I ::'■•"■...- :T: . ';:■;• 1 '-^V LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ©fyap. .„ .... ©upjrigH !fn. Skelf..I3J§.il'7/ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. . LONG AGO AS INTERPRETED BY THE NINETEENTH CENTURY / BY REV. E. F. BURR, D. D., LL. D., AUTHOR OF "UNIVERSAL BELIEFS," "CELESTIAL EMPIRES," ETC. I have considered the days ot old, the years of ancient times. DAVID. 'loropia (pLAoaoNG AGO. hatred burst out into flaming speech: "Shalt thou indeed reign over us? We will see to that!" and desires and plans of cruelty began to ferment and take shape in their minds. Opportunity only was wanting to bring on a catastrophe. But, when matters come to that pass, Satan is sure to see that an opportunity is not long wanting. Ivike his fathers, Jacob was rich in flocks and herds. This made necessary a frequent change of pasture. It was on one of the long absences from the central camp that their business required that Satan gave the wicked brothers the oppor- tunity they wished. They had been away from home so long that their father became anxious about them. Not being able, as we are, to sit in his tent and telephone inquiries into all parts of the country, he had no resource but to send a mes- senger. So Joseph, now about seventeen years old, was sent to look up the absentees. He went with no idea of what was in store for him. So far was he from reciprocating his brothers' ill-will that he did not even suspect its existence save as a surface and transient irritation; and he went on his way with a sense of perfect security and with the hope of soon carrying back to Mamre news of their safety and prosperity. From Mamre to Shechem, from Shechem to Dothan: at last he descried in the distance his father's flocks and his father's sons. He joyfully quickened his steps, happy in the thought of an ended journey, of FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 107 pleasant greetings, and of a father relieved from his anxieties. Perhaps in his impatience he called out warm salutations from afar and re- newed them at every step. And now he is among the men. Why this ominous silence? With startled eye lie looks from face to face, only to see so many thunder clouds fringed with light- ning. " Now is your time," cried the Satan in their hearts. "The aged father cannot see you. You can easily palm off some plausible story on him. And as for the God whose fear you have cast off, if he exists at all he is one who never says anything, whatever happens. Up, and make an end of this dreamer." They grasped him. They tore from him his goodly tunic. They bound him hand and foot. And, had it not been for the suggestion of the eldest, they would have killed him then and there with their own hands, true sons of Cain as they were. But Reuben suggested that their object would be secured just as well if they should cast Joseph into a certain deep pit close by and leave him there to die of starvation. To do this seemed to them a shade less criminal than to redden their own hands with paternal blood. Admirable casuistry! Peo- ple began very early to make very nice distinc- tions. They did not need to have at their com- mand all the resources of the Sanscrit and the Greek in order to do it. So the brothers agreed to make the pit their proxy in the murder they IOS LONG AGO. proposed, and cast Joseph into it. One would suppose that they would have had small appetite for their daily bread just after such a deed; but their hardness of heart was such that they were able to sit down to eat and drink. Was it not a wonder that their food did not choke them ? While they were busy at their meal they dis- covered a caravan in the distance coming towards them. This at once suggested an improvement on their plan. Why should they not make a lit- tle money out of Joseph and get rid of him at the same time? Doubtless it was a trading caravan going to Egypt: the traders might be willing to give a good price for a good-looking young man; and once in Egypt he would never be heard of again. A slave there, he would be as good as dead. So, long before the days of Aristotle and Euclid, they logically argued and acted. They hastily drew up the youth out of the pit; and when the Midianites came up they struck a bar- gain with them. Their brother brought just twenty silver pieces. Very likely they asked thirty; but the traders took advantage of the anx- iety to sell and pretended not to be anxious to buy — besides, the title was none of the best — and so beat the brothers down a third. One is a little curious to know how Joseph behaved through all these proceedings. His brethren afterwards said that the boy seemed very much disturbed and used entreaties. But did he FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 10 9 persist in these demonstrations ? Did lie continue to the last to expostulate and protest and strug- gle against his fate; or did amazement at what was happening and despair, as he looked through his tears into the stony faces about him, soon take away all power of struggle or speech? Who could have thought it? His own brothers, too! And that broken-hearted father! But a truce to such thoughts. The young slave must hurry away with his masters, perhaps carrying a bur- den, and pricked with spears as he tries to keep up with the long-paced camels. What does Joseph think of his dreams now? He a favorite of heaven ! Is there any heaven to see and care for what is done on the earth ? The skies are black as midnight, black as Egypt. And yet, O twice murdered and now enslaved lad, trust in God ! He knows how to overrule. He can take the wise in their own craftiness. Out of solid darkness he can carve out a flight of steps upward into day. The patriarch sat day after day at the door of his tent watching for the dear boy who never came. At last appeared the brothers and held up before him a torn and blood-stained coat. "This we have found: know now whether this be thy son's coat or no." The heart of the old man broke. Naught remained for him but to die as quickly as possible. Cruel men — nay, brutes in human form ! One wants to become a swift prov- IIO LONG AGO. idence and smite you hip and thigh. You have murdered your brother and now you have mur- dered your father ! You fratricides, you patri- cides, how can you escape the damnation of hell ! At the end of his journey the slave of the Mid- ianites became the slave of Potiphar, an officer of the Egyptian court. Despite appearances, the Iyord God of his fathers had not deserted the youth, and the youth in his new place did not desert the Lord God of his fathers. His diligence and conscientious fidelity, with the divine bless- ing, made all he did to prosper. This soon at- tracted the notice of his master. For Joseph to be well noticed was to be well esteemed and trusted. He found such grace in the sight of Potiphar that he was finally put in charge of all the family affairs; for in Egypt, as everywhere else, nothing succeeds like success. From that mo- ment the house of the Egyptian was wonderfully prospered. His granaries swelled, his lands mul- tiplied, and his palace grew splendid with treas- ures. Potiphar drank of Joseph's cup. He rose on Joseph's shoulders. As soon as the Egyptian saw this continuous and immense prosperity under the management of his steward he gave himself no further care. He knew naught that he had save the bread that he ate. In this flourishing life passed ten years. The youth had become a beautiful young man. His advantages and successes had not served, as such FROM MAMRK TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. Ill things too often do, to weaken the principles of integrity and religion. He stood in his young manhood like some strong pillar on which tem- ples may lean without fearing a fall. A time came for testing its strength. The winds of temp- tation arose and blew a tempest. It became ne- cessary for the young man to choose between vir- tue and prosperity — between the favor of God and the favor of man. He seems not to have hesi- tated. He saved his character and he lost his place. And his downfall was into a dungeon. What now of your dreams, O dreamer ! Have you not quite given up faith in them? Perhaps, while your sun was shining so brightly, you thought that fulfilment was casting its shadows before; but now that all of a sudden your sky has no sun at all, nor even a star, how can fulfilment cast that shadow of itself which we call hope? But it may be Joseph walked by faith and not by sight. Perhaps he remembered that, although God had promised him great things, he had not promised that he should reach them at once or by a smooth road. Jerusalem has some very rough approaches. The God who for years made Joseph the vice- roy of Potiphar soon made him viceroy of his jailer. His almighty Friend could not be shut away from him by bolts and bars and walls of massive masonry. Somehow the hard heart of the keeper was touched and softened. "The 112 LONG AGO. heart of the king is in the hand of the L,ord;" and it turned out that so was the heart of the king's turnkey. That proverbially flinty thing melted towards Joseph. Soon the young man became as important in the prison as he had been in the palace. He did well whatever he did. Whatever he touched seemed to prosper. And I imagine that he was one of the few men who carry a grand certificate of character and capacity in their very faces — men whom you have only to look at in order to feel that they can be trusted without limit. However this may have been, somehow Joseph inspired unlimited confidence in his keeper. Everything was put under his hand. Whatever was done in the prison he was the doer of it. So thorough was the faith reposed in his ability and fidelity that his principal ceased to overlook him, though responsible with his life for the consequences. What was the use ! — he had found that rare thing, a proxy who would do bet- ter than himself. A divine hand was manifest in such an unusual venture. To our knowledge it was a very safe venture, that is to say, no ven- ture at all, as was proved by the result. It was the good fortune of Joseph to carry a blessing wherever he went, instead of curses, as some do. He carried a blessing into that Egyptian prison, of which, though a prisoner himself, he was the general manager. Hitherto the providence of God had marched FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 1 13 slowly; for most of the time it had seemed not to march at all, or rather had seemed to march the wrong way. But now it went forward by long and majestic strides. The same heaven-sent vis- ions of the night by which his final greatness was foretold to Joseph, and by which in those far-off times God so often supplied the place of a written revelation, made their appearance in the prison. Two prisoners dreamed. What did their dreams mean ? Could not Joseph, who could do so many things, interpret dreams also? So he was called. A divine afflatus came upon him and he was able to explain the riddles. In three days fulfilment came. The cup-bearer of Pharaoh went forth from prison to press the grapes of his three vine- branches into the royal cup. The baker of Pha- raoh went forth to lose the baked meats from his three baskets by losing his head. Behold the prison superintendent suddenly risen to the rank of a prophet ! And what shall be done to the man whom the King of kings delighteth to honor? L,et royal apparel be brought and the horse which the king rideth upon, and let proclamation be made before him: Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor ! King Pharaoh slept. He saw before him the valley of the Nile. Seven fat kine made their way up the bank of the river and fed in the pas- tures. Seven lean kine followed, so lean as had never before been seen in the land. These at- Long K'io. O 114 LONG AGO. tacked the others, devoured them, and remained as lean as ever. The scene changed. The king- saw a stalk of wheat put forth seven ears, rank and good. While he looked there came forth seven thin and blasted ears, which absorbed the others-and remained as thin and blasted as ever. In the morning the monarch called in the wise men of his court to interpret. u Ye diviners, astrol- ogers, magicians, necromancers, by whatever name ye are called, are ye mere pretenders or not ? If not, now prove it. ' ' They confessed them- selves baffled. Then the cup-bearer bethought himself of the young interpreter of the prison whose words had come so exactly and swiftly true in his own case; and soon the young Hebrew was standing in the presence of the royalty and wis- dom of Egypt. The afflatus came on him again. With a winning modesty and grace he told the king of seven years of great plenty, followed by as many years of famine. He pointed out how the abundance of one septenniad should be made to feed the destitution of another. The monarch was charmed. Somehow God made the unprova- ble interpretation shine by its own light — neither the first time nor the last of his doing this. In these days he sometimes turns theorems into axi- oms; and many a humble Christian sees at first hand that Christianity to be true which others accept only on proof. Now, Hebrew of the Hebrews, thou art be- FROM MAMRK TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 115 ginning to ride the flood which threatened to drown thee! Now, slave of the pit, the caravan, the palace, and the dungeon, mount above the highest of thy masters. Now, thou hated of thy brethren, thou bought and sold of Arabs, thou slandered of thy mistress, thou almost forgotten of thy friend the cup-bearer, accept the fulfilment of thine own dreams in a primacy not unworthy thy surpassing virtue! He was at once arrayed in royal vesture and gold. The signet gem of Egypt shone on his finger. An authority to which the loftiest subject in all the realm must bow was placed in his hand. He went forth from the audience chamber of the Pharaohs to hear men cry before him, Bow the knee! and to ride through the streets of Memphis prime minister of the most splendid of the ancient monarchies. u He made him lord of his house and ruler of all his sub- stance, to bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his senators wisdom." During the seven years of great plenty that immediately followed Joseph exerted himself to lay up vast store of food. His granaries were crowded with wheat and the cities were crowd- ed with his granaries. He gathered corn as the sand of the sea, until he left numbering. So the years of famine, which came to time with astronomic exactness, found him well pre- pared. And a sore famine it was, extending into all the surrounding countries. And all Il6 LONG AGO. these countries sent down into Egypt for food. At the storehouses of Joseph waited side by side w T ith dusky Egyptians they of Midian and Am- alek, they of Edom and Cush. Among those who came were the ten sons of Jacob. And they came and bowed themselves before the all-powerful Vice-Pharaoh on whose will their lives hung, little thinking that their sheaves were at last bowing down to the sheaf of their brother. More than twenty years had now passed since they had seen him ; and the guilty men did not recognize in the majestic prince, to whose face they hardly ventured to lift their eyes and before whom they prostrated themselves, the stripling whom they so pitilessly sold into slavery. But well did he know them. What a fine opportunity for revenge! How many people in his circumstances would have caught at it and have informed the culprits as they were driven out to die of hunger or the sword that their sin had found them out, that they deserved even worse treatment, that " though the mills of the gods grind slowly, they must be expected to grind exceeding fine" ! This would have been poetically just, but it would not have been righteous; and Joseph was bent, above all things, on being righteous. Satan is very bold, and I do not know but that he was bold enough to suggest to the much-wronged man to become a frowninof and red-handed Nemesis. If he did this FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. II7 lie promptly heard, Get thee behind me, Satan! Joseph the viceroy became Joseph the sublime. He kept back his hand and he kept back his heart. He joyfully resolved on rivers of love and mercy instead of rivers of wrath and justice. But for the present it might be well to try the bro- thers somewhat. So he insisted on detaining one of their number till the others had returned with their youngest brother Benjamin. When the whole brotherhood was before him he declared himself. He gave full vent to the feelings of his great forgiving heart. He fell on the necks of those once hard and cruel, but now (it is to be hoped) melted and penitent men, and wept over them and kissed them. He quieted their natural fears, he palliated their conduct towards himself, he strove in the most tender and delicate manner to let bygones be bygones. He put into their mouths a most tender and moving message to his aged father. Let that father come to him and re- main near to him and be tenderly cared for in the best of the land all his days. Haste ye, said he, so eagerly did his filial heart crave to see the pa- triarch again. Then went up in long procession to Canaan the joyful eleven, beasts of burden laden with the choicest necessaries and delicacies, horses and chariots for the use of the aged and the tender, and probably an escort of honor from the troops of Pharaoh. And then in clue time went back in n8 LONG AGO. still longer procession the joyful patriarch and those forgiven sinners the joyful brethren, and their joyful families with all their effects, chariots and horses and camels and dromedaries and flocks and herds, stretching miles and miles along the des- ert. It was no desert to these emigrants, I ween. As they approached their future home Joseph himself came forth in state to meet them. The son clasped to his bosom the form of the venerable sire: the sire clasped to his bosom the form of the lonor-lost and darling son. What a change it was! o o o The boy who had gone forth from the tents of Mamre on a petty errand was returned with the state and port of a sovereign to become the saviour of all his kindred. That was a proud moment for Joseph, but a prouder still for his father. Do not fathers rejoice more over the success of their children than even the children themselves do? i 'Now let me die," said Jacob, "since I have seen thy face and thou art yet alive." And, may it please your excellency the viceroy, how much better is all this than to have listened to the devil of revenge, and to have treated your brothers after the manner in which they treated you! So, honorably and joyfully, the Hebrews came to their new home. The whole land rang with festival sounds, and even the palace was in a flutter of welcome. Pharaoh held a reception in honor of the father of the national preserver. He allowed Joseph to place him in the very best of FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS— JOSEPH. 119 all the Egyptian provinces. And that model son, for seventeen more years, did all he could to make the last days of the old man his best days. And when the inevitable came, he hastened away from his great affairs to smooth the dying pillow. He mourned for the dead with profound sorrow. He gave him the funeral of a sovereign and per- sonally attended his remains to the land where he had chosen to lie, where his fathers slept, and where his posterity were destined to dwell. "And there went up with him all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph and his brethren and his father's house, and chariots and horsemen, ... a very great com- pany." They buried Jacob as if he were the fa- ther of Pharaoh. The prosperity of Joseph was durable. He kept his integrity and his integrity kept him. Though the present is a world of change, though few are allowed to go on long in a course of un- interrupted success, God upheld the fortunes of Joseph with unwavering steadiness. He had the roughness and darkness of his way at the outset ; he had the smoothness and brightness of it from the time when he became the ruler of Egypt. Prime ministers are apt to have rather a brief day; but the primacy of Joseph seems to have lasted as long as he lived. And that was a long time. He saw a hundred and ten years, and his children's 120 LONG AGO. children of three generations. He died in faith, which is a much better thing than not to die at all. A hundred and forty-four years afterward the Hebrews in their famous exodus took with them his embalmed remains, according to his dy- ing injunction, and placed them by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I greatly admire the filial character of Joseph. From the outset he was a capital son. There is reason to think that Jacob's partiality for him when a child was owing, not merely to the facts that he was the son of the beloved Rachel and the child of his old age, but also to the extraordinary affectionateness and dutifulness which the child displayed. His affection suffered nothing from long absence and a most busy and eventful life. How alive with feeling were his inquiries after his father at the time when he made himself known to his brethren ! Through the transparent words of the simple narrative, as through some powerful lenses, we seem to look in directly on a heart full to overflowing with filial yearnings. How impatient he was to have the journey begun that was to bring his father to him ! What careful provision he made for his comfortable and honor- able transfer from Canaan ! And when news came that the patriarch was approaching, with what abounding demonstrations of reverent wel- come did the ruler of the land go forth to meet him ! The meeting itself — what a touching scene FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 121 it was, what with the passionate embracing and profuse joyful weeping ! Our eyes grow moist merely to read of it; and those Egyptian nobles who were actually present and looked on the scene had a chance to know beyond all question whether they carried stones in their bosoms in- stead of hearts, or no. Escorted like a king to his new home, Jacob found all the remaining years of his life pillowed in comfort and splendor by a watchful devotion that never thought it could do enough. Happy father ! Still happier son to whom was allowed the opportunity to make such magnificent tributes of filial devotion ! Never does the illustrious character of Joseph appear to better advantage than when the romantic story of the great adventurer and statesman brings him into connection with his father. He seems to for- get all the grandeur of his lot and to take back to himself the demonstrative childish heart again; or rather, he seems to take delight in abasing all his honors before the majesty of white hairs and the transcendent station of a godly parent. Be- fore the fifth commandment was given one could have predicted long life and durable prosperity to so good a son. It would not be amiss if the present generation would take a hint from the filial behavior of Jo- seph. It is well worth the copying. We all have parents or we have their memories. Are they in narrow circumstances? L,ike Joseph, let us hasten 122 LONG AGO. to broaden those circumstances. Are they aged and sorrow-stricken ? Like Joseph, let us do our best to make their last days their best days. Are they already in their graves? Like Joseph, let us give their wishes and memories such honors as we may. " Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth," is a commandment with promise which it is not wise for young or old to forget. I greatly admire the placableness of Joseph. He was no Mohawk. He was not a good hater. He knew how to forgive, if he did not know how to forget. That was a cruel and blood-firing wrong which his brothers had done him. They at first meant to imbrue their own hands in his blood; then they meant to starve him to death; and it was only their cupidity that led them to exchange his death for permanent slavery in a distant land. Few ties of brotherhood but would have hastened to snap asunder under such a strain. But his did not. With a stretch of generosity of which most men feel themselves incapable he forgave the debt of ten thousand talents. When he was all power- ful to exact the last farthing of an immense retri- bution, he not only exacted nothing, but freely gave ten thousand new talents. Instead of over- whelming his brothers with wrath and harms he overwhelmed them with love and benefits. Thus, nearly two millenniums before Christ, Joseph FROM MAMRE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 1 23 acted on Christian principles. Most men in his circumstances would have been as implacable as death. For wrongs almost infinitely less multi- tudes flame into a consuming- vindictiveness, and compel a whole life of suns to go down on their wrath. How hard it is for the average man to get over even a single insulting word or scornful look ! Back thunders the harsh word, the harsh look — with large interest added. But this will never do. The law of Christ's house will not tolerate it. If men will not forgive they shall not be forgiven. If men will not forgive they cannot cover themselves with the example of Joseph. If men say that they forgive and never do works meet for forgiveness, they can never excuse them- selves by the way Joseph treated his enemies. His forbearance and greatness of soul were sub- lime. They do not strike one as suggestive of that approach to the brutal which our thoughtful friends, the philosophers, advise us to be looking out for as we go back into the remoter centuries. They seem to me almost as eloquent in favor of the old-fashioned views of a divine origin of man as is the famous fossil man of Mentone. Shall we find a nobler soul and nobler ethics among the Darwins and Spencers of our time? We com- mend that style of primeval savagery to the atten- tion of Sir John I/ubbock. We commend such data of ethics as he can find in the life of Joseph the Great to the careful notice of Herbert Speii- 124 LONG AGO. cer. And if Edmund Burke were alive and yet to write his treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, we would respectfully suggest to him to prepare for the work by taking a long and careful look at that living specimen of the sublime and beautiful which was found in a certain Egyptian palace nearly two thousand years before Christ. Yes, I greatly admire the great-hearted, forgiving, Christlike Joseph. The man was far greater than his fortune. Even let us bare our heads as we look at him, and say to ourselves, "Well, man is immortal. One capable of such things cannot die." Who does not see in the light of such an example how grand and wise is the Christian law for dealing with injuries? I greatly admire the general religious con- stancy of Joseph. It appears from the tenor of the narrative that he lived his conscientious, principled, God-fearing life steadily to the end. And yet he was sorely tempted — tempted to mis- anthropy, tempted to atheism, tempted to poly- theism, tempted to immorality, tempted by the general example of a luxurious and pleasure-seek- ing court, perhaps above all tempted by that broad wave of worldly prosperity on the crest of which he was ever riding during the last seventy years of his life. But his was a staunch ship. It weathered equally well the storms of adversity and the quite as dangerous storms of prosperity. We have seen vessels ^o down in half the sea. FROM MAM RE TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. 1 25 But tins vessel went on and on, through fair weather and foul, through calms and gales — ■ never beating backward, never veering, always heading towards God and duty. Wherever the course of the narrative allows us a glimpse of his spiritual condition we see the same unswerving, unfaltering service of the God of his fathers. Human beings are a backsliding set. This is a fortunate thing when we are on the wrong track, but a very unfortunate thing when we happen to be on the right one. And the unfortu- nates are many. Josephs are scarce. Most of us make very zigzag journeys. Our ways go and come and crook about after the manner of Israel in the wilderness. We slip back from God and duty as if we were climbing ice-hills. Oh, for some alpenstock to secure our steps ! May not the example of that glorious ancient steadfastness serve us in that way ? It shows us that it is pos- sible, even in a dense community of sinners, to tread the narrow way as march the planets and the laws of nature; to maintain high character amid low surroundings; to have great piety while doing a great business; to stand erect while most stoop or fall; to stand alone in the service of God when none care to stand with us — to do all this for a lifetime as steadily and mightily as the earth turns on its axis. Joseph was a miracle of stabil- ity; but it was a miracle that can be duplicated and reduplicated to any extent. Else why are we 126 LONG AGO. bidden to stand fast in the Lord, to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord? It is a glorious thing to be stable in reli- gion. Reeds shaken with the wind, weather- cocks that look by turns to every point of the compass, tides that ebb and flow, leaning towers that are always threatening to fall and but too often fulfil their threats, boomerangs that go and come — such things have their uses in the natural world, but not in the religious. There we want stability. And when we find what we want, when some Joseph towers before us in the gran- deur of his inflexible righteousness, it is to me a far grander sight than that of the everlasting hills or the eternal stars. " Call no man fortunate till he is dead," says an ancient sage. This means that no one can tell from the present aspects of an event what its final bearing on his fortunes will be. Things are largely not what they seem. Blessings often come disguised as curses, and curses as blessings. The possession of pleasant Campania destroyed Hanni- bal. Many generals have been ruined by their victories. To gain a fortune has often been to lose a family. Honors and stations have been known to bring with them by far more cares and labors and envies and calumnies and contentions than they were worth. On the other hand things that at first, and it may be for a long time, have a frowning aspect often turn out at last very friend- FROM MAMRK TO MEMPHIS — JOSEPH. IT] ly — in fact our very best friends. The experience of Joseph is in point. That gay tunic, those pleasant dreams of coming greatness, that excur- sion through the beautiful land to look up his bro- thers — all these things came to him with inviting faces, but they brought a deal of trouble in their train. But when he was cast into the pit what seemed to him death was really an escape from death; when he was sold into slavery, when he was dragged into a country remote from home, when after a while he was thrown into a prison, his circumstances naturally seemed to him to have a very ugly look, but they were really successive stepping-stones to the promised greatness. Their real significance did not appear till from ten to twenty years afterwards, and meanwhile that seeming football of Providence had great room and need for trust. And there was good reason for trust in his case. Had he not an explicit promise — one sure to come to fulfilment at last? Why then borrow trouble because the wheels of the chariot tarry ? And why should any good man borrow trouble as to what the future may bring him? Has he not a promise that all things shall work together for his good ? All his seeming adversities are sure to prove in the long run real prosperities. If he goes down into some pit, let him fight with faint- heartedness and say, Perhaps this is to keep me from some worse evil; at least it will befriend me 128 LONG AGO. in some way or other. If lie is sold into some Egypt, let him pluck up heart and say, Perhaps this is that I may help the Egyptians and myself at the same time; anyhow it will turn to account in some way. If he is slandered, and slandered to death as Joseph was, let him shake his fist at dis- couragement and say, Perhaps this is to open to me the door of Mr. Interpreter and set me up in a new mission ; at any rate time will show, or eter- nity, that God means well by me and makes no mistakes as to means. Only let him be sure that he is on God's side, and then be sure that all his troubles will, sooner or later, turn to triumph. V. THE ROD OF GOD. Lonj Ago. MOSES 'The Deliverer, THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. I3 1 K THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. Noah died. The years continued to roll round, as they will, whoever dies, nearly a thou- sand of them. During this period lived Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew nation, his son Isaac, his grandson Jacob, his great-grandsons who found- ed the twelve Hebrew tribes. These last were "driven into Egypt by a famine, where for a time they greatly flourished under the patronage of their brother Joseph and his successors. Their numbers became very large. The Egyptians grew jealous. And when at last a king arose who knew not Joseph he proceeded to reduce his guests to slavery, and even ordered that all their male infants should be put to death. In this afflictive time Moses was born — Moses, the great lawgiver, the greatest and most ancient of historians, the prince of human miracle- workers; in short, the most venerable and majestic figure in the long perspective of Old Testament times. We are indebted to Moses himself for nearly all we know about him. He left an autobiogra- phy. This fact has been called in question by some people — as indeed what ancient fact has not? But uniform tradition and, above all, the testi- mony of Christ, the faithful and true Witness, 132 LONG AGO. ; make Moses the author of the Pentateuch. What matter if he is spoken of in the third person ? So is Caesar in his Commentaries. What matter if the book has different styles? So has the Anabasis of Xenophon. What matter if the book records the death of Moses with its circumstances? The added passage was accepted by the Jewish Church as part of the inspired record. But can the autobiography of Moses be relied on, considering the many rough ages through which it has come down, and considering too how prone men are, intentionally or unintention- ally, to misrepresent in their own favor? It is enough to say that no ages have been rougher than those before Christ, and that Christ relied on the Law and the Prophets enough to say that not one jot or tittle of them should fail. Accord- ingly, what Moses tells of his own life and charac- ter and times is true in every particular. His facts are real facts. His teachings are sound teachings. While we are reading his book it is not a novel we are reading, but history; not such history as sometimes comes to us under that name (all mixed up with the guesses and speculations of partisans), but pure fact colored after nature, from which every grain of tare or chaff has been care- fully sifted by divine hands. A beautiful child ! A child of three months so exceedingly fair that lying in his little ark of bul- rushes and lifting up his tearful eyes in mute ap- THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 133 peal to the face of the Egyptian princess, her heart went out to him with a great leap. No, she will not suffer him to drown. No, she will not suffer him to be devoured by the riv- er monsters. No, she will not suffer him to famish. Why, he is a right royal child ! Not another such in all Egypt. He shall be mine. Here, Jochebed, take him and nurse him for me ! So the infant Moses went back to his joyful mother, went back to get his first impressions of things in a godly household. How long he re- mained with his mother we are not told; but we have reason in Oriental customs to think that it was long enough to allow the seeds, at least, of the true religion to get imbedded in his life. Who can say that such seeds may not enter the child- soul with the first dawnings of intelligence, when it first sees a mother kneeling and hears a mother praying? But after the child Moses had been transferred from the cabin to the palace the nurse, very likely, was not denied the usual privi- lege of an ancient nurse, but kept up communica- tion with her boy, he coming often to her, she going often to him, perhaps securing some service in the royal household that she mi°dit be with him the more. So she was able, we may believe, to keep him from heathenism, to bring him to the fear and service of God, and as he passed into youth to keep him safe from the vanities anci 134 LONG AGO. profligacies of a heathen court. She looked after what we would now call his Christian education — by far the best education a child can receive. Say it over after me, O parents — the best education a child can receive. Of course the son of Pharaoh's daughter was given the best learning of Egypt, and that was then the best learning in all the world. { ' Of the ten portions of wisdom that came into the world, " says an old writer, "Egypt had nine." Her priests were the teachers of Grecian sages. Her art blossomed out into palaces and temples and various monuments that are still the wonder of the world. Her science, as shown in architecture, husbandry, manufactures, commerce, and war, was unrivalled. So young Moses had the best teachers and opportunities of his time. He im- proved his opportunities. Manhood found him learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, also, mighty in word and in deed. It would appear from this, as well as from tradition, that he was as remarkable for personal prowess, executive ability, and weighty speech as for knowledge: a well-rounded man, a man fit for anything to which he might be summoned, a man fit to gov- ern what was perhaps the most difficult and vexa- tious nation that the sun ever shone upon. For he had at the bottom of things solid moral founda- tions that had stood the strain of great tempta- tions, and on these a grand structure of faculties THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. 135 and accomplishments that rose towards heaven higher than the Pyramids. In and out, here and there, for forty years — perhaps governing provinces, sitting in council chambers, leading armies, certainly ripening in all his intellectual provinces and moral forces as slowly ripened the divine plans. We have to be patient with God as to time, as he has to be pa- tient with us as to character. But at last the clock of providence struck a warning. Moses thought it was the hour that struck. Pharaoh did not hear; perhaps nobody heard save the adopted son of Pharaoh. One day it was borne in upon that son that he must be one thing or the other; that he must not any longer live a divided life; that he must make an election between the lot of a Pharaoh and that of a Hebrew. Which lot shall he choose? Behold a crisis! such as comes to every man sooner or later. Right or wrong, true or false, the people of God or the people of Egypt — which shall it be? Now the balance trembles. Now the moment is big with fate. We look this way and that; we take account of advantages and disadvantages; Satan pleads for his side and God pleads for his. It is the very, very old way, the way of some three thousand years ago. Moses looked at both sides. On the one hand his eye took in palaces and sovereign- ties and riches and pleasures: on the other hand he saw cabins, serfdoms, vagrancies, hardships of 136 LONG AGO. all sorts. It was a supreme moment. But the supreme man was equal to it. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than en- joy the pleasures of sin for a season, counting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. How much it cost him to make this decision we are not expressly told; but my thought of the man is so large that I cannot well fancy him as long hesitating between two opinions, and then slowly and with many a backward look com- ing to his decision. On the contrary, I seem to see the question settled as soon as started, the great will sweeping to its work as some great bil- low with the storm behind it ^oes towards the shore, or as some mighty eagle swoops to his quarry. However this may be, it is certain that this is the way that you and I and everybody should choose the good part that cannot be taken from us. So great will be our recompense of re- ward. Having made his election, Moses proceeded to act accordingly. Had he not done so his election would have been hollow, mere superficies, a worthless shell, just as is every so-called Chris- tian decision which leaves a man acting just as it found him. "By their fruits ye shall know them." So we know Moses. He stood forth in defence of his people. He tried to right their wrongs. In ways not revealed he so acted in their behalf that he had a right to suppose that THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 137 they understood him to be a fast friend and that God by his hand would deliver them. But they understood not. He found himself premature. His zeal had outrun the ripeness of the people, and, indeed, the divine purpose. A very ancient mistake, and a very modern one too. Who has not known people to run before they were sent? Who has not, at some time, wanted to "hurry up" providence and found it very hard waiting till the clock should strike ? Moses had to wait another forty years. But he had so committed himself on the side of God and his people that it was no longer safe for him to wait in Egypt. So he fled from Memphis and midday to Midian and midnight; and he who had lived all his life in a palace of sculptured stone, ridden in royal chariots, and seen men prostrating themselves right and left as he passed, found himself in the wilderness, with the heavens for a tent and stripped of everything but his man- hood and his religion. "He has seen better days," thought Jethro as he looked upon him. He took him into his service. He gave him flocks to keep. And, finally, when he had found what a faithful and capable servant a wise prince could be, he gave him his daughter. "Where is the son of Pharaoh's daughter?" said the Egyptians. "Where is our friend Moses?" said groaning Israel. Nobody could answer. Dead, for aught his old acquaintance *3 8 LONG AGO. knew. And as year melted into year and no news of him came, his name gradually ceased to be spoken in Egypt and perhaps even the memory of him almost passed away. He was buried, though not dead. In the depths of the wilder- ness he lived his humble life and did his humble duties. Was he discontented ? Was the contrast too great for him? Did he feel as if his great faculties and superb education had been thrown away? Perhaps he said, "If the Lord can wait, so can I. If the Lord wants me, he knows where to find me. Meanwhile I will take care of these sheep. I will do as well as I know how the busi- ness at hand, however humble. Have I no re- sources within myself? Must I be miserable be- cause I am no longer on a pedestal ? Am I at a loss what to do with myself just as soon as the roar of Thebes and Memphis has died away in the distance? God forbid! Welcome, solitude. Now I can think. Now I have abundant time to commune with nature and God. And perhaps God will set me to writing for him something that the world will not willingly let die — say a history of the earlier times of the world, a Genesis that shall instruct all the ages to come. Yes, I will be content and will bide my time. If God wants me elsewhere he will send for me. I will bide my time." And he bided a long time, a very long time. It would have worn out the patience of most men. the: rod of god — moses. 139 But it was not time wasted. Before, he had the discipline of society; now, he had that of solitude; before, the discipline of public and official life; now, that of a private and domestic one; before, such discipline as comes from the schools, from the management of great affairs, from large deal- ings with human nature; now, such discipline as shows itself in faith and humility and patience and fortitude and resignation. Is not this latter discipline of some value ? Alas for most men if it is not, for it is about the only discipline they have. So the man Moses was himself rounding out while God was rounding out the fulness of time. The time of his waiting was so long that the exile almost lost sight of his mission. The means came to swallow up the end. That quiet domes- tic and shepherd life was so comfortable, he so relished the eloquent silences and solitudes amid which nearly half a century had been passed, that he grew reluctant to have any change. So when the hour really struck the man was not readily forthcoming. u Come now, I will send thee into Egypt," said God to him out of the flaming bush. What answer ? Did he promptly throw down his shepherd's crook, tighten his girdle, and with face on fire say, " Yes, Lord; this is just what I have been waiting and longing: for these two- score years"? Nothing of the sort. He wants to be excused. He asks for a substitute. He pleads incompetency. Just as if the Lord did not I 4° LONG AGO. know all about him, as if the Lord was not able to qualify even a stone to suitably represent him at the Egyptian court. Is this really Moses, or is it somebody else in his shape ? Well, it is some- body else for the moment. Men are not always themselves. Moses was not himself when he said, u Send by whom thou wilt send." But he soon came to himself. God insisted. He promised his servant all the help he might need for the work assigned him, as he does to every servant. Of course Moses yielded. What else could he do? What else does any good man do when he finds that the Lord insists on his doing some unpalatable thing? Obedience is the first law of piety. Now began the great mission in earnest. All that had gone before was mere scaffolding. The fugitive went back to Pharaoh with the message of God on his lips and the rod of God in his hand. When the one failed he plied the other. Ten times the stroke fell; ten times the whole Egyptian land writhed under terrible judgments. The last of these, which took away the first-born of Egypt, from the serf-child to the heir-apparent, completely broke down for the time the stubborn king. ' ' Get you out," he cried, u as speedily as possible!" And out they went with all their belongings; nay, even loaded with presents from their affrighted and hurrying masters. No Red Sea could stop them — make a dry path for them, ye depths ! No THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 141 backsliding Pharaoh, following hard after them, could stop them — bury his whole force of chariots and horsemen for ever out of sight, ye imminent walls of water ! Now on into the wilderness, ye chosen people, under your chosen leader, after the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night; on for forty more years, when less than forty days would have sufficed for a less vexatious people; fed with bread from heaven, drinking water from the rock, wearing clothes that never wore out, seeing Sinai smoking and flaming and quaking with the presence of the law-giving Je- hovah, helped by many miracles and punished by perhaps as many more, dropping in the wilder- ness a whole misbehaving generation — so at length they come to the border of the Promised Land. Through all the zigzag wanderings of the Hebrew millions Moses towers above them as the chief figure. He marshalled the host, he gave the laws, he wrought most of the miracles; in fine, he was the go-between for the twelve tribes and their God. He was faithful in all his house. He was meek above all men. And yet at the waters of Meribah he was so provoked into sin by that most provoking of all nations that he was not allowed to enter the Holy Land. He might have only a distant view of it. Was his case pe- culiar? Was there ever a sin, even a pardoned one, that did not shut the sinner out of some place of privilege and enjoyment ? 142 LONG AGO. Behold the white tents of Israel necking the plain at the foot of Nebo ! From them in the early morning goes forth a solitary man. His eye is bright, his step firm, his form erect; he moves with the easy majesty and strength of a king in his prime. Who would think him to be carrying the burden of one hundred and twenty years? Yet so it is. The vicissitudes of life, the toils of war, the cares of state, the studies of the sage, the perplexities and activities of the man of affairs, the excitements of the most mar- vellous history that mere man ever had, have left him with eye undimmed and natural force unaba- ted. But now the last day has come. He knows it, and has settled his affairs, appointed his suc- cessor, said his adieus, and now calmly turns his back on the host for which he has so long unself- ishly lived and prayed and suffered. He proceeds to ascend the mountain. At every tent door the people stand watching, with tears in their eyes and in their hearts. They will never see his like again. At last he stands on the summit and looks around. What a glorious panorama ! He needs no telescope; God brings distant things nigh. He needs no voluble native to stand by him and explain the landscape; God is his inter- preter. His anointed eyes see "all the land of Gilead unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south and THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 143 the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar. ,) Then he closes his eyes. Softly as the infant loses himself in sleep or as the day melts away into night, he passes away. Men would say he is dead. I say he has passed away. Here lies his body, it is true, motionless and un- breathing.; but Moses himself has sailed away on starry though invisible pinions, and, without any battle, is welcomed into another Promised Land, in comparison with which the goodly land that flowed with milk and honey was a desert. As for the body that he lived in for so many pilgrim years, God took care of that. He so buried it that no man knows the sepulchre to this day. Had it been known, there is reason to think it would long since have been rifled, and the pre- cious bones of the saint, encased in gold and gems, would have been scattered over the world as ob- jects of idolatrous veneration. Such is human nature. Men are in the habit of killing prophets while they live and of deifying them when dead. Commonly the biography of a man ends when his body dies. But it is not so in the case of Mo- ses. He has reappeared at least once since his so-called death. On the mount of transfiguration Moses and Elijah appeared in glory, talking with Jesus. Many ages had passed since that scene on Pisgah, but lo, now he was back again in the very heart of the country which he was forbidden to enter in the flesh, full of glorious life, and plainly 144 LONG AGO. in far brighter condition than of old. Of old, in- deed, his face once shone so brightly that Israel could not look steadfastly upon it. But that was a transient shining. A few hours later and the brightness was all gone : the face was become as the faces of other men. But as soon as the saint died the old shining came back again, came back to stay, came back with added splendors. What the three disciples saw on Hermon or Tabor was not a pageant-Moses gotten up for the occasion, but Moses as he had been ever since he had dropped the veil of flesh, and Moses as he will continue to be long after the sun itself has grown dim. That close communion with God that made his face to shine on Horeb is now perma- nent and complete on the heavenly hills. This consideration alone is enough to show that the glory of Moses is a glory that remaineth. The meteor has become a fixed star; or rather, the flash has deepened into a nightless day. Strong as this language is, it is still language within bounds; for the Bible uses as strong of every common be- liever. "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." "And their works do follow them." The works of Moses have followed him in a wonderful degree. Through the inspired works he has left his influence has been growing from age to age, and is now telling on the world more powerfully THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 145 than it ever did while he was in the flesh. In the sea of humanity he was not merely a great billow whose nplift sent out agitations to every shore : his influence has followed the law of the avalanche and has mightily gathered volume and speed in its descent through the ages. Moses once belonged to Israel ; he now belongs to the world. His ex- ample, his words, and his deeds are going into every language. Whoever hears of Christ will hear of him. Whoever reveres Christ will revere him. I wish to emphasize certain thoughts which have been already incidentally mentioned. 1. The history of Moses illustrates the force of early impressions. According to Eastern custom he remained with his nurse till he was old enough to be placed in the hands of those who were to super- intend his formal Egyptian education. Indeed, for some time after that, and perhaps always, the nurse had special privileges of free communica- tion with her foster son. He probably went often to her and she came often to him. Alive to the great position the child was to occupy and the great influence he might be expected to exert, re- membering what Joseph in a like high place had been able to do for his people, aware too of the great spiritual perils the child would have to meet in a heathen court, his parents and the elders of Israel doubtless exerted themselves to implant at the earliest possible moment the seeds of good A -:o. IO 14° LONG AGO. character and of his ancestral religion. How else can we account for the character and faith we find him possessing when come to maturity? He did not get such things from the court of Pharaoh — that is certain; nor from the priests of Isis — that is certain. The fact is, his pious friends must have looked after the beginnings of things in Mo- ses. They took time by the forelock. They carefully preoccupied the ground for God. And the result was that God never lost the ground. When the boy passed from the hut of his parents to the halls of the Pharaohs, from the presence of a spiritual religion to the gorgeous ceremonials of an idolatry that spoke only to the senses, from the instructions of uncourtly and unlearned pa- rents to the schools of the priest-sages at whose feet Greece sat to learn wisdom, he was fore- armed. There may have been a strain for a time. He saw Israel and Israel's faith looked down upon by all the prosperous and noble. Error and vice put on purple and gems and painted their faces skilfully and voiced themselves like sirens to captivate him. Moreover, all the influence of gratitude and worldly interest strove to make him thoroughly Egyptian in faith and feeling and hab- its. By identifying himself fully with the people who had adopted him he might expect to stand permanently among the proudest of that proud land, if not to occupy its throne — at that time the most brilliant throne in the world. We can hard- THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 147 ly conceive of both religion and patriotism more beset than they were in the case of young Moses. But he came out of the seven-fold furnace without the smell of fire upon him. The power of early impressions was greater than the power of Egypt. See what parents now can do for their children by starting a religious nurture at the earliest possible moment ! I^et them put the good seed into the ground while it is soft and quick with spring. If the world had more imitators of Moses' parents it would have more imitators of Moses. 2. Great divine favor did not exempt Moses from a large measure of trial. When we first see him it is as a foundling, weeping among the flags of the monster-haunted Nile. Then we see him fleeing his country, leaving behind him princely rank, riches, honors, and modes of living to which he had been accus- tomed from childhood. He went out bare of all things but life. He stole in fear and haste along the land through which he had been charioted in splendor. An exile of nearly half a century fol- lowed — an exile during which, probably, his father and mother had to die without his loving presence and ministrations; an exile which could hardly have been without many dreary features to one accustomed to the stirring life of the Egyp- tian capital in the days of the great Sesostris, and who was conscious of powers that fitted him for the grandest theatres of activitv. After the exo- 148 LONG AGO, dus, as the leader of a stiff-necked and fractious people, he found himself loaded with cares and vexations that knew little respite. Murmurings, reproaches, insurrections, idolatries — what a life the poor man had ! One wonders that he did not give up his troublesome sceptre in disgust. Al- most any other man would have done it. Most people would think twice before accepting forty years of vagrancy in the great and terrible wilder- ness — let alone other troubles. Yet this much-enduring man was peculiarly dear to heaven. He was allowed a fulness and freedom of intercourse with Jehovah granted to no other mere man in all the human history — face to face with God as a man talketh with his friend. When no other intercessions could avail, those of Moses saved Israel from utter extinction by divine wrath. When Aaron and Miriam presumed to rate themselves as high in the favor of God as their younger brother, how signally they were re- buked ! ' ' Hear now my words ! If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision and will speak to him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold : wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses ?" And Miriam went forth a leper as white as snow. THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. 149 Very dear was the Hebrew leader to God ; but it was no part of the divine plan to carry him or any other saint to the skies on flowery beds of ease, Job's friends to the contrary notwithstand- ing. The divine love did not show itself in screening its object from trial, but in giving him grace to bear it. His sky must have its clouds, his path its thorns, his cup its infusion of bitter- ness, his gold its purifying fires. Discipline, this is the key to divine providence in this world. So when we see a man bowed with trouble, his purposes crossed, his way hedged up, cares and crosses of many kinds pressing him heavily, we are not to conclude that God is against him. For aught his trials say to the contrary, he may be the dearest of all men to God. The heart of God often smiles where his providence frowns. Joseph in the pit or in the dungeon is on his way to the premiership of Egypt. u Many are the afflictions of the righteous," and yet " the Lord loveth the righteous and his ears are open to their cry." 3. The life of Moses illustrates the wisdom of that Providence that presides over every life. Every life, however obscure, is arranged in all its circumstances by Him who numbers the hairs of our heads; so we are told and so we are bound to believe, though we cannot see. But some lives manifest this wise providence more than others. The life of Moses is one of these manifesting lives. In it we can see that adaptation of means to ends, I50 LONG AGO. that fit arrangement of circumstances to secure a great object, which in most cases we are obliged to take on trust. The mission of Moses was to conduct Israel out of Egypt and to found them as a religious na~ tion. So he was born a Hebrew. None other could have commanded in the same degree the sympathy and confidence of Hebrews, nor have loved them so well and patiently. He was sent into the royal family of Egypt on the footing of a son; so he enjoyed the best advantages of secular education which the world at that time had. Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of Greek his- tory, whose mummy has just been found, was one of the ablest sovereigns and warriors of antiquity. His court was the focus of learning as well as of power. His priests were sages, his art an aston- ishment, his wars triumphs. Nowhere else could the elect youth have had such wide and varied culture in art, in science, and in arms. I say u in arms;" for it is not likely that what was then deemed so important a part of education was re- fused to Moses. Josephus says it was not refused, and that to his other accomplishments the He- brew prince added that of a great general. He was mighty in word; that is, a great counsellor. He was mighty in deed; that is, a great soldier. So he became fitted to lead the armies of Israel and to skilfully manage affairs of state. Trained to statesmanship and command, he entered on his THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. 151 mission as the leader of his people with nothing of the crndeness and awkwardness of a novice suddenly raised to a great position from the lower walks of life. He was w T ont to be looked up to and obeyed alike by Egyptians and Hebrews. All these circumstances were of great account in qualifying him to deal with so difficult a people as he was to have in charge. Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, they needed at the helm a strong and practised hand. This hand they would not have had unless Moses had been brought up in a court instead of a brick-field; and he would not have been brought up in a court unless the daughter of Pharaoh had gone down to the river at the critical moment when the infant was exposed; and perhaps she would not have cared to preserve him had not God gifted him with exceeding beauty and made him to ap- peal to her heart with eloquent tears. So divine Providence in due time sculptured out a great national leader. But it was not enough for Moses to become a great national leader. While getting all secular accomplishments in the company of the great and cultured he must be kept from their misbelief and; vices. It was even more important to his mission that he should be good than that he should be great. To secure the goodness without sacrificing the greatness, this was the problem for Providence to solve. Behold the solution ! Let the princess 152 LONG AGO. find it convenient to send the foundling to its own mother to be nursed. This step secured for the true God and his service the first impressions of childhood. These with their customary power conducted the boy, the youth, and the man un- harmed through court and camp, through tem- ples and schools. Preoccupied and forearmed for God, he steadily resisted all the evils that nested in and about his exalted station, and became great without ceasing to be good. When Moses had gotten out of Egypt all the accomplishments that Egypt had to give, the wise Providence broke up the nest of the young eagle and made him fly to Midian to get another sort of education. In the pastoral solitudes let Moses commune with nature and his own heart. While waiting for the slow-moving wheels of the exodus let him learn patience and trust. laving the sim- ple life of the desert, let him gradually slough off the self-indulgent tastes and ways of the city and the palace, and become a still hardier and 'health- ier specimen of manhood, and still abler to bear the strain of the great charge about to come upon him. And here too let him study Genesis and primeval history, with God himself for the in- spiring Teacher. Is not history instructive to a statesman and legislator, especially history out of which all chaff of guesses and falsities and spec- ulations has been carefully winnowed? Further, lest his piety should suffer from unfavorable com- THE ROD OE GOD — MOSES. 153 panionship during his long exile, lie must be brought into the family of a prince of Midian who seems also to have been a servant of the true God. A refined and godly home is a first-class security to everything good in a man. A daughter of Egypt as wife would have embarrassed his mis- sion; so God gave him the daughter of Jethro. And so the years wheeled themselves slowly away, adding venerableness to his aspect, experience to his culture, ripeness to his wisdom, prudence to his energy; in short, giving last touches to his preparation, until it stood complete before the burning bush which summoned him to his great work. I have said that the life of Moses throws light on that wise Providence that presides over every life, over yours and mine. That is just it. It is one of the sublimities of the divine government that it looks after the career of a slave as carefully as after that of a king. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Heavenly Father: and what are called the "happenings" of your lot and of mine, O friend, have all passed under the sceptre of him who marshalled the life of the o^reat He- brew and who marshals all the stars. Each of us has his own special mission as truly as Moses had his. The universe is a great machine designed to work out a definite result. It includes some parts that are large and shining and in conspicu- ous positions; it also includes parts so small and 154 LONG AGO. inconspicuous as to escape the notice of every eye but its Maker's — a little wheel, a little pin, a lit- tle invisible something whose absence would yet throw the whole whirling mass into more or less of derangement. And that little something is the smallest man in the smallest Nazareth of the smallest country on the face of the globe. What is mere size or show to God ? His eye is on the least as well as on the greatest. His hand is just as busy in the raindrops as in great Jupiter. What matters it to his omniscience and omnipo- tence if my life is only a raindrop and my orbit only an inch in diameter? Will this embarrass his superintendence? No, let no man, however small, count himself as lying outside of the scheme of divine Providence. What concerns us is to see that we make it possible for that Provi- dence, from whose grasp nothing can escape, to deal with us in a friendly manner. Then shall we rejoicingly find that u the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord" and that "he gives his angels charge over him to keep him in all his ways. ' ' 4. It seems that Moses is no friend to any scheme of philosopJiy, science, history (whatever name yon please to give), that makes little or nothing of God as the Former a7id Governor of all things. There is a philosophy, so called, that tries to account for the universe on purely natural prin- ciples, affirming that the heavenly bodies with all THE ROD OF GOD— MOSES. 1 55 their wonderful arrangements, the various sorts of plants and animals with all their exquisite mechanisms, and even man himself with all his intellectual and moral belongings — that all these came to be what they are from eternal dead atoms without any help whatever from a personal God. Another scheme allows God to introduce the ele- ments of things far back in the past (the farther back the better), and then dismisses him from all further concern with what he has made: the clock has been wound up and set going; now let it run on of itself till it runs down some millions of years hence. So, since the remote beginning, there has been no occasion whatever for the supernat- ural, not even in the history of mankind, which is simply an unfolding of the natural forces and laws originally hidden in the atoms of matter. The one scheme discounts God altogether; the other pushes him back from us such infinite leagues that the sun becomes a faint star whose very existence is questionable. Does any reader of the books of Moses need to be told that his philosophy is very different from either of these schemes? Holders of them never did, and never will, express themselves as Moses does about the origin of things and the history of mankind. He distinctly traces the great departments of nature to successive divine fiats. In the foreground of all his historic pictures, personal and national, stands the great form of Jehovah, not as a simple 6 LONG AGO. spectator of what is going- on, but as a mighty actor whom nobody can afford to ignore. Other philosophers are all the while telling us about Nature; the Hebrew philosopher is all the while telling us about the Supernatural. Other histo- rians only tell us what men do: from reading them one would not discover that there is any superintending, managing God at all among men ; the Hebrew historian shows us all events as un- folding from the hollow of a divine hand. A di- vine will is the pivotal-centre of events. A di- vine arm is bare and mightily predominant among all busy human arms. So plain men have always understood Moses. So unsophisticated men un- derstand him to-day. And so he is understood by the more logical and intelligent arguers for a god- less universe, and hence they discredit him. We discredit them. We say to them, You and Moses do not agree as to how the universe was made and is governed; and if we must make an election between you and Moses as guide to what is true, we altogether prefer Moses — Moses with the halo of inspiration about his head and the rod of God in his hand; Moses, to whose entire reliability Christ himself gave the weight of his sovereign authority. 5. It appears from the life of Moses that a dis- pensation of miracles does not necessarily, nor even probably, overcome unbelief and irreligion. Some fancy that even a single miracle, if they THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 1 57 could only have it, would set them up immovably in a religious life. " Let a shining angel appear in the sky and proclaim God, and I would be no longer godless. Let a mighty voice fall to me from heaven, saying of Christ, ' This is my be- loved Son; hear him,' and I would be no longer Christless. Let some dead man return to me and preach repentance, and I would repent." I am not so sure of that. It appears that a whole nebu- la of miracles was not enough to turn vast multi- tudes in the days of Moses from their sins. Pha- raoh remained hard despite the ten sore judg- ments. Despite them the Egyptians remained idolaters. As for Israel, though their fetters were loosed by the same great miracle, though God clave the Red Sea in twain before them, though a miraculous pillar guided all their jour- neyings, though for many years they drank and ate and were clothed by miracles, though God came out of his wonted silence and, amid flame and earthquake, spoke to them his law in articu- late thunder, though they, as it were, trod mira- cles and breathed miracles and ate and drank miracles and had amon«- them the standing mira- cle of a visible divine glory for nearly half a cen- tury, yet during all this time of wonders they were, every now and then, misbehaving in the grossest ways — even to the point of idolatry. "A stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright and whose spirit 158 LONG AGO. was not steadfast with God. They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in his law and forgat his works and his wonders that he had showed them." And all despite severe chastise- ments from time to time. In fact they carried their misconduct so far that only two of the gen- eration that came out of Egypt could be allowed to enter the Holy Land. Moses wondered at their unbelief and perverseness; and so do we. Wonderful misconduct — and how instructive! Through it, as through an open window, we look in upon the immense depravity of human nature. And we see also that people may be making a great mistake who suppose that if they could only have some rousing and indisputable miracle in favor of God and religion they would be sure to repent. The Hebrews had, not one such miracle, but many a one. They had, not far-off miracles brought to them by a succession of reporters, but such as their own senses could judge of and know beyond doubt to be genuine. They had, not mir- acles that came and went like a flash, but such as kept blazing on among them for a lifetime and which they could study at infinite leisure. They had, not miracles that were barely over the bor- der line between the natural and the supernatural, but such as could by no possible ingenuity be credited to mere nature, such as lay infinite leagues away from her and invoked God with both hands uplifted and with a voice that has THE ROD OF GOD — MOSES. 1 59 readied all the ages. Yet, with all this stupend- ous supernaturalism appealing to them, they, al- most to a man, found it possible to be stubbornly unbelieving and wicked. And you, who think that if you could only see a single genuine mira- cle you would be sure to believe and act accord- ingly — you, who think that if, on entering the next state and finding the teachings of the Bible confirmed by a still more impressive supernatural- ism than we have at present, you would, if proba- tion could be continued, be sure to swiftly change life and character — see you that your view is by no means warranted by the history of Moses. If such a dense and protracted rain of miracles was ineffectual to soften the hardness of the Hebrews, why may not a drop or two of the same rain be ineffectual to soften you? Men can stand out against miracles as well as against sermons. Mir- acles, like sermons, are capable of going wide of their mark. They can be explained away just as plainest Bible can be explained away. You can credit them to Beelzebub. You can credit them to occult natural forces. You can significantly hint that there is such a thing as jugglery, and may be such a thing as magic. In short, there is power enough in a human "I don't want to" to defy any amount of eloquence, whether it comes from divine lips or from divine hands, whether in this world or in the next. Be content with such evidence as you have, my friend; depend l60 LONG AGO. upon it this is better for you in your circumstan- ces than signs and wonders would be. My belief is that "if you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would you be persuaded though one rose from the dead." VI CURSE ME ISRAEL. ir BALAAM The TJnvvilling Pro pliet. BALAAM. 163 VI. BALAAM. The country between the Euphrates and the Tigris is remarkable for many reasons. It is grandly historic. Here the race began. Here it began the second time in Noah and his sons. Here Abraham was born and spent his youth, here Rebecca lived till her marriage with Isaac, here Jacob took refuge for more than fourteen years from his brother Esau, here may have lived Job, the prince of sufferers and the prince of saints. And here, too, was the seat of the great Assyrian and Babylonian Empires which figure so proudly in ancient history. In early times it deserved to be called the garden of the world. It was known under the name of Padan-Aram, or fruitful Syria. A charming climate; fat pastures; the sunny slopes which the vine loves; mountains with their grandeurs, their fountains, and their forests; plains rich in all the grains and fruits and flowers — the fertile, the picturesque, the salubrious, the beautiful, the sublime made their home in delight- ful Mesopotamia, especially in the more northern and elevated portion. It was here dwelt Balaam. "They hired Balaam of Mesopotamia to curse thee." u Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east." 164 LONG AGO. So Balaam was fortunate in the place where his lot was cast. He was also fortunate in the time when he lived. There had not been so illustrious a time since the creation of man — one so full of divine wonders, communications, and institutions — and after him no such time occurred again till the advent of Christ. He was the contemporary of Moses and Joshua, in whose days the heavens rained stars of the first magnitude till all the re- gion to the west of him was ablaze with signs and wonders. In his day, too, fairly began in heaven- ly pomp and warranty the Old Dispensation with its written revelation and its constellation of posi- tive religious institutions which should make the glory of the next fifteen hundred years. It was a good time, a glorious time for the evidences, a grand time as to illumination and opportunity. Yes, it was a good time to live in — this resurrec- tion period of the old world when the great order of ages began afresh, when God in shining ways came nearer to men than ever before. In Mesopo- tamia and Midian and Moab, the frontiers of the Egypt and of the "great and terrible wilderness " where the great miracles of the exodus were wrought — it was here at this privileged time lived Balaam. Balaam was also fortunate in his race and fam- ily. He was descended from Shem. His brother was king of Edom. His own name signifies Lord BALAAM. 165 of the people. In origin and rank Balaam was princely. He was zoned about with friends, com- forts, honors, resources. He had abundant leisure and facilities of all sorts for great usefulness. Every school of knowledge, every sphere of gra- cious activity, every instrument of personal cul- ture that existed in those times and countries, wise Egypt included, was within his reach. He was bom to these things. Instead of spending the greater part of his life in acquiring them, they were the capital and vantage-ground with which his life started. He was a child of fortune. He belonged to the elect of Providence. Palaces and coronets, Tyrian robes and Egyptian chariots, came to him without his asking — simply by blood and birth. As men estimate, he was one of the fortunate few instead of the unfortunate many. He might have been, like millions of others, a child of Ham. He might have first seen the light in the hut of a fellah and have dragged a fellah's chain all his days. But Providence smiled upon him. The sky was blue and the sunshine lay bright and warm over his cradle. In the matter of race and family his lot was superior to that of ninety-nine hundredths of his fellow-creatures. So, also, as to his talents. Balaam was a genius. His apostrophes to Israel, found in the 23d and 24th chapters of Numbers, are some of the sublimest compositions in any language. There is greatness in almost every sentence — 166 LONG AGO. originality, breadth, and splendor of conception beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame. If any say that this was not Balaam, but the Holy Ghost speaking through him, I answer that it was both Balaam and the Holy Ghost — the Holy Ghost flowing its gold through the great and va- rious moulds of Balaam's genius. The prophets preserved each his own mental characteristics. The divine force within worked these character- istics perfectly according to their own nature and laws. The various traits of the Scriptures are the traits of their various writers, each expressing in his own way the perfect will of God, and yet so expressing it as to matter and form as to make it an infallible and complete rule of religious faith and practice for men. Thus Balaam's con- tribution to the Bible, though small in amount, shows him to have had a mind of the first order. He was potentially poet, orator, statesman, sage, a man to counsel nations and kings. He was of the race of the giants. His mind had the roomy magnificence of a palace rather than the features of an ordinary dwelling; battlement after battle- ment, turret after turret, dome after dome — what a wilderness of brave structures! He was one of the few men born with great sweeping wings — from tip to tip what an outspread! So he came on the stage with a double royalty, the royalty of birth and the royalty of genius, and the latter was the greater. It was a great gift. Well used BALAAM. 167 it was able to do great and blessed things for him- self, his generation, and his God. Such a greatly capable soul, spacious enough to contain a plane- tary revolution, Balaam was highly favored in receiving. In this world where time and chance happen to all, and where the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, such natural endowments as crowned Balaam do not always give fame and influence to a man, especially while he is yet living. Not so, however, in this case. Providence, in addition to its other favors, allowed Balaam a great name that went abroad through many lands and reached the ears of kings and was with them a word of reverence and power. Monarchs took him into their coun- sels. If tradition says truly, he was potent in the cabinet of Egypt as well as in that of Moab. We know from sources better than the best profane tradition that the king of Moab sent to him repeat- ed embassies composed of men of the highest rank, and sued for his presence and help as essential to the safety of the nation. It seems to have been currently understood in those days that in Pethor, amid the mountains of the east, was living a man who for far-seeing sagacity and admirable power to realize his wishes had no known equal. "I wot," said Balak to him, "that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed." He held so high a place in the rever- l6S LONG AGO, ence of men that a word from him was like a law or an army. " After his words men spake not again and his speech dropped upon them. ' ' God built up a golden platform high in the presence of the nations and set Balaam thereon and said to him, "Stand thou here and do historic things and blessed things and things of honorable and everlasting renown. Influence the people aright Use your great reputation so that the name of the son of Beor shall appear with glory in Holy Scripture itself and go down embalmed in the sweet spices of its praise till the world's last day." Such a part is offered to but few. Such an op- portunity to impress right royally his own and other generations is rarely put into the hands of a man. With a fame and personal influence equiv- alent to a sceptre, what grand things might not Balaam have done for his fellows and his God! Surely he was a highly favored man. Let us say, further, that, as compared with most of those about him, and even with most of the wise men of his day, Balaam was highly fa- vored in the matter of religious information. He knew the true God. He knew enough of him to adopt his worship and discard idolatry. The al- mighty power and holiness and unchangeableness of this great Being he celebrated with most elo- quent lips. Our hearts thrill to-day as we read his majestic and awful utterances. He was the Chrysostom of his age. In addition, he knew BALAAM. 169 that the Hebrews were trie chosen people of God and that the entire system of religion which they had among them was divine. Above all, he knew of Christ to come, that Star that should come out of Jacob and that sceptre that should rise out of Israel. He seems also to have known of a future state; and of that day when the dead, small and great, shall stand before God to be judged. In short, his religious information could be truly de- scribed in such words as these, ' ' He hath said who heard the words of God and knew the knowl- edge of the Most High, who saw the vision of the Almighty." It would be claiming more than can be proved were I to say that he knew the main religious truth as well as Moses did, or even as well as did the common Hebrews, much less as well as we do on whom the sun is pouring un- clouded noon: but this I may safely say, that, as compared with most of those who surrounded him, from the serf to the sage, he was in religious mat- ters an exceedingly enlightened man. The peo- ple all about him were heathen. They were so dark-minded as to worship the stones and the stars. Compared with such men he was like some great mansion brilliantly illuminated for a festi- val. " In yonder mansion fair," across the coun- tries and the ages, u a hundred lights were glan- cing," while the lowly cabins around showed scarcely a single taper. The head of Balaam stood out of the general darkness as the gilded I/O LONG AGO. mountain-peak of the morning sometimes stands out of the sea of cloud that covers all other ob- jects. He was fortunate in this preeminent reli- gious knowledge — more fortunate, I ween, than he was in the possession of preeminent talents and renown: for religious information is the necessary outer gate to that best and most glorious of all things, a religious character. Balaam was also fortunate in the views he took of religion as an organisation. To admit the leading religious doctrines and duties, and yet to scout the church which is merely these doctrines and duties in an organized and visible form, is not an uncommon thing at the present day. And it is a very inauspicious thing. It says that the man does not hold religion itself in liking and honor. Whoever likes Christianity likes true Christians. Whoever is always railing at reli- gion as an institution and body-corporate is in a bad way. His diagnosis is not hard — no harder than is that of a consumptive with his hollow cough and nocturnal sweats. He is just as far from religion as an inward power as he is from it as a church. The Hebrews were the church of Balaam's times. They were the organic religion of the Old Testament. And if we would see anew what the son of Beor thought of them as a church let us read anew what he said of them in that character in the book of Numbers, under circum- stances which were a sufficient warrant for his BALAAM. 171 sincerity. As we read we shall say that beyond all doubt Balaam held that ancient church of God in profound veneration, judged all worthy members of it to be most privileged persons, and expected for it a career of brightest honor and success. Such views were a vantage-ground — an additional step in that ivory flight of steps by which a king may go up into the house of the Lord. They brought him nearer to religion itself. Whether o o these honorable views of religion as an institution came to Balaam by special revelation or by com- mon ways is of no consequence; he was fortunate in possessing them. They put him in still closer and more hopeful relations with practical religion. Good as these views were, Balaam possessed something still better. He had just and strong feeling on the matter of personal religion. Well informed in religion, holding it in signal honor as embodied in the people of God, he had the still higher good fortune to have a realizing sense of its desirableness for himself as a practical matter. Hear him: "Let me die the death of the right- eous, and let my last end be like his." He was in earnest in this. The superior condition of a good man in the hour of death deeply impressed him. He strongly desired to make that condition his own. He wanted to die a good man, and was not ashamed to avow as much in the presence of wicked men. He realized the importance of not leaving the world in his sins. He was profoundly 172 LONG AGO. sensible that the supreme moment must not find him an impenitent sinner, and he ardently de- sired that it might not. So strong was the desire that the presence of a brilliant company of un- sympathizing bad men of the highest rank did not deter him from expressing it in the strongest form. This looks like moral courage of a right manly sort. It is full of promise. We feel that Balaam is nearer the kingdom of God than he has ever been before. Indeed, he seems now to be standing just without the gate. A single step farther and he is within. God favored the son of Beor highly in bringing him so close to salva- tion — so close that an angel, so to speak, could readily stretch hand across the interval and draw him into the ark, as Noah did the dove. But brief as is the interval between a zealous desire for salvation and salvation itself, the dis- tinguishing mercy of God divided it in the case of Balaam and led him a half-step nearer the gate of life. u If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold I cannot go beyond the word of the L,ord my God to do less or more." " Must I not take heed to speak that which the L,ord has put into my mouth?" Behold at least a partial spirit of obedience. On this occasion Balaam makes great sacrifices in order to do the will of God. He perseveringly withstands great temp- tations in the shape of honors and wealth simply because God has bidden him. See, the man's cor- BALAAM. 173 rect views and feelings have to some extent been carried into action. He has grappled with one hard duty and has performed it. The ice is bro- ken, a breach is made, and now he has only to con- tinue as he has begun, has only to generalize his particular obedience into an honest and thorough aim at a universal one, in order to be the righteous man he would like to die. Will he do it ? That remains to be seen ; but in any event he is now at a most elect point, a point that shines like a star, a point choicer than a throne; a point which, if well used, will bring a throne such as no earthly king ever sat upon. There is only one point that is better, and that is the point of righteousness itself in the form of repentance. Balaam was favored in being led by the Spirit so far. A place so near to heaven as that was full of promise and fragrant with heavenly influences. He who was so fortunate in so many other features of his lot was most fortunate of all in his actually set- ting himself somewhat to the task of obedience. L,ast of all, Balaam was a prophet. Appa- rently, God singled him out from all the Gentiles of that time and gave him the glorious gift of in- spiration. What a crown was that ! It may have been heavy; it may have burned his brow, as crowns are apt to do; but yet it was a golden crown, shining as only crowns that come from heaven can. The omniscient One took possession of his faculties. The future unrolled itself before 174 LONG AGO. him like a map. He looked on great national events for thousands of years to come as men on some bright day look forth from some eminence on the fields and rivers and homes stretching far away, or as a traveller gazes in succession at the historic paintings which a nation has gathered at its capitol to commemorate the triumphs of the past. He saw the Star of Jacob. He saw the Church sweeping the earth with bridal robes and veiling her face with stars. He saw the resur- rection of the dead and eternal judgment. What a gallery of pictures I Never saw Roman or Tus- can such — so speaking, so eloquent, so instruc- tive. Hail, Balaam, the prophet, the seer, the oracle wiser and more gifted than Delphos or Do- dona or sibyl — Balaam, mouth of gold, because mouth of Godi Favored man! How much God did for him! What dignities and privileges and opportunities came together in his lot! In the place where his lot fell, in the time in which he lived, in the race and family to which he belonged, in the abilities he possessed, in the reputation and influence he enjoyed, in the amount of his religious informa- tion, in his respect for organic religion and strong desire for salvation, in his energetic beginning of obedience to God, and in his great function as a prophet, he was a man greatly favored of for- tune, or, if that is a too heathen way of speaking, of the providence and Spirit of God. BALAAM. 175 What became of Balaam ? I say, what be- came of Balaam ? For it is time to look towards the end and see what was the outcome of so much that was brilliantly promising. Did his ten talents gain other ten ? Did he become a solidly and comprehensively good man, and then go from strength to strength till he appeared in Zion before God? Now let us note the moral of this man's his- tory. Notwithstanding the amount done for him and the immense advantages he enjoyed (for we have seen that he lived in Eden in many senses), Balaam was both a wicked and a foolish man, and came to a sad end. It was Lucifer over again — wicked and foolish in heavenly places, and so losing them. He was a professional soothsayer and diviner, endeavoring to gain forbidden knowl- edge by consulting spirits and by other kindred means, and God speaks of such persons on this wise: "There shall not be found among you a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard or a necromancer; for all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord." Of course Balaam was an abomination to him, as are all spiritists at the present day. He "loved the wages of un- righteousness," even while exercising the func- tions of a prophet and having direct communica- tions with Jehovah. After this time we find him sinning still more grossly, teaching Balak how to put God against the Hebrews by corrupting their 1/6 LONG AGO. morals. The last we know of him he was perish- ing with the Midianites under the sharp sword of Joshua. He undoubtedly perished in his sins. The words he used, "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh," seem to have predicted his fate as a castaway. He would ap- pear before God in judgment, but would not be permitted to approach him. But the final Scrip- ture notice of him is still more decisive: "Who have forsaken the right way, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." The mist of darkness for ever! That, then, was the gloomy fate of Balaam; a man on whom the providence and Spirit of God had heaped such great advantages; a man like a mountain of his own land, great, fair, sublime, its foot in Eden, its sides glowing with all fair climates and productions, its head nestled among the stars; and yet, O Ararat, the flood at last rises over thee and thou art gone! Shall I say, Oh, lame and im- potent conclusion of a great man? Rather let me say, Oh, conclusion that contradicts and blas- phemes and destroys all its great antecedents! Can we forget that we may have great things done for us; may see Providence signally kind to us and our worldly interests at almost every BALAAM. 177 point ; may see even religious advantages im- parted to us with unstinting hand; yea, may even see the work of the Spirit as an enlightener, arouser, and reformer exceedingly prosperous within us up to a certain point, and yet remain radically and greatly irreligious, go on from bad to worse, and at last disappear in a " horror of great darkness''? The one thing that Balaam lacked was a spirit of comprehensive repentance. Had he added the honors of a martyr to those of a prophet, he could not have dispensed with this root of all true goodness. And nothing that we have in the form of privilege and opportunity and light and good feeling, nothing that we highly favored citizens of the great nineteenth century possess in the form of outward or inward advan- tage, will make sure our piety and salvation or enable us to dispense with that godly sorrow that worketh repentance unto salvation, and whose tears hold in solution the whole Christian charac- ter and life. I.ons Ago. J 2 VII. THE GOD OF BATTLES. JOSHUA The Invincible Cham' pion. the: god oe battles— JOSHUA. 181 VI. THE GOD OF BATTLES- JOSHUA. "The confused noise of the battle and gar- ments rolled in blood;" "the thunder of the cap- tains and the shouting" — this is what the very- name of Joshua suggests to us. The Hebrews have furnished examples of first- class men in almost every field of human effort. As bankers, as statesmen, as authors, as artists, as soldiers, as saints, as sinners, the sons of Israel have a great name. Among the ancient law- givers, who surpasses Moses in the justice, hu- manity, and wide influence of his codes? Cer- tainly not Draco nor Lycurgus nor Solon nor Numa nor Justinian. Among historians, who surpasses the same old Hebrew in the reliableness and value of his contributions to our knowledge of the past ? Certainly not Herodotus, nor any other Greek; certainly not Livy, nor any other Roman; certainly not Berosus or Manetho, nor any other Chaldsean or Egyptian; certainly not Gibbon, nor any other Englishman. Among poets, who surpasses David and Isaiah — the min- gled sweetness and fire of the one and the min- gled pathos and sublimity of the other? In my opinion, certainly not Homer, David's contempo- l82 LONG AGO. rary; nor Virgil, to whom Isaiah was one of the ancients. Among monarchs, who surpasses in as- tuteness and splendor Solomon the Magnificent, to whom it was said, " L,o, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee; and I have also given unto thee riches and honor, so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days." Certainly no ancient monarchs have left equal monuments of their wisdom, none equal evi- dence of their wealth and splendor, unless we accept as historical such Arabian Nights as tell of the Caliphs of Bagdad and the Great Mogul of Delhi. And as to warriors and champions, what Hector was to the Trojans, Achilles to the Greeks, the Cid to the Spaniards, Wallace to the Scots, Richard the Lion-hearted to the English, such was Joshua the son of Nun to the Hebrews — a man before whom no man was able to stand all his days. In general, war is a miserable and wicked bus- iness. Notwithstanding the great qualities which soldiers sometimes display; notwithstanding the great place they hold in history, romance, and song; notwithstanding their pomp and circum- stance when pennons flutter and banners wave and steel-clad legions flash glory in the sun till the fiery heart of youth throbs and sings like a trumpet — notwithstanding all this war in general THE GOD OK BATTLES — JOSHUA. 183 is a most wretched affair. It is against both Dis- pensations. It is cruel as the grave. It is to be prayed against, and, if necessary, fought against. The time will come when the gates of Janus will not only be permanently closed, but the nations will wonder that they were ever open. For war generally accomplishes nothing valuable, while wasting property and happiness and life and mor- als beyond all account. I think that even Joshua, that mighty and most successful Hebrew warrior, would have consented to this view of war in gen- eral. But he would have been sure to add that, nev- ertheless, war is sometimes necessary. It was necessary in heaven when the rebel angels were to be cast out. Naturally enough they did not want to leave such a place, and so Michael and his angels had to fight them away. God made war on the antediluvians with a flood, on Sodom and Gomorrah with a rain of mingled fire and brimstone, on the Egyptians with ten plagues and the Red Sea. After that, instead of using the brute forces of nature as his weapons of war on the wicked, he thought it best to use human weapons, and so said to Israel, "Go fight against Amalek and I will help you; and when you come to wicked Canaan, the most wicked and inexcusa- ble of all lands, fight it with sword and spear as I fought the more ancient sinners with water and fire. Must I always endure such people? May I 184 LONG AGO, not choose my instruments for removing them? I shall not cease to make war on sin and sinners; and sometimes I shall use earthquakes, and some- times famines, and sometimes pestilences, and sometimes I shall use the swords of men. Let Joshua sweep my land clean of the abominable and incorrigible, even as my fires swept the vale ofSiddim." With such a declaration of war as this on the part of the Supreme Ruler, the war against Ca- naan, severe as it was, was as holy as prayer; and Joshua, clad in armor and thundering on the wicked cities and armies as an avenging fate, was as canonical as Aaron the high priest minis- tering in his robes before the altar. War was his mission. Now let us see how he was brought to his mis- sion and how he discharged it. At the time of the exodus Joshua was about forty years old. Consequently he was born near the time when Moses fled into Midian, and in the very midst of that grinding oppression that forced mothers to cast out their young children to the end they might not live. We have no clew to the social standing of his parents. Perhaps they were among the highest in Ephraim — perhaps among the humblest. That God who afterward raised David from the sheep-cote to the palace, and Jesus of Nazareth from the manger to the princi- pality over all things, may have brought up the THE GOD OE BATTLES— JOSHUA. 1 85 son of Nun to his high destiny from the very humblest of all the Hebrew families. But, what- ever the rank of his family in Israel, its condition as a slave-family was wretched in the extreme. No Pharaonic palace lodged the infant Joshua. None of the schools of Egyptian wisdom which Moses attended were for him. He did not, like Moses, have princes and nobles and sages for his early companions. All his years, until far into manhood, must have been spent under the eye of a taskmaster. He was one of those who made bricks and furnished their own straw. Of course his portion of what we would now call early ad- vantages was next to nothing. And yet during that almost half-century of slavery his character may have been gradually tempering in the furnace to those sterner and more robust qualities for which his later life would have so large occasion. Some souls manage to get more nourishment out of storms than out of calms. But doubtless he was glad to see the sky clearing up under the Mo- saic miracles and to obey the summons to leave for ever behind that most unpleasant school, the house of bondage. In what way he first drew the notice of Moses we do not know. Perhaps he was a very notice- able man physically. Perhaps in the swarming and turbulent camp he did some great feat of valor and strength in the interest of quiet and order. Perhaps Moses was one of those leaders who, like 186 LONG AGO. Napoleon, are ever on the watch for new men of ability and prowess — quick to discover and quick to promote them. Perhaps God himself by a di- rect message pointed out the rising chief to the risen. In whatever way Joshua came to the no- tice of Moses, he soon became his personal attend- ant. In this situation he at once showed so great a character and capacity as to justify his being entrusted with the weightiest enterprises. Ere the exodus was two months old we find him lead- ing the battle against Amalek, who had fallen on the rear of Israel and had smitten the feeble and aged placed there for greater security. It was a sudden elevation and a great one. He vaulted at once from a brick-kiln to a generalship. Did it harm him, as sudden elevations sometimes harm? He quietly expanded to fill his princely sphere, and filled it, apparently, with as much ease as if he had been born a prince. He had not been trained at some Egyptian West Point; he had not spent years as aid to some Egyptian Eugene or Marlborough; he may have had no experience whatever in the art of war. But great geniuses are sometimes independent of the preparations and helps necessary to other men, and neither Ju- lius Caesar nor Cromwell nor Joshua may have needed to serve in the ranks before ruling a battle. Moses knew his man. As soon as Amalek made onset Joshua became commander-in-chief. He went forth to the field of strife, and Moses ascended TH.H GOD OK BATTLES — JOSHUA. 1 87 the eminence of prayer. The one grasped trie sword of man, the other the rod of God. To show to Israel their dependence on God it was a change- ful battle that day. As long as the prophet held up the rod that spoke of divine power, the warrior was able to carry dismay and defeat into the ranks of the enemy. But when the uplifted hand sank through weariness, all the exertions of the chief- tain in the field were unable to check the retreat of his troops. It was plain that the human and divine must work together. Then Aaron and Hur stood up to save the day, the one on this side and the other on that, upholding the sacred hands on which hung the fates of battle. The people rallied. Joshua hurled them again on the foe in steady triumph; and the sun at his setting saw Amalek discomfited with the edge of the sword. Joshua was a great soldier; but his army at that time must have been a mere mob, and would have sunk at once before the wild and warlike men of the desert had not the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, appeared on the scene as an ally. Soon after this battle Joshua ascended Sinai with Moses. This is a fact which commonly makes but small impression on the reader of the sacred narrative, though it is one that reflects high honor on the soldier. The people at large were not allowed even to touch the mountain on which the glory of God was resting and from which had 188 LONG AGO. gone forth the law in a divine voice. A select number of the elders were allowed to ascend a little way with Moses, and to see as it were the pavement, clear as the body of heaven, on which rested the foot of the God of Israel; but Joshua only was suffered to accompany the prophet to the very edge of the cloud which crowned the summit and veiled the central glory. Here they re- mained together for six days, watching with shaded eyes such displays of the supernatural as no others of the host ever saw. Then Moses was called within the cloud. For forty days Joshua awaited his return; for forty days he sat at the gate of heaven. Sinai was his mount of trans- figuration. Did he not, like Peter, want to stay there always? Perhaps so; but as the apostle had to come down from his mount in order to fulfil his mission, so the warrior had to come down from his mount in order to fulfil his destiny in the high places of the field. As Israel neafed the land of promise twelve men were sent to explore it. After more than a month's absence they returned and reported. Most of them brought a very discouraging report. They said the country they had spied out was so poor that it ate up its inhabitants; also that the people were of such gigantic size that themselves seemed grasshoppers in comparison. The camp was wofully disheartened. Murmurs, clamors, flat-footed rebellion broke out. They would THE GOD OF BATTLES— JOSHUA. 189 choose a new leader and go back to Egypt. In this state of things the other two members of the delegation rent their clothes, impeached their as- sociates of misrepresentation, and brought in a minority report. "The land which we passed through to search it," said they, "is an exceed- ing good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that floweth with milk and honey." Strange to say, these words inflamed still more the wilful and perverse multitude; and had not the glory of the Lord suddenly appeared among them, those two bold dissenters would have been torn to pie- ces. It has been said that the side on which God is is always a majority. So it proved in this case. God stood powerfully by his two witnesses. The wicked ten perished immediately by a plague. All the murmuring congregation above the age of twenty years were condemned to wander about the desert till they should die. Joshua and Caleb alone should enter Canaan. It pays to belong to a righteous minority. So Israel went to and fro in the desert for forty years, until the murmurers had all passed away. When the last of them had been laid in his grave Moses was summoned to appoint his own succes- sor. Who shall he be ? Why not one of his own sons, of whom he had two over forty years old? Kad not they some claim to the succession on ac- count of their father's great rank and services? So I go LONG AGO. men not seldom argue. But Moses was not that sort of reasoner. Though he had been faithful in all his house; though Israel, so to speak, owed everything to him; though doubtless he had in full force the feelings natural to a father, he made no account whatever of such things. He knew that the great post which he had so well filled was not his to hand down as an heirloom. It was for the most worthy, not for the most Mosaic. And a wiser than he must do the selecting. And God selected Joshua out of all the millions of the host. He must be the coming man. The times would soon be calling for a great soldier as thev had been calling for a great legislator; so let the great legislator, instead of appointing his own son Ger- shom, appoint that great man whom all Israel had come by degrees to know as the most valiant and mighty of all their men-at-arms. So Moses in sight of all the people laid consecrating hands on the head of his friend. He set him before Kle- azar the high priest and all the congregation and gave him an appropriate charge. He put some of his own honor upon him that the people might become accustomed to paying him proper respect. At the word of Joshua they went out; at his word they came in. Thus he was prepared to rule; thus they were prepared to obey. And there would be no violent transition when Moses should be called to go up higher. That time soon came. The prophet went up THE GOD OF BATTLES — JOSHUA. 191 to the summits of Nebo and looked abroad over the fairest land beneath the sun, and from thence went up to the summits of heaven and looked abroad over the fairest land above the sun. Joshua was at once accepted as his successor, and began that brilliant career of conquest in which after all God was a far more conspicuous figure than man. The first victory gained was over the laws of nature. The army had come up on the east side of Jordan. It was the time of harvest, and the river was overflowing all its banks. The waters were rushing and boiling and whirling with the unwonted floods. Boats there were none; bridges there were none, nor materials for making them. Even Julius Caesar, resourceful military engineer as he w r as on the wooded banks of the Rhine, would have despaired of crossing an army across the unwooded Jordan. Nature herself seemed to forbid and mock Joshua. But the God who made nature knew, and always has known, how to tri- umph over it, and, fortunately for the embarrassed army, he was on their side. "What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest, thou Jordan that thou wast driven back !" The matter was that a greater Commander than Joshua was conquering the Jordan even as he had conquered the Red Sea for the fathers. Behold the waters heaped up on this side and the waters heaped up on that side; and, between, a great highway broad enough for an army right over against the city of Jericho ! IQ2 LONG AGO. It was all a divine work. Great Joshua had noth- ing to do with it. All Israel stood still and saw the salvation of God. He made the depths of the sea a way for his ransomed to pass over. Com- monly God requires men to act with him as a condition of being helped. On this occasion they had nothing to do but to wonder and be thank- ful. When his people can do nothing God will do everything. When some impassable obstacle seems to us to lie between us and what God has commanded or promised, we are to go boldly for- ward, and as soon as our feet touch the river we shall find a dry way before us. Right over against Jericho went the dry- shod host. Of course the citizens saw the won- derful sight. It must have been a dreadful as well as wonderful sight to them, for of what use would their walls and towers be against a Power that had with such supreme ease broken through such a barrier as the Jordan ! But, after all, this is rather unsafe arguing. The blindness and in- fatuation of men are sometimes such that they will do and think very unreasonable things. The people of Jericho may have said, " Their god is a god of the valleys and not of the hills, a god of the waters and not of the dry land." If so, they had six days in which to indulge this mistake. On the first day Joshua and his forces silently bore the ark about the city once. The walls remained as solid as ever. On the second THE GOD OF BATTLES — JOSHUA. 1 93 day the same thing was done ; walls as solid as ever. So for six successive days ; and when they were ended the heathen may have said exultingly, " Let them tramp on ; we can stand any amount of that kind of warfare." But the close of the seventh day altered their views. On that day Israel compassed the city seven times; and when, at the last circuit, the ark-bearing priests blew their trumpets and the army at the command of Joshua rent heaven with a shout, down went rocky rampart and tower all round the city as if an earthquake had smitten them. For aught I know, during all those silent days the angels may have been prying at and loosening the foun- dations of things and preparing for a general breakdown, just as Virgil fancies Neptune ta have done at Troy; but if so it was all unseen, and when the catastrophe came it was as if the massive masonry had suddenly caught sight of God and on the instant prostrated itself before him in worship. Then every Hebrew soldier, wherever he happened to be, went up straight before him over the prostrate walls. Now the human part of the work really began. Hitherto only God had been working. The daily marches had been mere warning and symbolism, had no tendency whatever to prostrate walls ; now let Joshua and his host, in God's name, ply fire and sword and thoroughly clean out that sink of abominations, those Augean stables, that men Urns Ago. . I3 1 94 LONG AGO. call Jericho. And they did it. They answered the purpose of scavengers just as well as the Jordan would have done had its floods been turned through the city. May not God choose his instruments? The silver and gold of the captured city, by express divine command, were to be consecrated to religious uses. This without regard to the character of the original owners or the manner in which the treasure had been acquired. It has sometimes been claimed that religious institutions should not accept the money of irreligious men ; but in this case God not only accepted it but de- manded it. It should at last begin to do some good in the world. Was the fact that it had done no good in the past a reason why this deplorable state of things should always continue ? It seems that God thought not. He demanded that all the silver and gold of wicked Jericho should be strict- ly reserved for him. They were his royalty. They were his perquisites, his part of the spoil as supreme warrior and God of battles. Joshua was careful to make this requisition well under- stood throughout the camp. But there was one man hardy enough to disregard it. Achan se- creted in his tent two hundred shekels of silver and fifty shekels of gold. It is quite possible that Israel at large was at fault in not watching with sufficient care to prevent such a crime. However this may be, we know that it is the habit of Prov- idence to hold the public responsible to a certain THK GOD OF BATTLES — JOSHUA. 195 extent for the behavior of each member. All are inextricably bound up together: consequently the whole has to suffer somewhat for whatever is wrong in the character and conduct of any part; so that it is for the interest of everybody to look after the moral condition of all his neighbors, and good people are put upon making all those around them good as well as themselves. This, I sup- pose, explains the way in which God dealt with Israel in the matter of Achan. He would not prosper the army in its undertakings till the crim- inal had been looked up and punished. Joshua sent a small force to capture the neighboring city of Ai. Instead of succeeding easily, as they ex- pected, they were put to flight by their enemies and chased back with loss to the camp. That was a great mortification to Joshua. He felt, too, that it was likely to hurt much their prestige with the heathen. So he besought the Lord to show him where the trouble lay. The divine finger settled slowly towards Achan. What must have been the agony of the culprit as he saw the lot gradually narrowing its circle about him till at last it included only himself! Had he forgotten that there are always two spectators of every crime — the criminal himself and God? Achan confessed and received the punishment he had reason to expect. His crime was leze-majesty — the same that long afterwards condemned to death Ananias and Sapphira. 196 LONG AGO. Sin having been put away, Joshua was now able to proceed in his victorious career. He marched all his forces on Ai. To the resources of numbers he added the resources of stratagem. A picked body of troops was sent under cover of night to lie in ambush near the city. The re- mainder was brought up openly the next morn- ing in battle array. The gates of Ai poured out her warriors confidently to the strife. Scarcely had the battle begun when the Hebrews wavered and retreated. Even Joshua himself was seen re- tiring from the field. Then it was that the wel- kin rang with the shouts of the elated heathen. " They are running away as before," cried each to his fellow. They thronged after the supposed cowards; and from the city poured out old and young to join in the hot pursuit and in the spoil and rejoicings of the assured victory. The city was completely evacuated of its defenders. Then Joshua turned for a moment and stretched forth his spear towards the city. The sun flashed the signal to the men in ambush. They rose and hurried in at the open gates. The torches, like shooting stars, darted from dwelling to dwelling. On still swept the deceptive flight, on still the mad pursuit. ' ' Faster, still faster, ye men of Ai ; let not a single invader escape!" So on they pressed till far from the city. Then some chanced to look behind, and lo, unspeakable consternation, their city was naming to heaven! The pursuit THE GOD OF BATTLES — JOSHUA. IQ7 stopped as if smitten by lightning. At once Israel turned on their pursuers. Joshua himself came thundering back upon them. It evidently was a lost cause, and pursued and pursuers at once exchanged places. In dire panic and rout the heathen fled towards their burning city, while Joshua flamed like a comet on their rear. To add to the horrors of their situation they saw an- other army issuing from the city to meet them. What could they do between the two fires? The rout became a carnage. The sword leaped and ran and flashed and spared not till not one of the enemies of God was left. Was the doom a hard one? Yes, but the character of the Canaanites was still harder. They had gotten to be intoler- able. The land was aching to spew them out. The "poor innocent heathen" of whom some tell us are a myth anywhere; but those heathen against whom Joshua whetted his triumphant sword were a specially bad set. The smell of them rose rank to heaven. Out they must go from that fairest of lands in some way, even as Satan had to go out of heaven; and the only ques- tion was, How ? "It shall be by death," said the wisdom of God. "The death that must come to all soon or late shall come to them soon. Shall they die by famine or by pestilence or by earth- quake? Shall I rain fire and brimstone on this land of Sodomites, cr shall I send a flood to drown them out, or shall I use the sword of man as the I

NG AGO. balanced themselves on the fence so dexterously that neither party could claim them, or, more craftily still, so that both parties could claim. Plainly Josiah was not that sort of a man. He was prompt to show his hand on God's side. He held up his hand so high that the whole nation could see it, though almost the whole nation vo- ted the other way. Of course that is the sort of friend and servant that God likes and man re- spects. I am reasonably sure that even the un- godly of the land thought the more highly of the young monarch for his manly outspokenness and pronounced attitude on such fundamental mat- ters. Still another clear and satisfactory point is that Josiah threw all the weight of his example and position and influence of every kind on the side of God. He might have contented himself with merely holding up his hand, holding it up high. But he did not do this. He evidently thought that God had a right to have from him a much broader support than this. He was entitled to have him come out on His side with all his forces. So we say and believe. If a man believes in God and religion he is bound to take sides with them with might and main. Iyukewarmness has never been a favorite with heaven and never will be. Thus far we can go in commendation of Jo- siah. Can we go still farther and approve of his JOSIAH. 275 methods of standing up for God and religion as detailed in the verses which have been cited ? I think that, considering the circumstances, we may. The reasons that lay at the bottom of this se- vere dealing with the objects and means of idola- try may have been as follows. First, there was the express divine command found in Exod. 23:24. Then the whole spirit of the law of ceremonial cleanness was endangered by the pres- ence among the people of the symbols and imple- ments of even a disused abomination. Further, the abominableness of idolatry needed to be ex- pressed to the objective and materialized minds of those early days, and indeed of all times, in some striking, picturesque, intense, telling way; and that unpitying havoc that swept away, not only idolatry itself, but even the unconscious matter which it had touched, was well fitted to make the desirable impression. In that time, too, the peo- ple needed to be shown, as the people of India and the South Seas do to some extent in our times, that their idols could not save themselves, nor their temple, nor the smallest trifle of their belongings, from the worst of indignities: and the lookers-on, as they saw Baal and Ashtoreth and Dagon and Moloch lying battered and chipped among the fragments of their own altars, lost rev- erence for their helpless deities. They did well, those old iconoclasts, in sweeping clean away the 276 IX>XG AGO. whole paraphernalia of idolatry — not sparing the rare silver and gold, not sparing the exquisite carvings and castings and architectures, not sparing the pictures and statues and vases and vestments rich with the best labor and skill of the land. Under the Christian Dispensation a new mode of dealing with idols and their belongings has gradually made its way into favor. At the civil establishment of Christianity in the Roman Em- pire, under Constantine and his immediate succes- sors, many temples of paganism were converted into Christian churches and many statues of the old deities passed unharmed into the cabinets of the great as mementos and treasures of art. Some of these have escaped through wars and vandal- isms down to our own times. The Pantheon still stands. Jupiters and Apollos in marble still hold their pedestals in European capitals. Yet, under the early Christian emperors, a frequent rule of procedure was the Jewish. Very many stately edifices were destroyed as polluted things. Works of great sculptors and architects which would now be worth each a king's ransom perished under the hammers and torches of devoted men who took for examples the Hezekiahs and Josiahs of the Old Dispensation, and " hated even the gar- ment spotted by the flesh.'* Then Christian Rome herself became idola- trous. From country to country the plague spread, JOSIAH. 2 7/ till Luther and his reforming companions found almost entire Europe bowing and praying and sacrificing to images — painted, molten, carved. The churches were filled with paintings and stat- ues of God and the saints to which religious homage was addressed. They were idol-temples in everything but the name. What should the reformers and their friends do as power gradually passed into their hands? Should they smite these really heathen structures and idols with Trior' s hammer, but in the name of Moses and the Second Commandment? Should they break down into rubbish those grand old cathedrals, cast to the waters and winds the shreds of Raphaels and Titians, and splinter into worthless stone those marble saints that almost seemed to look and live? Some thought they must; and here and there arose the din of demolition and the roar of pur- ging fires. Travellers are wont to lament over the sites of edifices costly and fair which fell a sacri- fice to the zeal of the idol-hating fathers. They look up, not infrequently, at defaced carvings and empty niches and fractions of canvas where once gathered the admiration of all beholders, only to hear it said, ''This was done by the reformers." But these destructions were exceptional. Most Protestants contented themselves with cleansing churches instead of destroying them, with remov- ing saints and Madonnas to cabinets and museums instead of turning them to smoke and powder. 2;b LONG AGO. So survived the Westminster Abbeys, so manor houses and castles in England are now graced with ancient art. And now should papal Europe turn Protestant — that is, should idolatrous Europe turn Christian — very few persons would think it necessary to turn iconoclasts after the manner of Josiah, and to raze to their foundations St. Peter's and St. Mark's and the Duomo of Milan, and to empty their battered and ruined sculptures and paintings into the streets and rivers. There would be removals and lustrations and reconsecra- tions — the heathen temples would be adapted to a more spiritual worship; but the structures them- selves, in all their antique glory, would be care- fully preserved to serve the purposes of a purer gospel, and not a work of real merit in art would have reason to complain of the rough fin- gers and careless gait of those who carry them forth to new and more suitable homes in mansions and palaces. This, it seems, would be the proper dealing at the present day, just as the dealing of Josiah was the proper one in his day. Old Dispensation rules were the best for Old Dispensation times, just as the clothing anl subjection of childhood are better for it than are the dress and indepen- dence of manhood. Childhood once passed, a new system finds appropriate place. The national polity of the Jews has fulfilled its mission and is set aside. The svstem of ceremonial cleanness JOSIAH. 2/9 and unclean 11 ess lias done its work and has been distinctly repealed. The riper age of the world permitted the milder Christian economy, with which naturally associates a milder way of oppo- sing idolatry. The idolatry of these later times is not, in general, of that sort that needs to be taught the helplessness of wooden and stone gods (the world has come to too much science and experi- ence) ; nor is it one that would be much kept back by the destruction of its material objects and appliances (the world has grown too rich). There are at present much more effectual means of pre- venting a relapse into superstition : they are the Bible and the science of the times, applied with a facility and power incredible to the ancients by means of preaching and printing and a host of in- ventions, all comprised and subordinated in a dispensation of the Spirit. The preaching of the cross is a more effectual iconoclast than Josiah with his axes and hammers. Knowledge falling in the shape of printed leaves, as in the shaking of autumnal woods, is a better security against the worship of images than are ruined sanctuaries and headless statues. A new moral power is now abroad whose symbol is a cloven fire-tongue, and which is winged and sandaled by all modern dis^ coverics for progress and triumph against all fcL lies and sins. God has now completed his stock of examples, in the sterner and sense-appealing variety, of the abominableness to him of idolatry; 2SO LONG AGO. and the men in all time who need this sort of out- ward demonstration of the divine abhorrence can be referred to ample examples in the Old Testa- ment that breathe nothing but fire and sword. Now, in the spirit of the milder dispensation, let pagodas and mosques and cathedrals be cleansed and rededicated into Christian churches; and let the idols, according to their kind, either be shipped to illustrate missionary rooms and monthly concerts and museums or be cleft into fire-wood or be tossed scornfully to the moles and bats. Let apparent use determine which. In short, the main reasons for the sweeping severity of the early times no longer exist. Times change and methods must change with them. God is not now correcting an old mistake of policy; he has not become mutable; there is no letting down in these latter days of his law to what has been found to be incurable human infirmity; nor is the worship of idols any the less a crime now than it was anciently when Josiah did well in pitilessly hewing and bruising into destruction as many of them and theirs as he could lay hands on. But the law under which he acted has been super- seded by another adapted to a new age and more distinctly moral in its agencies. The time has come to work our levers for religion more on a moral fulcrum than was possible in the world's childhood. And this suggests the general fact that in the JOSIAH. 2Sl more advanced stages of individuals and commu- nities the chief stress is to be laid on moral means against sin. Childhood is the period for physical restraint and absolute coercion. Then the rod is in place. Then the hands may be bound to keep them back from mischief, or the doors bolted to keep the feet from going where they should not. Then there is special need that even the moral motives used have a strongly objective side and make a showy appeal to the senses. The power of self-government is weak r the experience noth- ing, the judging and reasoning faculty unprac- tised. For a time the mind is most surely reached and guided through the more developed body. Bodily habits are easily formed, and in the moulds of these the spiritual are best run. By pure authority and absolute compulsion, if need be, the outward forms of virtue should be estab- lished into habits as the best means of influencing the heart and judgment to the same. By these means reverence, obedience, prayer, Bible-read- ing, Sabbath observance should be firmly estab- lished in the body, which will then be a school- master in perpetual session to train the soul to goodness and Christ. But it is not lonQf that this method of training will answer. After a few years, if the parent has necrlected to use it, it is too late to bernn. The time has now come for a different style of dealing, and the best he can do is to work diligently the 2Sz LONG AGO. system appropriate to the more advanced stage of development on which his son has entered. The child has become a youth. He is still to be gov- erned and trained, but it must be chiefly by moral means. From the necessity of the case, as he ad- vances towards manhood, he must be exempted more and more from the dominion of physical force, must be accustomed to thoughtfulness and self-direction amid temptations and responsibili- ties. The government of brute force, of bare authority, of present penalty, must gradually give place to the government of reason, conscience, and distant consequences. The two systems stand related to each other very much as the an- cient system of divine dealing with idolatry does to the modern — the one obstructing and subduing sin with the strong outward hand, the other rely- ing chiefly on moral influences for its success, as being better adapted to the riper age of the world. In the early times of New England the Gov- ernment was shaped largely after Moses, and un- dertook to enforce common religious duties by the civil arm. People must observe the Sabbath, must attend and support the sanctuary, must fast, must give their families religious instruction. The founders of the Commonwealths were homo- geneously good men; they wished to deter others of a different character from joining them; and they thought that it was their right and their policy to hedge up their own children to Chris- JOSIAH. 2S3 tian principles and ways by civil as well as do- mestic and moral forces. Are we sure that their course was not the best on which to start a State? I am by no means prepared to say but that we are now in a better condition, by far, than we should have been had our fathers begun their settlements on less exacting principles. At any rate, it is easy to believe their policy the true one for the cruder societies of still earlier times, as it is the true one for every young family — the family which is the State in its simplest and original form. But the policy did not long remain proper for the colonies. Numbers increased, interests be- came complicated, sentiments differed; and at length it was agreed that among citizens the task of combating for Sabbath-keeping and other im- portant duties which the civil power had been trying to enforce must be thrown wholly on moral agencies. And it was rightly agreed. The com- munity had reached that stage in which no other system would work so well. Especially for us at the present time it is the best system. Religion in main aspects is flourishing under it as never before. The moral influences at our command are various, powerful, and easily applied, and the church needs the discipline of applying them. As matters now stand we know better what the moral condition of the community is than we could possibly know if the civil power were for- 204 LONG AGO. cing all conduct into uniformity; and a sense of responsibility and of the necessity of vigilance and labor is more pressed on all good men. At the best, outward decorum is all that civil power can secure. It can never regenerate and build up men into Christian character. For these results we must still depend on moral means connecting the heart with the Holy Spirit; and it is doubtless much better for all par- ties, in the present state of society, that the means which must be relied on to secure the salvation of men should also be the means for securing the outward religious proprieties. We cannot go to men whom we see quietly working on the Sabbath and bid them cease in the name of the law and the prison. It is well. It is better for us and them that we are compelled to go and reason with them in the name of con- science, God, and the public welfare. We cannot make men place themselves regularly under the preaching of the gospel at the point of fines and civil disabilities. It is well that we cannot. It is better for us and for them that we are com- pelled to solicit and argue and deal closely with conscience on the basis of that higher law which bids us not forsake the assembling of ourselves to- gether. We cannot go to people who revile and denounce sacred things and check them with fear of constables and courts. All we can do is to re- prove and expostulate as they will have to answer JOSIAH. 285 at the bar of God Almighty and of public opinion. And it is better so. Spiritual religion best works spiritual levers on a spiritual fulcrum. It is the appropriate method of the age. It is the New Testament way for New Testament times. In accordance with the spirit of this new economy, if our neighbors choose to set up an image of Baal or of the Madonna for worship, no Josiah will be seen going forth against their god or goddess with axes and hammers: the only things the idolaters will have to fear will be the common school, com- mon sense, and common conscience. It is the new order of things for the riper age of society. For us it is more powerful and reliable as a re- former and as an upholder of spiritual religion than the power of an emperor would be. Of course, it is an order of things that places the friends of religion under great responsibil- ity. What brute force cannot be invoked to do they must accomplish by their diligent and zeal- ous and skilful moral activities. They can ac- complish much or nothing, as they choose. Let them see to it that they accomplish much. So- ciety demands it of them. As they will answer it to God let them be up and doing — instructing men, persuading them, shining among them with a most influential example in favor of all that is good and against all that is evil. We are shut up to this way of proceeding against many great evils. The joss-house is an 286 LONG AGO. abomination whether in San Francisco or New York; but it is not well to tear it down over the heads of the idolaters; there is a more ex- cellent way. It were a pity to abolish Ching Sing because in the Forum he says, "Come to Confucius." Let there be a symposium in which Sing Ching shall more attractively say, "Come to Jesus." The blatant atheism of Ingersoll is a very pestilent thing as it itinerates the laud over; and the brow of every good man is clothed with thunder towards the blasphemer. Nevertheless, hands off! let him go his rounds, but follow him with a mightier eloquence of truth and prayer. There are publishers who, although bearing the Christian name, issue year after year books that attack the very foundations of even natural reli- gion and good morals; and our souls are aflame at the execrable hypocrisy and treason; and we want, perhaps, to send Comstock to confiscate and despatch the whole establishment; but, all things considered, I suppose we ought to content our- selves with exposing, denouncing, and arguing against it. In certain institutions of learning, established for the defence of religion, may be found professors who are teaching against it — men who are set and kept in their places by Chris- tian officials. Perhaps it would not be wise, as things are, to invoke courts and constables to turn these men out of their positions, however much we may want to. We must set ourselves to JOSIAH. Z&J manufacture public opinion by speaking and wri- ting till it has become a throne of judgment and a Josiah against the offenders. But such mild means will not answer against all the evils that attack our present society. Some have to be gone forth against with the demolish- ing axes and hammers of the civil magistrates, and sometimes of other Josiahs under the name of Vigilance Committees. We are not to content ourselves with reasoning with a thief: the civil arm must smite him. It is not enough to in- struct and dissuade a man against slander: the courts must sentence him to a fine of, say, $20,000 for trying to rob me of my good name. The dyn- amite anarchist has to be dealt with by something besides good advice and nosegays and fair eyes suffused with tears: he must hang. If parents are so foolish or so wicked as to neglect the common schooling for their children, the state in self-de- fence must make such schooling compulsory. If publishers are so lost to all conscience and shame as to issue obscene books and pictures, the law ought to come down on them with its posse conzita- tuSj and delight the children and all respectable adults with a glorious bonfire. If distilleries and saloons are flooding the country with poverty and crime and taxes and wretchedness, the Govern- ment should come to the rescue of moral suasion and go among the detected barrels and demijohns of liquid death after the manner of Josiah — that is 288 LONG AGO. to say, breaking them in pieces with axes and hammers and spilling their contents into street and sewer. When reason and conscience have long been appealed to in vain may not society protect itself from intolerable evils by the "rough and ready" methods of the Old Dispensation? If, because there is money in it, the railroads send their shrieking and thundering trains past our churches on Sunday, and silence the voices of worship and grind exceeding fine under their iron wheels that sanctity of the Sabbath with which all other sanctities are so closely bound up, we must invoke the veto of the legislature and such heavy fines as shall be axes and hammers among their dividends. And if the Mormons un- dertake to practise polygamy on American soil they should find American law and troops too strong for them — should find all the Josiahs in the country up in arms against them, a Josiah in every citizen. And generally this should be the finding of all persons to whom liberty means per- mission to interfere with the liberty of other people. XII. A CHARIOT OF FIRE. L"ii,- Ago. IQ ELIJAH 'Ptie Fearless Prophet ELIJAH. 29I XII ELIJAH, A certain Roman poet pictures a busy scene. It is the building of Carthage. Walls are rising, houses hastening to completion, crowds moving hither and thither, Queen Dido and her nobles offering a sacrifice in an unfinished temple, when, lo, the incensed air thins away and a stranger of wonderful mien stands out to view. Who is he ? Whence came he ? For what pur- pose has he come ? So suddenly appears Elijah on the stage of the Old Testament narrative, and to Ahab, king of Israel. Perhaps the king was riding in his char- iot along the streets of Jezreel. On turning a corner he found confronting him a man in simple garb but of venerable, resolute, and commanding aspect. "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." This and no more said the stranger and was gone. Who is this man? Whence came he? Whither is he gone ? Such were the questions, we may suppose, which Ahab hastily asked of his attendants. None could answer. None had ever seen the man before, or perhaps had ever heard of him. And had we ourselves been there, we who have 2^2 LONG AGO. the Bible in our hands, we could hardly have done better. For we could only have said, "This man is Elijah the Tishbite from Gi4ead;" and how little this means! To this day the early life, nay, the whole life of this extraordinary man up to this period, is practically a blank. Who his pa- rents were, what sort of training he had, how be- gan and advanced the mysteries of his religious and prophetic experience, by what providential events he was shaped for his work — of all such interesting matters we know absolutely nothing. His life as known to us begins almost at the end of it. A white-haired man is introduced to us as suddenly as he seems to have been to Ahab. The sacred historian, as it were, tears out a few of the last leaves of the prophet's long biography as it lay in the thought of God, and hands them over to us. We look, and lo, Elijah the Tishbite, an- nouncing a terrible famine on Israel! This from one sacred leaf. We take up another. The prophet is by the brook Cherith amid the solitudes beyond Jordan. He has gone there by divine command, and by divine command the ravens bring him for a year his daily bread. When the brook is drunk up by the drought, God sends his servant to Sarepta, there to be sustained for more than two years more— not by some wealthy noble who could well afford it, but by a poor widow already in such distress from the growing famine that there is ELIJAH. 293 only a handful of meal and a pittance of oil left between her and death. But her faith is equal to the mighty strain laid upon it. She gives her last crust to the prophet; and the prophet's God sees to it that there is never any the less meal in her barrel or oil in her cruse as lonof as the famine remains in the land. And this is her least recom- pense. Her only child falls sick and dies: but great is thy faith, O woman; and so God comes to the rescue of the poor, heart-broken mother in the person of Elijah, and gives back a living son to her clasping arms and singing heart that said, " Now by this I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth." And now another sacred leaf. Elijah again appears to Ahab as he rides into the country. Which is the king — the rider or the footman? With all the majesty of a divine commission shining in his eye and speaking with his tongue the king-footman rebukes the peasant-rider for his wickedness, and summons him in God's name to appear at Mt. Carmel, attended by the priests of Baal and all Israel. With the soreness of the great scourging famine still upon him, Ahab dares not disobey. And now see Carmel billowy with the assem- bled multitudes. Monarch and priests and nobles and commons from the whole land stand in vast and expectant assembly about Elijah. With fearless and trumpet voice he cries, " How long 294 LONG AGO. halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." He proposes a magnificent experiment. As every man of them, from Ahab downward, professes to want to know the truth as between God and Baal, let an altar be built to each of the rival deities, and let the one who answers by fire be ac- cepted as the national God. Agreed to. How for very shame could the Baalites refuse? And four hundred priests of Baal set up their altar, and from morning till noon cry unto their idol for de- scending fires. Of course in vain. In their per- plexity and mortification their fearless adversary stands and ridicules them. "You do not cry loud enough, O priests of Baal! Your god is asleep; you must put more strength to your voice or you will not succeed in waking him. Or, per- haps he is away on a journey; you must make more noise or the sound will not reach him." So scorns away the solitary champion of Jehovah. And the priests clamor still louder, and frantically cut themselves with knives and lances till the blood gushes out upon them. So hour after hour passes, and at length the declining sun looks down on men worn out with a senseless and fruitless violence. Baal was still silent as death. Not a spark, not a sound, gives sign of his hearing. Plainly Baal cannot help his worshippers in their extremity. Is there any Baal ? Now comes the turn of Elijah. He calls the ELIJAH. 295 people near to him that they may see that every- thing is done fairly. He builds an altar of incom- bustible stone; he lays wood and flesh on the altar and deluges the whole with water. He deluges again and again, as if to make it impossi- ble for even God to set the mass on fire. Then calmly he breathes a simple prayer heavenward that heaven would reveal itself. The words have no sooner left his lips than down flashes the an- swering lightning from the clear sky. Vanishes in the mighty flame the sacrifice, the wood, the stony altar itself, and all the deluging water. The affrighted people fall on their faces. As soon as they gather breath and courage they shout as with one voice, The Lord he is the God, the Lord he is the God! And now, of course, Elijah is the representa- tive of Jehovah. For the time being he can do whatever he pleases; and in the name of God he orders the divine statute against idolatrous proph- ets, Deut. 13:1-5, to be executed on those impos- tor-priests who have so wofully and so long misled the people. He has them brought down to the brook Kishon and slain. Condign punishment having been inflicted and the nation having forsaken its idols, Elijah looks for rain from the long-brazen heavens. He prays for it. It does not come, as did the light- ning, on the instant — few heavenly answers come in that way in any age — but a servant has to go 20 LONG AGO. seven times to a lookout before he sees the least sign of the coming rain. Then he descries a lit- tle cloud, no larger than a man's hand, rising out of the sea; and it takes some time longer for that cloud to expand itself over the whole sky and then break in glorious outpour. But long before the big drops begin to fall Elijah is sure that they are coming, and bids Ahab hasten away to Jezreel that the rain stop him not. Another leaf. The great miracle did not con- vert Ahab; it only intimidated him for a time. His w r ife Jezebel it neither converted nor intimi- dated. It enraged and hardened her. The iron became steel. She swore a great oath that within twenty-four hours she would have the prophet's life. He knew she would do her worst to be as bad as her word. When had that woman been known to turn pale at the sight of blood? She was no Lady Macbeth to cry, "What, will these hands never be clean ! All the perfumes of Ara- bia will not sweeten this little hand." So Elijah had to flee from his kingdom almost as soon as he had gained it. He fled to the wilderness of Horeb, miracu- lously fed on the way and miraculously sustained for forty days without being fed. Arrived, he had a wonderful experience. He is coming! pro- claimed a great wind that rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks. He is coming! shud- dered an earthquake that made the ground a bil- ELIJAH. 297 lowy sea. He is coming! flashed a lightning blaze 0:1 which the eye could not rest. He is here! said a still small voice whose accents soothed the sol- itary and discouraged man whom earth had quite forsaken, but whom heaven would never forsake. Well, one can afford to be forsaken of men provi- ded a friendly and comforting God will stand in their place. He is a magnificent substitute. Let Him come as it pleases him — with flame, earth- quake, and storm as his avant-couriers blowing their sonorous announcing trumpets, or with the still small voice alone — he shall be welcome. But in these days we expect him to signify his presence only in that silent speech that addresses itself to the ear of the soul. That is real, that is grand. May the God of Elijah grant it to us abundantly ! Only two leaves of the sacred record left. One records how the prophet suddenly appeared once more to Ahab as an embodied conscience, as that incorrigible sinner took possession of the field of the murdered Naboth; also how, in the brief da) 7 " of Ahaziah, he called down consuming fires from heaven on company after company of troops sent to apprehend him. It was not God's will that his confessor should become a dying martyr. He had been a living martyr all his days, and now it was time for the much-tried but kingly man to ascend the most kingly chariot that ever dazzled the eyes of men. 298 LONG AGO. Behold it on the last leaf of all. One day the prophet came with his successor Elisha to the banks of the Jordan. Some hundreds of years before, that river offered a dry path to Joshua and his host. To-day it shall do as much for two men who, in the sight of God and history, are a host in themselves. The mantle of Elijah swept down on the waters, and, like a divine sabre, divi- ded them into two crystal walls, between which the men went over dry shod. Now the great orbit of Elijah's life comes back to Gilead, where it began to unroll its mighty curve. As the two ends come together and complete the glorious round, lo, " the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" Behind steeds of fire, pavilioned as in a sun, the prophet goes up as by a whirlwind into the welcoming heavens. Get thee away, O Eli- jah, to thy rest and thy glory, for it is time; but come asfain with Moses to shine as satellites to the Sun of Righteousness on the Mount of Transfigu- ration! In reviewing the career of Elijah we are struck with his adaptation to his times. It was no reed shaken with the wind that could then answer for a messenger from God, no man clothed in soft raiment and living delicately as in kings' courts. The scholar profoundly versed in the letter of the sacred writings, the orator skilful to recommend them in honeyed rhetoric, the phi- losopher wise to grasp and analyze and systema- ELIJAH. 299 tize the foundation-principles of thought and reli- gion — such men, however useful in their places, were not the men to do God's work in Israel in the bad days of Ahab. The nation was apostate. At so small a remove from the times of David and Solomon, it is not likely that the general defection was promoted in any considerable de- gree by want of suitable religious information. The root of the evil was an extreme viciousness cf the national heart, stimulated by the example and power of daring and godless rulers. The king was a thoroughly bad man, without much force of character and not incapable of being in- timidated from the wrong, though other consider- ations had little force in leading him to the right. But Jezebel, his queen, was one of the worst char- acters it has ever fallen to the lot of history to record — a wild beast in the form of a woman. To more than the vileness of Ahab she added an audacity, determination, and passion in sin all her own. She stopped at no crime in pursuit of her purpose. Fierce, implacable, bloody — woe to the man who crossed the track of her injustice, debauchery, or idolatry ! These qualities gave her great ascendency over the more timorous spirit of her husband; and their conjoint govern- ment was hardly less terrible to man that it was revolting to God. To deal with such rulers of such a people a very peculiar man was needed and supplied in the person of Elijah. He was a 300 LONG AGO. , foreordained champion. His neck was naturally clothed with thunder. To storms and battles he said, Brothers. This Boanerges, this Cceur de Lion, feared no face of clay. It mattered little to him whether the enemy of his God was royal or plebeian, a nation or an individual, dangerous to oppose or safe. He was a rough storm that ven- tilates alike city and country, that tosses with equal force the rags of the beggar and the robes of the monarch. A lonely man, apparently, with no family interests to imperil by the course he might take, accustomed to a coarse, hard life such as a proscribed man must expect. And, to make good his position against the whole weight of royal and national antagonism, wearing the glit- tering panoply of a worker of miracles. Does God ever leave his cause long destitute of a fitting champion ? Is not some man suited to the times sure to be raised up to fight the bat- tles of truth and religion ? If a profound scholar is needed with the quiet voice of his learning, he will be shaped in the shades of some Oxford with its classic cloisters; or, what is quite as likely, in the pastoral shades of some Stockbridge; and will make his appearance in due time. If the call be for a man of singular prudence and gentleness to pour oil on troubled waters, to soothe and persuade and win, he will be found coming out of his obscurity in season for his work, and his name, perhaps, will be Melanchthon. ELIJAH. 301 And perhaps the times should have one of sterner mood, to go abroad in the spirit and power of Blias : an agitator, facing out of countenance wickedness in high places, smiting it with the sword of his mouth, bearding lions in their dens, neither giving quarter nor taking it; then supply will come to meet the demand and, perhaps, his name will be Luther. In no case will God leave himself without a witness. He will not indeed always crown the testimony with all the success we could wish, in our sense of the word success ; but the testimony the world shall have, and have it in just the kind and degree which God sees are suited to its circumstances. In this way God secures that no blame shall justly attach to his providence, whatever may happen; and in this way also secures that evil shall always meet the agencies best fitted to overcome it. May Elijah have many successors in his bold fidelity to a crooked and perverse generation ! God bade him confront Ahab and Israel with a terrible voice of accusations and warnings and judgments. He took his life in his hand and went. No shaking of the knees, no quavering of the voice, as the messenger delivered his message; but he smote the sinners, crowned and uncrowned, with eye that lightened, with brow that thun- dered, and with tongue like Attila's, " scourge of God." What had he to do with consequences? In these times we are not often called to such 302 LONG AGO. a trial of intrepidity as befell Elijah. Still the oc- casions are many when to do what we ought is a severe tax on our courage. Fidelity to friends will sometimes oblige us to take the risk of alien- ating them. Duty to the public will sometimes demand that we do very unpopular things, things which will be largely thought unwise, unkind, and even intolerable. Men sometimes find it necessary to face large pecuniary losses in order to satisfy their consciences: and few find the path of business-honor always coincident with that of gain. It is well if we can meet such duties in the spirit and power of Elias. With no hesita- ting step, with no smiting knees of timidity and irresolution, did the single-handed prophet go forth to flail with rebukes and judgments a wick- ed king and summon an impatient nation, in mass-meeting assembled, back to the service of the true God. He was as lion-hearted as he was single-handed. Was not duty king? Had not God spoken; and what if Ahab should be angry, and Jezebel furious, and all Israel should join them in hunting to death God's one spokesman! Elijah knew how to die if necessary. He would bate from his commission not one word though the heavens fell. That is an example to inspire one. If every Christian would march up to his duty as courageously as did the Tishbite, many an Ahab who now troubles Israel would relent, and many an Israelite who now worships one of ELIJAH. 303 our modern idols would find his way to a purer altar. Especially does the mantle of heroic Eli- jah become Christian ministers; and when in the day of great sins and dangers they resolutely step to the front to call things by their right names, and, whether men will hear or forbear, rebuke the Ahabs and the majorities with all authority, then let the patriot thank God and take courage. The land is not reprobate. There is hope of a brighter day. An active service of God is binding on every one of us. At the same time the active is far from being our whole duty. The passive virtues have their claims. Even Elijah, with his vast capacity for doing, was set the task of patiently enduring. For several years after he faced Ahab with drought and famine his energies were buried in exile; and after his great doings at Carmel he again retired from view to silently watch the course of events and bide his time for another mission. Meanwhile his mission was — the pas- sive virtues. Not that such intervals were passed in absolute idleness as a servant of God; for this is not after the will of God, nor after the style of devoted men anywhere. But so far as his work as a prophet and reformer is concerned, the great work of his life, that work was suspended for long intervals during which he could only pray and watch and exercise himself in holy patience and trust in regard to it. And great was the need. 304 LONG AGO. His labors and exposures at times seemed with- out fruit: no human eye could see that the cause for which he had dared so much was making the least progress: on the contrary the wickedness and condemnation of the people seemed increased by his ministry among them. What was the use? Yet God had bidden him do all that he had done. And so he was obliged to content himself with a consciousness of having done his duty, obliged to stay himself on the wisdom and goodness of the Most High, obliged to school himself to patient and prayerful waiting and trusting. Doubtless the discipline was good for him. It is a discipline to which God calls all his servants. Whatever the good cause to which one has given himself, he must make up his mind to times when prayer is about the only sort of work he can do for it, and when it is better for him to be at the brook Cherith than in Jezreel, in the wilderness of Horeb than in the city of Sa- maria. He will find times when toil and courage will seem to have been in vain, and faith must gird up her loins to what is perhaps still harder work — resignation and endurance and patient waiting. One who has not the grace to be silent and still, as well as to dare and do, is but half qualified for any great mission. When God says, Move not, obedience is just as holy as when he says, March. Many a person belonging to the ELIJAH. 305 " Shut-in Society" has -been obliged to comfort himself by this truth. Though the attitude of Elijah at the lone brook where the ravens were his only visitors, and in the cabin at Sarepta, is far less striking than when he confronted mon- arch and nation at Carmel with his august dem- onstration of the nothingness of their idol, yet in the sight of God the one attitude was, doubt- less, as worthy and useful as the other. As Elijah looked over the land he concluded that he was the only person in all Israel who served the true God. He was in a minority of one. A dreary conclusion to come to after such exposures and labors and miracles to reform the people; but, from his point of view, it seemed a just one. He became exceedingly discouraged. What did all his doing amount to? He had faithfully preached, a preaching famine had spoken still louder, preaching fires from heaven had argued, convinced, and destroyed; yet, so far as he knew, not a single soul had been permanent- ly turned from idolatry or kept from it. That was discouraging. What must have been his surprise and relief to learn from One whose sur- vey was deeper and wider than his that there were seven thousand men in the land who had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal! And perhaps good men now, when their labors seem without fruit, should oftener than they do take ac- count of the possibility that they have not rightly 2>o6 LONG AGO. interpreted the aspect of things, and that under the barren surface there are seeds and sprouts of good due to them which they would rejoice to see, and whose appearance at some later day will prove to those who see only with bodily eyes that their labor has not been in vain in the Lord. Christian parent! mourning over your family on which prayers and instructions seem to have been thrown away, perhaps, after all, under that hard exterior your leaven is working and will go on to leaven the whole lump. Christian minister! saddened at hearing nothing from your many meetings and sermons, perplexed that neither study nor closet seems to take effect on the peo- ple, perhaps, after all, errors have been dissipated, temptations repelled, virtues strengthened, apos- tasies prevented, the way of the Lord prepared by your seemingly fruitless doings. Christian patriot! almost despairing of native land in view of the amazing tokens of a principleless life, or of dyna- mite principles that thrust themselves on your notice at every turn, almost ready to believe that free institutions cannot stand the strain of such tempestuous folly and wickedness as ferment in our cities, perhaps you should allow yourself to hope that the case is not quite as bad as it seems, that there is more soundness at the national heart than you have thought, more fear of God and re- gard to man, more prayers ascending and more duties done, than there are signs of on the surface ELIJAH. 307 of the politics, the business, and the pleasures — so that for every Elijah whom you have counted God could tell you of seven thousand true Israel- ites. To human sight the obscure and hidden places are always a majority. What we see are the hilltops and not the populous valleys between. One has to look down on these from the heights of the sky, as God does, in order to have them all fall within his field of view. Such considerations should help us to keep up heart in the cloudy and dark day of good enterprises. Let us hope that we have more sympathy and support in them than are manifested. At least let us not forget that in every such enterprise God stands by us, though not a single man does, and that he is the Lord of hosts innumerable and bright who are sure to give their sympathy and support wherever he gives his. But what right have men who really are 0:1 the side of the God of Israel to timidly keep them- selves out of view and throw upon a few Elijahs the whole responsibility and glory of a public confession ? It is a good thing if the seven thou- sand never bow the knee to Baal or any other idol, but it would be a vastly better thing if they would add to their faith courage and manliness, and go forth in broad day to do and dare for the truth in the spirit and power of Elias. Should the champions in the field be driven to comfort themselves with the idea that somewhere there 308 LONG AGO. may be somebody who at heart sympathizes with them ? Is the truth fairly dealt by when we wish her well under our breath, and never venture to lift a finger for her till we are quite sure that we are well screened from observation ? If any of us are disposed to serve the interests of religion only in this muffled and subterranean way, we may as well understand that such servants are not ac- ceptable. What, shall we be allowed to go about such a work as men steal away to a robbery or a debauch ? The truth is ashamed of us if we are ashamed of the truth. If we try to save our lives by such disgraceful expedients we shall lose them. Fie on the unmanliness of the man who fears to be caught on his knees, or even to be thought seriously disposed ! Christ could have swollen the roll of disciples amazingly by allowing of a discipleship in masquerade, and by telling all who were ashamed or afraid to serve him by day that it would answer as well to serve him by night. But the inflexible command was, Confess me before men. This law has never been repealed. It does not deserve to become obsolete. Whoever wants the privilege of putting off his manhood before helping a good cause is not wanted by it. When nations are punished for their sins some innocent persons will be found suffering with the many guilty. The Lots will not often be con- ducted out of the Sodoms before the fires fall. If the fires be the pestilence, it will devour the aged ELIJAH. 309 who had left the stage when the guilt began and the young who had not then entered upon it, those who have striven against the public guilt as well as those who have striven for it. If the punish- ment be famine, the fields of the seven thousand will parch by the side of those held by idolaters, and the best men will grow pale and haggard by the side of the worst. On account of this law of Providence, which practically makes every person in a degree responsible for the behavior of the public, it becomes a measure of self-defence with a good man to look after the conduct and charac- ter of his neighbors, and, if possible, to secure that their courses be as upright as his own. Him- self and family are held as hostages. Himself and family are passengers in the same ship of state that carries the general public, and a reasonable regard to his own safety demands that he do what he can to prevent the ship taking such a course as will bring her on the breakers of divine judg- ments. Especially is this true in a land where every one is allowed a hand in shaping the course of public affairs. Hence, when the Christian is praying earnestly for his country, when he is busy in scattering among the masses the principles which exalt and save, when he warmly interests himself that the national acts do not plunge us into a contest with the Almighty, and he is won- dered at by some Wall Street man whose private affairs will not allow of his looking after the city 3IO LONG AGO. government, then let him say that, in addition to higher reasons, he has a regard to self-preserva- tion, and only hopes to escape the sword himself by preventing the public sins — that will be sure to unsheath it sooner or later. Let him affirm that judgments for national sins are no dead letter of a dead dispensation. They belong to the pres- ent order of things; they impend and threaten even under the blue arch of gospel times and the latest civilization. What an ending had the career of Elijah! Without the preparatory process of dying he rode to heaven in the 'chariot of fire — a sublime con- clusion of a sublime life ! But, after all, the way of his going to heaven was less sublime than the going. That any man should be taken up to dwell for ever with God is a wonderful thing, and never will it cease to be a wonder to those so happy as to experience this glorious translation. Though but one person ever shared with Elijah his evasion of death, multitudes have shared his transfer from earth to heaven. And the path to this latter and greater blessing is still open. First be translated out of the kingdom of darkness into that of God's dear Son, and then, after death, you shall mount to heaven as surely and perhaps as gloriously, if not as visibly, as did the charioted prophet. Was not poor Eazarus carried by an- gels to Abraham's bosom? That shining cortege awaits every Christian. What an ascension ! It EUJAII. 311 deserves our ambition. We should count all things but loss in comparison with it. Let us pray for it and live for it. Let the pinions for that upward flight be now carefully forming and pluming within us against the day when they will be needed. If need be, let us rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulness, that we may enter gloriously into the rest that re- maineth, and survivors be compelled to think of us, not as dead, but as translated. XIII. THE FALLEN MANTLE. E1LISHA 'The Worthy Stic cessor. EUSHA. 315 XIII. ELISHA. An early country training has been thought very conducive to an effective manhood. Our most successful men in the walks of business, of learning, of statesmanship, and of Christian ser- vice, mostly passed their earlier years amid rural scenes and occupations. There they gained vigor of body, habits of industry, shelter from the gross- er temptations, the thoughtful and forecasting and determined moods that breathe in all the great operations of nature. Thence have come most of the great Christian workers of our day and of all days; and thence came KHsha, the son of Shaphat, of Abel-Mehola. When he first ap- pears in the Scripture narrative it is as a young man ploughing with oxen. An early beginning of Christian service, as of any other good vocation, is very desirable. Of course it is better to begin late than never. But it is vastly better still to start out in God's service and into his great field early in the morning. The earlier the better. There will be more work done; it will be done more easily and perfectly; it will bring greater wages. The man who begins to be a worker for God at the eleventh hour, or when his sun is westering, is always sorry that he 316 LONG AGO. did not begin before. Blislia the son of Shaphat did not have that sorrow. When God called him, successfully called him, into his field, he was yet a young man. Whatever the call which God makes on us, it is a grandly good thing if we obey it promptly and zealously. Perhaps it is a call to some hum- ble work; perhaps it comes in the form of indirect and veiled intimation; perhaps to obey will in- volve sacrifices; yet, even in such cases, it is a grandly good thing to obey promptly and jealous- ly. Elisha was ploughing. Elijah came along and cast his mantle on the ploughman. That was all. Nothing was said ; nothing further was done. Had the young man been anxious to evade service in the cause of God he might have made the veiled character of the summons a pretext for neglecting it, and allowed the prophet to pass on without a servant, if not without a mantle. But he did not do this. He knew what the hint meant. He did not need to be told in so many words, and with an evidencing miracle, that it would be his duty henceforth to wait on the steps of Elijah. It was an inferior post — but he did not hesitate on that account. The plough must be left in the furrow, the farewell must be said to fa- ther and mother — but he would not hesitate on these accounts. He ran at once after Elijah; he said, "I will follow thee;" he slew his oxen and boiled their flesh with his tools, and made a festi- ELISHA. 317 val for his friends and neighbors as if some great good fortune had happened to him, and as if he meant to have nothing further to do with his old pursuits, but to give himself unreservedly and for ever to the work of obeying the call he had re- ceived. In burning the very tools of his trade he burned the bridges and ships behind him. Certainly this is the kind of obedience that God wishes from all of us. Does he call on us for repentance? He wants us to turn from our sins without any delay and with all our hearts, even if his voice is not loud enough to shake the heav- ens. Does he call us to some specific Christian service? Probably the call is hardly more than hints and shadows of duty cast upon us by the common movements of Providence, in connection with general principles of the Scriptures. The young Christian hears no voice that sets the world a-trembling telling him in plain English that he must prepare himself to preach the gospel: he has only a mantle cast silently on him. The young minister does not open his Bible and read in so many words that he is to be a missionary: he has only a mantle cast silently on him. No layman has an express revelation, clear as the sun, that he is to gather a class for the Sunday-school or hold a religious conversation with his neighbor or give so much to a certain charity or be present at a certain prayer-meeting: he has only a mantle cast silentlv on him. The circumstances in which 318 LONG AGO. Providence lias placed us create a probability, more or less strong, as to what our duty is — some- times a probability that gives full certainty, but generally one that falls far short of that; and this is all the call we have. We are bound to act on this as promptly and zealously as if an angel had spoken. What is according to the best of our judgment has as mighty claims on our doing as what is according to demonstration. The man who has thoroughly mastered this principle and governs his conduct by it; who on the mere cast- ing of a mantle stands ready to leave his half- ploughed field and slay his oxen and burn his tools; who is ready to do all this for the sake of a service, for the sake of those humbler forms of duty which get little notice and less praise among men, is a great man in the sight of God and a beat- itude of the Christian religion. For nearly all our duties are of the humbler forms, and nearly all our calls to them are like that which Elisha had to serve God at second-hand by serving Elijah. It is a maxim in war that to rule well one must first learn to obey. The child must have his long discipline of restraint and subjection ere he is fit to preside over the conduct of others. And commonly it is only by long schooling in an inferior station that we are prepared to take place in a higher. We are reminded of this fact when we notice what place in the old church was first given to Elisha. He was made a servant. EUSHA. 319 For ten years he held this post before it was said to him, Come up higher. While pouring water on the hands of his principal and bearing his bur- dens after him and delivering his messages, he listened to his instructions, saw his example, and became acquainted with the general character of the sphere belonging to the chief prophet of Israel. Thus he was gradually trained into a ripeness for that great post. Just so, amid the silence and obscurity of some humbler sphere, most of the present greatness and usefulness of the world have matured. Just so God gives every man the lower for the sake of the higher. Deep in the nature of things lies a necessity for our being small before being great, for our being the servants of a prophet before we become prophets ourselves. Is there anything disagreeable in the form of duty to which you are now called — whether by the clear word or by the casting of a mantle? Consider that in this world the present is never for itself. It is meant as a stepping-stone to a superior con- dition. If you are faithful in the few things it is certain that in time you will come to rule over many things. Let it be your consolation and stimulus that, whatever may be the disadvantages of your present position, it is the necessary gym- nasium for something better, the apprenticeship by which you may, with suitable care, reach the skill and profit and dignity of the master-work- man. In a well-ordered army the soldier who 320 LONG AGO. wants promotion can do nothing so likely to fur- ther his purpose as to throw all his energies into an able discharge of the duties of the post he al- ready has. His watchful commander will notice the shining and advancing faculty, and will re- ward it. In fact, that soldier is his own son whom he has placed in the ranks for the very purpose of qualifying him to be a commander himself. God is such a leader in chief and father — we such privates and sons. All we have to do to insure our rising, sooner or later, to higher grades of service is to do well the duties of the present moment. The usefulness, happiness, and dignity of our position in the kingdom of God may be ever on the increase. God may be expected to provide a successor to every great and good man whom he translates. When one king dies another ascends the throne. An endless chain is being forged on the anvil of providence: one golden link is hardly cold before a glowing new one is added to it. From the be- ginning God has not left himself without a wit- ness. The succession has been unbroken, though sometimes the links have passed through glooms. Patriarch has taken hold on patriarch, prophet on prophet, apostle on apostle, martyrs and confess- ors on martyrs and confessors, reformers on re- formers, and so on down to the present. Here is the true apostolic succession. Doubtless it will continue to the end of the world. And it is a EUSHA. 321 succession to be rejoiced over. We will not be downcast when we see a great and good man drawing near the end of his brilliant career, will not exclaim, "How can we spare this man ? How the cause will suffer when he is gone!" for we know that somebody is being prepared somewhere to take his place, some Klisha to succeed the Eli- jah. As soon as the one is ready to depart the other will be ready to come. As soon as the one goes up the other will come to the front. For ten years the Elisha has been in process: now let him take the mantle that falls from the skies. And by-and-by, when his work is done, let him pass the mantle on to another generation. That is about the only sort of bequeathing which in these days will be sure to stand. This will stand; for is it not the Christian law, That which thou hast received of me commit thou to faithful men , that they may teacli others also? So we will joyfully expect that the cross will be passed faithfully from hand to hand till all the clans are brought together to the final victory. Christians have great encouragement to ask largely and persistently of heaven. "Open thy mouth wide. " " Pray and do not faint. " " Covet earnestly the best gifts." All such passages put us on being hearty, persevering, and large ask- ers. No doubt our limited receiving is largely due to our limited and easily discouraged asking. When shall we get it by heart that God is rich Long Ago. 2 I 2,22 LONG AGO. and likes to be treated as if he were — is liberally disposed and likes to be treated as if he were? What if he does put us under the necessity of asking again and again, perhaps of wrestling in prayer! It may be that it is not because he is re- luctant, but because we are as yet unprepared and need the discipline of patient seeking. Elisha wanted a great privilege. On a certain day he and his master were taking their last walk to- gether. They went from Gilgal to Bethel, from Bethel to Jericho, from Jericho to Jordan, from this side of Jordan to the other side by grace of miracle and the cleaving mantle. Go back, said Elijah again and again. Again and again Elisha answered, As the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. He greatly wished to see with his own eyes the glorious translation which he knew was about to take place. It would be to him a fresh revelation of the wonderfulness of God; it would open for a few moments a window into heaven and the glory of the hereafter; it would lessen the pang of parting with his dearest earthly friend, and indeed with his own life, by- and-by, to get a glimpse of the glory beyond. So he would not take a nay. And he was at length rewarded for his persistence by seeing the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof, and a human saint borne heavenward in dazzling triumph. Now, when the Christian dies, we have to ima- gine the ascension: then, for once, it could be EUSHA. 323 seen. No wonder that EHsha wrestled to see it. Perhaps you and I would have done the same. That glorious vision would have been to us a sonorous proclamation of our own immortality. It would have said to us, Well, after all, God does love and honor a really good man, though so little clear discrimination is made in his favor in the common providence of the world. It would have been to us a most welcome flash of the glory of the Lord, and an outlook for a moment into the heaven for which we hope, but which we find it so hard to realize. It would have been an in- spiration to us all our days. No doubt it was to EHsha. The fiery splendors of that ascension burned themselves indelibly into his memory; and all his days he must have congratulated himself on his perseverance in insisting that he be allowed to see the sublime ending of the saint- ly life whose fortunes he had followed so long. But in that same eventful walk EHsha did an- other instructive thing. He made this large prayer: I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit rest upon me. What an audacious and extrava- gant petition — at first sight ! Why, EHsha pos- sessed already a large portion of his master's spirit — the same lofty simplicity, the same bold and determined character, the same fearless and uncompromising fidelity to God. But he was not satisfied with this great possession: he wanted twice as much. He ventured to ask for what he 324 LONG AGO. wanted. And, though the request was so enor- mously ambitious that Elijah pronounced it a hard thing to grant, it was granted. The servant rose at once to the level of his master. He be- came capable of doing and daring and enduring like him. Before he seems not to have possessed the power of working miracles: afterward he blazed out into a majesty of signs and wonders scarcely equalled by Elijah himself, miracles to take one's breath away — miracles in the mineral kingdom, in the brute, and in the human; mira- cles of mercy and of judgment; miracles in domes- tic life, iu politics, in war, and between nations. So he obtained according to his asking. He opened his mouth wide, and it was filled. Let us learn that God is both able and willing to allow great drafts on his treasury. Only it is not every sort of thing we can draw for: we must draw for things that seem good to God. But how shall we know what things are good in his sight? Often we cannot know in advance; we must leave God to judge for us. But as to one thing our way is clear, ages ahead: " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." All over society are many bitter fountains. Some of these proclaim themselves at first sight as fountains of error and vice and misery. But others are very attractive to look at; and around their decorated brims multitudes eagerly gather ELISHA. 325 as they do at famous watering-places, and the drinkers come to take with great relish and in enormous quantities what in time works them sore mischief. I saw a man whose business pros- pered. And I saw also that as his gains went on increasing his heart grew more proud, more wrapped up in this world, more hard and selfish and disinclined to the things of God. In short, I saw that prosperity in business was to him a fountain of harm. I saw a man who was success- fully engaged in acquiring knowledge. And I saw also that as his stores of information grew he became more self-sufficient before God, more scornful of his neighbor, more skilful to do evil, more averse to sitting as a little child at the feet of the great Teacher. That is to say, I saw that success as a student was to him a bitter fountain. I saw a man climbing, and not in vain, for hon- ors. And I saw also that the higher he rose the more self-centred he became, the more ready to trample on whatever stood in his way, whether men or principle, the more dissatisfied with the humbling doctrines of the cross, the more care- less of the honor that cometh from God, and the more influential in warping the views and lives of other men into the same mistaken courses. In short, I saw that success in the pursuits of ambi- tion was to him a baleful spring. So it is every- where and continually — men drinking of these attractive earthly springs with as much eager- 326 LONG AGO. ness as if they contained the elixir of life, and yet sickening and even dying by thousands around the fatal brims. And is there nothing which can be cast into these fatal waters to cure them of their insalu- brity? As soon as Elijah had ascended, Elisha returned to Jericho with the glory of that ascen- sion beaming in his face. Moreover some of the people had watched from afar his return, and had seen the Jordan again cut asunder by the mantle-sword. So they knew that Elijah had a successor. And they bethought themselves of a great service which that successor, with his newly found faculty, might do them. The city had a spring. No complaint was made of its looks; for aught anybody knows it was abundant, unfailing, clear as crvstal. But it was unhealth- ful. It poisoned men, and it poisoned the land. Could the prophet do anything for it? So they brought him to the brink. He cast salt into it, saying, "Thus saith the Lord, i have healed these waters : there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land." He did not abolish the spring ; he did a better thing, he cured it. Can we not do a like thing to those fountains of worldly business and knowledge and honor which so often prove hurtful to our best interests? Thank God ! we can. Religion is a sufficient alterative. Let prophets and apostles cast that EIJSHA. • 327 iuto our gains, our talents, our learning, our hon- ors in just measure, and they will cease to corrupt us and begin to sanctify us. Then what was killing us will give us new life. Then what what was making us pernicious will make us useful. We shall be all the more helpful to man, and all the more grateful and obedient to God, for draughts of prosperity which would disorder and perhaps ruin carnal hearts. We are told of springs that hold stone in solution, and upon whatever their waters trickle for a long time there is formed a coating of rock; and sometimes a reptile long sleeping becomes ensnared in the hard accretion and wakes up too late to free his encased limbs, and, after some ages, the geologist smites with his hammer and finds him in the centre of a stone. If our souls are in a state of nature the various forms of worldly good are gradually building them up into stone. Unless we seasonably awake our imprisonment will be perpetual. We shall remain stony hard for ever towards God and religion. Shall we awake and fly from the ensnaring and hardening fountains? Shall we ask that they be abolished? Nay, they were designed to be used. Business and learning and honors belong to the scheme of Providence for this world; only they need to have the salt of religion cast into them. This will heal them; and then we may drink of them, not only with safety, but with actual profit. Worldly things 328 ■ LONG AGO. may be means of grace — "earthly cares a heav- enly discipline. " After healing the waters of Jericho Elisha went on to visit the school of the prophets at Bethel; for, as the successor of Elijah, he had be- come the leading supervisor of such institutions. From the beginning till now such institutions have always needed supervising. They are the fountains of religious instruction for the next generation ; and it is therefore of the first impor- tance that they be kept pure. But when men separate themselves from the common employ- ments and needs of society, and come together in order to think and study, even on religious sub- jects, leisurely thought is apt to degenerate into idle and harmful speculation. The teaching of experience is that thought divorced from action soon becomes diseased. So the schools of the prophets have always been centres of danger as well as of blessing. They have always needed watching. And it was a leading part of the great function of Elisha to watch the theological sem- inaries of his time — to visit them and see to it that the young men in them were properly in- structed and trained. He was a Board of Visit- ors. On his way to Bethel he was wantonly in- sulted by a company of graceless youngsters. They were old enough to know better. It was important that the rising generation should be KLISHA. 329 taught, if necessary by a severe lesson, that di- vine messengers must be treated with respect. In that day, perhaps, irreverence was the besetting sin of the young, as it has been in many another day. So God made an example of the ring-lead- ers. He who at his pleasure can summon in- struments of any sort from any quarter, summoned two wild beasts from the wood to rend the cul- prits, vindicate the majesty of religion, and be- speak for his prophet henceforth due attention and reverence. He was to be the chief religious instructor of the young in his time; and it was necessary that they, as well as others, should learn that, "He that despiseth you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me." In due time other si^ns and wonders testified to the divine mission of Klisha, and they were mostly of the merciful sort. He made the bor- rowed iron to swim; he extracted death from the veins of poisoned people; he, after the manner of Elijah, multiplied the little oil of a poor widow into marketable quantities that redeemed her two sons from the hands of a creditor. Is God the God of the small and not of the large? Does he interfere only in behalf of obscure persons and places, never in matters national and international? Syria made war on Israel. Crafty plans were laid by Damascus to take Samaria by surprise. Troops marched stealthily to this point 33° LONG AGO. and to that, expecting to find an unexpecting and easily captured post. They were disappointed. They always found the gates bolted, the walls manned, a superior force blowing trumpets of de- fiance in their faces. They were astonished. "Will no one tell me," said the disheartened Ben-hadad, "who it is among you that betrays my plans to the enemy?" "None of us are trai- tors," replied his courtiers, "but the prophet Elisha tells the king of Israel what thou speakest in thy bed-chamber." This was considerably nearer the truth than courtiers commonly get : for the God who in every age has known how to ex- pose and frustrate the crafty designs of the ene- mies of religion had, through Elisha, told the king of Israel what various strategies were on foot against him. "If this is the trouble," said Ben- hadad to himself, "I know how to cure it." So he sent a great force to Dothan, where he found Elisha then was. "Make forced marches, ye troops; come to the city by night; gird it on all sides with spears and swords so that no one can get away; now when the day breaks we will have him." The day broke and Elisha and his servant went forth to walk on the wall. Eo, the Syrian chariots and horse in every direction- -not a break to be seen in the hostile cordon that sur- rounded them. The servant was dismayed. He saw no chance of escape. Not so his master. He was calm as that old summer morning. Well EUSHA. 33I might he be, for he saw what the other could not see; he saw all the space between him and the Syrians crowded with a celestial host of protectors — with chariots and horses of fire. Guardian an- gels have never been a novelty in the world (for the angel of the Lord encampeth about them that fear him) ; but the seeing of them was a novelty — a very reassuring novelty to the servant when, at the prayer of his master, his eyes were opened on that dazzling body-guard. Plainly, instead of being in the power of the enemy, the enemy was in their power. Smitten for the time with blind- ness, the Syrians were led by the prophet into the heart of Samaria. "Shall I smite them," said the king. "Nay," answered the prophet, "but rather entertain them liberally and then send them away to their homes magnanimously.' ' This was done. This generous treatment had the effect one might expect. The bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel till after a long time. But, after a long time, Ben-hadad seems to have forgotten the very unusual forbearance shown him. He made another attempt on Israel. This time he reached Samaria with his forces, and so straitened the city with his close siege that the people came to the last extremity of famine. Then Elisha again appeared as the messenger of deliverance. "Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be 33- LONG AGO. sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria." It seemed an incredible thing. A certain high noble did not hesitate to say that it was utterly past all belief. Why, there was scarcely any food in the city. All around the compact Syrians kept vigilant ward. " No, the thing is impossible," scoffed his majesty the natural philosopher in the face of the prophet. "Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof," was the calm reply. That night a mighty sound came swelling through the camp of the Syrians. What is it? they said to one another, and pricked up all their ears. It seemed to them like the noise of chariots and horses and a great host advancing upon them. It must be that'tJie king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyp- tians. An ungovernable panic seized them. They left everything and fled. Arms, chariots, horses, tents, endless provisions — all were abandoned in the unreasoning and desperate fight. And when day came Israel found so much spoil in the for- saken camp that the famine prices went down at once almost to zero, and the unbelieving noble went down still lower ; for, having charge of the gate, he w 7 as trodden to death by the out-throng- ing people. He saw the abundance, but did not eat thereof. God has small liking for stiff-necked skeptics. AQ-ain there was war. This time between ELISHA. 333 Moab on the one hand, and Israel, Judah, and Edom on the other. Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, the bad man and the good, struck hands and marched their united forces into the arid plains of Arabia Petrsea. Water failed the host. It seemed as if they all must perish of thirst or surrender at discretion into the hands of Moab. But there was one good man among the confederate kings, and he in their extremity bethought himself of the Lord, as good men are accustomed to do in their troubles. Is there any prophet of the Lord here? Some one tells him of Elisha. Just the man, says Jehoshaphat; the zuord of the Lord is with him. And so it was: and the word said, Make this valley full of ditches : ye shall not see wind, ncitJicr shall ye see rain, yet the valley shall be filled with water. Now all men to work! Do not stop to ask why, but cut up all this ground with trenches. Morn- ing came over the hills of Edom, and with it came the gurgling sound of running waters, pure waters, abundant waters. All the trenches were filled. And the Moabites looked forth from their strongholds into the valley, and the waters shone red to them in the morning sun. The ground seemed all veined and splashed with blood. Surely the kings have fallen out with one another ; they are being slain with their own sivords, and yonder red currents are streams of blood. Up, Moab, to the spoil! Wide open swung the gates, down poured the disorderly crowds — to find that God had sent 334 LONG AGO. a strong delusion that they might believe a lie, to find an orderly and refreshed army ready to overwhelm them. All this for the sake of the good king Jehoshaphat; for the prophet had said to Jehoram, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, were it not that I regard the presence of ye- hoshaphat, king of yudah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee. This was the fearless, outspoken Elijah over again. What loftiness of tone 1 what scorn of wickedness in high places ! Which was the kinglier of the two, the good man clothed in serge or the bad man clothed in purple ? Elisha passed through the city of Shunem. In that place lived a woman who counted it a great privilege to entertain so illustrious a guest. That she might do it more suitably she had a room built and furnished expressly for him in the best part of her house. Her careful hospi- tality met its reward. A son was given her in answer to the prophet's prayer; and when the child fell sick and died it was the prophet's prayer that brought him back again to life. This narrative reminds us of a much more im- portant fact, namely, that the God of Elisha is sure to come and loves to stay where his presence is desired and suitable preparations are made for his entertainment, and that whatever labor may be expended in this high hospitality is destined to have in the end an exceeding overpayment. The prophet in Shunem was an imitator of God KUSHA. 2>25 in the world. Why this bustle in yonder sinful heart? What mean these sounds of the axe, the hammer, and the plane ? For what this going in of rich upholstery through the open door? And now we see ready a beautiful room and beautifully adorned; and w r e ask, For whom has all this pains been taken? Here, for some one, is the best place in all your heart. For whom, we pray you, is prepared this room of honor? Is it indeed for the God of Blisha instead of Elisha himself? And do you really imagine that this most august of all beings will be your guest, long for it and do for it as much as you may? Hush! it is too late for unbelief to question now, for here in very deed is God himself coming to take possession of the place prepared for him. Scarcely has the last stroke of preparation died away on the ear before he is at the door, prepared to fulfil his promise that they who seek him shall find that he will dwell with the humble and contrite, and that if any man love Christ and keep his words the Fa- ther will love him, and both Father and Son will come to him and make their abode with him. So "lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in." The Shunammite thought it a great thing to win a prophet to stop occasionally at her house; and so it was. But the God of that prophet is no tarrier for a ni^ht; and now that he has entered 336 LONG AGO. the heart where repentance and faith have fitted up for Him a place, it is not to-morrow's dawn that will see Him resume his journey, nor the next, nor the next. He is now at home. Behold a permanent dwelling-place ! And as time passes, this prudent, forecasting heart, that did so much that it might have the privilege of entertaining God, will daily see new evidence that its labor was not thrown away, but was, on the contrary, the grandest investment it could have made. Its ignorance shall be instructed, its famines fed, its deserts made fruitful, its dead brought to life. O fortunate heart, that chose to be a habitation of God through the Spirit and then set apart and made ready a chamber for his occupancy! We predict that you will never repent this hospitality. If you should find imitators in all hearts, not a solitary one of them would ever repent it. When will men come to understand that there is noth- ing safer and happier, nothing wiser, higher, and holier, than to have God for our permanent guest; that all our building amounts to nothing unless we build a chamber for Him, that all our furnish- ing of home and body and intellect is a vain out- lay unless we furnish a choice place in our hearts for Him ? A great noble came to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. He came with a peradventure in his heart. Perhaps the prophet was not able to reach so bad a case as his, for he was a leper as white as Eusha. 337 snow. Perhaps the prophet would not be willing to help Naaman the Syrian, the leader of rav- aging armies. But the need was so great that, notwithstanding the uncertainty of success, the leper had undertaken the long journey from Da- mascus, and with chariot and retinue was at last at the door of Klisha. He had a high sense of the dignity of his position and decided preferences as to the manner in which he should be healed, if healed at all. He wanted that the healer should himself come out to him, and call on the name of his God, and strike his hand over the leprosy. He was willing to seek cure by some great enter- prise, if Elisha saw fit to so direct. But his views were not consulted. Elisha would not come out to him in person. And, instead of directing him to be rid of his disease by some great feat and aristocratic method, he bade him go and dip seven times in Jordan as any slave might do. The proud magnate turned away in a rage. Was he to sub- mit to such a humbling way of cure ! But the expostulation of servants and sober second thought finally determined him to follow directions and not throw away his only chance of being healed. The help after all was of more consequence than the way to it. So he went down to the despised Jordan and dipped and was whole. Then he felt reconciled to the method — felt quite reconciled to it as he looked on his flesh, all fresh and delicate as that of a little child, and felt the delicious cool- 33& LONG AGO. ness of a new life coursing through his veins. And he found that he had no payment to make in return for the merciful miracle. It cost no thin q; but the trouble of going for it. Now let us go out of our Damascus, all we who are leprous with unpardoned sin, and see if we cannot have help from the God of Israel. There is no peradventure to us about his ability to help, nor as to his willingness. Though we are sinners of the Gentiles, though we have been hostile to him and even leaders in hostility, we have the best ground for believing that there will be no obstacle on his part to our receiving as complete healing as we desire. There may be an obstacle from ourselves. We may find ourselves unwill- ing to comply with the simple and humbling con- ditions on which alone the blessings we seek can be granted; for it will be required of us to do something far more opposed to prejudices and mortifying to pride than it was for that patrician Syrian to go at second-hand bidding and dip in the general bath of the Jordan. But here we are at the door of prophets and apostles. We will make our application. What, O Elisha, what, O Moses and Malachi, what, O Matthew and John and Paul, shall we do to be cured of our leprosy? May we not sit here erect in our chariots and have God's blessing come down on us like summer rains and pleasant dreams ? Or may we not get it by doing some EUSHA. 339 honesty or giving some charity or going on some interesting pilgrimage? And from Moses to John they all answer, No. You must put your hand on your mouth and your mouth in the dust. You must not only acknowledge that you are guilty and undone, but you must feel that you are so. You must come down from your chariot and bow to the very ground your stubborn erect- ness, and with brokenness of heart ask pardon for the sake of the merits of another. You must con- sent to be made clean by washing in the same fountain that is used by thieves and murderers and still more abominable men. These no doubt are the necessities of the case. Shall our pride turn us away in disgust? Shall we insist on being grandees and majesties in the presence of heaven? Had we not better stop and reflect whether this is not our only chance of being healed? To be sure the way is a humbling one; but is it not better than no way at all? If we come back years hence to these prophets and apostles they will be sure to give us precisely the same directions which they give us now. What are the Abanas and Pharpars of moralities and philosophies to us? Do we not know that our disease is too radical to be reached by any waters which the Lord God of Israel has not blessed? Let sober second thought teach us wisdom. Let it show us that it is better to have God's way with salvation than our own way with destruction. 34° LONG AGO. Now let us go humbly down, all we who are diseased and leprous with unpardoned sin, and dip again and again in the prescribed Jordan ©f contrition and Christ's blood. Many have done it before us; more will do it after us. Its efficacy is sure and quick. That great remedial bath will cost us nothing, though it means regeneration and the kingdom of heaven. And when the cure is effected, when we find ourselves clean before the divine law, when we feel a new life unto God throbbing love and trust and obedience to the very extremities of our moral being, we shall be as well satisfied with the manner of the remedy as with the remedy itself. When Elisha came to die the young king of Israel came to weep over him. Joash felt that the chariot of Israel and its horsemen were de- parting. Through his long life the prophet had been a greater defence to the nation than all their rocky ramparts and armies of warriors. And now they were about to lose the champion who in his garb of peace, was mightier than the doughtiest crusader, or than Achilles, bulwark of the Greeks, in his Vulcanian arms. Well might the young king call him father and weep at the thought of losing him. But the dvino: Blisha was allowed to console him somewhat with a legacy. He bequeathed to him three victories over Syria ; for, bad as Israel was, Syria was worse. The bequest would have been larger if EUSHA. 34I Joash had only used more understanding and more faith, and if, instead of smiting the ground three times with the arrow of the Lord's deliver- ance from Syria, he had smitten on till bidden to stop. And how much most of us lose — how many victories over her enemies the church probably loses — from slowness in understanding God's signs and from lack of strong, persistent faith ! God still speaks largely to us by other signs than words, saying, Here is an opportunity. There is an open door. If yon, will strike now yoit will win much. But very likely our minds are not on the alert to catch the whispered information, or we soon tire of acting on it when caught; and so we miss great advantages which we might have secured. Be wide-awake to the leadings of Prov- idence, O Christian ! Interpret promptly and wisely the signs of the times, O Christian church; for these are the present symbols and parables of the Lord; and when you have found out what to do, keep on doing till Providence bids you stop. Up to the very last — even far beyond the last — Elisha continued his usefulness. His very bones as they lay in the sepulchre revived a dead man who chanced to touch them. If all relics had such a faculty as that even stout Protestants would be glad to patronize them. Some three thousand years have passed since Elisha died, and his bones are now scattered dust, but he is 342 LONG AGO. still potential for good in the world, and, no doubt, ever will be. His soul will be "marching on" through all the coming ages. The sacred record perpetuates him. As long as men believ- ingly read the Old Testament, his faith, his example, his sublime demonstrations of the being and providence of God, will be eloquent teachers. And no man's usefulness ought to die in ad- vance of him as that of some men is said to do. It ought to survive him, even through many gen- erations. He is bound to manage so as to be of service to the world up to his latest breath, and then, dying, leave instructive footprints on the sands of time. In fact, everybody docs leave footprints of some sort. The marks he is ma- king on the clay of the present will appear in the solid stone of future ages. The works of good men do follow them; and so do the works of the bad. Both sorts, being dead, yet speak. But what a difference in the speaking ! The one sort speak benedictions ; the other speak maledictions. Benedictions are what the life of Elisha is speaking to-day, and they are what our lives should speak long after we are gone. Let us see to it that the footprints we are sure to leave behind us be such as to guide heavenward the steps of our successors. XIV. GLORIOUS POLITICS. DANIEL 'The Prayerful States man. GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 345 XIV. GLORIOUS POLITICS- DANIEL. It is in Judaea. Josiah, the good king, is on the throne and doing all he can to keep a way- ward people true to their God. But the times are troublous and threatening. On the southwest Egypt is a constant peril ; on the east towers the great Babylonian Empire, crowding out its boun- daries in every direction. And what if Josiah should die? His sons, Jehoahaz and Eliakim, alas, are unlike him in character, and promise but poorly for the future of the land. At this time Daniel was born — born in a princely home, perhaps in a royal one, probably in Jerusalem. Consequently Ave are to suppose that he had the best early advantages that a Jew of those times could have. The capital was the headquarters of the religious reformation: of the best teachers, the best manners, and the best morals. Here for some twelve years he grew. Then came the death of Josiah and, after an in- terval of three months, the reign of Jehoiakim — the sinner and the fool. Three years of evil- doing and blundering brought on him the armies of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, who took Jerusa- lem and carried away to Babylon some of the 346 LONG AGO. principal people. Among these were Daniel and three other youths of like princely rank. As these four young Jews followed the army eastward — followed it, probably, as bound and guarded captives — what did they think of their future ? It must have looked dark and forbid- ding enough in the light of the burning homes behind them. How did they know that they had any future ? How did they know but that it meant death or a slavery worse than death ? All was darkly uncertain. Still youth is hopeful, and the good can always be trustful. On their arrival at Babylon the captives were subjected to an examination. For the king had said to Ashpenaz "that he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the king's seed and of the princes ; children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skilful in all wis- dom and cunning in knowledge and understand- ing science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chal- daeans." Daniel and his companions passed the examination satisfactorily. They were all re- markable for personal beauty, for their talents, and for their accomplished manners and attain- ments. Unlike many young persons having great opportunities, these Hebrew boys had prop- erly improved theirs. And now they began to reap the advantage. They shone in that civil GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 2>A7 service examination. And they would Lave shone still more had they been examined, as I fear they were not, on a still more important matter. Their blue blood, their fine abilities, their stores of knowledge, their shapely figures and handsome faces, were of little worth compared with the glorious religious principles which even at that early age had been securely enthroned over all their powers and attainments. Their piety was their strong point. This was their su- preme accomplishment, and a capital one to take with them into that heathen palace which now became their home. Daniel and his friends could not complain of their new accommodations. They were right roy- ally housed. Nor could they complain of the poor quality and quantity of their fare. It was as good as the king himself had. In fact it was too good — too rich and generous and stimulating. And this was not the worst of it. It was a kind of food which, either from its nature or mode of preparation, was forbidden to the Jew by the law of Moses. This latter consideration was decisive with Daniel. He was sensible of the importance of starting out rightly in his new life, and at once made up his mind to go by his religion and not by his appetite. So he sought, and with some difficulty obtained, leave for himself and friends to make an experiment, ten days long, of living on pulse and water. At the end of that time 34 S LONG AGO. they were found fairer and fatter in flesh than others of their class who had been living on the king's dainties. The steward was astonished. He had expected to find them thin and pale and feeble — hinting broadly at skeletons and graves. But the experiment satisfied him that he could safely allow the lads to live as they thought best. It is said that a feather will show which way the wind blows: this little incident shows on what a self-governed and conscientious course of living the young scholars had even then firmly settled. Did they not like delicacies and dainties? If not, they were very unlike most young people. No, it was their sacrifice to principle. Their lower natures were already dominated by their higher. They made, probably, the first Total Abstinence Society in Babylon ; and it was con- siderably more comprehensive than anything now known under that name. Under their Chaldsean teachers the young He- brews made great advances. And it deserves special notice that these advances were due largely to divine help. The Scripture says, "God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom. ' ' Is God an available fac- tor in education? Will students in all sorts of useful knowledge find it worth their while to make their Maker a partner in their labors? One would naturally suppose so. It would be strange if the Maker of our faculties could not GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 349 quicken and guide them. That he is sometimes disposed to do what he always can do is shown in the experience of those four eminently successful students in Babylon. God helped them to win- now the chaff from the wheat. He unlocked doors for them and gave them clews. And the consequence was that when the king came to confer with them on difficult matters he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm. I should not wonder if Daniel and his friends were in the habit of asking for what they so liberally received. "To have prayed well is to have studied well," is not by any means a new maxim, and may, for aught I know, be as old as Daniel's times. All the friends made great progress in the Chaldsean learning. But there was one particular in which Daniel stood out preeminent from his fellows. He alone was divinely taught as to dreams and visions. We make small account of our modern dreams. We say that they come through the multitude of business, from ill-health, from what last impressed us in our waking mo- ments, and so on. We seldom expect that they will come true. Nevertheless, they do once in a while, sometimes in a very remarkable manner, so that a believer in God and his government does not like to say that, even now, dream sare not sometimes used as divine messengers to suggest and prepare for what is about to happen. And $$0 - LONG AGO. he thinks he sees reasons why this means of di- vine communication with man may have been more largely used in the Long Ago than it is now, just as he thinks he sees reasons why mir- acles of many kinds may have been more frequent then. Then the written Word did not exist, or existed only in part, so that it was more necessary that God should speak to man by other means. He having spoken by such means, and having, as it were, accumulated a great fund of supernatural marvels to which the faith of after ages can go back for justification and support, the need of continuing them is evidently less, and, for aught we can say, may cease altogether. As a matter of fact they have practically ceased. God changes his means and modes to suit chanq-ed circumstan- ces. He has his old dispensations and he has his new. He has made everything beautiful in its season. Divine dreams were seasonable things as late as the days of Daniel; and they are always seasonable when God sends their evidence along with them. Nebuchadnezzar had one of these self-eviden- cing divine dreams. In the morning he tried to recall it, but in vain. He knew that it was a wonderful thing, that it had profoundly moved him; and he was convinced that it had for him a personal significance which it was important for him to know. But, for the life of him, he could not summon back the vanished picture. In GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 35 1 this difficulty he had recourse to his cabinet of wise men. It was their business to solve all man- ner of hard questions that might come up in the palace, and especially such as related to the border line between the natural and the supernatural: for, in those times, people had not got so far as to question the existence of the supernatural. That sort of nonsense was reserved for times much later. "Tell us your dream, O king," said the conclave of hoary Magi gathered in the audience chamber, "tell us your dream, and we will then tell you what it means." "That I cannot do," answered the king, " the thing is quite gone from me; and now it occurs to me that for you to tell me the dream would be a good way of proving that you are able to interpret it. How should I know that your interpretation is a true one? If the gods can give you a sound interpretation of the dream they can give the dream itself. So tell me the dream." They confessed themselves unable. They declared that the demand was un- precedented and unreasonable. On this the king, unused to be thwarted, long flattered to think that even the impossible must be within his reach, fell into a rage, pronounced them a set of impostors, and decreed that the whole lot of them should be put to death at once. " Be in a hurry about it," he said to the captain of the guard. Now Daniel and his friends officially belonged to this body of the Magians, though not present 352 LONG AGO. at their session, probably on account of their youth. So the executioner came to Daniel. "Why is the decree so hasty?" said the young man. He sought audience of the king. Let time be given him to consult the God whom he served. The king, his first outburst of wrath having spent itself, consented. Then Daniel, who it seems believed in the special efficacy of united prayer, asked his friends to aid his prayers with their own. And their prayers were not so broad as to cover the whole universe; nor were they for the purpose of moral discipline; but they were for the specific thing just then needed, viz., the dream and its interpretation. An answer quickly came. Whereupon Daniel, unlike many of us who are always asking for favors and too often forgetting: to be thankful for them when they come, broke out into magnificent thanks- giving; for now many lives would be saved and God would be greatly honored. He hastened to the king. He told him that what the gods of the other Marians could not do the God of Israel had done; that the lost dream was of a great statue with head of gold and other parts of various met- als and earths; that this statue was smitten and broken in pieces by a stone cut out by invisible means from a mountain. He explained that this image meant a succession of kingdoms of which Nebuchadnezzar's was the most brilliant; but all would be replaced by a mightier and everlasting GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 2)53 kingdom which the true God would set up. In his explanations Daniel was careful to make much of the God of Israel, little of himself, and just nothing of the gods of wood and stone. It was not his sagacity nor his learning nor his goodness that enabled him to penetrate the king's secret, so inscrutable to the national idols and their worshippers: the feat was due solely to the God of Israel, before whom all idols were a vanity. In a right manly way did the boy-proph- et do his part that day before that volcano of an autocrat who had come near sacrificing him and his whole class, and from whom another eruption at almost any moment would not be strange. Royal boy! So thought Nebuchadnezzar as he bowed low before the young prophet. He recog- nized his dream: the dream proved the interpre- tation. He showered srifts on Daniel. He made him chief of the Magi. He made him governor of the province of Babylon, and, at his request, set his three friends in posts of honor under him. Nebuchadnezzar was now well convinced that the God of Daniel was a great God; but he was not yet convinced that he was the only God. He remained an idolater. He probably thought that each nation should stick to its own idols. And he meant that his Babylonians should stick to theirs. What is this immense thing going up in the plain of Dura? They have set up a pedestal; on it, with timbers and metals, they have built a Long A^o. 03 354 LONG AGO. huge man-like figure, and now they have covered it with plates of gold. It is finished; and now it shines in the morning sun like the god of morn- ing. And now there must be a dedication festival. A dedication to what? Of course to the national god Bel. So come together, all ye peoples and nations and languages, and worship the god who has made you victorious over all lands ! And the people came in vast numbers. The monarch and his court came and sat in state. An immense orchestra, including all sorts of musical instru- ments, was on hand to add the inspiration of mu- sic to the splendor of the scene. Is everything ready ? Then let the herald stand forth and pro- claim that as soon as the music strikes up all the people, without exception, must fall down and worship the image on penalty of being cast into a fiery furnace; and yonder is the furnace blazing. There was a reasonable magistrate for you! There was liberty of conscience for you ! And there too was a fine specimen of unconditional submission as well as of Oriental despotism. Away burst the musical thunder across the plain, and down on their faces in worship fell all the millions. I say all; I should say all save three persons. These were Daniel's three Hebrew friends. Had Dan- iel himself been present there would no doubt have been four persons instead of three dragged up that day into the presence of the furious mon- arch. We who know Daniel are sure of that. GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 355 He was sick, or he was away in a distant prov- ince on affairs of state, or — in short, for some good reason he was not present to stand by the side of his friends as they stood bolt upright in grand protest against the universal idolatry that pros- trated itself around them. So they had to stand alone before the kino:. " Is this true that I have been told of you?" flashed from lip and eye of that tempest historically called Nebuchadnezzar. "True," said the men; "and be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, whatever the consequences." Then how the tempest raged ! All the winds of passion burst out in thunder. "Heap on the fuel, pour 011 naphtha, heat the furnace seven times hotter than it is, and be quick about it — do you hear? We will see if there is any god that can deliver out of my hand." And the soldiers hurried, and fuel was not spared and the flames crackled and roared and the crowds trembled and the eyes of the king blazed impatience like his own furnace. But the friends looked calmly on. What, have they con- sidered how hot that furnace is getting to be and how small a matter it is just to bend their knees a little for a moment, and then they can make as much mental reservation as they please? Oh, yes, they have done all the considering they care for — did it long ago; the matter is SETTLED; you see it in every composed feature. "May it please your majesty, the furnace is 3^6 LONG AGO. ready." "Then bind them hand and foot and cast them in — well within." The flames were so fierce that the men who executed the pressing order perished with the heat. Down amid that gehenna sank the holocaust sacrifice to Bel, and for a few moments disappeared from view. In such a crematory as that they should have turned to ash and smoke in a few seconds. Instead of that, lo, as the fiery sheet ever and anon wavered and lifted, the three saints were seen walking leisurely in the fiery bath in company with One whose glorious aspect proclaimed him superhu- man. The amazed monarch passed at once from the extreme of rage to the extreme of awe. Here was something never seen before. His e»" GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 361 lie was all pride and self-will. He fell on his knees and thanked the Most High for his restored reason, for the juster views and feelings that had come to him, for his sanctified afflictions. And, by the time he had gotten his lesson by heart, his nobles sought him and welcomed him back to his palace and kingdom. The tree-stump began to sprout and grow again vigorously. God finally gave him greater majesty and honor than ever. And Nebuchadnezzar, frank, magnanimous, "soundly converted" man as we may hope he was, wanted to tell the whole story of his folly, his humiliation, and his forgiveness to all his sub- jects — for the honor of the God of Daniel and as a salutary lesson to all men. So he wrote an en- cyclical — one of the sublimest things in all liter- ature — and recounted the facts, humbled himself and exalted God, and sent forth the proclamation not merely to his own people, but to all future generations. This famous state-paper, which took no counsel of the notion that magistrates and state-papers as such should not recognize God and religion at all, closes in these words: "Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose words are truth and his ways judgment; and those that walk in pride he is able to abase." I greatly admire that proclamation. It is by far the noblest and most enduring monument that the much-building Nebuchadnezzar ever con- 3$2 LONG AGO. structed. His hanging garden, his palaces, his temples long since passed away. But this work of his will last as long as the world. The justness and greatness of its thoughts; the picturesqueness, splendor, and majesty of its expression; the com- bination in it of the historian, logician, orator, poet, and monarch, is something wonderful. But it contains something still better. What lofty faith in God it displays; what earnest desire to have Him known, revered, and served as widely as possible; what utter frankness, profound hu- mility, honest confession, manly outspokenness, and energy of religious conviction ! Would there were more such state-papers ! It greatly honored the God of Daniel — a thing it was meant to do. It also greatly honored Nebuchadnezzar — a thing it was not meant to do. Friends! you have read that proclamation many times; read it again, and see how natural it is for a thoroughly honest and downright reformation to proclaim itself and throw all its influence on the right side. During the more than forty years of Nebu- chadnezzar's reign Daniel seems to have contin- ued in his great post; not by such means as courtiers sometimes use to obtain and retain great offices — flattery, subserviency, unscrupulous man- agement — but by solid merit. He was worth far more than his weight in gold. Probably not an- other man so honest, so capable, so gifted with the faculty of succeeding in whatever he under- GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 363 took, could have been found in all the great Bab- ylonian Empire. The king knew when he was well off. He was himself too much of a man not to know a man — a great, well-rounded man — when he once fairly had eye on him. So he kept Daniel at his right hand during all his long reign, and until Daniel the youth had become Daniel the aged. Then came the days of the decline and fall. Other less able and less favorably known kings succeeded to a short-lived authority; so that in a short time the great and overshadowing monarchy which Nebuchadnezzar bequeathed had waned and narrowed far towards ruin. Subject kings re- volted, outskirting provinces and countries one after another fell off, on the east the hardy and warlike Medes and Persians became troublesome and menacing. Under these circumstances it was that Belshazzar, the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, came to the throne. He was a weak and wicked prince. The sage counsellors of the earlier reign, with the sager Daniel at their head, were no long- er in favor. Everything was falling to pieces. And soon the king saw the enemy at his gates. God had called Cyrus from the mountains of Me- dia; and now that great captain had massed his forces at Babylon, and his legions could be seen from the walls going and coining, setting up cat- apults and battering-rams, building and digging for unknown purposes as besiegers are wont to do. 37 5 that in every dominion of my kingdom men trem- ble and fear before the God of Daniel. He de- livereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath deliv- ered Daniel from the power of the lions." Ye neglecters of prayer, see the great value which Daniel the Wise attached to it ! Was he wise or otherwise in this? Was it enthusiasm and extravagance in him to hold on to his daily intercourse with heaven after such a determined fashion ? God did not think so. He was pleased with that prayerful obstinacy, and designed to honor it before heaven and earth when he sent his anorel to shut the lions' mouths. What a re- buke to such as never pray at all ! No lions threaten ; each has blessings to ask for and thank for, and at least as much time for prayer as Daniel had, and yet months and years pass without bow- ing the knee to God. Daniel would have pre- ferred a hundred deaths to such a life as this. If God was pleased with him, how displeased must he be with those who neglect prayer altogether when prayer involves no sacrifices whatever ! If the prophet could not afford to dispense with his devotions for thirty days, how can my neighbor afford to do it for thirty years? Another neigh- bor does not do as badly as this. He only allows small things to crowd out occasionallv his morn- ing or evening worship. The hurry of business, the call of a friend, the weariness of labor, sue- 3j6 LONG AGO. cessfully tempts him to omit the private or the family sacrifice. Ah, if for such hindrances he consents to restrain prayer before God, how plain is it that in Daniel's circumstances he would not have done as Daniel did. And every time he reads how that servant of God, in full view of the open-mouthed lions, as regularly as the set hours came, went and kneeled in worship three times a day as aforetime, must he not feel re- proved by the eloquent example, even as though Daniel's angel had come and shaken at him a re- proving finger, saying, "What I did fcr him I shall have no occasion to do for you." The ups and downs of Daniel's life ceased when he came out of the lions' den. Through the reign of Darius and into that of Cyrus who succeeded him the great Hebrew continued in his great trusts and honors. Through three reigns he discharged the functions of a states- man; during five reigns the greater functions of a prophet. By angels and by dreams and by visions he was taught what would be the fortunes of empires and what the fortunes of the church and what the times and fortunes of the Messiah. These revelations he was inspired to commit to writing for the benefit of future ages. His states- manship profited his own times ; his prophetic character has profited all the times since he passed away. And when he passed away it was from great to greater. On the earth he was always GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIKL. SJJ greater than his place ; above he found a place that fully matched his virtues and his powers. As Daniel approached the end of his long life he doubtless did as other aged people do — he be- came retrospective. And it must have afforded him exquisite pleasure to look back on such a career as we have tried to describe — on the good fight he had fought, on the most instructive and inspiring example in certain particulars which he had been able to leave to all coming time. I. Daniel, in his retrospect, had the satisfac- tion of seeing that he started out early on a prin- cipled and godly life. See the lad ! He is living in the palace of Babylon, surrounded by the worst temptations of heathenism. And how lives this Jewish prince — this child bred amid the snares of opulence and rank; this child bred amid a degenerate and back- sliding people, and now transferred by the for- tunes of war into as corrupt a court, perhaps, as the sun ever shone upon ? Does the boy consent to luxury and sloth ? Does he readily fall in, as most persons of his age would do, with the pre- vailing manners? Do good principles and the rules of his ancestral religion sit loosely upon him as he is fanned by the breezes and swept by the gales of temptation ? Far from it. He does not forget the instructions of pious parents or pious Levites. He scrupulously holds fast, with both hands, to the law of God in the smallest particu- 37^ LONG AGO. lars. The dainty portions from the king's own table, his spiced wines and delicate meats over which the names of idols have been invoked and which at best are enervating luxuries — what has a young expatriated Jew whose friends and coun- try are in their graves to do with these? So he puts aside the defiling dainties. Mere pulse shall suffice him. The simplest peasant fare, instead of royal banqueting, the boy chooses for con- science' sake. And this is merely the straw showing the direction and force of the current. Already, at this early age, he is master of him- self; his principles are settled; his face is set like a flint towards all noble, manly, conscientious ways. His life is well begun; and what can one expect but to see it progress well and end well? There is a peculiar charm in youthful princi- ple and conscientiousness. One thinks how much may be made of a life thus prosperously started. One thinks how many bitter experiences that self-restraining and sin-fearing youth is avoiding. One thinks into what sweet and glorious flower the red and scented bud will have time to open. One thinks how many treasures may be laid up in heaven by him who goes into the vineyard early in the morning. We feel that it is a fairer offering when the dew and freshness of youth are laid on the altar of religion than when the few days and decayed powers of old age are laid there. An old man must be found walking carefully GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 2)79 and religiously — for is he not on the very thresh- old of his account? His virtue hardly seems a free-will offering. It is a beautiful thing to look back, far beyond the times of Christ, and see that young Daniel, amid great temptations, starting rightly in life, planting himself firmly in good- ness, resolutely putting away from his fervent heart the evil and embracing the good; and so it is a beautiful thing to look just around us and see youthful character taking the right bent and set- tling itself solidly to a principled and religious life. Is it not so, fathers and mothers ? Is it not so, ye who wish well to the community, the coun- try, and the age? When have you seen a more attractive object than some nineteenth century edition of youthful Daniel ? 2. Daniel, in his retrospect, had the satisfac- tion of seeing that all his honors and prosperities had been worthily won and kept. His winning was great. He came to great honor, great power, great fame, and probably great riches. During his long life he seems never to have been long away from great and brilliant posts. These great distinctions were not gained by craft, by some tortuous policy, by time-serving and truckling to the weaknesses and passions of the powerful, by seeking first the kingdom of Satan and his unrighteousness. They were worthily won and nobly used. They ap- pear never to have been sought as chief end; in- 380 LONG AGO. deed it looks very much as if they were never sought at all. He qualified himself for great things, he followed the leadings of Providence, and his greatness came. And when as illustrious as a subject could be, when Mayor of the Palace, when ruling with power almost regal from Susi- ana to the Mediterranean, we know very well from the general tenor of the narrative how he carried himself in his greatness. Not arrogantly, not oppressively, not selfishly ; but humbly, justly, and benevolently. He made high and right and gloriously shining things his object. It was for these his renown sounded, his authority com- manded, and his opulence expended. Such a man as he could have cared little for worldly greatness save as the means of promoting these ends. The way in which Daniel dealt with worldly prosperity is that in which all must deal with it who would secure their own best advantage or even safety. Riches, honor, power, are too often thought valuable under almost any circumstances. They are generally pursued as ultimate and un- conditioned good; and so they pass among us freely under the fair names of prosperity and suc- cess, without reference to the fact, which every- body ought to bear in mind, that there is only one set of circumstances under which they can possibly deserve such names. They must be ob- tained in a certain way, and used in a certain way, GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 381 or they have no value whatever. They must be gained by worthy means: not by trampling on the rights of others, not by stooping to low and mean arts, not by pursuing them with the eager- ness suitable only to the "one thing needful." Offices gained by the tricks of the demagogue are not worth the having. Profits made by over- reaching are no profits. And he who sacrifices a single duty or a single charity for the sake of the meat that perisheth thereby turns the bread into stone, if not into poison. Let me bend all my energies to secure an honorable place among men, strive for it more than I do for righteousness and salvation, and, though I gain my object, I might as well not have gained it. I press all real value out of it by the manner in which I lay hold of it. And one may do the same thing by his way of using the object after it is well obtained. Be that object influence or property or place, he has not only to come into possession of it in a cer- tain worthy way, but he must also iise it in a cer- tain worthy way, else all that is really desirable in it will exude and escape. Use your money selfishly, and it will plague rather than profit yon. Exert the influence you have for the purpose of embarrassing good enterprises and hindering the gospel, and it will do far more to make you wretched than it will to make you happy. In a word, all sorts of worldly advantages, so called, must be used as Daniel used his, if we would not 3^2 LOXG AGO. have them prove to us so many disadvantages. They must be redeemed and sanctified by a prin- cipled and benevolent use. It is greatly worth our while to remember this ; for we are so apt to act as if gold is gold, come and go how it may; as if honor and weight amon^ men are things to be admired and desired, whether coining from above or beneath, whether doing God's work in the world or Satan's: than which nothing is more false. If a man is determined to better his condition, as the phrase is, by whatever means may seem most convenient, and, when bettered, to make the most of it for pampering his pride, his passions, his selfishness, in one form or an- other, it is very certain that his success will be an awful misnomer. A prosperity won and worn as was Daniel's is the only real prosperity. 3. Daniel, in his retrospect, had the satisfac- tion of seeing that throughout he had lived a life of principle instead of a life of policy and self- indulgence. With some — and they are the lowest of all in the moral scale — the perpetually recurring ques- tion by which all things are tested is, How will it affect my present comfort and gratification ? Any course requiring them to curb present desire and to endure present discomfort is almost sure of rejection. "Live to-day" is their short-sighted motto. But there is another class who clearly see how preposterous is such behavior and regu- GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 383 larly eschew it. They ask what will be for their interest — Meaning their worldly interest on the whole. If it will promote this to sacrifice the convenience or happiness of to-day, they are ready to make the sacrifice. Every course proposed to them may be expected to find its way to this touchstone of policy; and woe to the measure that cannot show for itself a good balance of per- sonal profit as the world counts profit. They are ready for self-denials and sacrifices, but they must have reason to believe that their endurances will net them something in the way of honor or prop- erty or other secular advantage that is worth more than they give for it. But, thanks to divine grace, there is yet another class of persons with whom the test question which they carry through life is not, Is it agreeable for the present? not, Is it politic and remunerative on the whole for this world? but, Is it right? What does conscience say about it? What the written law of God? Now it was to this last class evidently that Daniel belonged. Throughout, his life was one of prin- ciple, as opposed to a life of policy or self-indul- gence. He knew how to sacrifice not merely to- day for the sake of to-morrow, but both these, with calm and easy magnanimity, for the sake of glorious righteousness. His virtue was not of the elastic and calculating sort. It was not reck- ing with the arithmetic of profit and loss. In no case does there seem to be the least effort to effect 384 LONG AGO. a compromise between interest and duty. Not for a moment would he countenance the popular idolatry. Not for a moment would he abate one jot from the practice or profession of his true but despised faith. Is a haughty monarch to be re- proved and warned ? Daniel is the man to take his life in his hand and do it. Do royal edicts go forth forbidding what God has commanded? Daniel is the man to take stand at once by the side of the higher law and patiently accept all consequences. No trimmer of sails was he to catch the popular or royal breeze; you do not see his easy morals veering about to all points of the compass according to the caprice or wickedness of a heathen Court ; right onward he held his way, in sunshine and in storm, steering by the everlasting stars of princip!e which his raised eye never suffered to escape him ; keeping by his course though it lay in the teeth of the gale; keeping to his course though it was traversed by nearly his whole generation of time-servers sail- ing backward and forward, hither and thither, as the wind of convenience or pleasure chanced to blow. Most noble and admirable man! No doubt the courtiers of Babylon looked on thee with some such astonishment as the savage feels when for the first time he sees a great steamer moving steadily and powerfully along his waters without regard to wind or tide. What a magnificent ex- ample! How our better natures go out to meet GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 385 such a man and do him reverence! Does he need to be a prophet or a genius or a prime minister to command our respect ? We feel that in such a life as his there is something brighter than gold, more commanding than authority, more kingly than kings. Such a soul as that at death goes straight to God as a matter of course. Never tell me that it then ceases to be; I know better. And conscience whispers to each of us, Go thou and do likewise. Take to yourself the beauty and majesty of an unbending principle like that. Let duty be your magnanimous policy, unfaltering right- eousness your self-indulgence. Let come what will, keep on the path of rectitude; and when pleasure, all robed and garlanded like spring, stands at some turning and points down her gay by-path and says in soft accents, "That is pleas- ant," then answer you bravely while your step hesitates not for a moment, "But this is right!" Let come what will, keep to the path of recti- tude; and when policy, sharp-eyed and plausible, stands at some turning and points you down her crooked lane to where men seem borne aloft on human shoulders or drawn in cars triumphal by human steeds or washing out yellow sands, say- ing with urgent voice, "That is profitable," then make you answer as sturdily as some Daniel, while your step lingers not, "But this is right!" Here is manliness for you. Here is glory for you; here music grander and sweeter than ever rose to Lon? Ago, 25 386 LONG AGO. heaven through cathedral domes. Oh, here is likeness to God as well as to Daniel, and a shining promise that where they arc you shall be also. God grant us many such politicians! 4. Daniel, in his retrospect, had the satisfaction of seeing that he had given a brilliant example of the consistency of a very religious life with a very . busy one — secularly busy. Sometimes men pressed with worldly cares and labors feel as if it were quite impossible for them to attain any high Christian standing till they have attained more leisure. They must have more time for direct personal culture than they can now command. These cares and tasks of the daily calling, filling up so much of life, are a heavy drag on religious progress, and they hope some day to get beyond the necessity of spending so much time and thought on matters of this world. Then they will be better Christians; then their piety shall shine with a brighter ray. If these men are right, if great business and great piety are incompatible with one another, and to live near to God they must live far from the din and whirl of exacting secular affairs, then they may not wait a few years till it is convenient to disengage themselves from their unhappy circumstances. They should do it at once. If poor, they should remain poor; if ignorant and despised, let them remain ignorant and despised; but let that soul- damaging business be abridged, and, if necessary, GLORIOUS POLITICS — DANIEL. 387 extinguished, without delay. One thing is plain: that our religion is to be taken care of at what- ever expense. But it is not true that the highest grades of piety cannot be gained and maintained under a heavy pressure of secular affairs. Witness the experience of Daniel. The successful student of the Chaldaean learning, the preeminent states- man holding the most prominent and responsible post in the Babylonian Empire — what drafts on his time and strength and thoughts he must have had! And yet he managed to be a saint of heroic stature all his days. Despite the fulness of his hands, he found time to pray three times a day. Who will pretend that he cannot do as much ? Despite his many engagements, he found time, no doubt, for daily reflection and reading of the Scrip- tures, also for keeping holy the Sabbath. Who of us is so busy that he cannot do as much ? And the prophet no doubt early discovered that it was possible to make all his worldly business a reli- gious discipline, by carefully seeing to it that each item as it came up was tested by the divine law and made to square accurately with its re- quirements, and so actually made his multitudi- nous business a multitudinous means of grace. And who of us will pretend that he cannot in the same way change base metals into toM ? The fact is, life was meant to be busy — busy in all honorable and useful ways, busy in sowing and reaping, busy in buying and selling, busy in a 388 ' LONG ACxO. hundred various pursuits that minister to the needs and comforts of human life. No one has a right to throw into the gulf of nothingness any part of his golden youth, his strong manhood, or his experienced age. Every man should have his hands full of work — full as Daniel's were, though not of the same sort. Only he is bound to see that conscience and religion preside over all he does. Only he is bound to see that his every work recognizes the authority of God above and the needs of man below, and that the avails of it, whether in the form of knowledge or influence or property, are held and used as trusts of the Great Proprietor. OTHER BOOKS BY THE. SAME. AUTHOR, Ecce Coelum. i2mo. 198 pp. $1. From the late Dr. Horace Bushnell. 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