Part 13

The lessons of this subject are very spirited and impressive. This seemingly valueless lump of quartz has the pure gold in it. The smallest dewdrop on the meadow at night has a star sleeping in its bosom, and the most insignificant passage of Scripture has in it a shining truth. God’s mint coins no small change.

HEZEKIAH.

Luxurious living is not healthy. The second generation of kings and queens and of lords and princes is apt to be brainless and invalid.

The second crop of grass is almost always short.

Royal blood is generally scrofulous. You will not be surprised, then, to hear that King Hezekiah had disorders which broke out in a carbuncle, virulent and deathful. The Lord told him he must die.

But Hezekiah did not want to die. He turned his face to the wall, so that his prayer would not be interrupted, and cried to God for his life.

God heard the prayer and answered it, saying: “Behold, I will heal thee.” But there was human instrumentality to be employed.

This carbuncle needed a cataplasm. That is a tough word that we use to show how much we know. If in the pulpit we always used words the people understood, we never should have any reputation for learning.

Well, this carbuncle needed a cataplasm, which is a poultice. Your old mother, who doctored her own children in the time when physicians were not as plentiful as they are now, will tell you that the very best poultice is a fig, and that was what was used upon the carbuncle of King Hezekiah. The power of God, accompanied by this human instrumentality, cured the king.

In this age of discovery, when men know so much it kills them, and write so wisely it almost kills us, it has been found out that prayer to God is a dead failure. All things are arranged according to inexorable law.

Ah, my friends, have we been so mistaken? Does God hear and answer prayer, or does He not? Why come out with a challenge in this day, and an experiment, when we have here the very experiment?

Hezekiah was sick unto death; he prayed for his life; God heard him, and added fifteen years to that lifetime. The prayer saved him, the lump of figs applied being merely the God-appointed human instrumentality.

JEHOIAKIM.

We look in upon a room in Jerusalem. Two men are there.

At the table sits Baruch, the scribe, with a roll of parchment and an iron pen in his hand. The other man is walking the floor, as if strangely agitated.

There is an unearthly appearance about his countenance, and his whole frame quakes as if pressed upon by something unseen and supernal.

This is Jeremiah, in the spirit of prophecy. Being too much excited to write with his own hands the words that the Almighty pours upon his mind about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, he dictates to Baruch, the scribe. It is a seething, scalding, burning denunciation of Jehoiakim, the king, and a prophecy of approaching disasters.

Of course, King Jehoiakim hears of the occurrence, and he sends Jehudi to obtain the parchment and read its contents.

It is winter. Jehoiakim is sitting in his comfortable winter house, by a fire that glows upon the hearth and lights up the faces of the lords, princes and senators who have gathered to hear the reading of the strange document.

Silence is ordered. The royal circle bend forward to listen. Every eye is fixed.

Jehudi unrolls the book gleaming with the words of God, and as he reads Jehoiakim frowns; his eye kindles; his cheek burns; his foot comes down with thundering indignation.

King Jehoiakim snatches the book from Jehudi’s hand, feels for his knife, crumples up the book, and goes to work cutting it up with his penknife. Thus God’s book was permanently destroyed, and the king escaped.

Was it destroyed?

Did Jehoiakim escape?

In a little while King Jehoiakim’s dead body is hurled forth to blacken in the sun, and the only epitaph that he ever had was that which Jeremiah wrote:

“Buried with the burial of an ass.”

To restore the book which was destroyed, Baruch again takes his seat at the table, while Jeremiah walks the floor and again dictates the terrible prophecy.

It would take more penknives than cutler ever sharpened to hew into permanent destruction the Word of God. He who shoots at this eternal rock will feel the bullet rebound into his own torn and lacerated bosom.

When the Almighty goes forth armed with the thunderbolts of His power, I pity any Jehoiakim who attempts to fight Him with a penknife.

That Oriental scene has vanished, but it has often been repeated. There are thousands of Jehoiakims yet alive who cut the Word of God with their penknives.

King Jehoiakim showed as much indignity toward the scroll when he cut one way as when he cut the other. You might as well behead Moses as to behead Jonah. Yes, Sir, I shall take all of the Bible or none. Men laugh at us as if we were the most gullible people in the world for believing in the genuineness of the Scriptures; but there can be no doubt that the Bible, as we have it, is the same--no more, no less--as God wrote it.

As to the books of the New Testament, the great writers of the different centuries give complete catalogs of their contents. Polycarp, Ignatius and Clemens Romanus, in the first century, give a catalog of the New Testament books; Tertullian and Justin Martyr, in the second century; Cyprian and Origen, in the third century; Augustine, Jerome and Eusebius, in the fourth century. Their catalogs of the different books of the New Testament silence the suggestion that any new books could have been stealthily put in.

As to the books of the Old Testament, Christ sanctioned them by recommending them to the Jews. If any part of the Old Testament had been uninspired, Christ would have said: “Search the Scriptures--all except that Book of Jonah,” or “Search the Scriptures, except the Book of Esther.” When Christ commends to all the canon of the Old Testament Scriptures, He affirms its genuineness.

There never could have been any interpolations in the Bible, for the Jews were constantly watching, and there were men whose lifetime business it was to attend to the keeping of the Scriptures unadulterated.

JEHU.

Joram, wounded in battle, lies in a hospital at Jezreel. The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off and sees against the sky horsemen and chariots.

A messenger is sent out to find who is coming, but he does not return. Another messenger is sent, but with the same result.

The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off upon the advancing troop, and gets more and more excited, wondering who are coming. But long before the cavalcade comes up, the matter is decided.

The watchman can not descry the features of the fast approaching man, but he exclaims:

“I have found out who he is. The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”

By the flash of that one sentence we discover Jehu’s character. He came with such speed not merely because he had an errand to do, but because he was urged on by a headlong disposition, which had won him the name of a reckless driver, even among the watchmen. The chariot plunges until you almost expect the wheels to crash under it, or some of the princely party to be thrown out, or the horses to become utterly unmanageable. But he always goes so; and he becomes a type of that class of persons to be found in all communities, who in worldly and in religious affairs may be styled reckless drivers.

To this same class belong all those who conduct their worldly affairs in a headlong way, without any regard to prudence or righteousness. The minister of Christ does not do his whole duty who does not plainly and unmistakably bring the Gospel face to face with every style of business transaction. We have a right, in a Christian manner, to point out those who, year by year, are jeopardizing not only their welfare, but the interests of many others, by reckless driving.

As a hackman, having lost control of a flying span, is apt to crash into other vehicles, until the property and lives of a whole street are endangered, so a man driving his worldly calling with such loose reins that, after a while, it will not answer his voice or hand, puts in peril the commercial interests of scores or hundreds.

There are today in our midst many of our best citizens who have come down from affluence into straitened circumstances, because there was a partner in their firm, or a cashier in their bank, or an agent representing their house, or one of their largest creditors, who, like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, was a furious driver.

When I see in the community men with large incomes, but larger outgoes, rushing into wildest undertakings, their pockets filled with circulars about gold to be found in Canada and lead in Missouri and fortunes of all sorts everywhere, launching out in expenditures to be met with the thousands they expect to make, and with derision dashing across the path of sober men depending upon their industry and honor for success, I say: “Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”

When I see a young man, not content gradually to come to a competency, careless as to how often he goes upon credit, spending in one night’s carousal a month’s salary, taking the few hundred dollars given him for getting a start in the purchase of a regal wardrobe, lazy or ashamed to work, anxious only for display, regardless of his father’s counsel and the example of the thousands who, in a short while, have wrecked body, mind and soul in scheming or dissipation, I say: “Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”

When this world gets full power over a man, he might as well be dead. He is dead! When Sisera came into the house of Jael, she gave him something to drink, and got him asleep on the floor. Then she took a peg from the side of her tent, and with a mallet she drove the peg through the brain of Sisera into the floor. So the world feeds and flatters a man, and when it has him sound asleep it strikes his life out.

JESUS AT EMMAUS.

Two villagers, having concluded their errand in Jerusalem, have started out at the city gate, and are on their way to Emmaus, the place of their residence.

They go with a sad heart. Jesus, who had been their admiration and their joy, had been basely massacred and entombed.

As with sad face and broken heart they pass on their way, a stranger accosts them. They tell him their anxieties and bitterness of soul. He, in turn, talks to them, mightily expounding the Scriptures. He throws over them the fascination of intelligent conversation. They forget the time, and notice not the objects they pass, and, before they are aware, have come up in front of their house.

They pause before the entrance, and attempt to persuade the stranger to tarry with them. They press upon him their hospitalities. Night is coming on, and he may meet a prowling wild beast, or be obliged to lie unsheltered from the dew. He can not go much farther now. Why not stop there, and continue their pleasant conversation? They take him by the arm, and they insist on his coming in, addressing him in the words: “Abide with us; for it is toward evening.”

The candles are lighted. The tables are spread. Pleasant sociabilities are enkindled. They rejoice in the presence of the stranger guest. He asks a blessing upon the bread they eat, and he hands a piece of it to each.

Suddenly, and with overwhelming power, the thought flashes upon the astonished people: “He is the Lord!” And as they sat in breathless wonder, looking upon the resurrected body of Jesus, He vanished. The interview was ended. He was gone.

The journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus will soon be ended. Our Bible, our common sense and our observation reiterate this fact in tones that we can not mistake, and which we ought not to disregard.

JOB.

Job had it hard. What with boils and bereavements and bankruptcy, and a fool of a wife, he wished he was dead; and I do not blame him.

His flesh was gone, and his bones were dry. His teeth wasted away until nothing but the enamel seemed left. He cried out: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.”

There has been some difference of opinion about this passage. St. Jerome and Schultens and Doctors Good, Poole and Barnes have all tried their forceps on Job’s teeth. You deny my interpretation, and ask: “What did Job know about the enamel of the teeth?”

He knew every thing about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the Earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, Horace, Solomon and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body.

To other provoking complaints, I think Job had added an exasperating toothache, and, putting his hand against the inflamed face, he said: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.”

A very narrow escape, you say, for Job’s body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooth’s enamel; but, as Job finally escaped, so, thank God, have they.

Paul expresses the same idea by a different figure when he says that some people are “saved as by fire.”

A vessel at sea is in flames. You go to the stern of the vessel. The boats have shoved off. The flames advance; you can no longer endure the heat on your face. You slide down on the side of the vessel, and hold on with your fingers, until the forked tongue of the fire begins to lick the back of your hand, and you feel that you must fall, when one of the life-boats comes back, and the passengers say they think they have room for one more. The boat swings under you--you drop into it--you are saved.

So some men are pursued by temptation until they are partially consumed, but, after all, get off--“saved as by fire.”

But I like the figure of Job a little better than that of Paul. With God’s help, some men do make narrow escape for their souls, and are saved as “with the skin of their teeth.”

JONAH.

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh on an unpleasant errand. He would not go. He thought to get away from his duty by putting to sea.

With pack under his arm, I find him on his way to Joppa, a seaport. He goes down among the shipping, and says to the men lying around on the docks: “Which of these vessels sails today?”

A sailor answers: “Yonder is a vessel going to Tarshish. I think, if you hurry, you may get on board her.”

Jonah steps on board the rough craft, asks how much the fare is, and pays it. Anchor is weighed, sails are hoisted, and the rigging begins to rattle in the strong breeze of the Mediterranean.

Joppa is an exposed harbor, and it does not take long for a vessel to get out on the broad sea. The sailors like what they call a “spanking breeze,” and the plunge of the vessel from the crest of a tall wave is exhilarating to those who are at home on the deep.

But the strong breeze becomes a gale--the gale a hurricane. The affrighted passengers ask the captain if he ever saw any thing like this before. He answers:

“Oh, yes. This is nothing.”

Mariners are slow to admit danger to landsmen.

But, after a while, “crash!” goes the mast, and the vessel pitches so far “a-beam’s-end” that there is a fear she will not be righted. The captain answers few questions, but orders the throwing out of boxes and bundles and so much of the cargo as they can get at.

At last, the captain confesses there is but little hope, and he tells the passengers they had better begin praying. It is seldom that a sea captain is an Atheist. He knows there is a God, for he has seen Him at every point of latitude and longitude between Sandy Hook and Queenstown. Captain Moody, commanding the Cuba, of the Cunard line, at Sunday service led the music and sang like a Methodist.

The captain of this Mediterranean craft, having set the passengers to praying, goes around the vessel, examining it at every point. He descends into the cabin to see whether, in the strong wrestling of the waves, the vessel has sprung a leak, and he finds Jonah asleep.

Jonah had had a wearisome tramp, and had spent many sleepless nights about questions of duty, and he is so sound asleep that all the thunder of the storm and all the screaming of the passengers disturb him not.

The captain lays hold of him, and begins to shake him out of his unconsciousness with the cry: “Don’t you see that we are all going to the bottom? Wake up and go to praying, if you have any God to go to. What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God--if so be that God will think upon us--that we perish not.”

The remainder of the story I will not rehearse, for you know it well. To appease the sea, they threw Jonah overboard.

The devil takes a man’s money, and then sets him down in a poor landing place. The Bible says Jonah paid his fare to Tarshish. But see him get out. The sailors bring him to the side of the ship, lift him over “the guards,” and let him drop with a loud splash into the waves. He paid his fare all the way to Tarshish, but he did not get the worth of his money. Neither does any one who turns his back on his duty and does that which is not right.

The worst sinner on shipboard, considering the light he had, was Jonah. He was a member of the Church, while they were heathen. The sailors were engaged in their lawful calling--following the sea. The merchants on board, I suppose, were going down to Tarshish to barter. But Jonah, notwithstanding his Christian profession, was flying from duty. He was sound asleep in the cabin. Oh, how could the sinner sleep?

If Jonah had been told, one year before, that any heathen sea captain would ever waken him to a sense of danger, he would have scoffed at the idea; but here it is done. So now--men in strangest ways are aroused from spiritual stupor.

If, instead of sleeping, Jonah had been on his knees confessing his sins from the time when he went on board the craft, I think God would have saved him from being thrown overboard. But he woke up too late. The tempest is in full blast, the sea is lashing itself into convulsions, and nothing will stop it now but the overthrow of Jonah. So Jonah was cast overboard.

JOSEPH.

The Egyptian capital was the focus of the world’s wealth. In ships and barges, there had been brought to it: From India, frankincense, cinnamon, ivory and diamonds; from the North, marble and iron; from Syria, purple and silk; from Greece, some of the finest horses of the world and some of the most brilliant chariots; and from all the Earth, that which could best please the eye, charm the ear and gratify the taste.

There were temples aflame with red sandstone, entered by gateways that were guarded by pillars bewildering with hieroglyphics, wound with brazen serpents and adorned with winged creatures--their eyes, beaks and pinions glittering with precious stones.

There were marble columns blooming into white flower buds; there were stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in full bloom.

Along the avenues--lined with sphinx, fane and obelisk--there were princes who came in gorgeously upholstered palanquin, carried by servants in scarlet, or else were drawn by vehicles, the snow-white horses, golden-bitted and six abreast, dashing at full run.

There were fountains from stone-wreathed vases climbing the ladders of the light. You would hear a bolt shove, and a door of brass would open like a flash of the sun. The surrounding gardens were saturated with odors that mounted the terrace, dripped from the arbors and burned their incense in the Egyptian noon.

On the floors of mosaic the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in letters of porphyry, beryl and flame. There were ornaments twisted from the wood of the tamarisk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There were footstools made out of a single precious stone. There were beds fashioned out of a crouched lion in bronze. There were chairs spotted with the sleek hide of the leopard. There were sofas footed with the claws of wild beasts, and armed with the beaks of birds.

As you stand on the level beach of the sea on a Summer day, and look each way, there are miles of breakers, white with the ocean foam, dashing shoreward; so it seemed as if the sea of the world’s pomp and wealth in the Egyptian capital for miles and miles flung itself up into white breakers of marble temple, mausoleum and obelisk.

This was the place where Joseph, the shepherd boy, was called to stand next to Pharaoh in honor.

What a contrast between this scene and his humble starting--between this scene and the pit into which his brothers threw him! Yet Joseph was not forgetful of his early home; he was not ashamed of where he came from.

The bishop of Mentz, descended from a wheelwright, covered his house with spokes, hammers and wheels; and the king of Sicily, in honor of his father, who was a potter, refused to drink out of any thing but an earthen vessel.

So Joseph was not ashamed of his early surroundings, or of his old-time father, or of his brothers. When the latter came up from the famine-stricken land to get corn from the Egyptian king’s corn crib, Joseph, instead of chiding them for the way they had maltreated and abused him, sent them back with wagons, which King Pharaoh furnished, laden with corn; and old Jacob, the father, was brought back in the very same wagons, that Joseph, the son, might see him and give him a comfortable home all the rest of his days.

Well, I hear the wagons, the king’s wagons, rumbling down in front of the palace. On the outside of the palace, to see the wagons depart, stands Pharaoh in royal robes; and beside him stands Prime Minister Joseph, with a chain of gold around his neck, and on his hand a ring given by Pharaoh to him, so that any time he wanted to stamp the royal seal upon a document he could do so conveniently.

Wagon after wagon rolls on down from the palace, laden with corn, meat, changes of raiment and every thing that could aid a famine-stricken people.

I see aged Jacob, one day, seated in the front of his house. He is probably thinking of his absent boys (for sons, however old they get, are never to a father any more than boys); and while he is seated there, he sees dust arising, and he hears wagons rumbling, and he wonders what is coming now, for the whole land had been smitten with the famine, and was in silence.

But after a while the wagons have come near enough, and he sees his sons on the wagons, and before they come quite up, they shout:

“Joseph is yet alive!”

The old man faints dead away. I do not wonder at it. The boys now tell the story how that the boy, the long-absent Joseph, has got to be the first man in the Egyptian palace.

While they unload the wagons, the wan and wasted creatures in the neighborhood come up and ask for a handful of corn, and they are satisfied.

One day the wagons are brought up, for Jacob, the old father, is about to go to see Joseph in the Egyptian palace.

You know, it is not a very easy thing to transplant an old tree; and Jacob has hard work to get away from the place where he has lived so long. He finally bids good-by to the old place, and leaves his blessing with the neighbors; and then his sons steady him, while he, still determined to help himself, gets into the wagon--stiff, old and decrepit.

Yonder they go--Jacob and his sons, his sons’ wives and their children, eighty-two in all--followed by herds and flocks, which the herdsmen drive along. They are going out from famine to luxuriance; they are going from a plain country home to the finest palace under the sun. Joseph, the prime minister, gets into his chariot and is driven down to meet the old man. Joseph’s charioteer holds up the horses on the one side; the dust-covered wagons of the emigrants stop on the other.

Joseph, instead of waiting for his father to come, leaps out of the chariot and jumps into the emigrants’ wagon, throws his arms around the old man, and weeps aloud for past memories and present joy.