Part 16

From a very lowly lot Esther rose to be the first lady in the land, and I suppose all her sister Jewesses envied her, and thought that there was nothing that was not happy, and prosperous, and pleasant in her position. Yes, it was a position of great advantage, of great pomp, flattering to her pride—rich raiment, jewellery, the adulation of fawning courtiers, the admiration of the great monarch of the mightiest kingdom in the world, promoted to the throne as queen, wielding power over the destinies of man. Ah! it was a very enviable, happy lot, and yet not altogether so very enviable. I will tell you why—a thing that we apparently forget. When we all of us enter into our estates, when we come of age, nearly all good fortune in this world is heavily mortgaged. It is encumbered estates that we come heir to; and without disloyalty, without being renegades and dishonourable, we cannot cast off these encumbrances. The present has always got to pay the purchase price to the past. You must not kick away the ladder by which you rose to fortune. Ah! and sometimes into the bright sunshiny present the past comes with a very long bill to pay—comes with a very stern face and a demanding hand, and bids you, perhaps, risk all that is making your heart so warm, and so proud, and so gay.

That was the case with Esther. She was a Jewess. She owed her birth and her breeding to that despised, exiled people. She had won her proud position on the emperor's throne through the planning, and toiling, and sacrifice of her Jewish guardian. And now her people's destiny hangs on the balance. A deadly conspiracy against them has brought it about that on a given day, rapidly approaching, there is to be a universal merciless massacre of these defenceless Jews. And through the mouth of her old revered guardian the demand comes to her—the one human being that might have influence with the cruel king to cancel the decree and save the lives of men, women, and children—at the risk and peril of her own life in asking it, to go and intercede for them.

Hard! oh, how hard! Don't you judge harshly the poor queen when she shrank away from it and could not face the stern summons. Think of it, the young flesh, the soft heart—a woman's heart—within her, and think of the cruel death by torture that was wont to be inflicted upon any one that, unbidden, dared to force his way into the king's presence; coming, too, in the bright noonday of all her good fortune. It would have been easier to risk life when she was an unknown Jewish maiden; but oh, in this good luck, this fortune, this love, this adulation, this admiration, with her right fair beauty all upon her, to take it all and go and confront grim death! it seemed too much to ask. And so Esther began arguing within herself: Was she bound to hazard her life for these Jews? After all, what had they done for her? They were her race, her kindred, but what of that? Had she not come out from among them? Has not destiny taken her lot and separated it from theirs? Why cannot she live her own life apart from them? Why should she come down from the throne and take her stand among them, exposed to cruel massacre and death? What is the obligation? Where are the ties that bound her lot to theirs? Ay, where were the ties of love and the obligations to generosity? They are too fine and impalpable to be proved by argument. The moment you begin discussing them or questioning them—ties that bind brother to brother, sister to sister, child to parent—they vanish like life dissected for. You destroy them. They have to be felt, not proved, but are more real, more solemn, more important in determining a man's destinies than all the legal bonds and moral obligations that bind him in society.

But then, again, the queen would ask herself, What would be the good of her running such a risk? Is it reasonable that she, a single weak woman, unskilled in the ways of courts and of cunning courtiers; that she should be asked to plunge into a whirlpool of race-hatreds and furious feuds between unscrupulous nobles and potentates about the court; that she should confront the reckless rage of the royal tyrant—she, so defenceless, so impotent, so frail? Ah, yes! once again the argument was good to shirk the path of heroism; but once again, what business had she to argue? When duty comes to you it is not a thing to reason about. You have got to just go and do it.

Mother, when your little one was struck down with the deadliest and most infectious ailment, did you reason for one moment whether you could be expected to risk your life, whether you were not too delicate to make it worth while doing it, whether you would not be throwing away your existence? If any man came and suggested that to you,—"No!" Love, duty, they do not argue, they command.

The fact of the matter was, the queen was standing in a false position. She could not see the truth, she could not see the right, where she stood. I hope I have been able to show you how very plausible, how very weighty, the grounds were on which she made her refusal to risk her life. But have not you yourselves felt something about a home atmosphere in which such reasoning moved that is contemptible and despicable? Have not you recognised its infinite pettiness and littleness? Oh, what a narrow, contracted, selfish world that woman's heart is living in! It has been all a question about Esther—Esther's life, Esther's risks, Esther's obligations, as if that were the whole. Why not break down those prison walls of littleness? Look at those thousands of Jews—fathers, mothers, young maidens, brave lads, little children with their bright eyes, and with terrible death impending over them. How is Esther so forgetful of them, with their white faces and their anxious eyes, and of God's purposes in this world? Ah, no man can ever choose the path of right, of heroism, of goodness, of duty, till he sees and feels himself in God's big world, and with God above him up in heaven!

Mordecai recognised the root of the queen's cowardice, and swiftly and sternly he sent back a reply that shattered those barriers of her selfishness, and lifted her out of her little self-centred world, and set her on the pinnacle whence the whole line and way of duty shone out unmistakably. "Go back," said he—"go back and tell the queen to be ashamed of her despicable selfishness. Does she imagine that she lives separate and unconnected in this world of God's, so that she can save her own life by sacrificing, cowardly, the lives of her kinsmen? Go, tell the queen that she does not live in a will-less, random world, where she may pick and choose the best things for herself. Go, tell her that confronting her, sweeping round her, seizing her in its currents, the great will of God is moving on down through the centuries. If she will not save God's people, then God will find another deliverer, and she herself shall be dashed aside. Go, tell the queen she may refuse the task, but the deed shall be done. God's purpose in His chosen people shall not be baulked. Deliverance will come to the Jews, but she, poor blind queen, may have missed a noble vocation. Go, bid the queen look at the strange providence that picked her out among her people, that placed her on the throne, that set her by the side of the despot in whose hands the fate of her people is held, and then bid her ask whether she thinks God did that deed out of partial, indulgent favour of her petty self, or whether it is not clear as noontide that just for this hour of peril, and of danger, and of death, to be the redeemer and the saviour of the Jews, God gave her that dignity and set her on the throne."

Ah, what a new world we are in now! what a new light floods everything! The queen felt it. All that was noble, all that was good in her waked and gained the upper hand, and crushed down her baseness, and her meanness, and her selfishness. And yet heroism had a struggle with the weakness of the flesh. That is nothing strange. Remember Christ in Gethsemane: "Oh, watch with Me, with your human sympathy and fellowship, in My dire hour of need!" It was a cry like that that made Esther send back that message to Mordecai. She wanted to feel the binding force of the ties of common human brotherhood that connected her with her people to make her strong. She saw how it was. Away from them, and living alone, proudly, selfishly, her heart had got hard, and she could not go out among them; but it would mean a deal for her during those days if she knew that in every Jewish home men and women, young men and maidens, and little children, from morning till night, were fasting, and by the pain and abstinence of fasting kept thinking, from morning till night, of the deadly danger hanging over them, and Esther steeling herself to risk her life for love of them. Oh, wrapped round with that sense of human sympathy, nerved and braved by the thought of all these human lives hanging on her heroism, the weak woman conquered, and she could go and do the deed of valour!

But one thing more: the other element, the sense of her own weakness, her own impotence—for that she needed to fall back on God. Ah, if it were the case simply of a nation pleading with her to intercede on their behalf, she could not have done that all alone! But when she herself, through those two days, lived face to face with God, till this world was filled with His presence, till all the old stories of the generous rescues of bygone days were blazing resplendent before her eyes, guaranteeing that it was a call of God, that God would be behind her and with her and that His strength would be sufficient for her weakness—so backed with intimate love and sympathy with her fellow-men, and a strong faith in God, she could go and do her duty. Look at this striking contrast. Read that first refusal of hers—selfish, self-centred, cowardly, prudent. I think you feel all through it a restlessness, a dissatisfaction, a vacillation, a nervous excitement, a sense of uneasiness, a hidden doubt whether in saving her life she may not be losing it. Read that reply now, when she pledges herself to go and dare the king's deadly rage. How grand, and majestic, and calm it rings out! solemn, earnest, like the voice of a brave veteran going on a forlorn hope, but with the tranquillity, the serene certainty, of a brave heart doing what it knows to be duty. Ah, the man that goes through this world regardless of right or wrong, not asking what is duty, taking and choosing what shall be for his own advantage, trimming, and chopping, and setting his sails to catch every breeze of dishonourable prosperity, the restless heart that made response hanging upon himself, every step his own, if wrong then the upbraiding and the remorse all will be his. Oh, the sweetness, the grandeur, the calmness of the man who has asked simply, in any circumstances of danger and difficulty, "What is right? what is duty? what is the will of God? what alone can and ought to be done?" and then does it, ay, with death hanging over. He can sleep tranquilly. He is not responsible for the issue, no matter what it be. Here on earth he has done the right, done his duty, and the responsibility rests on God.

Esther, by that deed of heroism, delivered God's people from destruction. In her measure she did the same thing that Christ did perfectly later. Like Him, too, she laid her own life down on the altar. That it was not sacrificed does not diminish the value of the offering. A man does not need to perish in saving another from drowning, if he plunge into the wild, stormy sea, to deserve an admiration as great as if he had perished in the task.

She did a deed of Christ. That deed roused the admiration of her day and generation. That deed of hers was told with kindling eyes and ringing voice, and pride and triumph, from father to child, generation after generation. That deed of hers stood out as a pledge, a guarantee, of the reality of God's purpose for His kingdom on earth. By her deed, in her own day and generation, she saved God's people from imminent destruction; by that deed, preserved in history, she lifted up and made strong the hope and faith of generations after. And so, rightfully, her story finds its place in that long record of the hearts, noble, and brave, and true, who, for love of men and faith in God, at the bidding of Heaven, loved not their own lives to death, but laid them down for their brethren.

Oh, we men and women have got to learn this lesson from this Bible of ours—the real service of God, that is real religion, and that does build God's kingdom on earth, is done not altogether, by a long way, in our churches, in our religious exercises of worship; but done in purity, love, and truth, and goodness, out of generous kindliness to one another, at the bidding of God, through all the common chapters that make up our daily life.

X.

_THE EXAMPLE OF THE PROPHETS._

"Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example."—JAMES v. 10.

We possess the books produced in olden times by a number of different nations. Each national literature has its own peculiarities. The literature of Israel has various features that are very characteristic of it. Among them all, one stands out and is unique. All along the nation had a conviction that they were destined to be the greatest nation in the world, and they believed that this destiny of theirs lay in the fact that through their government the world was to be made good, righteous, holy, and happy. They believed that God had a large plan, embracing the whole world in its operations; they believed that God was using all the different races as tools to work out that design of His; but they held that infinitely beyond all lesser instruments, He had made up His mind to employ Israel in accomplishing that great purpose of His high heart; through Israel He was to make the whole world into one Divine kingdom, ruled by Himself, and reverencing Himself as the one only God and Lord.

The mass of the people constantly forgot that sense of a lofty destiny; they constantly tired of that great ideal; they chose to prefer present gain and advantage; they disregarded that predicted end of their history in determining their contemporary policy in relation to other nations; they were dumb, and blind, and deaf to that feeling of God's movement in history and His purpose for the future. Nevertheless, in every age down through that nation's story there existed in their midst men who were possessed by a supreme conviction of this presence, and power, and purpose of God, men who sacrificed bread, profession, home, happiness, and life itself, that they might seek to carry out that intention and desire of God. In every age they declared what God wanted Israel to be and to do. In every age they recommended a policy founded on that destiny of Israel and that design of God. The darker the national history grew, the more decided was their certainty of the fulfilment of God's purpose. But this singular change took place in the form in which they conceived that fulfilment: In the earlier times Israel—the whole nation—was to be the minister of God's intention; but as age after age exhibited the depravity, the unholiness, and the jealousy of the nation, the thought of the coming kingdom of promise, and of gladness and goodness, concentrated itself not so much about the people, but about the King. More and more, it was not the chosen _people_ of Israel, but it was the chosen _Son_ of Israel, the chosen Heir of David, the coming Deliverer, the King, that was to bring it in. It is a strange spectacle to behold how God, by His external dealings with the people of Israel, and by the development of their conduct, led His servants the prophets to see that if ever this grand purpose of God for mankind was to be accomplished, it could not be done by the whole people, or any number of them, but must be done by one single individual, who should combine in his character all the goodness, and all the truth, and all the knowledge, and all the power of God that were necessary to make a kingdom of God on earth. So it came to pass that inside the progress of Israel's history, as a wall down the long march of that history, there was a line of men first of all foreseeing a grand future, mainly connected with Israel in the government of the nation, and gradually defining more brightly the covenant, and the establishment, and the maintenance of that kingdom as contained in the person, in the character, in the work, in the heart, in the sufferings, in the triumph of a great coming Messenger of God, a Man of God, a Son of God, yet so stamped with Divinity that He gets names which set Him on a level with God. It is the long procession of prophets, the line of foreseers, who, in succession to the patriarchs, touch, ages in advance, the coming of Christ, and make the world expect it, and preserve faith in mankind till Christ does come.

The history of these men within their own nation is striking. As a rule, they stood in a small minority, were despised and disbelieved, had to maintain the truth of their Divine conviction in the face of almost universal denial, were ill-treated and persecuted, were declared to be impostors or traitors to the national cause, were cast out, and an immense number of them were killed. But as time rolled on the development of events proved that those men had seen the calamities and vengeances of God which had been foretold as about to fall on Israel, because of Israel's sin. The people were cast out of their own native land; they were driven into captivity, and in captivity they remembered what the prophets had spoken; and then, with humble hearts and penitent spirits, they said to themselves "Those men were right; they spoke true; they anticipated what has come to pass; God was with them; they were His messengers; we were in the wrong; it was a true word from heaven that they uttered amongst us;" and so the old contempt and disbelief vanished away, and there came a reverence and a faith for those prophets that almost reached the verge of superstition; they gathered together their writings; they treasured them, and made the books of those prophets into their Bible. It is in that fashion that our own Old Testament of the prophets was formed. The prophets were first rejected, derided, put to death, and, then with repentance and humility, accepted as the true messengers of God, taken as authoritative interpreters of God's mind and will; their writings were treasured and preserved, and made into the national Bible.

It is these prophets that the Apostle James bids us take as an example. He means that every Christian man and every Christian woman is, in a measure, to be a prophet; He means especially that every Christian man and every Christian woman in the battle of life stands in some measure between God and others, and is to be a prophet. He means further that every father is to do for his children what those prophets did for Israel—he is to make them know God. He means that every mother is to be the very channel of making her children come into contact with God's character, and comprehend God's intentions for them. He means especially that every Sunday-school teacher is to be just what those old prophets were in Israel—to make others who are more ignorant than he is sensible of the presence, and purpose, and progression of God's designs through life in his own present age and time. He means that every preacher, and every teacher, and every man who speaks about religion is, in his conduct and character, and what he teaches and what he preaches, to be a prophet. And above all, he means that one and all of us of this age shall, even down to the humblest Christian, who hardly has any influence, act as a mediator or interpreter between other men and God, as did many of the prophets, with an unswerving belief of the truth, and with a patience and perseverance of spirit in every unenlightened time, and amidst the most adverse circumstances, founded upon the certainty of the fulfilment of God's promise that Christ should come, and shall come again.

Now I want to say a few things to you about the character and the office of those prophets in the world, that we may see some respects in which we may and certainly ought to imitate them. What was a prophet? I imagine that many of us are content with a very superficial notion of the part played in actual life by those men. I imagine, because of the class of books that has been written in great profusion in our present century, and is still written, that we are apt to think of a prophet simply and only as a man who predicted things that were going to happen—incidents and events that were to fall out in the unfolding of history. The prophets did a vast deal more than that, and the very essence, and life, and grandeur of their character and conduct appear only in a small fragment in that portion of their office. Their real movement and meaning are in quite another department.

If we wish to know what a prophet is, we may, first of all, take the names given to the prophets in the Bible. Then, again, we may remember who were the prophets. And then we may take their writings, the records of their deeds, the history that tells of their fortunes. What are the names given to a prophet in the Old Testament? The first and holiest is "a man of God"—"the man of God." All that that tells us is that in a peculiar sense the prophet belonged to God. The next name is "the servant of God." That tells us that he belonged to God in the sense of serving God, doing things for God. Then he is called "the ambassador, or the messenger, of God." That tells you that he served God by bringing messages from God. Then he is called an interpreter. That tells you that it was to men he took God's message, and that he had to make it understood by them. The next thing that we come to is a "seer," connected with the word "watchman," a spier or seer. It means one who saw what other men could not see, who saw into God's mind, who saw God, who saw what God was about. It tells us how he got to know his message, how he learnt it; it was by insight, seeing into the hidden, underlying purposes of God. Then the last name of all is what we translate "prophet," and it literally means a man who bubbles up and runs over, whose heart gushes out, in the sense of being poured into, that what is poured in comes out of him. It tells us that he pours out what he has learnt, to other men; and it adds this shade of meaning (the very form of the Hebrew word does so), that he is, as it were, spoken through; it does not end with himself, nor does it take its rise with himself, but it comes into him like a flood, and it overflows; he cannot help himself; he is possessed, he is pressed; he is compelled to utter what his God tells him.

The names of a prophet, therefore, tell us this; this is his function; he, beyond other men, has to do with God, belongs to God; he belongs to God in being God's servant; he is God's servant in being God's messenger; he is God's messenger in bringing things to men that God wants men to know; he learns what he has to tell men by seeing it himself, by knowing it, understanding it, feeling it, and then he utters it by a resistless compulsion and impulse, the fire burning in his heart, a pressure being put on him to tell what God has taught him. Already you have got the thought of a man with a grandeur, a greatness, a significance, and a meaning immensely above what you think of when you think of a man who can tell you where an axe which has been lost is to be found, or whether a sick person will die or live, or whether a town is going to be destroyed or not. What you have is a living, breathing, warming channel of communication between the great God in heaven and the human hearts of men on earth.