The old woman was questioned by her murderers. Would she renounce her Lord? Never; she could not deny the faith of Christ. So they left her to her fate, and the sea rose. Silently, quietly, stealthily it crept on, till her arms, her shoulders, her neck were covered, and then soon after the wave came which carried her into the presence of her Lord. Then they pleaded with the girl, they tried to make her change, they used every argument likely to move her, but all in vain. She was strong in soul, strong and mighty, so strong that death itself could not make her flinch. Still the sea crept on, still the water rose, and still they tried to make her deny her Lord. But, strong in spirit, the girl held bravely on. Higher and higher came that ever-encroaching water, and soon her head was covered, and she thought her sorrows were ended, but her tormentors brought her out of the water, rubbed and warmed her, and brought her to life again, only to put the question to her once more.
Would she deny her Master? No; again she refused to do so, and was dragged back, wet and dripping as she was, once more to be chained to the stake, and to lay down her life a second time. But the Lord was with her, and she was faithful to the end.
That girl was strong in soul, strong in the highest, n.o.blest form of strength; she could say No when tempted to do wrong, she was faithful when sorely tried. But Samson was weak as water, he had no strength of soul; a woman"s pretty face, a woman"s coaxing word, was quite sufficient to overthrow all the strength of soul he possessed. He could resist no temptation that came across his path; he was an easy prey to the tempter.
Oh! that we were all strong, strong in this highest, grandest form of strength, mighty giants in spirit!
But do you say, How can I obtain this strength, by what means can I acquire it? I feel I need it. I am often led astray; I listen to the voice of the tempter, I give way to my besetting sin. I want to break off from it, but I cannot; I want to leave the companions who are leading me wrong, but I have not the strength to do it. How can I become strong?
Here, in the story of Nehemiah, we find the answer. Let us come again to the water-gate, at the south-east of the city. There is the huge pulpit of wood, there is Ezra with the roll in his hand, there are the people, sobbing as if their hearts would break.
But "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" It is for sin that their hearts are broken, they feel they have left undone so much that ought to have been done, they have done so much that they ought not to have done, that they are crushed with sorrow, and the tears will come.
But hush, who are these pa.s.sing amongst the weeping crowd? There is Nehemiah the Tirshatha, or governor, there is Ezra the scribe, and they are followed by a company of Levites. They call to the people to stop crying, and to rejoice. Is not our G.o.d a G.o.d of mercy? Is there not forgiveness with Him? If sin is confessed and forsaken, will He not pardon it? Dry your tears then, and, instead of crying, rejoice. Be merry and glad that G.o.d is willing to forgive, nay, that He has forgiven you.
Cheer up, for this day is holy unto the Lord; it is a feast day, the joyous Feast of Trumpets. Mourn not, nor weep. Do not imagine that G.o.d likes you to be miserable; He wants you to be happy. You have owned your sin, you have repented of your sin; now let your hearts be filled with the joy that come from a sense of sin forgiven.
Go home now, and keep the feast. Eat and drink of the best you have, eat the fat and drink the sweet, the new sweet wine made from this year"s grapes. Go home and enjoy yourselves to the full; but do not forget those who are worse off than yourselves, remember those poor people who have suffered so much from the late famine, who have paid their last penny to the tax-collector, who have lost their all in these hard times. Let them enjoy themselves too to-day. Eat the fat and drink the sweet, but do not forget to send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared. Remember the empty cupboards, and the bare tables, and the houses where the fat and the sweet are nowhere to be seen.
What a word for us at the time of our joyous Christmas feast! G.o.d loves us to be happy. He likes us to rejoice; He does not want us to go about with long faces and melancholy looks. A long-faced Christian is a Christian who brings disgrace on his Master.
Then as we meet, year by year, round the happy Christmas table, and sit down to our Christmas dinner, let us remember that G.o.d loves us to be happy; but let us also remember that in the midst of all our joy He would have us unselfish. He would have us send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared. Is there no one whom we can cheer? Is there no desolate home into which we can bring a ray of light? Is there no sorrowful heart to which we can bring comfort? And what about the portions? Is there no poor relative, or neighbour, or friend, with whom we can share the good things that have fallen to our lot?
Our own Christmas dinner will taste all the better if we have helped some one else to happiness or comfort, our own festal rejoicing will be tenfold more full of merriment and real joy, if we have helped to spread the festal joy into dark and gloomy places.
"Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength."
Yes, there we have the secret of strength, of the highest kind of strength, of strength of soul. The joy of the Lord, that joy which comes from knowing our sin is pardoned.
Can I say--
"O happy day, O happy day When Jesus washed my sins away?"
Then I have spiritual strength, for the joy of the Lord is my strength.
He has forgiven me, He has washed me from my sins in His own blood; how can I grieve Him? How can I pain Him by yielding to temptation? How can I ever risk losing the joy of my heart by going contrary to His will? I am joyful because I am forgiven, and I am strong because I am joyful.
Here then is the highest kind of strength, and it is a strength within the reach of all. Bodily strength some of us can never attain. We are born with weakly bodies, we have grown up delicate and frail, we could no more transform ourselves into strong, powerful men, than we could make ourselves into elephants.
There was a man who lived in Greece long before Hezekiah, who was determined to make his nation the strongest nation on earth; he was resolved that it should consist of mighty giants in strength, and that not one delicate or weak man should be found amongst them. But what did Lycurgus find himself obliged to do in order to secure his end? He was compelled to have every infant carefully examined as soon as it was born, and if a child had the least appearance of delicacy, he took it from its mother, and sent it to some lonely cave on the hill-side, where it was left to die of cold and hunger. He found that it was not possible to turn a puny delicate child into a strong man.
Bodily strength then is beyond the reach of many men; weak they were born, weak they live, and weak they will die, nothing will alter or improve them.
Nor can strength of mind be attained by many. They were born with no power of memory, no apt.i.tude for learning, no gift for study; you may teach them, and labour with them, and they may work hard themselves, but no application can instil into them what was not born in them; they came into the world with second-rate intellects, and they will die with the same.
But, thank G.o.d, the highest form of strength, strength of soul is, in this respect, not like strength of body or strength of mind. No one is born with it, we are all by nature weak as water, an easy prey for Satan; but there is not one of us who may not acquire this spiritual power. If we will take the lost sinner"s place, and claim the lost sinner"s Saviour, we shall be filled by that Saviour with joy, joy because sin is forgiven, and with the joy will come the strength of soul.
In Greece, in that city in which all the weakly babies were murdered, those children who were spared and who were p.r.o.nounced to be strong, were looked upon from that time as belonging not to their parents but to the state, and they were trained and brought up with this one object in view, to make them strong and powerful men. They were taught to bear cold, wearing the same clothing in winter as in summer; they were trained to bear fatigue, being accustomed to walk barefoot for miles; they were practised in wrestling, in racing, in throwing heavy weights, in carrying burdens, in anything and everything which was calculated to make the strength that was in them grow and increase. And it was wonderful how, by means of practice, the strength did grow.
We are told of one man, who in the public games carried a full grown ox for a mile, and we are told that he accomplished this by gradually accustoming himself to the weight. He began when the ox was a tiny calf to carry it a mile every day, and the increase of weight was so gradual that he did not feel it; his arms became used to the weight, and as the ox grew bigger, he at the same time grew stronger.
Strength of body then grows and increases in proportion to our use of it.
So, too, does strength of mind. Here is a boy, born with good abilities and with an intelligent mind. Take that child, and shut him off from every possibility of using his mind; never teach him anything, never allow him to look at a book or a picture, keep him shut off from everything that might tend to open his mind, tell him nothing, bring him up as a mere animal, and soon he will lose all his powers of mind, and become an imbecile. But, on the other hand, teach him, train him, educate him, let his mind have full scope and exercise, and his mental powers will grow and increase a hundred-fold, for strength of mind, like strength of body, grows with the using.
Just so is it with strength of soul. Every temptation you overcome makes you stronger, every l.u.s.t you subdue, every battle of soul you fight, every inclination to evil you resist, makes you stronger.
"From strength to strength" is the motto of the Christian.
So let us press forward.
"Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of G.o.d, unto _a perfect man_" (or as R.V. has it, a _full-grown man_) "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
Now we are but children in spiritual strength, then we shall be giants in power, full-grown men, with full powers and energy and strength, ready to work for the Master through eternity.
CHAPTER X.
The Eighty-four Seals.
Merrily the Christmas bells were chiming in the old city of York, on Christmas morning in the year 1890, speaking gaily and joyfully of the Christmas feast, when suddenly there came a change. The merry peal ceased, and was followed by the quiet sorrowful sound which always speaks of mourning and death, a m.u.f.fled peal. News had reached the ringers that the Archbishop of York, who had been known and respected in the city for more than twenty-eight years, had gone home to G.o.d.
And as we ate our Christmas dinner that day, as we gathered round the table to eat the fat and drink the sweet, the solemn voice of Old Peter, the great minster bell, was heard tolling for the departed soul.
Truly in the midst of life we are in death, in the midst of joy there comes sorrow, in the midst of festivity we are plunged into mourning.
"Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, Flower and thorn."
So the poet makes the old grandmother sum up her life"s story.
And it is just the same in our religious life. One day the joy of the Lord makes us strong, the next the sense of sin weighs us to the ground; one moment we are ready to overflow with thanksgiving, the next we are down in the dust mourning and weeping.
Just such a change as this, a change from the gay to the solemn, from joy to mourning, from feasting to fasting, comes before us in the Book of Nehemiah.
Look at Jerusalem, as we visit it in imagination to-day, and take a bird"s-eye view of the city. The whole place is mad with joy. They are keeping the gayest, the merriest, the prettiest feast in the whole year, the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a saying amongst the Jews, that unless a man had been present at the Feast of Tabernacles he did not know what joy was. And in Nehemiah"s time this feast was kept more fully and with more rejoicing than it had been kept for a thousand years; no one had ever witnessed such a Feast of Tabernacles since the days of Joshua.
The city was a ma.s.s of green booths, made with branches of olive, pine, myrtle, and palm; and in these the people lived, and ate, and slept for eight days; whilst the whole city was lighted up, and glad music was constantly heard, and the people feasted, and laughed, and made merry.
It was the 22nd day of the month Tisri when the Feast of Tabernacles was ended, and only two days afterwards there came a remarkable change.
Look at Jerusalem again, you would hardly know it to be the same place.
The green booths are all gone, they have been carefully cleared away.
There is not a branch, or a banner, or a bit of decoration to be seen.
The bright holiday dresses, the gay blue, and red, and yellow, and lilac robes, the smart, many-coloured turbans have all been laid by; there is not a sign of one of them. We see instead an extraordinary company of men, women and children making their way to the open s.p.a.ce by the water gate. They are covered with rough coa.r.s.e sackcloth, a material made of black goats" hair and used for making sacks. Every one of the company is dressed in this rough material; not only so, but the robe of each is made like a sack in shape, so that they look like a crowd of moving sacks, and on their heads are sprinkled earth and dust and ashes.
The rejoicing has turned into mourning, the feast into a fast. A great sense of sin has come over the people; they feel their need of forgiveness, and they are come to seek it.