Part 16

After a while Herod sits in enchanted silence, looking at the flashing, leaping, bouncing beauty, and as the dance closes and the tinkling cymbals cease to clap and the thunders of applause that shook the palace begin to abate, the enchanted monarch swears to the princely performer:

“Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee, to the half of my kingdom.”

Now, there was in the prison at that time a minister of the Gospel by the name of John the Baptist, and he had been making a great deal of trouble by preaching some very plain sermons. He had denounced the sins of the king and brought down upon him the wrath of the women of the royal household.

At the instigation of her mother, Salome takes advantage of the extravagant promise of the king, and says: “Bring me the head of John the Baptist on a dinner plate.”

Hark to the sound of feet outside the door and the clatter of swords! The executioners are returning from their awful errand. Open the door. They enter and present the platter to Salome.

What is on this platter?

A new glass of wine to continue the uproarious merriment? No. Something redder and far more costly--the ghastly, bleeding head of John the Baptist. The death glare is still in the eyes; the locks are all dabbled with gore; the features are still distressed with the last agony.

Salome, this enchantress who had whirled so gracefully in the dance, bends over the awful burden without a shudder. She gloats over the blood, and with as much indifference as a waiting maid might take a tray of empty glassware out of the room after an entertainment Salome carries the dissevered head of John the Baptist, while all the banqueters shout with laughter. They regarded it as a capital joke that in so easy and quick a way they have got rid of an earnest and outspoken minister of the true Gospel.

Well, there is no harm in a birthday festival. All the kings from Pharaoh’s time had celebrated such occasions, and why not Herod? No harm in kindling the lights. No harm in spreading the banquet. No harm in arousing music. But from the riot and wassail that closed the scene of that day every pure nature revolts.

SAUL.

The Amalekites thought they had conquered God, and that He would not carry into execution His threats against them.

They had murdered the Israelites in battle and out of battle, and had left no outrage untried. For four hundred years this had been going on, and they said: “God either dare not punish us, or He has forgotten to do so.”

Let us see.

Samuel, God’s prophet, tells Saul to go down and slay all the Amalekites, not leaving one of them alive; also to destroy all the beasts in their possession--sheep, ox, camel and ass.

Hark! I hear the tread of two hundred and ten thousand men, with monstrous Saul at their head, ablaze with armor, his shield dangling at his side, holding in his hand a spear, at the waving of which the great host marched or halted.

The sound of their feet, shaking the Earth, seems like the tread of the great God, as, marching in vengeance, He tramples nations into the dust.

I see smoke curling against the sky. Now there is a thick cloud of it, and now I see the whole city rising in a chariot of smoke, behind steeds of fire.

Saul has set the city ablaze.

The Amalekites and Israelites meet; the trumpets of battle blow peal on peal, and there is a death hush.

Then there is a signal waved; swords cut and hack; javelins ring on shields; arms fall from trunks and heads roll into the dust. Gash after gash, the frenzied yell, the gurgling of throttled throats, the cry of pain, the laugh of revenge, the curse hissed between clenched teeth--an army’s death groan. Stacks of dead on all sides, with eyes unshut and mouths yet grinning vengeance.

Huzza for the Israelites! Two hundred and ten thousand men wave their plumes and clap their shields, for the Lord God has given them the victory.

Yet the victorious warriors of Israel are conquered by sheep and oxen.

God, through His prophet, Samuel, told Saul to slay all the Amalekites, and to slay all the beasts in their possession; but Saul, thinking that he knows more than God, spares Agag, the Amalekitish king, and five droves of sheep and a herd of oxen that he can not bear to kill.

Saul drives the sheep and oxen down toward home. He has no idea that Samuel, the prophet, will discover that he has saved these sheep and oxen for himself.

But Samuel comes and asks Saul the news from the battle. Saul puts on a solemn face--for there is no one who can look more solemn than your genuine hypocrite--and he says: “I have fulfilled the commandment of the Lord.”

Samuel listens, and he hears the drove of sheep a little way off. Saul had no idea the prophet’s ear would be so acute.

Samuel says to Saul: “If you have done as God told you, and have slain all the Amalekites and all the beasts in their possession, what meaneth the bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen, that I hear?”

Ah! One would have thought that blushes would have consumed the cheeks of Saul. No, no! He says the army--not himself, of course, but the army--saved the sheep and oxen for sacrifice; and then they thought it would be too bad, anyhow, to kill Agag, the Amalekitish king.

Samuel takes the sword, and he slashes King Agag to pieces; and then he takes the skirt of his coat, in true Oriental style, and rends it in twain--as much as to say:

“You, Saul, just like that, shall be torn away from your empire, and torn away from your throne.”

In other words, let all the nations of Earth hear the story that Saul, by disobeying God, won a flock of sheep but lost a kingdom.

A hypocrite is one who pretends to be what he is not, or to do what he does not. Saul was only a type of a class. When the fox prays, look to your chickens.

Do not be hypocritical in any thing; you are never safe if you are. At the most inopportune moment, the sheep will bleat and the oxen will bellow.

SOLOMON.

What is that building out yonder, glittering in the sunshine? Have you not heard?

It is the House of the Forest of Lebanon. King Solomon has just taken to it his bride, the princess of Egypt. You see the pillars of the portico and a great tower, adorned with a thousand shields of gold, hung on the outside of the tower. Five hundred of the shields of gold were manufactured at Solomon’s order, and five hundred were captured by David, his father, in battle. See how they blaze in the noonday sun!

Solomon goes up to the ivory stairs of his throne between twelve lions in statuary, and sits down on the back of the golden bull, the head of the bronze beast turned toward the people.

The family and attendants of the king are so many that the caterers of the place have to provide every day one hundred sheep and thirteen oxen, besides the birds and the venison. I hear the stamping and pawing of four thousand horses in the royal stables.

They were important officials who had charge of the work of gathering the straw and the barley for all these horses.

King Solomon was an early riser, tradition says, and used to take a ride out at daybreak; and when in his white apparel, behind the swiftest horses of all the kingdom and followed by mounted archers in purple, as the cavalcade dashed through the streets of Jerusalem I suppose it was something worth getting up at five o’clock in the morning to look at.

Solomon was not like some of the kings of the present day--crowned imbecility. All the splendor of his palace and retinue was eclipsed by his intellectual powers. Why, he seemed to know every thing. He was the first great naturalist the world ever saw. Peacocks from India strutted the basaltic walks, and apes chattered in the trees and deer stalked the parks, and there were aquariums with foreign fish and aviaries with foreign birds; and tradition says these birds were so well tamed that Solomon might walk clear across the city under the shadow of their wings as they hovered and flitted about him.

King Solomon had a great reputation for the conundrums and riddles that he made and guessed. He and King Hiram, his neighbor, used to sit by the hour and ask riddles, each one paying in money if he could not answer or guess the riddle.

The Solomonic navy visited all the world, and the sailors, of course, talked about the wealth of their king, and about the riddles and enigmas that he made and solved.

Solomon had at his command gold to the value of £680,000,000, and he had silver to the value of £1,029,000,377. The Queen of Sheba made him a nice little present of £720,000, and King Hiram made him a present of the same amount.

If Solomon had lost the value of a whole realm out of his pocket, it would hardly have been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up.

He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost every thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and fishes.

No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on the hunter’s trappings, and went out with his arrows to bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then with his fishing apparatus he went down to the streams to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into the forest and found the rarest specimens of flowers. He then came back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the science of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science of birds; about botany, the science of plants.

Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man?

His fame spread abroad, and Queen Balkis, away to the south, heard of it. She sent messengers with a few riddles that she would like to have Solomon solve and a few puzzles which she would like to have him find out.

She sent to King Solomon, among other things, a diamond with a hole so small that a needle would not penetrate it, asking him to thread that diamond. Solomon took a worm and put it at the opening in the diamond, and the worm crawled through, leaving the thread in the diamond.

This queen also sent a goblet to Solomon, asking him to fill it with water that did not pour from the sky, and that did not rush out from the earth. Immediately the wise man put a slave on the back of a swift horse and galloped him around and around the park until the horse was nigh exhausted, and from the perspiration of the horse the goblet was filled.

She also sent King Solomon five hundred boys in girls’ dress and five hundred girls in boys’ dress, wondering if he would be acute enough to find out the deception. Immediately Solomon, when he saw them wash their faces, knew from the way they applied the water it was all a cheat.

Queen Balkis was so pleased with the acuteness of Solomon that she said: “I will just go and see him.”

Yonder it comes--the cavalcade--horses and dromedaries, chariots and charioteers, jingling harness and clattering hoofs, and blazing shields, and flying ensigns, and clapping cymbals.

The place is saturated with perfumes. She brings cinnamon, saffron, calamus, frankincense and all manner of sweet spices. As the retinue sweeps through the gate the armed guards inhale the aroma. “Halt!” cry the charioteers, as the wheels grind the gravel in front of the pillared portico of the king. Queen Balkis alights in an atmosphere bewitching with perfume. As the dromedaries are driven up to the king’s storehouses and the bundles of camphor are unloaded, and the cinnamon sacks and the boxes of spices are opened, the purveyors of the palace discovered, so the Bible relates: “Of spices, great abundance; neither was there any such spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”

Well, my friends, you know that all theologians agree in making Solomon a type of Christ and making the Queen of Sheba a type of every truth seeker, and I take the responsibility of saying that all the spikenard, cassia and frankincense which the Queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon are mightily suggestive of the sweet spice of our holy religion.

THE GENTILE MOTHER.

It was a Sabbath afternoon in the Belleville parsonage. I had been trying for two years to preach, but to me the Christian life had been nothing but a struggle. I sat down at the table, took up my Bible, and asked for divine illumination; and it poured like sunlight upon my soul through the story of the Syro-Phenician woman.

This woman was a mother, and she had an afflicted daughter. The child had a virulent, exasperating and convulsive disease, called the possession of the devil.

The mother was just like other mothers; she had no peace as long as her child was sick. She was a Gentile, and the Jews had such a perfect contempt for the Gentiles that they called them dogs. Nevertheless, she comes to Christ, and asks Him to help her in her family troubles. Christ makes no answer. The people become afraid there is going to be a “scene” enacted, and they try to get the woman out of Christ’s presence; but He forbids her expulsion. Then she falls down and repeats her request.

Christ, to rally her earnestness, and to make His mercy finally more conspicuous, addresses her, saying: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread [that is, the salvation appointed for the Jews] and cast it to dogs”--the Gentiles. Christ did not mean to characterize that woman as a dog. That would have been most unlike Him, who from the cross said: “Behold thy mother.”

His whole life was so gentle and so loving, He could not have given it out as His opinion that that was what she ought to be called; but He was only employing the ordinary parlance of the Jews in regard to the Gentiles. Yet that mother was not to be put off, pleading as she was for the life of her daughter. She was not to be rebuffed; she was not to be discouraged. She says:

“Yea, Lord, I acknowledge I am a Gentile dog; but I remember that even the dogs have some privileges, and when the door is open they slink in and crawl under the table. When the bread or the meat sifts through the cracks of the table or falls off the edge of it, they pick it up, and the master of the house is not angry with them. I do not ask for a big loaf; I do not ask even for a big slice; I only ask for that which drops down through the chinks of the table--the dogs’ portion. I ask only the crumbs.”

Christ felt the wit and the earnestness and the stratagem and the faith of that woman. He turns upon her and says:

“You have conquered Me. Your daughter is well now. Go home, mother; but before you get there she will come down, skipping out to meet you.”

There I see the mother going. She feels full twenty years younger now. She is getting on in life, but she goes with a half run. Amid an outburst of hysterical laughter and tears they meet. The mother breaks down every time she tries to tell it. The daughter is before her, with cheeks as rosy as before she fell in the first fit. The doctors of the village prophesy that the cure will not last, because it was not according to their prescription. But I read in the oldest medical journal in the world: “The daughter was made whole from that very hour.”

This story shows you Jesus with His back turned. That woman came to Him and said: “Lord, spare the life of my child; it will not cost You any thing.” Jesus turned His back. He threw positive discouragement on her petition. Jesus stood with His face to blind Bartimeus, to the foaming demoniac, to the limping paralytic, to the sea when He hushed it, and to the grave when He broke it; but now He turns His back.

I asked an artist if he ever saw a representation of Jesus Christ with His back turned. He said no. And it is a fact that you may go through all the picture galleries of London, Dresden, Rome, Florence and Naples, and you will find Christ with full face and profile, but never with His back turned. Yet here, in this passage, He turned away from the woman.

ZACCHÆUS.

Zacchæus was a politician and a tax gatherer. He had an honest calling, but the opportunity for “stealings” was so large that the temptation was too much for him.

The Bible says that Zacchæus was “a sinner”--that is, in the public sense. How many fine men have been ruined by official position! It is an awful thing for any man to seek office under government unless his principles of integrity are deeply fixed. Many a man, upright in an insignificant position, has made shipwreck in a great one. So far as I can tell, in the city of Jericho this Zacchæus belonged to what might be called the “ring.”

They had things their own way, successfully avoiding exposure--if by no other way, perhaps by hiring somebody to break in and steal the vouchers.

Notwithstanding his bad reputation, there were some streaks of good about Zacchæus--as there are about almost every man. Gold is found in quartz, and sometimes in a very small percentage.

Jesus was coming to town. The people all turned out to see Him. Here He comes--the Lord of Glory--on foot, dust-covered and road-weary, limping along the way, carrying the griefs and woes of the world. Christ looks to be sixty years of age, when He is only about thirty.

Zacchæus was a short man, and could not see over the people’s heads while standing on the ground; so he got up into a sycamore tree that swung its arm clear over the road.

Jesus advanced amid the wild excitement of the surging crowd. The most honorable and popular men of the city are looking on, and are trying to gain His attention. But Jesus, instead of regarding them, looks up at the little man in the tree, and says:

“Zacchæus, come down. I am going home with you.”

All regretted to see such choice of company.

Zacchæus had mounted the sycamore tree out of mere curiosity. He wanted to see how this stranger looked--the color of his eyes, the length of his hair, the contour of his features, the height of his stature.

I see Christ entering the front door of the house of Zacchæus. The King of Heaven and Earth sits down; and as He looks around on the place and the family, He pronounces the benediction: “This day is salvation come to this house.”

NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE.

Nearer, my God, to Thee-- Nearer to Thee! E’en though a cross it be That raiseth me, Still all my song shall be: Nearer, my God, to Thee-- Nearer to Thee!

Though, like a wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone, Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to Thee!

There let the way appear Steps unto Heaven; All that Thou sendest me In mercy given! Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to Thee-- Nearer to Thee!

Then, with my waking thoughts Bright with Thy praise, Out of my stony griefs Bethel I’ll raise; So, by my woes, to be Nearer, my God, to Thee-- Nearer to Thee!

Or if, on joyful wing Cleaving the sky-- Sun, Moon and stars forgot-- Upward I fly, Still all my song shall be: Nearer, my God, to Thee-- Nearer to Thee!

BIBLE CHARACTERS

DISCUSSED AND ANALYZED BY THE SCHOLARLY DIVINE, JOSEPH PARKER, D. D.

ABIJAH.

We forget Abijah’s character in his eloquence. He carries a spell with him. Judging from his speech, one would suppose him faultless--entirely noble in every aspiration and impulse and sublimely religious and unselfish.

The whole Abijah is not here. This is but the ideal Abijah. Who ever shows himself wholly upon any one occasion? Who does not sometimes go forth in his best clothing?

We must read the account of Abijah which is given in the Book of Kings before we can correctly estimate the Abijah who talks in the Book of Chronicles.

It is, perhaps, encouraging that while men are upon the Earth they should not be so dazzlingly good as to blind their fellow men. Yet it is pitiful to observe how men can be religious for the occasion. Nearly all men are religious at a funeral; but few men are religious at a wedding.

Abijah has a great cause to serve, and he addresses himself to it not only with the skill of a rhetorician but with the piety of a mind that never tenanted a worldly thought. God knows the whole character--how bright we are in points, how dark in many places; how lofty, how low. Knowing all, He judges correctly, and His mercy is His delight. Neither God nor man is to be judged by one aspect, or one attribute, or one quality. We must comprehend, so far as we may be able, the whole circuit of character and purpose before we can come to a large and true conclusion.

But as we have to do with the ideal Abijah, let us hear what he has to say in his ideal capacity. We will forget his faults while we listen to the music of his religious eloquence.

Abijah comes before us like a man who has a good cause to plead. He fixes his feet upon a mountain as upon a natural throne, and from its summit he addresses a king and a nation, and he addresses his auditors in the sacred name of “the Lord God of Israel.” He will not begin the argument at a superficial point, or take it as starting from yesterday’s new raw history--history hardly settled into form. He will go back, and with great sweep of historical reference he will establish his claim to be heard. In II. Chronicles, thirteenth chapter and fifth verse, Abijah asks:

“Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?”

The binding covenant--the covenant that even pagans would not break. If you have eaten salt with a man you can never speak evil of him with an honest heart. You must forget your criticism in the remembrance of the salt. You are at liberty to decline intercourse and fellowship and confidence; you are perfectly at liberty to say: “I will have nothing to do with thee in any association whatsoever.” But you can not be both friend and enemy. You can not eat salt with a man and smite him in the face, or wound him in the heel, or hurt him in any way, at any time, in any line or point.

That was pagan morality.

We are fallen a long way behind it in many cases, for what Christian is there who could not eat all the salt a man has, and then go out and speak about him with bitterness, plunder him, frustrate his plans, anticipate him in some business venture, and laugh at him over his misplaced confidence?

Abijah recognized the perpetuity of the covenant. The kingdom was given to David for ever--if not in words, yet in spirit; if chapter and verse can not be quoted, yet the whole spirit of the divine communion with David meant eternity of election and honor. It is right to hold up the ideal covenant; it is right that even men who themselves have broken covenants should insist that covenants are right. We must never forget the ideal. Our prayers must express our better selves. A dying thief may pray. Again and again we have to fall back upon the holy doctrine that a man is not to be judged in his character by the prayers which he offers, inasmuch as his prayers represent what he would be if he could.

Abijah, having to deal with a perpetual covenant, charges Jeroboam with breaking it:

“Yet Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon, the son of David, is risen up, and hath rebelled against his Lord.”

All rebellion is wrong, unless it arises from a sense of injustice, untruthfulness or dishonesty. No man has a right to dissent from the national Church unless his dissent be founded upon conscience, a right conception of the nature of the Kingdom of Christ upon the Earth, which leads him to say to certain men: “Stand off.”