afternoon in the Belleville parsonage. I had been trying for two years to preach, but tome the Christian life had been nothing but a struggle. I sat down at the table, took up my Bible, and asked for divine illumination; and it poured like sunlight upon my soul through the story of the Syro-Phenician woman.
This woman was a mother, and she had an afflicted daughter. The child had a virulent, exasperating and convulsive disease, called the possession of the devil.
The mother was just like other mothers; she had no peace as long as her child was sick. She was a Gentile, and the Jews had such a perfect contempt for the Gentiles that they called them dogs. Nevertheless, she comes to Christ, and asks Him to help her in her family troubles. Christ makes no answer. The people become afraid there is going to be a “scene” enacted, and they try to get the woman out of Christ’s presence; but He forbids her expulsion. Then she falls down and repeats her request.
Christ, to rally her earnestness, and to make His mercy finally more conspicuous, addresses her, saying: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread [that is, the salvation appointed for the Jews] and cast it to dogs”—the Gentiles. Christ did not mean to characterize that woman as a dog. That would have been most unlike Him, who from the cross said: “Behold thy mother.”
His whole life was so gentle and so loving, He could not have given it out as His opinion that that was what she ought to be called; but He was only employing the ordinary parlance of the Jews in regard to the Gentiles. Yet that mother was not to be put off, pleading as she was for the life of her daughter. She was not to be rebuffed; she was not to be discouraged. She says:
“Yea, Lord, I acknowledge I am a Gentile dog; but I remember that even the dogs have some privileges, and when the door is open they slink in and crawl under the table. When the bread or the meat sifts through the cracks of the table or falls off the edge of it, they pick it up, and the master of the house is not angry with them. I do not ask for a big loaf; I do not ask even for a big slice; I only ask for that which drops down through the chinks of the table—the dogs’ portion. I ask only the crumbs.”
Christ felt the wit and the earnestness and the stratagem and the faith of that woman. He turns upon her and says:
“You have conquered Me. Your daughter is well now. Go home, mother; but before you get there she will come down, skipping out to meet you.”
There I see the mother going. She feels full twenty years younger now. She is getting on in life, but she goes with a half run. Amid an outburst of hysterical laughter and tears they meet. The mother breaks down every time she tries to tell it. The daughter is before her, with cheeks as rosy as before she fell in the first fit. The doctors of the village prophesy that the cure will not last, because it was not according to their prescription. But I read in the oldest medical journal in the world: “The daughter was made whole from that very hour.”
This story shows you Jesus with His back turned. That woman came to Him and said: “Lord, spare the life of my child; it will not cost You any thing.” Jesus turned His back. He threw positive discouragement onher petition. Jesus stood with His face to blind Bartimeus, to the foaming demoniac, to the limping paralytic, to the sea when He hushed it, and to the grave when He broke it; but now He turns His back.
I asked an artist if he ever saw a representation of Jesus Christ with His back turned. He said no. And it is a fact that you may go through all the picture galleries of London, Dresden, Rome, Florence and Naples, and you will find Christ with full face and profile, but never with His back turned. Yet here, in this passage, He turned away from the woman.
Zacchæus was a politician and a tax gatherer. He had an honest calling, but the opportunity for “stealings” was so large that the temptation was too much for him.
The Bible says that Zacchæus was “a sinner”—that is, in the public sense. How many fine men have been ruined by official position! It is an awful thing for any man to seek office under government unless his principles of integrity are deeply fixed. Many a man, upright in an insignificant position, has made shipwreck in a great one. So far as I can tell, in the city of Jericho this Zacchæus belonged to what might be called the “ring.”
They had things their own way, successfully avoiding exposure—if by no other way, perhaps by hiring somebody to break in and steal the vouchers.
Notwithstanding his bad reputation, there were some streaks of good about Zacchæus—as there are about almost every man. Gold is found in quartz, and sometimes in a very small percentage.
Jesus was coming to town. The people all turned out to see Him. Here He comes—the Lord of Glory—on foot, dust-covered and road-weary, limping along the way, carrying the griefs and woes of the world. Christ looks to be sixty years of age, when He is only about thirty.
Zacchæus was a short man, and could not see over the people’s heads while standing on the ground; so he got up into a sycamore tree that swung its arm clear over the road.
Jesus advanced amid the wild excitement of the surging crowd. The most honorable and popular men of the city are looking on, and are trying to gain His attention. But Jesus, instead of regarding them, looks up at the little man in the tree, and says:
“Zacchæus, come down. I am going home with you.”
All regretted to see such choice of company.
Zacchæus had mounted the sycamore tree out of mere curiosity. He wanted to see how this stranger looked—the color of his eyes, the length of his hair, the contour of his features, the height of his stature.
I see Christ entering the front door of the house of Zacchæus. The King of Heaven and Earth sits down; and as He looks around on the place and the family, He pronounces the benediction: “This day is salvation come to this house.”
Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!E’en though a cross it beThat raiseth me,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Though, like a wanderer,The sun gone down,Darkness be over me,My rest a stone,Yet in my dreams I’d beNearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee!There let the way appearSteps unto Heaven;All that Thou sendest meIn mercy given!Angels to beckon meNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Then, with my waking thoughtsBright with Thy praise,Out of my stony griefsBethel I’ll raise;So, by my woes, to beNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Or if, on joyful wingCleaving the sky—Sun, Moon and stars forgot—Upward I fly,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!E’en though a cross it beThat raiseth me,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Though, like a wanderer,The sun gone down,Darkness be over me,My rest a stone,Yet in my dreams I’d beNearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee!There let the way appearSteps unto Heaven;All that Thou sendest meIn mercy given!Angels to beckon meNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Then, with my waking thoughtsBright with Thy praise,Out of my stony griefsBethel I’ll raise;So, by my woes, to beNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!Or if, on joyful wingCleaving the sky—Sun, Moon and stars forgot—Upward I fly,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!E’en though a cross it beThat raiseth me,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee!
E’en though a cross it be
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be:
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee!
Though, like a wanderer,The sun gone down,Darkness be over me,My rest a stone,Yet in my dreams I’d beNearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee!
Though, like a wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God, to Thee
Nearer to Thee!
There let the way appearSteps unto Heaven;All that Thou sendest meIn mercy given!Angels to beckon meNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
There let the way appear
Steps unto Heaven;
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given!
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee!
Then, with my waking thoughtsBright with Thy praise,Out of my stony griefsBethel I’ll raise;So, by my woes, to beNearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
Then, with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I’ll raise;
So, by my woes, to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee!
Or if, on joyful wingCleaving the sky—Sun, Moon and stars forgot—Upward I fly,Still all my song shall be:Nearer, my God, to Thee—Nearer to Thee!
Or if, on joyful wing
Cleaving the sky—
Sun, Moon and stars forgot—
Upward I fly,
Still all my song shall be:
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee!
We forget Abijah’s character in his eloquence. He carries a spell with him. Judging from his speech, one would suppose him faultless—entirely noble in every aspiration and impulse and sublimely religious and unselfish.
The whole Abijah is not here. This is but the ideal Abijah. Who ever shows himself wholly upon any one occasion? Who does not sometimes go forth in his best clothing?
We must read the account of Abijah which is given in the Book of Kings before we can correctly estimate the Abijah who talks in the Book of Chronicles.
It is, perhaps, encouraging that while men are upon the Earth they should not be so dazzlingly good as to blind their fellow men. Yet it is pitiful to observe how men can be religious for the occasion. Nearly all menare religious at a funeral; but few men are religious at a wedding.
Abijah has a great cause to serve, and he addresses himself to it not only with the skill of a rhetorician but with the piety of a mind that never tenanted a worldly thought. God knows the whole character—how bright we are in points, how dark in many places; how lofty, how low. Knowing all, He judges correctly, and His mercy is His delight. Neither God nor man is to be judged by one aspect, or one attribute, or one quality. We must comprehend, so far as we may be able, the whole circuit of character and purpose before we can come to a large and true conclusion.
But as we have to do with the ideal Abijah, let us hear what he has to say in his ideal capacity. We will forget his faults while we listen to the music of his religious eloquence.
Abijah comes before us like a man who has a good cause to plead. He fixes his feet upon a mountain as upon a natural throne, and from its summit he addresses a king and a nation, and he addresses his auditors in the sacred name of “the Lord God of Israel.” He will not begin the argument at a superficial point, or take it as starting from yesterday’s new raw history—history hardly settled into form. He will go back, and with great sweep of historical reference he will establish his claim to be heard. In II. Chronicles, thirteenth chapter and fifth verse, Abijah asks:
“Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?”
The binding covenant—the covenant that even pagans would not break. If you have eaten salt with a man you can never speak evil of him with an honest heart. You must forget your criticism in the remembrance of the salt. You are at liberty to decline intercourse and fellowship and confidence; you are perfectly at liberty to say: “I will have nothing to do with thee in any association whatsoever.” But you can not be both friend and enemy. You can not eat salt with a man and smite him in the face, or wound him in the heel, or hurt him in any way, at any time, in any line or point.
That was pagan morality.
We are fallen a long way behind it in many cases, for what Christian is there who could not eat all the salt a man has, and then go out and speak about him with bitterness, plunder him, frustrate his plans, anticipate him in some business venture, and laugh at him over his misplaced confidence?
Abijah recognized the perpetuity of the covenant. The kingdom was given to David for ever—if not in words, yet in spirit; if chapter and verse can not be quoted, yet the whole spirit of the divine communion with David meant eternity of election and honor. It is right to hold up the ideal covenant; it is right that even men who themselves have broken covenants should insist that covenants are right. We must never forget the ideal. Our prayers must express our better selves. A dying thief may pray. Again and again we have to fall back upon the holy doctrine that a man is not to be judged in his character by the prayers which he offers, inasmuch as his prayers represent what he would be if he could.
Abijah, having to deal with a perpetual covenant, charges Jeroboam with breaking it:
“Yet Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon, the son of David, is risen up, and hath rebelled against his Lord.”
All rebellion is wrong, unless it arises from a sense of injustice, untruthfulness or dishonesty. No man has a right to dissent from the national Church unless his dissent be founded upon conscience, a right conception of the nature of the Kingdom of Christ upon the Earth, which leads him to say to certain men: “Stand off.”
No part of the empire has a right to arise against the central authority, of which itself constitutes a part, merely for the sake of expressing political prejudice or selfish design. Every rebellion must be put down that can not justify itself by the very spirit and genius of justice. Separation becomes schism when it but expresses a whim, an aversion, of a superficial or technical kind; and every rebellion is wickedness, is born of the spirit of the pit, that can not justify itself by appeals to justice, nobleness, liberty and God.
Yet our rebellions have made our history.
We should have been in slavery but for rebellion. The rebels are the heretics that have created orthodoxy. We owe nothing to the indifferent, the languid, the selfish, the calculating, the let-alone people who simply want to eat and drink and sleep and die. That they were ever born is either an affront to nature or is the supreme mystery of human life.
Abijah, therefore, is perfectly right when he insists upon mere rebellion being put down; but when rebellion expresses the spirit of justice and the spirit of progress—the new revelation, the new day—all the Abijahs that ever addressed the world can only keep back the issue for a measurable period.
The accusation of Abijah was that Jeroboam had “gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial.” For “vain men” read “sons of worthlessness”—empty fellows, who will join any mob that pays best; men who will cheer any speaker for a half-crown an hour, and put out anybody on any plea on any side for extra remuneration.
Where do these men come from? Whose language do they speak? Whose image and superscription do they bear?
They are in every country; they worship in the sanctuary of mischief and bow down at the altar of selfishness. They know not what they do. They will make a cross for a day’s wages. Evil company follows evil men. Worthless fellows are soon dissatisfied with the company of righteousness; the intercourse becomes monotonous and suffocating. A bad man could not live in Heaven. It is not in the power of mercy to save men from hell, for they carry hell with them; they are perdition.
Who can wonder if desecration followed in the steps of worthlessness? Abijah asks:
“Have ye not cast out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and have made you priests after the manner of the nations of other lands, so that whosoever cometh to consecrate himself with ayoung bullock and seven rams, the same may be a priest of them that are no gods?”
Let them bring the offering, and then they may become priests and do what they please at altars that have no foundations, the incense of which is a cloud that Heaven will not absorb. William Rufus declared that church bread was sweet bread. How many men have eaten church bread who ought to have died of hunger! What responsibility attaches to some people in this matter! Church bread ought never to be given away—ought never to be dishonored with the name of a “living.” No man should be in the Church who could not make five times the money out of it that he ever made in it. It should be felt that if he put forth all his power—both his hands, his whole mind and strength—he could be the greatest man in the commonwealth.
Jeroboam would admit any one to the altar; he would make room if there was none; he would cast out a priest of the Lord to make room for a priest of Belial. This is the accusation which Abijah brings against Jeroboam and his company of rebels.
Now Abijah turns to state his own case. He tells us what he and his people are:
“But as for us, the Lord is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and the priests, which minister unto the Lord, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business. And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shew-bread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lampsthereof, to burn every evening; for we keep the charge of the Lord our God; but ye have forsaken Him.”
What a character Abijah gives himself!
Let us remember that we are dealing with an ideal man, and not with the real personality.
Take this, however, as an ideal representation, and how perfect it is in every line! “The Lord is our God.” We have a sound and vital theology; we have a clear upward look, and no cloud conceals the face divine; no idols have we—no images of wood, no pillars, no groves, no high places where idolatry may be performed as an entertainment.
The man reasons well. He insists upon having corner stones in any edifice or argument he puts up. When he accuses, he goes back to the covenant of salt; when he claims a right position, he claims that it is a theological one. He holds the right God. Losing the right theology, we lose all the detail with it. When the conception of God is wrong, no other conception can be right. It is only bold because it is true to say that if a man has not the right desire after the right God he can not keep correct weights and scales. The custom house, the inland revenue, the excise—call it what you please—may to some extent keep him up to the right mark, but in his soul he takes in every customer that comes near him; if he does not, he loses sleep. This applies to the so-called heathen as well as to the Christian. It is not necessary that a man should have a clear and perfect revelation of God, but that in his heart he feels that he is a creature, not a creator; a subject, not a sovereign; that he is under responsibility, and not above it. In thatproportion only can he deal righteously and nobly with his fellow men.
“And the priests, which minister unto the Lord, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business.”
Here is apostolic succession before the time of the invention of the term. Here is an excellent pedigree, a most complete genealogy. Our priests are in the Aaronic line, and the Levites know their business and keep to it; every thing is in order in our Church.
That is beautiful, and that is right. We need not shrink from adding, that is necessary. We must have nothing to do with men who are not in the Aaronic and apostolic succession; they must not occupy our pulpits, nor be allowed to make pulpits of their own; no man must sell them wood or stone with which to construct a pulpit; they must be forbidden by the genius of law from ever preaching or attempting to preach.
When we let go the doctrine of apostolic succession we let go a vital treasure and blessing.
We may differ as to our definition of “apostolic succession,” but surely there can be no difference among frank and enlightened hearts and minds as to what apostolic succession is. No man is in the apostolic succession who is not in the apostolic spirit, and no man is out of the apostolic succession who is animated by the spirit of the apostles. That is not a spirit which is conferred by the tips of any fingers; that is the gift of God.
Do you see your calling, brethren? God has chosen you. What a Church is God’s! Not a Church of wax-works, all made at one factory, and all charged for inone invoice; but living men, characterized by innumerable individualities—some broad as the firmament, others beautiful and tender as little flowers that can only grow in the fullest sun-warmth; some military in argument and in discipline, others persuasive in pathos, sympathy and tenderness.
There is no monotony in God. One star differeth from another in glory; no two blades of grass are microscopically identical. There is a common likeness in the worlds and in the sub-economies of Nature, but the more penetrating our vision is made by mechanical and scientific aids the more wondrous in difference are discovered to be the very things which are supposed to be identical.
We must never allow the apostolic succession to be handed about without its being accompanied by the apostolic spirit. Every man is in the apostolic succession who believes in the apostles, who follows them as they followed Christ, and who would know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
“And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shew-bread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening.”
At that time piety was mechanical. It could not be otherwise. God never forces history. The days come, each with its own burden and its own blessing, its own dawn and its own apocalypse. We can not have today what is due tomorrow. God’s seasons move in measured revolution, and come to us in orderly and timely procession; and no man can hasten them by lighting his campfire, or striking his matches, or kindling his little inflammable powder.
We can not imitate the Sun.
Some have tried to mimic the stars; but where is the image of the Sun that the Sun has not obliterated by one mid-day look?
The time came when all these ordinances were set aside. There was to be no more burning; there was to be no morning sacrifice and evening sacrifice and sweet incense, or shew-bread and candlestick of gold and lamps thereof for evening burning.
“Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more; but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”
So we may misuse history by going back and making that necessary which has already been abrogated. We may thus ill-treat the day of rest, by measuring it and weighing it in Jewish scales. We may cast a cloud over the day of jubilee that comes every week, by measuring its beginning and its ending by Jewish arithmetic; we may make the whole week sabbatic by Christian consecration.There will always be ordinances, because while man is in the body he needs external helps, collateral assistances and auxiliaries. He is not always equally awake; he is not always equally spiritual. He needs the communion of saints, the coming together in holy fellowship, all the associations of a sacred time and a sacred place, and through the active yet subtle ministry of these he comes to feel that he is in touch with God. “Here in the body pent” we need such aids as can penetrate our prison and minister to the liberty of the soul.
Now Abijah says, as a kind of climax:
“And, behold, God himself is with us for our captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”
How steadfastly Abijah abides by the altar! He can not be tempted one step from the throne of God. His appeal is sublime because it is religious. It is historically religious. “The Lord God of your fathers.” It would seem to be a solemn thing to cut off oneself from all the currents of history—to bury our fathers over again in a deeper grave; yea, to bury them at night-time, so that when the morning came we could not tell where they were interred.
Abijah will have a historic line. He maintains the doctrine of philosophic and personal heredity and organic unity. He will insist upon it that the men of his day represented the men of dead generations, and were to do what they would have done had they then lived. Not only was it historically religious, but it was religion accentuated by motives, such as act most powerfully uponhuman conduct—“for ye shall not prosper.” That appeal they could understand.
The double appeal constitutes God’s address to men. He is bound to point out consequences, though He would not have life built upon them. There is no other way of getting at certain people than by telling them that if they believe not they shall be damned. They are so curiously and fearfully made that only hell can excite their attention. The preacher does not declare this doctrine of fire, or mere penalty, for the sake of revealing God and acting upon human thought and conduct. He knows it is an appeal more or less tinctured with possible selfishness. He can not but despise the man who asks for Heaven simply because he has smelt the fire of hell.
But the Christian preacher will begin where he can. He has to do with all classes and conditions of men. All men do not occupy the highest point of thought—do not approach the Kingdom of Heaven from the noblest considerations—and he is the wise pastor, he has the great shepherd heart, who receives men by night, by day, through the gate of fear, through the portals of love; who keeps the door ajar for men, not knowing when they may come home.
He is but a poor preacher, and he knows it, who bids people come to God that they may get to Heaven; but he is aware that some people can only understand through the medium of such terms, if ever; and he really hopes for them that by experience they may eventually rise to a nobler level, and desire God for God’s own sake. He only is in the Spirit of Christ who would pray as much, give as much, suffer as much, if he knew he had to diethis night, and be blotted out for ever, as he would do and give if he knew he were this night going into everlasting glory.
To be good in order to buy Heaven is not to be good. To be religious in order to escape hell is not to be religious.
Yet we must always so judge human nature as to provide for people who can only act through fear, and through love and hope of reward. Their education will be continued and completed, and some day they will look back upon their infantile beginning and pity themselves.
The great thing, however, is to begin. If we are afraid of hell, let us ask great questions. If we are in hope of Heaven, let us begin to do great services. Hell and Heaven have nothing to do with it in reality, but they have to do a great deal with it initially, instrumentally and educationally.
What was the upshot of the war? Who needs to inquire? When Omnipotence goes forth to war, what can be the issue of the battle? God takes out His glittering sword, and His hand lays heavy in judgment; can grasshoppers stand before Him? Oppose a wooden fence to a boundless conflagration, and you may act almost rationally—most rationally—as compared with those who set a grasshopper to oppose the march of God.
The writer in the Book of Kings takes a much worse view of Abijah’s character than we find in the Book of Chronicles. From the first Book of Kings we learn that Abijah endeavored to recover the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and made war on Jeroboam. No details are given, but we are also informed that he walked in all thesins of Rehoboam—idolatry and its attendant immoralities—and that his heart “was not perfect before God, as the heart of David, his father.”
In the second Book of Chronicles Abijah’s war upon Jeroboam is more minutely described, and he makes a speech to the men of Israel, reproaching them for breaking their allegiance to the house of David, for worshiping the golden calves, and substituting unauthorized priests for the sons of Aaron and the Levites. He was successful in the battle against Jeroboam, and took the cities of Bethel, Jeshanah and Ephraim, with their dependent villages. Nothing is said by the writer in Chronicles of the sins of Abijah, but we are told that after his victory he “waxed mighty, and married fourteen wives”—whence we may well infer that he was elated with prosperity, and like Solomon, his grandfather, fell during the last two years of his life into wickedness, as described in Kings. Both records inform us that he reigned only for the period of three years.
God is the time-keeper. He says: “Now.” We wonder we can not go just when it is convenient to ourselves. We think we see the exact juncture when it would be right to go, but if we went just then a serpent would bite us on the road.
We want to go to Heaven, but God says: “Not yet.”
We want to begin the battle, but God says: “Wait.”
In the eighteenth chapter of the first Book of Kings we read:
“And it came to pass, after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying: ‘Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the Earth.’ And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.”
Think of waiting “many days” and doing nothing! But what if waiting be the best working? What if we can best do every thing by simply doing nothing? There is a time to stand still and see the salvation of God.
Mark another thing in these verses. The Lord said “Go,” and Elijah went. Not Elijah “objected,” Elijah “reasoned,” or Elijah “pointed out the difficulties,” but simply Elijah “went.”
That is the true ideal of life.
Always be ready.
Contrast with this the case of Jonah. Elijah had no fear of Ahab. He who fears God can not fear man. If you go up to your duties in your own strength, you will find them difficult; if you come down upon them from high communion with God, you will find them easy.
The governor of the house of Ahab was called Obadiah. The word Obadiah means “servant of Jehovah,” and it would seem to have been a true description of the man, for we read that “Obadiah feared [or reverenced] the Lord greatly.”
It is possible for a man to be very bad in one direction and very tolerant in another. It was so in the case of Ahab. He was the worst of the kings of Israel, yethe kept a governor over his house who feared the Lord greatly.
The Lord causes the most wicked men to pay His religion the homage which is due to its excellence. A bad king employs a good governor. He who himself disobeys Jehovah yet engages a servant who fears the Lord greatly. The thief likes an honest man for steward. The blasphemer likes a godly teacher for his child. The great speculator prefers an unspeculative man for book-keeper. It is thus that virtue has many unconscious votaries.
He who is the slave of idolatry becomes an easy prey to the power of cruel tempters. We do not know that Ahab was a cruel man, but we do know that Jezebel was a cruel woman, and Ahab was greatly influenced by his passionate and sanguinary wife. Ahab’s provocation of the Lord may have been in the direction of idolatry alone; but to be wrong in your conception of worship is to expose yourself to every possible attack of the enemy. To pray in the wrong direction is to be weak in every other.
Ahab was a speculative idolater; Jezebel was a practical persecutor. Ahab showed that speculative error is consistent with social toleration. You must distinguish between Ahab and Elijah in this matter. It was Jezebel who slew the prophets of the Lord, and Ahab knew that his servant, Obadiah, had hidden fifty of these prophets in a cave; and yet Ahab kept Obadiah in his service. But redeeming points do not restore the whole character. “One swallow does not make a Summer.”
In the same character may be met great faith andgreat doubt. Obadiah risked his life to save fifty of the prophets of the Lord, yet dare not risk it, without first receiving an oath, for the greatest prophet of all! This mixture we find in every human character. “How abject, how august, is man!”
In Ahab, Obadiah, Elijah and Jezebel we see a fourfold type of human society. There is the speculator, the godly servant, the far-seeing prophet and the cruel persecutor.
Society has got no farther than this today. The Ahabs of the age are leading us away into speculation that ends in idolatry and in infinite provocation of the Lord; the Obadiahs of the age are still praying, and serving God, and saving even the worst households from the wrath of Heaven; the Elijahs of the age are still hurling their divine thunders through the corrupt and stagnant air, and piercing with lightning shafts the gloomy and threatening future; and the Jezebels of the age are still narrow, bitter, indignant, vengeful and sanguinary.
O wondrous combination! So checked, so controlled, by invisible but benignant power! Speculative error has its counterpart in actual cruelty, and patient worship has its counterpart in daring service.
We sometimes hear that Ahab was a covetous man. Are we quite sure that the charge is just and that it can be substantiated?
This charge is based on the affair of Naboth’s vineyard. How could Ahab be covetous? He proposed terms, saying:
“Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a gardenof herbs, because it is near unto my house, and I will give thee a better vineyard than it; or, if it seems good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.”
The terms do not, upon the face of them, appear to be unreasonable or inapplicable. Surely this is not mere covetousness, if covetousness at all. The vineyard was close to the palace, and that fact was assigned as a reason for wishing to open negotiations concerning its transfer. But do we not sometimes too narrowly interpret the word covetousness? It is generally, at least, limited to money. When a man is fond of money, wishes to add to it, and is not scrupulous as to the means by which he seeks to enhance his fortune, we describe him as covetous. The term is perfectly applicable in such a case.
But the term “covetous” may apply to a much larger set of circumstances, and describe quite another set of impulses and desires.
We may even be covetous of personal appearance; we may be covetous of popular fame, such as is enjoyed by other men; we may be covetous in every direction which implies the gratification of our own wishes; and yet, with regard to the mere matter of money, we may be almost liberal.
This is an astounding state of affairs.
A man may be liberal with money, and yet covetous in many other directions. Sometimes, when covetousness takes this other turn, we describe it by the narrower word, “envy.” We say we envy the personal appearance of some; we envy the greatness and the public standing of others.
But under all this envy is covetousness.
Envy is in a sense but a symptom; covetousness is the vital and devouring disease. Under this interpretation of the term, therefore, it is not unfit or unjust to describe Ahab as a covetous man.
Look at his dissatisfaction with circumstances. He wishes to have “a garden of herbs.” That is all. He is king of Israel in Samaria; but there is one little thing of which he has not yet possessed himself, and until he gets that in his hand he can not rest well. There is a dream that troubles him; there is a nightmare which makes him afraid to lie down to sleep.
Look at what he has. Who can measure it? Who can run through the enumeration of his possessions? Who can take an exhaustive inventory of all the riches of the king of Israel?
But there is one little corner that is not his, and he wants it, and until he can get it all the rest goes for nothing.
The great Alexander could not rest in his palace at Babylon because he could not get ivy to grow in his garden. What was Babylon, or all Assyria, in view of the fact that this childish king could not cause ivy to grow in the palace gardens?
Ahab lived in circumstances; he lived in the very narrowest kind of circumstances. As a little man, he lived in little things, and because those things were not all to his mind it was impossible for him to be restful or noble or really good.
Once let the mind become dissatisfied with some trifling circumstance, and that fly spoils the whole pot of ointment. Once get the notion that the house is toosmall, and then morning, noon and night you never see a picture that is in it, or acknowledge the comfort of one corner in all the little habitation. The one thing that is present in the mind throughout all the weary hours is that the house is too small.
Once get the idea that the business is undignified, and you go to it late in the morning and leave it early in the afternoon, neglecting it between times; you are also ashamed to speak of it, and will not throw your whole heart and soul during business hours into its execution.
Once get the notion that the neighborhood is unfashionable, and it goes for nothing that the rooms are large and airy, that the garden is one of the best you ever had, that there is ample scope for a rich library, that all the neighbors are men of peculiar intelligence and goodness. All go for nothing, because the tempter has said: “This neighborhood is not a fashionable quarter of the town, and when people come to know that you are living here they will lose confidence in you and respect for you.”
If we live in circumstances, we shall be the sport of events; we shall be without dignity, without calmness, without reality and solidity of character. Let us, therefore, betake ourselves into inner thoughts, into spirituality of life, into the soul’s true character, into the very sanctuary of God. There we shall have truth and light and peace; there the stormy wind can not disturb us, and the great darkness is but an outside circumstance, for within there is the shining of the light of God.