Part 5

The bat was regarded as unclean. Two reasons may be given for this--corresponding to the two classes of bats which are known to have existed in Bible lands. We have first the _insectivorous_ bats, which, both in habits and appearance, are so repugnant that no one would ever dream of regarding them as food, or as fit objects for sacrifice. They were rejected on the principle that nothing repulsive or hideous is to be eaten or offered; for this would offend the _horror naturalis_ which is so great a safeguard in human life. And indeed, if these were the only bats known to the Jews, the prohibition as thus applied would seem to be needless. But these were not the only bats. We have also the large _frugivorous_ bats which have been used as food in various parts of the world; and they may have been so used by the Jews themselves when sojourning in the land of Egypt. The Egyptian monuments show that these large fox-headed bats were not at all uncommon in the valley of the Nile; and Canon Tristram secured two fine specimens even in Central Palestine, which measured twenty and a half inches from wing to wing. Now if surrounding nations ate these bats as a common article of diet, would not this be a sufficient reason why the Jews should not be allowed to touch them? I think it would. Israel as a nation was set apart to Jehovah. They were His peculiar people. They were His chosen and purchased possession; and therefore even in their food there must be a separation in which this reference to Jehovah was expressed. They must be made to feel that even in the prohibition of the bat and other animals, the divine command had been addressed to them, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord."

And yet one cannot but think that all this was rather hard on the bat. "It is said that the African negroes depict and describe _their_ evil spirits as white; and that in consequence, the negro children fly in consternation if perchance a white man comes into their territory. Yet a white man is not so very horrid an object after all, if one only dare look at him, and the same remark holds good with the bats." (J. G. Wood.) A very pretty and useful creature is the bat, and it is quite qualified to teach us many valuable lessons.

II.--WHAT A BAT IS.

How are we to describe this little puzzle? Are we to call it a bird or a beast, or is it both of these rolled into one? The possession of wings would seem to argue that it must be a bird; but then its sharp teeth and mouse-like body would as clearly prove that it must be a beast; so that the simple question whether the bat is a bird or beast is not so simple as it looks.

The common name, "_Flitter-mouse_," exhibits the same difficulty; and so also does AEsop in his amusing description of the battle of the beasts and birds. The bat, availing himself of his combination of fur and wings, did not join himself to either party. He hovered over the field of battle, and waited to see which side was going to be victorious. He was determined in the final issue to be on the side of the victors. But in this little game he was entirely unsuccessful; for when they saw the tactics of the little traitor, he was scouted by both parties, and has been compelled ever since to appear in public only at night. It is quite evident that when AEsop wrote this fable, he was not sure what to call the bat--whether to describe it as a bird because it had wings, or to place it among the beasts because it had fur. But what then is the tiny creature? A mammal, of course. A whale is not a fish because it swims in the sea, and the bat is not a bird because it flies in the air. They both suckle their young, and therefore are true mammals. Nay, Linnaeus has actually placed the bat in the highest order of the mammals--in that of the primates beside the monkey and the man. Indeed, in one essential particular it has easily excelled both. It has grown for itself a pair of wings--not a mere parachute like that of the flying squirrels or the flying fish, but a real pair of wings which enable it to laugh to scorn all the flying machines and balloons ever invented by man. How clumsy all these inventions are in comparison with a bat's wing. Four of its fingers are drawn out like the ribs of an umbrella, and then covered over with its own skin like the web of a duck's foot; and thus furnished with the necessary means of competing with the birds, it sails out like the swallow in pursuit of its prey. The remaining finger or thumb is used as a hook to suspend it from the roof or rafters where it takes up its abode. Here then is the high position to which the bat has attained. It is the only mammal that flies.

III.--WHAT THE BAT DOES.

Let no one say that it lives a useless life. It is one of the most useful animals we have. It vies with the swallow in destroying the swarms of insects that infest the atmosphere. They divide the day of twenty-four hours between them. The bat begins the work where the swallow lays it down; and ruthlessly pursues the insect prey all through the night. From dark to dawn, and sometimes far into the day, it does yeoman service in this important connection. The present writer remembers a pair of bats in Perthshire, which were found in company with the swallows even at the hour of noon. It was the month of September, and perhaps they felt they must now make haste in preparing for the winter's hibernation. For the bat is not able, like the swallow, to migrate to a warmer clime when the supply of insect food begins to fail. It must find another way of spending the long months of the winter. It must pass into a deep death-like slumber, from which it is awakened, as the flowers in spring are awakened, by the returning life of the summer. But the traces of a wise design are seen everywhere. The marks of a good and faithful Creator are found through all His works. If one creature has the power of migrating, another has the power of hibernating; and thus even in the mode of existence pursued by a bat, there is abundant evidence of the wisdom and goodness of God.

And how is the bat able to thread its way through the darkest caverns where the sharpest eyes are rendered useless? It is not blind, like Tibbie Dyster in "Alec Forbes"; and yet it might say, as she did when congratulated on her fine spinning, "I wadna spin sae weel gin it warna that the Almichty pat some sicht into the pints o' my fingers 'cause there was nane left i' my een." The bat has indeed a marvellous power of sight in "the pints o' its fingers." Prof. Mivart can only compare the sensitiveness of its _touch_ to a state of inflammation; and it is this extreme sensibility that enables them to direct their flight in these dark caverns. This is another coign of vantage reached by the bat. It is the only mammal that possesses wings, and these wings, in turn, are the very perfection of the delicate sense of touch.

But we go back to the point from which we started, and say that, however useful and wonderful the bat may be, it is not to be eaten as food or offered in sacrifice. It is _unclean_. This, indeed, is a principle which is full of gospel teaching. A thing may be good and useful in its own place, and yet be quite unfit as an offering when we appear before God. Good thoughts, kind words, and brave deeds are all needed. They are all necessary for the adornment of our Christian character; but for the forgiveness of our sins, and the reception of "so great salvation," there is no sacrifice which can be mentioned save one: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." To Jesus then must every boy and girl look, saying in the language of the hymn--

"Just as I am, _without one plea_, _But that Thy blood was shed for me,_ And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come."

*The Eagle.*

"Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?"--Job xxxix. 27.

Jehovah is answering Job out of the whirlwind. He brings before him a grand panorama of external nature--the earth and sea, snow and hail, the Pleiades and the lightning--the wild goat, the wild ass, the ostrich, the hawk, and the eagle; and as the glorious pageant defiles before his eyes, he forces him to face and answer the question: Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct Him? He that reproveth God, let him answer. And Job's answer is all that could be desired: "Behold, I am vile: what shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth." The greatness of God in nature has taught man his own utter insignificance.

Doth the eagle mount up at _thy_ command? No. All these pictures point man to God. They combine to illustrate the mind and thought of Him who formed them and cares for them. So that the conclusion of Ruskin is more than justified that the universe is not a mirror that reflects to proud self-love her own intelligence. It is a mirror that reflects to the devout soul the attributes of God.

I.--THE ROCK-DWELLING HABITS OF THE EAGLE.

"She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock and the strong place" (ver. 28). It is to this that Obadiah refers when he takes up his parable against the Edomites. They too were rock-dwellers, who had made for themselves houses and founded cities in the rocky fastnesses of Mount Seir. But they are reminded that the impregnable and inaccessible heights to which they have resorted will be no defence against Jehovah: "Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord." It is even added that Edom would become utterly desolate: "As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee, ... and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau." And if the testimony of modern travellers may be accepted, the desolation is mournful enough. In 1848 Miss Harriet Martineau visited Petra, the chief of these rock-cities, and describes it as follows: "Nowhere else is there desolation like that of Petra, where these rock doorways stand wide--still fit for the habitation of a multitude, but all empty and silent except for the multiplied echo of the cry of the eagle, or the bleat of the kid. No; these excavations never were all tombs. In the morning the sons of Esau came out in the first sunshine to worship at their doors, before going forth, proud as their neighbour eagles, to the chase; and at night the yellow fires lighted up from within, tier above tier, the face of the precipice" ("Eastern Life," vol. iii. 5).

The Edomite, alas, is gone, though the eagle is still left, and she fixes her habitation on the dizzy crag.

II.--THE ACUTENESS OF THE EAGLE'S SIGHT.

"From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off" (ver. 29). The eye of a bird is a marvellous structure. It is a telescope and microscope combined. It has the power of compressing the lens to adapt it to varying distances; and is larger in proportion than the eye of quadrupeds. The kestrel hawk, for instance, feeds on the common field mouse; but this tiny creature is so like the colour of the soil, that a human eye could scarcely detect it at the distance of a few yards. The kestrel, however, has no such difficulty. Her telescopic eye sees it from the sky overhead, and like a bolt from the blue, she swoops down upon the helpless prey. No mistake is made as she nears the ground. Swiftly and almost instantaneously the telescope is compressed into the microscope, and the daring freebooter could pick up a pin.

The same power is possessed by the Griffon vulture or "eagle" of Holy Scripture. "_Her eyes behold afar off_." A dozen eagles may be soaring upwards in the sunlight, until they become mere specks against the blue of heaven, but they are carefully watching each other in their wheeling circles, and diligently scanning the desert below in the hope of discovering some prey. The moment the object is sighted, and even one bird has made a swoop downwards, the movement is detected by the one nearest, which immediately follows; while the second is followed by a third, and the third by a fourth, until in a few minutes, "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Their vast power of wing and acuteness of sight have led them to the prey.

And the lesson is not far to seek. In the Carlyle use of the word it emphasises the need of being able to _see_. "To the poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _see_. If you cannot do that, it is of no use stringing rhymes together and calling yourself a poet, there is no hope for you." And in religion it is the pure in heart that see God. If the inner eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light. The aged _seer_ on Patmos saw into the heaven of heavens. Like Paul, he heard words not lawful to be uttered; and thus in the symbolism of the Christian Church, he is known as the New Testament _eagle_. He was the one who "saw more and heard more, but spake less than all the other disciples." But all the saints of God may soar and _see_ in some measure as he did--

"On eagles' wings, they mount, they soar, Their wings are faith and love, Till past the cloudy regions here They rise to heaven above."

III.--THE EAGLE AND HER YOUNG.

"Her young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are, there is she" (ver. 30).

The eagle is one of the most rapacious of birds, and her terrible instincts are transmitted to her young, which "_suck up blood_." This is heredity in its most awful form, and is well fitted to shadow forth the grim heritage of woe which is handed down to _their_ children by the drunkard, the libertine, and the thief. But in any form the thought is a solemn one, forcing even the Psalmist to wail, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." The fountain of the life is polluted, as well as the streams--"Her young ones also suck up blood."

But this is not the only way in which the eagle influences her young. Allusion is frequently made to the way in which she supports them in their first essays at flight. When the tired fledgeling begins to flutter downwards, she is said to fly beneath it, and present her back and wings for its support. And this becomes a beautiful illustration to the sacred writers of the paternal care of Jehovah over Israel: "As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange god with them" (Deut. xxxii. 12). "I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself" (Exod. xix. 4).

Let ours be the holy ambition to be worthy of that care. Let us try, like the young eagles, to soar and _see_ for ourselves. Let us gaze upon the Sun of righteousness and rejoice in the fulness of His light, remembering the promise, that "they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles: they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."

"What is that, mother? The eagle, boy! Proudly careering his course with joy. Firm on his own mountain-vigour relying, Breasting the dark storm, the red bolt defying: His wing on the wind, and his eye on the sun: He swerves not a hair, but bears onward, right on. Boy, may the eagle's flight ever be thine, Onward and upward, true to the line." --G. W. DOANE.

*The Lion.*

"He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow."--2 Sam. xxiii. 20.

This text treats of the way in which lions were hunted in Bible lands before the introduction of firearms. A deep pit was dug in the woods, and carefully covered over with withered leaves, and when the monarch of the forest came out in search of his prey and stumbled into the trap, he was easily secured by the wily hunters, or forthwith despatched with their long-pointed spears. Benaiah, however, did a more valiant deed than this. He went down single-handed to the bottom of the pit and slew the lion in the depth of winter. Evidently he was one of those muscular giants whom all young Britons will delight to honour--a very Samson in sheer herculean valour, a brave and dauntless warrior, who was well worthy of a place among King David's mighty men.

David himself, as a young shepherd, had gone after a lion and a bear, and rescued a lamb out of their teeth. And Samson, when going down to the vineyards of Timnath, had also slain a young lion which came out and roared against him. But both of these encounters had taken place in the open, where there was a fair field and no favour; whereas Benaiah met his antagonist in the most dangerous circumstances--in the middle of winter, when the lion was ravenous with hunger, and at the bottom of a lion-trap, where there was no possibility of escape. Clearly this man was a hero who would neither flinch nor fear: "He slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow."

*Brave and fearless*--that is the lesson which is written large for all healthy and noble-minded boys, and it is taught by the character of the lion, no less than by the courage of the lion-slayer. There are few books in the Bible that do not contain some reference to this majestic animal, and it is always introduced as an emblem of strength and force, whether used for a good purpose or abused for a bad one. Jesus Himself is spoken of as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and our adversary the devil is described by Peter as a roaring lion walking about and seeking whom he may devour.

I.--THE MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LION.

(1.) It is the incarnation of *strength*. Size for size, it is one of the strongest of beasts. It can kill a man or an antelope with one blow of its terrible paw; and so powerful are the muscles of the neck, that it has been known to carry away in its mouth an ordinary ox. Well may its name signify in the Arabic language "the strong one."

(2.) It is also celebrated for *courage*. A lioness is simply the most terrible animal in existence when called upon to defend her cubs. We all know how a hen, when concerned about her chicks, will beat off both the fox and the hawk by the reckless fury of her attack. And it may be imagined what the fury of a lioness will be when she has to fight for her young ones. She cares little for the number of her foes or the nature of their weapons.

(3.) Another marked feature is that "in the dark there is no animal so *invisible* as the lion. Almost every hunter has told a similar story of the lion's approach at night, of the terror displayed by the dogs and cattle as he drew near, and of the utter inability to see him, though he was so close that they could hear his breathing."

(4.) The main characteristic, however, is the lion's *roar*. This is said to be truly awful. Gordon Gumming speaks of it as being "extremely grand and peculiarly striking. He startles the forest with loud, deep-toned, solemn roars, repeated five or six times in quick succession, each increasing in loudness to the third or fourth, when his voice dies away in five or six low, muffled sounds, very much resembling distant thunder." It is to this Amos refers when he speaks of his own prophetic call: "The lion hath roared: who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken: who can but prophesy?"

II.--TWO LESSONS FROM THE LION.

(1.) _It is glorious to have a lion's strength, but it is inglorious to use it like a lion_. When this is not attended to, heroism degenerates into big-boned animalism, and courage into selfishness and ferocity. What might have been the glory of our expanding manhood and a tower of defence to the weak and defenceless becomes the Titanian arrogance of the bully and the senseless boast of the braggart. This is to imitate the lion in a bad sense, and "I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon than such a Roman." This is to walk in the footsteps of those Assyrian monarchs who took the lion as their favourite emblem, and counted it their greatest glory to lash the nations in their fury. But all this is selling oneself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, and becoming willing captives to him who walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

(2.) _It is glorious to have a lion's strength, if the strength be the measure of our gentleness_. It is in this sense that Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He conquers by stooping. His other name is the Lamb.

You remember how beautifully this is illustrated in AEsop's Fables. A lion asleep in the wood one day was awakened by a little field-mouse, and quick as lightning he laid his terrible paw on the tiny intruder, and forthwith would have sentenced it to death. But the trembling captive implored him to show mercy, and the great beast was softened, and allowed it to escape. And that gentleness was twice blessed--it blessed him that received and him that gave. A few days after this the same lion was caught in a strong net which the hunters had set for him, and struggle as he might, he could not set himself free. But the little field-mouse heard his terrible voice, and came to the rescue. Patiently, thread by thread, it gnawed through the stout rope, and the monarch of the forest was free. And no doubt, as he stood and shook his bushy mane before plunging into the depths of the forest, he thought within himself, saying, "My former gentleness hath made me great."

Yes, "he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." Even a lion may be tamed. Even a lion may become a lamb; and it is glorious to have a lion's strength when it is tempered and tamed into gentleness.

*The Cock-crowing.*

"And one shall rise up at the voice of the bird."--Eccles. xii. 4.

Youth and age are strangely blended in this chapter. With a pathetic reference to old age, the young heart is called upon to remember its Creator in the days of its youth. The days of youth are the choice--the choosing days. They are full of temptation, but they are also blessed with many great advantages; and no better season could be mentioned for resisting the one and improving the other than the moulding season of what the paraphrase calls "life's gay morn." Old age, like a sick-bed, has enough to do with itself. There are many discomforts that beset the path of the aged. For one thing, they cannot sleep so soundly as young people do. "_They rise up at the voice of the bird_." The first twitter of the swallow under the eaves, or the first crowing of the cock, is quite sufficient to break their night's repose, for their light and fitful slumbers are very easily disturbed. And old age is soon followed by death. The silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken; the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern. And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it. How foolish then to neglect religion until a time of decay like that! It is worse than foolish: it is suicidal. The whole life ought to be given to God, and not the mere dregs of the cup. "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them."

"Deep on thy soul, before its powers Are yet by vice enslaved, Be thy Creator's glorious name And character engraved."

I.--THE COCK-CROWING AS A DIVISION OF THE NIGHT.