Chapter XXX (9)

Sometimes I have most clearly seen the whole tragedy of Job in a waking dream, the whole passing before me in twilight shadows, losing itself in thick darkness, reappearing in light like the dawn--always changing, always solemn, always instructive; a thing that surely happened, because a thing now happening in all the substance of its eternal meaning.

Is it a pillar grand in height, and finished all over with the dainty care of an artist whose life has been spent in learning and applying the art of color?

How stately! How Heaven seeking because Heaven worthy! While I admire, I wonder religiously.

I see the hosts of darkness gathering around the erstwhile flashing capital, and resting over it like midnight sevenfold in blackness; then the lightning gleams from the center of the gloom, then the fire-bolt flies forth and smites the coronal once so glorious, and dashes it in hot dust to the Earth, and the tall stalk--so upright, so delicate, so like a well-trained life--reels, totters and falls in an infinite crash!

Is it true?

Every word of it. True now--may be true in thee and me, O man, so assured of stability and immovableness. There is danger in high places. Is there a Spirit which hates all noble-mindedness and seeks to level the spiritual pile with mean things? Evil Spirit! The very Devil--hating all goodness because hating God!

But stop.

After all, who smote the pillar? Whose lightning was used to overthrow the fair masonry?

O God of gods, the devil’s Creator and Master, without whom Satan could not be, nor hell, nor trees forbidden, nor blast of death--O Mystery of Being--what can our souls say in their groaning? And how, through anguish so intolerable, can they pray?

I am afraid to build, because the higher the tower the more deadly the fall. Dost Thou watch our rising towers and delight to rain Thy fires on them, lest our pride should abound and our damnation be aggravated by our vanity?

And God’s own Book it is that tells the good man’s pains, and that revels in swelling rhetoric over the rottenness and despair of the man who feared God and eschewed evil! And what unguided hands--if hands unguided--set the tale of wrong and woe and sorrow next to the very Psalter? Is not the irony immoral, because cruel? Or is there meaning in all this?

Is it Life’s story down to the very letter and jot of reality? How better to come out of the valley than to the harping and song of musicians who have known the way of the Almighty and tasted the counsels of Heaven?

Cheer thee, O poor soul! Thou art today miserable as Job, but tomorrow thou mayest dance to the music of David. Tomorrow thou mayest have a harp of thine own.

A tree of the Lord’s right hand planting arises loftily and broadly in the warm air. Birds twitter and sing as they flit through its warp and woof of light and shade. It is a tree whose leaves might heal the nations.

What sudden wind makes it writhe? What Spirit torments every branch and leaf? What Demon yells in triumph as the firm trunk splits and falls in twain? Was it grown for such a fate as this?

Better if the seed had been crushed and thrown into the fire than that it should have been thus reared and perfected and then put to shame among the trees of the field.

Who can give speech to this flood as it plunges from rock to rock in the black night time? Hush! There is a man’s voice in the infinite storm: “Let the day perish in which I was born! Let it be darkness; let that night be joyless, let no song enter into it; let them who curse the day stigmatize it who are ready to stir up the leviathan. Why died I not from the womb? Then had I lain down and been quiet; I had slept; … there the wicked cease from troubling, and there the wearied mighty rest; the prisoners sweetly repose together, they hear not the voice of the exactor, and the slave is free from his lord.”

These are human words, but are they not too strong, too rhetorical, to be true?

No! For who can mechanize the rhetoric of woe?

“Why is life given to the miserable, and to one who would be blithe to find a grave? I have no quiet, no repose, for trouble on trouble came, and my sighs gush out like waters long dammed back.”

No doubt the rhetoric is lofty, yet with a strange familiarity it touches with happy expressiveness all that is most vivid in our remembrance of woe.

“I loathe my life. I will give loose to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. To God I will say: ‘Condemn me not. Show me why Thou contendest with me. As the clay Thou hast fashioned me, and to dust Thou causest me to return. Thou hast poured me as milk and compacted me as cheese. As a fierce lion Thou huntest me; then Thou turnest again and showest Thyself marvelous.’”

Job has found fit words for all mourning souls. So they borrow of him when their own words fail like a stream which the Sun has dried up. What woe the poor little heart can feel! Herein is its greatness. It is, in its own way, as the heart of God.

“Truly, now, He hath worn me out. Thou hast made all my household desolate, and Thou hast shriveled me up. God giveth me up to the ungodly, and flingeth me over into the hands of the wicked. He seized me by the throat and shook me. He breacheth me with breach on breach. He rusheth on me like a man of war.”

In what good man’s sick chamber is not Job welcome? Welcome because he can utter the whole gamut of human woe. He can find words for the heart that is ill at ease, and prayers for lips which have been chilled and silenced by unbelief. His woe belongs to the whole world. All other woe is as the dripping of an icicle compared with the rush of stormy waters.

In the case of Job the internal is proved to be greater than the external. When the trials came one after another like shocks of thunder, “in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”

But did he speak? That is the point. If he did not, perhaps he was dazed. He felt a tremendous blow on the forehead, and he reeled, and was not in a condition to bear witness about the matter. If he said any thing, let us know what he did say. Could he speak in that tremendous crisis?

Yes, he spoke. His words are before us. Like a wise man, he went back to first principles. He said:

“Circumstances are nothing; they are temporary arrangements. The man is not what he has, but what he is. I do not hold my life in my hands, saying ‘It weighs so much,’ and count up to a high number.”

Job went back to first principles--back to elementary truths. He said:

“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither [that is, as I began]. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away [as He had a right to do; I had nothing of my own]. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Could Job look over the ages that have been healed and comforted by his example--stimulated to bear the ills of this life by the grateful memory of his invincible patience--surely, even now, in Heaven, he would be taking the reward of his long-continued and noble endurance of the divine visitation.

It may be so with you, poor man or woman. You do not get all the sweet now. This shall be a memory to you in Heaven, long ages hence. The wrestling you have now may minister to you high delight, keen enjoyment and rapture pure and abiding. Who can tell when God’s rewards end? Who will venture to say: “This is the measure of His benediction?”

God is able to give and to do abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. Should any one inquire of you as to your compensation, say: “It is given by instalments--today and tomorrow, in death; in the resurrection, all through the ages of eternity. Ask me thousands of ages hence, and I will reply to your question concerning compensation.”

Life is not limited by the cradle and the tomb, and it is not between these two mean and near points that great questions are to be discussed or determined.

Job has been read by countless readers. His was, of course, a public trial--a tragedy that was wrought out for the benefit of multitudes in all generations. Nevertheless, it is literally and pathetically true that every man, even the most obscure, has his readers--fewer in number, it may be, but equally earnest in attention.

Think you that your children are not taking notice of you--seeing how you bear your temptations, difficulties and anxieties?

Think you not that your eldest boy is kept away from the table of the Lord because you are as atheistic in sorrow as ever Voltaire was?

Do you know that your daughter hates the church because her pious father is only pious in the three Summer months of the year? He curls under the cold and biting wind as much as any Atheist ever did. Therefore, the girl says: “He is a sham and a hypocrite--my father in the flesh, but no relative of mine in the spirit.”

You have your readers. The little Bible of your life is read in your kitchen, in your parlor, in your shop and in your warehouse; and if you do not bear your trials, anxieties and difficulties with a Christian chivalry and heroism, what is there but mockery on Earth and gloating in hell?

May God give us grace to bear chastisement nobly and serenely; bless us with the peace which passeth understanding--with the quietness kindred to the calm of God; help us when death is in the house, when poverty is on the hearth-stone.

When there is a storm blinding the only poor little window we have, let us say: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. If I perish I will pray, and perish only here.” That is Christianity--not some clever chatter and able controversy about metaphysical points; but noble temper, high behavior, faultless constancy and an invincible fortitude in the hour of trial and in the agony of pain.

MICAIAH.

Micaiah was the son of Imlah, a prophet of Samaria, who, in the last year of the reign of Ahab, king of Israel, predicted his defeat and death, B. C. 897. This was three years after the great battle with Ben-hadad, king of Syria, in which the extraordinary number of 100,000 Syrian soldiers is said to have been slain, without reckoning the 27,000 who, it is asserted, were killed by the falling of the wall at Aphek.

Ahab had proposed to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, that they should jointly go up to battle against Ramoth-gilead, which Ben-hadad was bound by treaty to restore to Ahab.

Jehoshaphat assented in cordial words to the proposal, but he suggested that they should first “inquire at the word of Jehovah.” Accordingly, Ahab assembled four hundred prophets, while in an open space at the gate of the city of Samaria he and Jehoshaphat sat in royal robes to meet and consult them.

The prophets gave a unanimously favorable response. Among them was Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah. He made horns of iron as a symbol, and announced, as from Jehovah, that with those horns Ahab would push the Syrians till he consumed them. For some reason which is unexplained, and can now only be conjectured, King Jehoshaphat was dissatisfied with the answer, and asked if there was no other prophet of Jehovah at Samaria.

Ahab replied that there was yet one--Micaiah, the son of Imlah; but in words which obviously call to mind a passage in the “Iliad” (i. 106), he added: “I hate him, for he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.”

Nevertheless, Micaiah was sent for; and after a vain attempt had been made to tamper with him, he first expressed an ironical concurrence with the four hundred prophets, and then boldly foretold the defeat of Ahab’s army and the death of Ahab.

In contradiction of the false four hundred, Micaiah said he had seen Jehovah sitting on His throne, and all the host of Heaven standing by Him--on His right hand and on His left. He said Jehovah asked: “Who shall persuade Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?” A Spirit came forth and volunteered to do so. On being asked “Wherewithal?” the Spirit answered that he would go forth and be a lying Spirit in the mouth of all the prophets.

Irritated by the account of this vision, Zedekiah struck Micaiah on the cheek.

Then Ahab ordered that Micaiah be taken to prison, and be fed on bread and water till his return to Samaria. But Ahab was killed, and Micaiah’s fate is unknown.

This incident is found in both the first Book of Kings and in the second Book of Chronicles.

MOSES.

Moses loses nothing by diffuseness. Even in days that were made long by intolerable monotony--in which men lived centuries because of weariness--Moses did not shrink from a condensation unparalleled in human literature.

Considered as embracing the history of one month only, the third Book of Moses may claim to be the most remarkable book in the Old Testament. Containing twenty-seven chapters, ranging its contents under sixteen different categories, and requiring to be actively represented within the space of twenty-eight days--it may, in its own degree, claim an energy not inferior to the Book of Genesis.

The same fearlessness of treatment is distinctive of both books. The reverent audacity which represented creation as the work of six days--whatever the measure of a day may be--did not shrink from focalizing into one month the whole discipline of life.

Moses’ words could hardly have been fewer if he had lived in our time of feverish haste and tumult. To put up the Heavens and the Earth in one chapter was a miracle in authorship. Yet, well pondered, it was the only thing to be done. Any poet could have built them in endless stanzas, and any philosopher could have begun the infinite story in a book too large for the world to hold.

Moses chose the more excellent way, creating creation with a swiftness that has dazed a literal criticism ever since--literal criticism that has but one season in its dreary year, a year that knows nothing of snow-blossom or wedded light and song. But this very haste was part of the man.

The Moses of Poetry required fifty-one days for the revolution of his “Iliad”; the Moses of Revelation only took a week for the settlement of the Heavens and the Earth, and in that week he found one whole day of rest for the Creator.

This action was entirely characteristic of Moses, for he was the most wrathful man as well as the meekest--killing, smiting, destroying and burning with anger, as well as praying like the father-priest of his people.

In a sense obvious enough he was the protoplastic Christ--for was not he who described himself as “meek and lowly in heart” the scourger of trespassers, and did he not burn the religious actors of his day?

Moses and Christ both did things with most startling rapidity. In their very soul they were akin. They were “straitened” until their work was “accomplished.” The Pentateuch and the Gospels have action enough in them to fill innumerable volumes, yet there is an infinite calm in both--the haste being in the temporary framework, the calm being in the eternal purpose.

Think of these twenty-seven chapters constituting the discipline of one month! The reflections started by this circumstance culminate in a sense of pain, for who can bear this grievous toil or endure this sting of accusation? There is no respite.

Egyptian burdens were for the body, but these wilderness exactions tormented the soul, and by so doing made Egyptian memories bright. The trial of muscle is nothing to the trial of patience. Men may sleep after labor, but an unquiet conscience keeps the eyes wide open. This discipline afflicted both the body and the soul, and thus drained the entire strength of the people.

This conscious toil must have been accompanied by unconscious inspiration--a reciprocal action impossible in theory but well understood in spiritual experience.

We resume our burdens in the very act of dreading them. We pray the next prayer in the very process of waiting for answers to a thousand prayers to which God has paid no known heed. Yesterday’s sacrifice has nothing to do with this day’s sin, except to remind us that today must provide its own sacrifice.

This was so with the Jews; this is precisely so with ourselves. Yet we boast our liberty, and suppose that in leaping one inch from the Earth we have broken the tether of gravitation.

As put before us in this manual called Leviticus, the discipline of the month seems to be more than we could endure; and this we say in ignorance of the fact that our own manual imposes a more severe discipline. Our pity for the Jews arises out of the apparently ineradicable sophism that spiritual service is easier than bodily exercise. A most deadly sophism is this, and prevalent yet, notwithstanding the rebuke and condemnation of universal history.

In no spiritual sense is Leviticus an obsolete book. Moses is not dead. The inventors of the alphabet have some rights even in “Paradise Lost,” and quite a large property in “Euclid.” It is not grateful on our part to forget the primers through which we passed to the encyclopedias, though their authors were but our intellectual nurses. In no mere dream was Moses present when Christ communed with Him concerning the Exodus that was to be accomplished at Jerusalem, and in no dramatic sense did Elijah watch the consummation of prophecy.

The wonder is that Christians should be so willing to regard the Pentateuch as obsolete. This is practically a foregone conclusion--to such an extent, certainly, that the Pentateuch is tolerated rather than studied for edification by the rank and file of Christians.

Without the Pentateuch, Christ as revealed in the Gospels would have been impossible; and without Christ the Pentateuch would have been impossible.

I venture upon this proposition because I find no great-event in the Pentateuch that is not for some purpose of argument or illustration used by Christ or by His disciples and apostles in the interests of what is known as evangelical truth.

It lies within easy proof that Christ is the text of the Old Testament and that the Old Testament is the text of Christ. What use is made in the New Testament of the creation of the universe, the faith of Abraham, the rain of manna, the lifting up of the serpent and the tabernacle of witness! The sublime apology of Stephen epitomizes the Old Testament, and the Epistle to the Hebrews could not have been written but for the ritual of Exodus and Leviticus. In its purely moral tone the Old Testament is of kindred quality with the New.

Take an instance from Leviticus. Three forms of evil are recognized in one of its most ardent chapters--namely, Violence, Deceit and Perjury. This is a succession amounting to a development, and, unwittingly it may or may not be, confirming that law of evolution which is as happily illustrated in morals as in physics.

Men begin with acts of violence, then go on to silent deceit and calculation, and close with a profanation of the holiest terms. The early sinners robbed gardens and killed brothers; the later sinners “agreed together” to “lie unto God.” It is something, therefore, to find in so ancient a book as Leviticus recognition of an order which is true to philosophy and to history.

But the proof that Moses and Christ are identical in moral tone is to be found in the process which offenders were commanded to adopt. By no sacerdotal jugglery was the foul blot to be removed; by no sigh of selfishness could the inward corruption be permitted to evaporate; by no investment of cheap tears could thieves compound for felony.

First, there must be restoration; second, there must be an addition of a fifth part of the whole; third, the priest must be faced as the very representative of God and a trespass offering be laid on the altar. After atonement forgiveness would come--a white angel from Heaven--and dwell in the reclaimed and sanctified heart. All the past would be driven away as a black cloud and all the present filled with a light above the brightness of the Sun.

What is this but an outline or forecast of what Christ said when He drove the hostile and vindictive man from the altar, bidding him first be reconciled with his brother and at peace with society? Christianity is not a substitute for morality; it is morality inspired, glorified and crowned. Say that the ritual was sanitary rather than doctrinal or theological. What then? All divine things are first sanitary, but not necessarily bounded by that term.

It will be found that the practice of genuine cleanness, chemical as well as mechanical, will be followed by a philosophy, and that the morality of cleanness will be followed by a theology.

Accustom a man to look out for bullocks and rams and lambs “without blemish,” and he will find that he can not stop at that point. He has begun an education which can only culminate in the prayer: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Yet no word of that holy thought was named in the original instructions.

Leviticus is the gospel of the Pentateuch--glistening with purity, turning law into music and spreading a banquet in the wilderness. But its ritual is dead. This is hard to believe--hard because religious vanity is fond of ritualism, which makes no demand on the conscience. Yet ritualism had a divinely appointed function in the education of the awakening mind, and was the only influence which could hold the attention of a people to whom freedom was a new experience.

Spectacular religion is alphabetic religion; therefore, to revert to it is to ignore every characteristic and impulse of manhood and progress. But they who say so be prepared to complete the philosophy which that contention initiates.

It is not enough to dismiss ritualism on the ground that it has been displaced by spiritual worship. Admit that such is the case, and other and broader admissions are involved in the plea, and can only be shirked at the expense of consistency.

It is generally admitted, for example, that the Old Testament law has been displaced by a New Testament principle. So Ritualism and Law, in their ancient forms, have passed away. But let us be careful. When we say Ritualism and Law, we mean in reality the letter, and it is evident that if any one letter can be displaced every other letter may be outlived and completed. And what is “the letter” but a symbol of flesh--visibleness, objectivity, historic fact and bulk?

Apostle Paul went so far as to say that even Christ was no longer known “after the flesh”--yea, though He had been known after the flesh, that kind of knowledge was for ever done away, and another knowledge had permanently taken its place.

The Church has never adopted the whole meaning of that teaching. Willing enough to consign Leviticus to the shades, the Church still clings to some sort of bodily Christ--the figure of a man--a bulk to be at least imaginatively touched. This is easily accounted for without suggesting superstition, and yet it might be done away with without imperiling faith. We are held in bondage by a mistaken conception of personality. When we think of that term we think of ourselves.

But even admitting the necessity of this, we may by a correct definition of personality acquire a higher conception of our own being. Instead of saying personality is this or that, after the manner of a geometrical figure, binding it to four points and otherwise limiting it, say that personality is the unit of being, and instantly every conception is enlarged and illuminated--the meaning being that personality is the starting point of conscious existence; not the fullness, but the outline; not the maximum, but the minimum; the very smallest conception which the mind can lay hold of--the Euclidic point, to be carried on into ratios and dimensions which originate a new vocabulary.

We do not, then, define “God” when we describe Him as a “Person,” but we merely begin to define Him; in other words, we say that God can not be less than a Person. What more He is, we must gradually and adoringly discover.

So far as Christ is concerned, there is one enlargement of His personality which no school of thinkers will dispute. This is rhetorically expressed by M. Renan, when he says of Jesus:

“A thousand times more living, a thousand times more loved, since Thy death than during the days of Thy pilgrimage here below, Thou wilt become to such a degree the Corner-Stone of humanity that to tear Thy name from this world would be to shake it to its foundations.”

If ritualism has been displaced by spirituality, and if law has been suspended by a principle--in other words, if the local has made way for the universal--why shrink from the admission that limited Personality has been exchanged for unlimited Influence?

How would Moses regard nineteenth century worship--say, of a Low Church and Evangelical type, as the true evolution of Leviticus? Where is the resemblance? The eye that can see the similitude is surely looking through an adapted medium. Yet the mystery would be dissolved if the Book of Leviticus were not open to reference.

The man is the completion of the child, but the child is no longer in existence.

The fruit is the fulfillment of the blossom, but the blossom is no longer available for comparison and for contrast.

Christianity is the consummation of Leviticus, but Leviticus remains--unlike the child and the blossom--and offers a series of dissonances or dissimilarities of the most positive quality.

Yet if Moses were living now he would be unchurched if he refused to identify the meaning of Leviticus in the service of the Christian sanctuary--the Papist nearest in gorgeousness, the Protestant claiming to be nearest in doctrine.

The Nonconformist Moses, in the absence of inspiration, would in this matter be the arch-heretic of the century.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

The moral character of Nebuchadnezzar is not such as entitles him to our approval. Besides the overweening pride which brought on him such terrible chastisement, we note a violence and fury common enough in Oriental monarchs of the weaker kind, but from which the greatest of them have usually been free; while at the same time we observe a cold and relentless cruelty that is particularly revolting. The blinding of Zedekiah may possibly be justified as an ordinary Eastern practice, though it is the earliest case of the kind on record; but the refinement of cruelty by which he was made to witness his sons’ execution before his eyes were put out was more worthy of a Dionysius or a Domitian than of a really great king.

Again, the detention of Jehoiachin in prison thirty-six years for an offence committed at the age of eighteen is a severity surpassing Oriental harshness.

Against these grave faults we have nothing to set, unless it be a feeble trait of magnanimity in the pardon of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego--when he found that he was without power to punish them.

It has been thought remarkable that to a man of this character God should have vouchsafed a revelation of the future by means of visions. But the circumstance, however it may disturb our preconceived notions, is not really at variance with the general laws of God’s providence, as revealed to us in Scripture.

As with His natural gifts, so with His supernatural gifts--they are not confined to the worthy. Even under Christianity, miraculous powers were sometimes possessed by those who made an ill use of them. And God, it is plain, did not leave the old heathen world without some supernatural aid, but made His presence felt from time to time in visions, through prophets, or even by a voice from Heaven.

It is only necessary to refer to the histories of Pharaoh, Abimelech, Job and Balaam in order to establish the parity of Nebuchadnezzar’s visions with other facts recorded in the Bible. He was warned, and the nations over which he ruled were warned through him, God leaving not Himself “without witness” even in those dark times.

Abydenus, a heathen writer who generally drew his inspiration from Berosus, ascribes to Nebuchadnezzar a miraculous speech just before his death, announcing to the Babylonians the speedy coming of “a Persian mule,” who, with the aid of the Medes, would enslave Babylon.

QUEEN OF SHEBA.

The Queen of Sheba is a model to all inquirers. It was not enough for her to have heard of the fame of Solomon and to have admired him at a distance as a unique genius. Her admiration excited her interest and suspicion, and, being a woman of penetrating mind, she desired to put riddles and enigmas whereby she could test the proverbial wisdom of Solomon.

When she arrived at his court she did not put flippant questions to King Solomon. She rather sought out the most difficult inquiries which she could possibly make.

It is recorded that Solomon told the queen all her questions, and there was nothing hid from Solomon which he told her not. She was astounded by what she heard and what she saw. She declared that the half had not been told her.

The visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, though not strictly commercial, arose out of commercial intercourse. The territory of Sheba, according to Strabo, reached so far north as to meet that of the Nabathæans, although its proper seat was at the southernmost angle of Arabia.

The very rich presents made by the queen show the extreme value of her commerce with the Hebrew monarch. This early interchange of hospitality derives a peculiar interest from the fact that in much later ages--those of the Maccabees and downward--the intercourse of the Jews with Sheba became so intimate and their influence and power so great. Jewish circumcision took root there, and princes held sway there who were called Jewish.

The language of Sheba is believed to have been very different from the literate Arabic; yet, like the Ethiopic, it belonged to the great Syro-Arabian family, and was not alien to the Hebrew in the same sense that the Egyptian language was.

The great ease with which the pure monotheism of the Maccabees spread itself in Sheba gives plausibility to the opinion that even at the time of Solomon the people of Sheba had much religious superiority over the Arabs and Syrians in general. If so, it becomes clear how the curiosity of the southern queen would be worked on by seeing the riches of the distant monarch, whose purer creed must have been carried everywhere with them by his sailors and servants.

REHOBOAM.

“So Jeroboam and all Israel came and spake to Rehoboam, saying: ‘Thy father made our yoke grievous. Now, therefore, ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude of thy father, and his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee.’”

A cause so stated must succeed. There will be difficulty, but the end is assured.

The reasonable always triumphs, due time being given for the elucidation of its purposes and the manifestation of its real spirit. Violence can have but a short day; the tempest cries itself to rest.

The speech of this man was a speech strong in reason. “Ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude of thy father, and his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee.” They wanted ease for service--for loyalty. Where there is no ease how can there be homage, thankfulness, devotion or any of the high qualities of patriotism?

Men who are not disquieted are prone to tell others to bear their burdens uncomplainingly. We ought to hear what they have to say who feel the iron. Our inquiry should be: “How does it suit you? What is the effect of the piercing iron on the soul? How does manhood bear the heel of oppression?”

The sufferers should sometimes be admitted to the witness-box.

There is a danger lest our personal comfortableness should disqualify us for judging the case of down-trodden men.

Wherever there is weakness the Christian Church should be found. Wherever there is reasonableness the Christian sanctuary should offer hospitality. The Christian sanctuary ceases to be the Tabernacle of God among men when it shuts its door on the cries of reason, the petitions of weakness, the humble requests of those who ask for nothing exaggerated, but simply ask to have their misery mitigated somewhat, that their loyalty may be of a larger and better quality. The names are ancient, but the circumstances may be painfully modern.

It is the peculiarity of the Bible that it is always getting in our way. It has a word on every subject. Is there any thing more detestable than that a man who has his own way seven days a week, whose footsteps are marked by prosperity, whose very breathing is a commercial success, should stand up and tell men who are bleeding at every pore to be quiet and contented, and not create disturbance in the body politic?

If Jeroboam had come with a petition conceived in another tone it ought to have been rejected. It would have been irrational, violent and contemptuous; but the reasonableness of the request will insure its victory in the long run.

How easy it is to think of Rehoboam as the foolish son of a wise father! But are we not unjust to the son in so regarding him? Was Solomon the wise man he is often made out to be? The answer would be: “Yes--No.” There was no greater fool than Solomon; and he attained his supremacy in folly because there was no man so wise. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” “How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” If he had not been son of the morning some shallow pit might have held him; but, being son of the morning and detaching himself from the gravitation of God, the pit into which he falls is bottomless.

Pliny says no man can be always wise. That is true philosophically and experimentally; for all men have vulnerable heels, or are exposed to temptations to lightness of mind, amounting in some instances almost to frivolity. They are also the subjects of a most singular rebound, which makes them appear the more frivolous because when we last saw them they were absorbed in the solemnity of prayer.

Solomon was not wise in this matter of government. The history shows that the people were appealing, not against Rehoboam, who had yet had no opportunity of proving his quality as a king, but against his father. “Thy father made our yoke grievous.” We are prone to copy the defects of our ancestors and our idols rather than their excellences.

Folly has often more charms for us than wisdom. When Diogenes discoursed of philosophy his auditors turned away from him, but when he began to play frivolous music or to sing frivolous songs the crowds thronged about him, and he said: “Ye gods! How much more popular is folly than wisdom!” Even there he spoke as a philosopher.

Rehoboam made a cautious reply, and therein he began well. He said to the petitioners: “Come again unto me after three days.” This looked hopeful.

King Rehoboam utilized the interval by taking counsel with “the old men who had stood before Solomon, his father, while he yet lived, saying: ‘What counsel give ye me to return answer to this people?’ And they spake unto him, saying: ‘If thou be kind to this people and please them, and speak good words to them, they will be thy servants for ever.’”

Rich is the king whose old men talk in such a strain. They were patriots and philanthropists and philosophers; they were Christians before the time.

Marvelous is the power of kindness. They will do most in life who are most considerate. They may be charged with sentimentalism by those who do not understand the power of human feeling, but they will be given credit for philosophy by men who understand the genius of sympathy.

What a message would this have been to return to the complaining people! If, when the people returned after three days, Rehoboam had spoken so, the welkin would have rung with the resonant cheers of a delighted and thankful people. Kindness is not weakness.

But Rehoboam forsook the counsel which the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men who had been brought up with him and who stood before him. He asked them the same question he had asked the old men. Their answer was:

“Say unto them: ‘My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins. For, whereas my father put a heavy yoke upon you, I will put more to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.’”

Woe to the nation whose young men talked so! A young oppressor is an infant devil. Young men talking so will ruin any occasion.

Are there such things in history as retorts, reprisals, rebounds and consequences? Let it be known and laid down as the basic principle of all action--social, ecclesiastical and imperial--that there is no right of tyranny.

It might be supposed that the king had taken a most patriotic course in consulting the young and the old. He had done nothing of the kind. He had omitted to consult Him who had called his house to the royalty.

Rehoboam should have consulted the King Maker whose throne is on the circle of the Earth, whose scepter touches the horizon and whose will is the law of both monarchy and commonwealth.

The greater the man, the nearer should he stand to God; yea, he should be within whisper-reach of the Lord of lords, asking Him in every crisis of national history what Israel ought to do--what the country ought to answer--what is the will of Heaven.

Rehoboam answered the people roughly, and forsook the counsel of the old men. “So the king hearkened not unto the people.”

The Gospel never gives liberty to oppression. Employers may adopt this course if they please, but they will find it end in ruin. We must recognize the difference between employing cattle and employing men. A parent may adopt this course of Rehoboam, if he so chooses, but his children will chastise him and sting him with many a disappointment; or, if he does not live to see the wreck of their manhood, they will execrate his unfragrant memory.

Rehoboam will be punished; have no fear of that. “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” You can make your whips thongs of scorpions, but on your own back shall the lacerating lash be laid; you can play the fantastic trick before high Heaven and make the angels weep, but the bitterness shall be yours. The triumphing of such a policy is short, and the end is everlasting punishment.

SHISHAK.

Shishak was a king of Egypt contemporary with Jeroboam, to whom he gave an asylum when he fled from Solomon. This was indicative of his politic disposition to encourage the weakening of the neighboring kingdom, the growth of which under David and Solomon was probably regarded by the kings of Egypt with some alarm.

After Jeroboam had become king of Israel, and probably at his suggestion, Shishak invaded the kingdom of Judah (B. C. 971) at the head of an immense army, and after having taken the fortified places advanced against Jerusalem.

Satisfied with the submission of Rehoboam and with the immense spoils of the Temple, the king of Egypt withdrew without imposing any onerous conditions on the humbled grandson of David.

Shishak has been identified as the first king of the twenty-second or Diospolitan dynasty, the Sesonchis of profane history. His name has been found on the Egyptian monuments in the form of Sheshonk. He is said to have been of Ethiopian origin, and it is thought that, with the aid of the military caste, he dethroned the Pharaoh who gave his daughter to Solomon.

SOLOMON.

The first prominent scene in the reign of Solomon is one which presents his character in its noblest aspect. There were two holy places which divided the reverence of the people--the ark and its provisional tabernacle at Jerusalem and the original Tabernacle of the Congregation, which, after many wanderings, was then pitched at Gibeon.

It was thought right that the new king should offer solemn sacrifices at both.

After those at Gibeon there came that vision of the night which has in all ages borne its noble witness to the hearts of rulers.

Not for riches, long life or victory over enemies did the son of David--then, at least, true to his high calling, feeling himself as “a little child” in comparison with the vastness of his work--offer his supplications, but for a “wise and understanding heart,” that he might judge the people.

The “speech pleased the Lord.”

There came in answer the promise of a wisdom “like which there had been none before--like which there should be none after.” So far all was well. The prayer was a right and noble one. Yet there is also a contrast between it and the prayers of David which accounts for many other contrasts.

The desire of David’s heart is not chiefly for wisdom, but for holiness. He is conscious of an oppressing evil, and seeks to be delivered from it. He repents and falls, and repents again.

Solomon asks only for wisdom. He has a lofty ideal before him, and seeks to accomplish it, but he is as yet haunted by no deeper yearnings, and speaks as one who has no need of repentance.

Then began Solomon’s marvelous development as a builder and statesman.

He was not content to build the house of the Lord alone. This is a remarkable circumstance, as illustrating the spirit which is created and sustained by all truly religious exercises. It would have been ambition enough for any man religiously uninspired to have erected such an edifice as the Temple. Most men are contented to do one thing, and to rest their fame on its peculiar excellence.

Having completed the house of the Lord and his own house, Solomon began to build the cities which Huram had restored to him, and to cause the children of Israel to dwell there.

A religion that ends only in ceremony building is little better than a superstition. No man can be zealously affected in the interests of the Church without having his whole philanthropic spirit enlarged and ennobled, so that he may become a builder of cities as well as a builder of churches. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that he who builds a synagogue really helps to build the town in which it is located. A synagogue, temple or church is not to be looked on in its singularity, as if it were so many walls, with so many doors and so many windows. A church is a representative institution, through which should flow rivers that will fertilize all the districts of the city--rivers of knowledge, rivers of charity, rivers of brotherhood, rivers of co-operation--so that men should turn to the Church, assured that every rational and healthy expectation would be satisfied by its provisions.

Having completed for the time being the measure of building on which his mind was set, Solomon went forth to war.

It would seem as if, in ancient days, kings could not be satisfied to dwell at peace. Even Solomon, whose very name signifies peace, had in him the military spirit which was characteristic of his race and time; it was in him, indeed, as the word of the living God. Solomon did not go forth to war for the sake of war; he believed he was obeying a divinely implanted instinct, or carrying out to the letter some divinely written law.

Having passed through another military period, King Solomon began once more to build. He built Tadmor, and all the store cities; he built Beth-horon the Upper and Beth-horon the Lower, and fenced cities with walls, gates and bars.

A busy time it was in the reign of Solomon. But even all this building is not without its suggestion of a corresponding evil.

Why were the cities fenced? Why the gates? Why the bars? We have instances of the same kind in our own civilization--silent witnesses against the honesty of the society in which we live. Every bolt on the door is a moral accusation; every time we turn the lock we mean that there is an enemy outside who may endeavor to violate the sanctity of the house.

We sometimes forget the moral suggestiveness even of our commonest institutions and plans of procedure. Every precaution that is taken for our preservation implies the presence of hostile elements in the society that is round about us.

Solomon may be taken in this instance as representing the great doctrine that men should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and afterward attend to minor matters, or even leave those minor matters to the adjustment of providence.

Solomon is represented as first most anxious about the Temple, giving himself wholly to its erection, occupying his thoughts night and day, turning every thing to account in its relation to the Temple. Having finished that marvelous structure, he was prepared to descend to other levels and do the commoner work which lay to his hand.

Many persons leave the temple half finished. What wonder if they go out to the war and return wounded and disabled? Our religious purposes are broken off. What wonder if our political ends pierce us and sting us by way of retribution?

“But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no servants for his work; but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and captains of his chariots and horsemen.”

The statesmanship of Solomon is as distinctly proved by this arrangement as by any thing we have yet seen in his whole policy. Solomon knew that one man was not as good as another, however much democratic philosophy may have endeavored to prove the contrary. One man is a genius, but another man is a slave--an imitator, a hewer of wood; very serviceable, and in fact indispensable, but not adorned with the very highest excellence and dignity of mind.

Solomon made a distribution of classes, saying in effect that some men can do the drudgery, some men can dig and build, some can pull down and take away and make ready for the exertions of others; the higher class of men can think and direct, for they are inspired with the genius of administration, and are men of powerful mind, of fertile resources in government and in war. So Solomon made the best use of the material at his disposal--not getting great men to do small work or setting small men to fail in great work.

Adaptation is the secret of success. For want of knowing this, many men fail in life.

There are employers who are making themselves but little better than toilers, when they might by an expenditure of money apparently distinctly not economical very greatly assist the progress and solidity of their fortunes. A man may be industrious in a way which involves the absolute frittering and humiliation of his energies.

We are to be careful not only to be industrious, but industrious about the right things and in the right proportion. A man might slave himself to death cutting down wood or in throwing away stones, but if some other man of inferior mental faculty could be employed to do that work the superior man should turn his attention to other and nobler pursuits, and thus with smaller expenditure of strength he might be doing immeasurably greater good.

If the thinker is not to degrade himself to the level of a drudge, neither is the drudge to attempt to force his way to positions for which he is not qualified. Nothing is mean that is not meanly done.

The Canaanites might be as useful as the Israelites in their own way. With the eye of a statesman and with the inspiration of a genius, Solomon saw that he must distribute and classify men, and set each man to do that for which he was best fitted. Even Solomon could not do all the work alone.

“And Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he had built for her; for he said: ‘My wife shall not dwell in the house of David, king of Israel, because the places are holy whereunto the ark of the Lord hath come.’”

This may be taken as an instance of punctilious morality. We are not able to understand all that was involved in the incident. Evidently we are in the presence of conscience working under some eccentric law or suggestion. Yet here is a conscience, and by so much the action of Solomon is to be respected. He will not have any place or institution even ceremonially defiled. He will go back to precedents; he will consult the genius of history; he will preserve the consistency of the royal policy. Solomon felt that the ark of the Lord had sanctified every locality into which it had come, and that a broad distinction must always be maintained between heathenism and Judaism--between the idols of pagan lands and the Spirit of the living God.

In these matters Solomon’s wisdom was displayed as certainly as in the greater concerns of State and Church. We are to remember that at the beginning Solomon was endowed with the spirit of wisdom and of a sound mind. The Lord quickened his sagacity and gave him that marvelous insight which enabled him to penetrate into the interiors and cores which were hidden from the scrutiny of other men.

We are, therefore, to give Solomon credit for being at once wise and conscientious; we are to see in his action the working of a tender conscience. Even though he may be appeasing his conscience by some trick or ceremony, yet he is showing us the working of the moral nature within the kingly breast.

Yet there is a point to be noted here which is common to human experience. Why should Solomon have married the daughter of Pharaoh? Why should he, in the first instance, have placed himself in so vital a relation to heathenism? Are there not men who first plunge into great mistakes, and then seek to rectify their position by zealous care about comparatively trifling details? Do not men make money by base means, and then most zealously betake themselves to bookkeeping, as if they would not spend money except in approved directions?

There is nothing more misleading than a conscience that does not rest on a basis of reason. We are to beware of the creation of a false conscience, or a partial conscience, or a conscience that operates only in given directions, but which makes up for sins of a larger kind by ostentatious devotion at the altar of detail and ceremony and petty ritual.

“Then Solomon offered burnt offerings unto the Lord on the altar of the Lord, which he had built before the porch, even after a certain rate every day, offering according to the commandment of Moses--on the Sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts, three times in the year, even in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles.”

Solomon was great in burnt offerings. Do not men sometimes make up in burnt offerings what they lack in moral consistency? Is not an ostentatious religion the best proof of internal decay? It ought not to be so.

The hand and the heart should be one; the outward and the inward should correspond; the action should be the incarnation of the thought. We are not always to look on the ceremonial action of the Church as indicative of its real spirituality.

Solomon did not live to a very great age, since he was not more than twenty years old when he ascended the throne. Whether Solomon turned to the Lord again with all his heart--a question widely discussed by the older commentators--can not be ascertained from the Scriptures.