Rivers of Scripture: With their Lessons and Associations — a Book for the Young
Unknown Author
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
AT THE RIVERSIDE
“Now, young people,” said their mother to her children and their little guests, “this is your holiday; our morning reading is over, and you can all run down to your riverside playground and amuse yourselves until lunch-time. Take your fishing rods and your sailing-boats, and you smaller ones your buckets and spades for the sandy banks. Nurse is going with you, and you are to be very obedient and do what she tells you, and keep out of danger. Dick is coming home from school on Saturday, and then you can go with him in the punt, but you are not to go till then; for none of you can manage a boat till you get older.
“And as you were so interested this morning in our reading about the River Jordan I am getting you a little book on Scripture rivers, telling us of some lessons we can learn in connection with them; and I hope you will all read it, and be able to answer any questions I may ask you afterward about it; and, more than that, it is my prayer that you may give your hearts entirely to the One who has created these rivers and this beautiful world in which we live, and that you will render to Him, who is our God and our Father, all the praise and honor.”
So spoke this good mother to her children and their playmates that morning. "Riverside," their home, had very pretty grounds extending down to the river's edge—spreading beech trees giving ample shade from the heat of the sun's rays, and all sorts of wild flowers growing along the slopes and under the trees.
The children ran off—I see two of them—little boys, "John" and "Stephen," full of life and fun. I have hanging on the wall before me silhouette groups of John's and Stephen's great-great-grandparents. In one the old gentleman is sitting at his table with horn-rimmed spectacles on, reading the newspaper of the day; he is holding up one finger as if explaining to the little old lady opposite what he is reading. She sits in her old-fashioned chair with her strange old-fashioned "mobcap" and her old-world garments, listening while their daughter stands behind giving her attention also. A quaint setting of bygone days!
How cleverly those artists cut out these pictures long ago!
The children perhaps are thinking too of their real holidays later on at the seaside.
What building of sandy castles they will have! and how the inrushing surf will demolish them! How they will enjoy their bathing and paddling and playing with the other children who come there!
And now we turn to the writer of this book, and the task before him as he sits down to write for such a large young family! With all the allurements of youth answering to youth in a day which is ceaselessly catering for human pleasure to the utter exclusion of God and His claims, how can one bring these claims before them, and introduce that which will lead them to the knowledge of the Savior? Only through Divine guidance and blessing; and for these, in this book on the Rivers of Scripture, the writer earnestly prays.
Here, from the window of this house on the brow of an Irish hill, one can look down on the fertile valley below bathed in the morning sunlight leis early summer—that season of especial charm. Long since have the fierce gales of winter tide spent themselves—its snows have melted away, and Nature is rejoicing once more in her freshly donned garb of leaf and color. Every hedge and copse seems full of singing birds, and the clear-throated call of the song-thrush and blackbird is an outstanding melody.
Through the emerald green of the pastured dale a river placidly wends its way, sleek trine are browsing contentedly in the fields alongside; and in the river's mirrored depths, as it glides along, are reflected the beauties of neighboring hill and dale and the ever-varying tints of sky and cloud.
Anon its waters break in the shallows—anon they race over the pebble bed and gravel shingle—they fall in cataracts over the rocky slopes, lined on either side with a lace-like bordering of exquisite ferns—they scintillate and sparkle in the sunshine, and then they chase each other merrily in joyous flowing and eddies till they merge in the deeps once more, and resume that long patient journey to the vastness of the far-away ocean.
One thinks of that poem on the "Waters of Ladore" in our elocution books long ago, and also Tennyson's musical lines in one of his English Idylls on the Brook:
“I come from haunts of coot and hern—
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges.
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till, last, by Philip's farm I flow,
To join the brimming river.
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.”
Chapter 2
ON RIVERSIDE BOTANY
LET us have a little talk now in this preliminary chapter on Riverside Botany. Some way or other it seems to me that my large family has grown older than it was in the previous chapter, so they will not object to reading something which is not a school book, but yet contains a little useful knowledge.
We will stray round the river and its little adjuncts, and, taking the seasons in their turn, consider some of the pretty wild flowers and plants appertaining.
Look at that gay show of bright Marsh Marigolds (Cáltha palustris) all over those wet fields and margins of the streams. How beautiful are their brilliant yellows! Then there are the Golden Irises or Water Flags (Iris pseudacorus), with their long sword-like leaves: what clumps of them there are, and how they stand out—these large yellow blooms—amidst the surrounding green!
Very soon you will see tall spikes of purple—intensely purple flowers—jutting upward between the long grasses. These are the Purple Loosestrifes (Lythrum salicária). You cannot fail to recognize them, and nearer the water's edge another tall and leafy plant, with "rosebay" or purplish flowers—the Great Hairy Willow Herb (Epilóbium hirsútis), and, beside it, a little farther from the water's edge and near a meadow if possible, your favorite plant, the Meadow Sweet (Spirœa ulmária), with its fragrant feathery plumes of a delicate creamy color.
You take your little canes playfully to knock the tops off the Black Knapweed, or Hardhead, with its bright purple tuft like a small thistle. It takes its Latin name (Centaúrea nigra) from the legend that the Centaur Chiron, in Mythology, when wounded in the foot by Hercules, cured himself by applying a root of one of these plants to the injured part.
The larger Knapweed (Centaúrea scabiósa) is a very handsome wild flower, and very showy in autumn.
Now you will find trailing along the pathways, where the townsfolk take their walk after the day's work is done, a pretty little Cinquefoil or five-parts-leaf plant with bright yellow blossoms of four and often five petals. This is the little Potentilla Repens, or Creeping Potentilla, and the color of its flowers is that of the purest gold. The Silverweed along the roadside is a cousin (Potentilla aroserína), the leaves shining underneath like silver are "pinnate" (many leaflets ranged on either side of the stalk), and its flowers are like the creeping Potentil.
There is also another little trailing plant, the Tormentilla, a frequent ornament of our pastures and moorlands. It has only four petals, otherwise its flowers are the same shape as the Potentillas.
Look at that profusion of lilac-colored Scabious (Scabiósa), they are of the Teasel family. How abundantly they grow on the borders of those fields, and where there is chalk or limestone subsoil!
Climb up higher now to the drier ground, and let us admire the pretty little Euphrasia, or "Eyebright," with its tiny blossoms of snowy white, so delicately interlaced with the softest of blue. They look like little stars on a frosty night, as they peep out through their tiny forests of green, or little sun-kissed spangles of dew. Milton, you remember, in his lines on the "Archangel's interview with. Adam," refers to the eye-strengthening qualities of this plant, accredited to it in his day, in his lines:
“Then purged with Euphrasy and Rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.”
These are only a few of our showy flowers by the riversides, and up farther along the banks and precincts. We need not dwell on the well-known Ragweed, or Ragwort (Senécio Jacobæa), with its exceedingly tough stems and clusters of bright yellow flowers. We call it in Ireland the "Prishach Wee" or Yellow Weed. There are also the Yarrows, tougher in stem, if possible, than the Ragwort (Archillea millefólium), with its profusion of blossoms in disc shape; "Composite" they are called in Botany: they are white, varying to pink. And there are the Thistles. The great prickly Scotch Thistle (Onopórdum acánthium,)—you cannot fail to recognize it! And the very common melancholy Thistle (Cnícus heterophyllus), so called from its drooping stems and heads which are of a very intense purple. It must be a very idle farmer, indeed, in whose pastures or lands flowering Thistles are allowed to appear, with their winged seeds flying all over the place and finding a resting-place in neighboring farms. These little airplanes of Nature are not without their object lesson. An idle thought, an idle word, some evil, some wrong, ever ready to fall, and fall so fruitfully and efficaciously on some unoccupied ground working its mischief. Howitt, the poet, sings:
“Lightly soars the thistledown
Lightly doth it float:
Lightly seeds of care are sown,
Little do we note.
Lightly floats the thistledown,
Far and wide it flies:
By the faintest zephyrs blown
Through the summit skies.
Watch life's thistles bud and blow:
Oh! ties pleasant folly!
But when all our paths they sow
Then comes melancholy!”
And now Dame Autumn comes on the scene. How richly she is clad in her mantle of crimson and russet-brown! Her Bramble Bushes (Rúbus fruticósus) (how often we have gone blackberrying!) have changed the green of their leaves for the more seasonable tints of amber and carmine and gold. The rich black fruit you have gathered, in spite of the angry wasps, has been transferred by deft hands into preserving pans mixed with other appetizing ingredients, to emerge afterward in those delicious jellies and jams with which our careful housekeepers stock their winter larders.
The well-known Ampelopsis and its sister, the larger-leaved Virginian Creeper, which we so tenderly trail round the walls of our houses and bungalows, are now one brilliant show of scarlet, and set off our dwellings with great effect.
But alas! Autumn will not continue to treat us so well. We shall soon hear the first swishes of her untamed winds sweeping down from the leafless lands to blow roughly and rudely on our gaily colored scenes, and to play havoc with the remaining foliages of summer.
“Farmer Philip," to whom Tennyson refers in his "Idyll of the Brook," has all his crops safely gathered and housed-he is an industrious farmer—is Philip! and the writer knows another Philip—industrious in his Irish estate, and equally so in that of his Lord. Our extra hour of sunlight has been shut off by Act of Parliament, and we settle down for the advent of Winter. Cold, wet and windy many a day may be, yet it is by no means a season lacking in its accompaniments and characteristics of that charm which attaches to the three other seasons.
How beautiful the whole countryside appears when it is wrapped in its mantle of snow! Softly and silently have the feathered crystals fallen all through the night upon the frosted scene; the old yew-tree in. the garden, bent by the westerly gales of successive years, seems to bend further beneath its load of snow-every surrounding bough and branch has its new covering; and all along, up the hillsides, and off into the distant mountains there is an unbroken expanse of dazzling white.
And we are reminded of the promise of God in Isa. 1:18:
“Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow:
Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
How many down through the long stream of time have answered in the words of the Psalmist, and may you answer too: “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be Glean, Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow,”
(Psa. 51:7).
And so pass the seasons in their order. The Covenant of God to Noah was-while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and Summer and Winter, and day and night shall not cease “(Gen. 8:22).
Wild flowers! Ah leave them there,
And let them grow.
They smile upon us from each nook and dell,
The bright blue speedwell and the pimpernel—
The aye bright sweet and low,
And the tall loosestrife by the reed-bound mere.
And the geranium wild,
Down in its mossy glade,
Beneath the fragrant roof of the hawthorn
That peeps to welcome the rejoicing morn
From out its verdant shade:
What lonely moments have they all beguiled!
All lovely in your life,
And fair and true,
Unsullied by these fatal storms of fatal years,
With all their wreckage and with all their tears,
Beneath your skies of blue
Sweet flowers bloom on throughout these scenes of strife.
J. W. McC. Ireland, 1921,
Chapter 3
THE RIVERS OF SCRIPTURE
NOW we come to the Rivers of Scripture. We have not touched in previous chapters on the great rivers of the world. The Amazon or the Mississippi or the Niagara with its tremendous "falls" or the Zambesi—that great African river whose cataracts are said far to exceed in grandeur and sublimity those of Niagara, or any of these vast onrushes of water. You will read of all these in your geography. We will now turn our attention to those rivers in the Scriptures to which God has directed the thoughts of His people, and learn our lessons from them.
I can feel that I am drawing into my circle readers who have passed their childhood days, and one would pray that we all may derive benefit from our little study.
The first river which is mentioned in Scripture is of the very earliest date, and in connection with the Garden of Eden.
You will find the reference in Gen. 2:10, which reads: "And a river went out from Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads." God had planted this incomparable garden for the pleasure and enjoyment of the man whom He had created, and He walked in it Himself "in the cool of the day." He had formed this man "out of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul" (chap. 2. ver. 7). And, again, verse 8: "The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He had put the man whom He had fostered." The eastward position in Scripture always typifies what is for God's glory. His glory came in by the eastern entrance.
Can you not picture in your minds the wonder and admiration with which this first human being—the ancestor of our race, coming direct from the hand of God, and endowed with intelligence and apprehension of the highest order, regarded this scene of surpassing beauty as his eyes opened upon it? It was a scene in which everything was good—everything to the complete pleasure of God, and through which, for coolness and refreshment, the clear waters of this primeval river flowed.
How this first man moved about from vantage-point to vantage-point, enraptured with each newly discovered charm—each fresh glory of creation, and the fact that he himself was in unclouded communion and intercourse with his Creator—the blessed Source and Spring of all!
For the pleasure of God was he made, and the interests of God were centered in him. Before him were marshaled, in their order, "the beasts of the field and the forest and the fowls of the air," and "what he called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
There were no thorns nor briars, nor noxious weeds to mar the purity of the heavenly planting, nor had as yet the shadow of sin cast its baneful gloom over the place of God's blessing.
But alas! the first Adam fell: "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men (Rom. 5:12). But, again, who shall despair while lasts the abounding grace of God—for," By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous, "and, next verse," As sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
He is the Sun and the Center of all God's purposes and counsels—everything is committed to Him, and "His Kingdom shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth" (Zach. 9:10).
The river of Eden, as we have read, flowed on to the outer world in four divisions. Four in Scripture is an earthly number, and refers to what is world-wide. In figure thus it dispensed the goodness and favor of God to all without limitation. "God is Love" the apostle John says.
He has blessing in His mind for all, and wherever in His sovereign grace and dispensation, there is an outflowing of the river of His love and goodness, it is with the object in view that all who come into the region of it may experience that love—that goodness—and that blessing in their very fullest import and meaning.
And it reaches the children too. "Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto Me," said the blessed Lord Jesus, "for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19:14). This salvation is for you, young people. Come while you are yet young, and untrammeled and unhardened by the influences of a Christ-less world, as the old revival hymn has it—"Come to Jesus just now.”
The first head or division of this river was named "Pison" (Gen. 2:11), and we are told that it "compassed the whole land of Havilah where there is gold," also that "the gold of that land was good," and that the "bdellium and the onyx stone were there." Gold in Scripture is figurative of righteousness-as it is the finest and purest of metals, so surely is righteousness, or doing right, the finest of works, and this river of God's ordering flowed out into a scene answering entirely to His mind. How like the experience of the Church in her early days, when "they who received the word continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers!" (Acts 2:42). Through such a company could the river of God's pleasure and refreshment flow; there were precious things for him, as typified in the "bdellium and the onyx stone," and it could be said appreciatively that the "gold of that land was good.”
Broken though the state of the Church may be to-day, there can still be a Havilah for God in the hearts of His people, refreshed by the river of His grace, the unclouded joy of His Presence, and the blessed sense of His pleasure in His assembly.
The second head or division of the river was named Gihon, and we read that it "compassed the whole land of Ethiopia.”
Of that country it is prophesied in Psa. 68:31, "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God," and again in Psa. 87:4, "I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia and Tire, with Ethiopia, this man was born there.”
How blessedly the Ethiopian Eunuch of Acts 8 came into the good of that river!
He was, as we all know, a very distinguished man in his country, "having great authority under Candace, the Queen, and charge of all her treasure." He had been up to Jerusalem worshipping according to the Jewish ritual, and was now returning to his own land, never evidently having heard of the blessed Lord or His claims as the true Messiah, even though He had suffered and died and risen again only a few years before.
We can see him on this return journey riding along in his chariot with a suitable retinue.
There were no trains in his day and no luxurious motors as there are in our day with their rich appointments and widely advertised efficiencies and comforts to convey persons of distinction in their travels. People of the Eunuch's rank and authority had to traverse long distances in the chariots of their period, which must have lacked greatly in ease and smoothness of transit, and the roads or tracks over which they had to run were anything but a pleasure.
The Eunuch was taking back with him a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Spirit of God was guiding his attention to the beautiful fifty-third chapter of the prophet Isaiah. On and on this educated man reads, his heart becoming more and more affected by the account given in it of that glorious One, far above all others, of whom the prophet wrote, who was to suffer for the people, who was to be led as a lamb to the slaughter, and, His judgment being taken away, whose life was to be cut off from the land of the living. How truly as he reads on, does his heart answer to the confession, " All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned, everyone, to his own way," and with what ineffable sweetness falls the remedy on his, or on any awakened sinner's ears—" The Lord path laid on Him the iniquity of us all!”
“Who can tell me, "the Eunuch must have cried, as he read on," who can tell me of this wonderful Person?”
And the answer came swiftly and surely. He was purposed in the mind of God for blessing, and a work had begun in his soul.
The angel of the Lord gave an immediate divine message to Philip the Evangelist to "arise and go towards the South on the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gasa, which is desert" (Acts 8:26). And he arose and went. Five very significant words! and we would do well to take lesson by them, and ask ourselves, old and young, "Do we follow the Lord as obediently and unquestioningly? Are we as ready to do His bidding, and can He mark us out as the faithful and reliable ones when there is something connected either with the conversion of an immortal soul or the edification of His people, that would need our presence and counsel on His behalf?" We should be ready always to act on Divine light and guidance, nothing should hinder us, and thereby we would be given more light, more guidance, and more usefulness in His service.
Philip went and joined himself to the Eunuch's chariot just as the latter was reading the seventh and eighth verses of the chapter, and (I am sure with divinely given diffidence and tact) he asked him, "Understandest Thou what thou readest?" Equally direct and without any preliminaries came the answer, "How can I except some man should guide me?" I fear if we were in Philip's place we should have "beaten about the bush" first and introduced all sorts of topics before we came haltingly to the one thought uppermost in our minds; but both Philip and the Eunuch were very direct about it, and that is the best way. So he desired Philip to come up and sit beside him in the chariot and explain everything to him. How he drinks in the word of life! For the first time he listens to the glad tidings of the Salvation of God. The Ethiopian Magnate had gone as such—in his place there is a "little child" in all simplicity and trustfulness learning the Personality of that "some other Man" whose existence was a puzzle to him. Now his heart goes out in glad response as the devoted Evangelist preaches unto him Jesus. "Jesus," sang Bernard of Clairvaux in the days of the Church's Ethiopian darkness:
“Jesus—the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast:
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest!”
There was something very lovable about this Eunuch in his genuineness, and we can see his whole countenance lighting up with joy as he takes in the gospel message, and accepts the blessed Lord Jesus as his Savior.
Now his charioteers halt in wonder. This decisive Evangelist has found an equally decisive pupil. They come to water—a river, perhaps, or the deeper pool of a passing brook, and the Ethiopian Ruler passes out, in the figure of baptism, from the leadership of this world and the glory of it, through the waters of death, to rise again in newness of life, a follower of the Lord Jesus. He could sing as he thought of that heavenly country of which he was now a citizen, as a beloved servant of the Lord sang in his own day—
“There only to adore,
My soul its strength, may find,
Its life, its joy, for evermore,
By sight, nor sense, defined.”
One heard, only the other day, in conversation, of a tribe in Ethiopia with a ritual of their own, half Jewish, half Christian, which they say was first introduced into the country by this Eunuch of old. Missionaries have lately discovered them, and are seeking to bring them back to the truth, as, no doubt, the Eunuch originally delivered it when he returned home.
Hiddekel was the name of the third head, or division of the river. It is now called the "Tigris." "That is it," the Scripture says, “which goeth to the east of Assyria." By this river—"The great river Hiddekel”— stood the prophet Daniel when he received the "Heavenly Vision," and was shown in symbol God's mind as to the future. He was of the tribe of Judah (chap. 1., ver. 6) and was one of those well-favored and cultured youths of the Jewish race who had been taken captive to Babylon, and were specially chosen to stand in the king's palace, and to be inducted into the lore and language of the Chaldeans. But he and his godly companions stood for their God, and refused to be conformed to the usages and customs of a Pagan country. And God stood by them. On the one hand Nebuchadnezzar, the powerful monarch with his lordly temples and costly gods of wood and stone in his realm of Shinar. On the other hand Daniel, the preserved of the Lord, with his windows open towards Jerusalem, the place of blessing, kneeling upon his knees three times a day, and giving thanks before his God as he ever did (chap. 6., ver. 10). Nebuchadnezzar, who climbed to the summit of human power, while glorying in the wealth and extent of his territory, was stricken to the ground, and given his portion with the beasts of the field till he should acknowledge that the "Heavens do rule." Daniel, who followed the Lord, was established and had the joy of seeing the once Pagan king brought to acknowledge Daniel's God as his God, and to worship Him alone.
Nebuchadnezzar passes away-his kingdom is divided, but Daniel remains, and to him the "greatly beloved" are these visions of God being now revealed.
How blessed it is to be "greatly beloved" in heaven! How blessed to stand in an evil day for God, and, having done all, to stand! We can be faithful, we can refuse what is of this world. We can pass through a hostile scene with our spiritual windows open towards Jerusalem-all the resources of heaven are at our disposal to carry us through. Kings and their thrones fall round Daniel-he passes through the fiercest fires of persecution unscathed, he is carried through blessedly in the power of the God whom he loves and serves-and what a recompense! What a reward! His name is registered in heaven as "Daniel the greatly beloved." Kingdoms may be shaken and the powers of this earth pass away, but his portion would be to "rest and stand in his lot at the end of the days" (chap. 7, vers. 9-12).
The fourth head or branch of the river was Euphrates. God "gave to the seed of Abraham the land from the river of Egypt to the great river—the River Euphrates" (Gen, 22:18). In the days of Josiah, King of Judah—Pharaoh-Necho went up from Egypt against the King of Assyria to the River Euphrates, and, although he had no quarrel with Pharaoh, nor was it his province to go to war with him, King Josiah went up against him, and was slain (2 Chron. 35:20-27). Shortly afterward Pharaoh-Necho himself was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and all his possessions were seized and appropriated from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, and Pharaoh slain.
This river will be the scene of the final judgments of God in a marked way. We read in Rev. 16:21, that "the sixth angel will pour out the vial of the wrath of God upon Euphrates, and that the waters thereof will dry up that the way of the Kings of the East may be prepared." No doubt the "Man of God's counsel from a far country" (Isa. 46:2) in judgment on the peoples. It will be a solemn day for this world when God sets out "throughly to purge His floor," and to cleanse the scene from its increased iniquity. But His beloved people—equally beloved with Daniel—will, like God's loved Daniel, stand in their lot too in those days, for we shall all be for "ever with the Lord." And when these judgments, centered as they will be in the region of the Euphrates, shall have accomplished their end, the "kingdoms of this world" all Heaven shall announce with joy and thanksgiving "shall be the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever" (Rev. 11:15).
Chapter 4
THE RIVER OF EGYPT
LONG years have passed by—sad years with melancholy record of human failure. Sin has come in— thorns and briars have overspread—the Garden of Eden is no more. Our first parents have fallen from their happy estate. Righteous Abel, so eminently in the mind of God as to His rights in redemption, has been slain by the hand of his jealous brother Cain, and the posterity of the murderer, according to sentence, has been allotted the land of the fugitive and the Nomad. Saintly Enoch—the seventh from Adam, who prophesied that in the latter days the "Lord should come with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment upon the ungodly," is no more, for God has translated him apart from the sorrows of death. Noah, the preacher of righteousness, at whose ark-building his hearers scoffed, has passed safely-he and those with him and the beasts and the birds in his charge after their kind—over the floods of the wrath of God which He lifted up in His anger on an evil generation, upon whom mercy could wait no more; and Noah, this eighth person, and his family, are the only survivors from that old world which God could not spare.
Noah has stepped out on a new world from which the waters of judgment have passed, and he sees the Rainbow of the Covenant for the first time as it spans with its radiant arch the departing cloud upon which the sun is shining. It is the token that the waters shall not devastate the earth again.
The children of men in their newly builded city in the distant land of Shinar who sought to reach to heaven with their lofty tower, and to live in defiance and independence of God, have been scattered from their gathering-place, and their language confounded that they cannot understand one another.
Faithful Abraham has passed away, before whom fell Chederlaomer, King of Elam, and Tidal, King of Nations, with their confederate rulers, and to whom God said of old, "Fear not, Abraham, I am thy Shield, and thy exceeding great Reward" (Gen. 15:2). Isaac, his son, the son of promise, the joy and treasure of his declining years, has gone to his rest, with Rebekah his wife, that beautiful type of the Church of God.
The touching scenes of the meeting of Jacob's children with their long-lost brother Joseph, whom in jealousy they would have slain, but for fear's sake sold instead to the Median merchantmen, have passed into history. A history fraught with types and pictures of Christ and His Church, for the despised one has risen to be Governor of the Land and is instrumental in the deliverance of his kinsmen.
Joseph himself has been gathered to his fathers, and over the country has arisen a ruler who knows not the people of Israel, nor cares for Joseph and his generation, and whose aim and object is solely to afflict the people of God in his realms.
His edict has gone forth that all the newly born sons of the Hebrews are to be flung ruthlessly into the river after their maltreatment at birth, Their name and lineage are to be extinct, and the promise of God as to their numbers being as the sand of the sea is to be rendered of no effect. But the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob slumbers not, neither does He sleep, and this Egyptian monarch, like the Nebuchadnezzar of after years, must be taught that the "Heavens do rule.”
And God is pleased to bring about His purposes through the weakest of instruments, and to carry His servants unscathed through the fiercest opposition, and over obstacles that, to human minds, are quite insurmountable.
We have a decided instance of this in the history of His servant Moses which we are now taking up.
Far up in that Oriental country—farther than the ancient land of Cush, there rose that lovely river—the River of Egypt. It flowed on through Libia and Nubia, down through the rainless land of Misraim until it reached the great sea of Tarshish, now the Mediterannean, and there, in its deltas, it was merged into those waters. The tall Papyri sway gracefully on its banks on either side, and the great Lotus or Water Lily, the sacred flower of the country, blooms beside. Noble temples of old, mausoleums of bygone kings, and vast halls of wonderful structure are seen on every hand; for in those days Egypt was a center of far advanced science and architecture—yet all without God.
The daughter of the Pharaoh of the day is seen coming down from her palace with her waiting-maids, as was her wont, she to "wash in the river," and they to "walk along by the river side.”
Out among the tall Irises or Water flags, she espies that strange little craft of wickerwork, made from the Bulrushes of the Nile, (Cypérus nilótecus), and she sends one of her maids to find out what it is, and to fetch it. It proves to be a little cradle, or ark, and to contain a beautiful little Hebrew child of three months old, whose mother had hidden him in this way from the cruel fate to which the country's laws had doomed him.
Pharaoh's daughter, perhaps she was childless herself, looked on her father's would-be victim, and as the bonny boy wept, her compassion went out to him, and she ordered a nurse to be called, who, in Divine providence, was his own mother, to rear and bring up the child for her, to become, eventually, her adopted son.
And so this Hebrew child was preserved for God. He was preserved to esteem in later years the "reproach of Christ greater riches than the pleasures of Egypt," to forsake that country and the glory of it, "not fearing the wrath of the king," and to be, under the all-powerful hand of God, the Leader and Lawgiver of Israel.
What a priceless child, if such we may style him, was rescued that day from the waters of the Egyptian river! One is reminded of Cowper's lines, written, it is said, on the occasion of a special deliverance from death by his own act, in one of his fits of melancholia:
“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”
Now we see Moses standing in awe before the burning bush—receiving the revelation of God. His shoes are removed, he treads on holy ground, and this meekest of men is given authority from the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob to deliver His afflicted people from the hand of the mighty Pharaohs, and to "bring them up into a good land and a large, into a land flowing with milk and honey" (Exod. 4-8).
See him before Pharaoh, that haughty and powerful monarch, who goes on hardening his heart while plague after plague devastates his country. Hear his solemn warnings to this wicked man, and see the end of Pharaoh's career. The children of Israel are safely carried dry-shod between the divided waters of the Red Sea, while the host of the pursuing Pharaoh is lost forever in the returning flood.
How he stood by the people of God during their long journey through the wilderness, that journey of murmuring and complaining and rebellion!
By Divine direction he had the Ark and the Tabernacle formed in every way, "according to the pattern on the Mount": the Commandments and the statutes and the laws of the burnt offering and other offerings were all framed and instituted as they were given him by God.
High on the pole was lifted up that serpent of brass, that all who under the anger and judgment of God had been bitten by the fiery serpents might look thereon and live. A type of that blessed One our Savior and Lord, who brought this event in that light before Nicodemus, and who was lifted up on Calvary that we who had been bitten by the fiery serpent of sin might look to Him and live.
And now, after forty years in the wilderness, during which God said of them, “Your fathers tempted Me, proved Me and saw My works; wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said, They do always err in their hearts and they have not known my ways '" (Heb. 3:9, 10)—after these forty years they are in view of the Promised Land.
Moses has reached the great age of one hundred and twenty years, and so preserved has he been of God for the work given him that "his sight is not dimmed, nor his natural force abated." And he is now speaking his last words to the large company, who, after all their wanderings, have at last come in sight of the desired haven. Read his encouraging injunctions to the faithful Joshua, the son of Nun, to be so soon his successor, in the thirty-first of Deuteronomy, his song of victory in the thirty-second, and his blessing of the tribes in the thirty-third, and consider how truly great in the things of God this meekest of men had become for God. In all this we see pre-eminently, not Moses himself, but the Divine operation of God in a human soul. He has done with Israel—his last words have been said, it is revealed to him that he is about to pass away-he is not permitted to enter the Promised Land on account of his failure at the striking of the rock, but a wonderful compensation awaits him. God is just, and must deal justly with us in our failures, but His compensations are limitless, and as boundless as His love.
We are permitted to know a little of the last hours of Moses as he is brought to the topmost peak of Pisgah's Hill to spend these last hours upon earth face to face with God, as he did in Sinai.
There, with unclouded vision as he stands in the Presence of his God, he sees the land—the glorious land of Promise—the goal for which he had suffered and struggled so patiently these forty years. The Divine hand points out to him the "Land of Gilead and Dan—Naphthali, Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah unto the utmost seas—the south—the plain of the Valley of Jericho, and the city of palm trees, unto Zoar" (Deut. 34.). How glorious was the sight! and how glorious to our vision shall be that land of all lands when we are gathered home! But more blessed far to behold the loved Face of the Owner and Giver! "And so he died there and God buried him, and no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.”
It is so touching to read of the way in which, in His great goodness, God compensated His beloved servant for his loss in not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. Those wonderful moments at the last were worth it all. How greatly "recompensed His smile the sufferings of this little while!”
Truly, as the Scripture says, "There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" (ver. 10).
We may not understand fully why it was said of Moses in Heb. 11 that he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater than the riches of Egypt, living, as he did, in such an antecedent day; but the scripture of. Deut. 18:15,18, will show us that God had instructed him in the truth of His coming Messiah, and that he was able to anticipate and appreciate in his own heart the Christ of God, and to live, even then, in the light and joy of His coming day, as Jacob of old was, who prophesied, in the blessing of his son Judah, that "the Scepter should not depart from Judah, nor a Lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (He whose it is) came, and to Him should the gathering of the people be" (Gen. 49:10).
Chapter 5
THE RIVER JORDAN
WE see a large company coming to the brink of the River Jordan. They have traveled far and they have been traveling for forty years—unnecessarily long years—for they have been a sore trial to their leaders with their murmurings and discontentedness’s, and many a time have they come under the special judgment of God, and many a time have they been the subjects of severe disciplinary measures on account of their unbelief and disobedience. Though placed in what could have been the happiest circumstances of Divine favor and blessing they have only proved the truth of the Scripture with regard to all of us—"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9). And yet in the forbearing mercy of God they have not been exterminated. "Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness," God said. "They walked not in My statutes and they despised My judgments" (Ezek. 20:13). What a sad chapter the twentieth of Ezekiel is! How full of the exposure of human failure and iniquity, with the impossibility on the part of a righteous God to pass it over! And yet His mercy endureth forever. We read on that they will be brought again into the wilderness—this time, spiritually, among the hostile nations, and there God will "plead with them face to face." As He pleaded with their fathers in the wilderness in the Land of Egypt, so will He plead with them there. Then shall their eyes be opened and they shall see that their Prince and Savior is the One whom they once hanged on that tree, and the true and only Messiah.
The Church will have gone home, but Israel in her scene of turmoil and tribulation will be left, and at last will "lift up her hand to God. "What a day of conversion it will be! Then shall they cross the Jordan in anti-type, and step out into a world of millennial blessing—the" Land flowing with milk and honey” in its highest sense.
See that multitude now, as it approaches the margins of the river. Wives, families, tented dwellings, and earthly possessions. Tribes arranged according to their order—the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord their God—the priests to bear it, and to offer up sacrifices for the people.
Moses has gone to his rest; they have a new leader, Joshua, the son of Nun, he who came out of Egypt with their fathers forty years before, and who discomfited Amalek at Rephidim in the strength of the Lord, that striking type of the flesh.
During that long day of conflict, Moses, the man of God, stood on the top of the hill, with the rod of God in his uplifted hands, and when unable of himself to hold up his hands any longer Aaron, the High Priest, and Hur came beside him and held them up for him (Exod. 17:8, 13). We can never overcome the flesh in our own strength, only in the strength of God. With that rod Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea, and smote the solid rock for the welcome waters to gush forth. Death was vanquished, and Life was brought to light in that Spiritual Rock—Christ the Lord.
And now Joshua rises early and comes to the Jordan, he and all the Children of Israel. He is full of faith and hope in God tremendous though the issues before him may prove.
The spies have brought back word of the land, and that the inhabitants of it have fallen under the terror of the Lord, on account of the victories achieved over the armies of the Amorite kings on their side of the river—Sihon the King of the Amorites, and Og the gigantic Ruler of Bashan.
Surely the Lord has triumphed gloriously, and He will triumph still!
It is harvest-time, the warm sun has melted the far-off snows of Lebanon, and the river is overflowing all its banks, But they fear not the swelling of Jordan.
By divine command the "Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of all the earth" passes in first, borne by the priests, the Levites. The waters stand—these great volumes of water rushing down that long decline of country, stand—and rise up upon an heap; the downward waters fail, and are cut off, and all the people pass clean and dry-shod over the Jordan. Then the twelve stones, as twelve records answering to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, are placed in the midst of the river bed, where the feet of the priests which bore the Ark while the people passed on, had stood, and the waters of Jordan return unto their place, and flow over all its banks as they did before.
The mighty work is done—the people of God have entered the Promised Land, His word is fulfilled—the hope and expectation of long years is an accomplished fact. What a day for the praise and glory of God!
And now, we come to the last days of faithful Joshua, the son of Nun. God has been with him all the long and weary way, and at the great age of one hundred and ten years he passes home, full of days, and with the blessed memory and comfort that all the days of his leadership Israel, his care and concern, has served the Lord faithfully and well (Josh. 24:29, 31).
But we must not pass on without referring to dear old. Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, who had crossed the Red Sea of old, and who had come up through the wilderness with Joshua, true to his God, and who was elected therefore to enter the land of blessing.
Hear him saying when the lands were ready for distribution, and the godly were claiming their privileges, as he looks out with joy on the Canaan—the longed-for Canaan—his aged feet have now as their goal to tread: "I am this day four score and five years old, and yet I am as strong this day as the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out and to come in. Now, therefore, give me this mountain whereof the Lord spake in that day... and, if so be the Lord be with me, I shall be able to drive out the Anakims" (Josh. 14 and 15.). And in the goodness of God he did enter into his possession and drave out Anak's towering sons.
How beautifully he gives way to Joshua! Recognizing without the least touch of jealousy or affront the one whom God had, in His sovereign wisdom and election, chosen to be the leader of His people, although, from a human point of view, Caleb's qualifications were not of a lesser order, for he had proved to be equally true.
And now, his compensation. (What compensations God has for us!) He is given Hebron, which is fellowship. How well fitted he was for fellowship—this dear humble-minded man, with his simple, lovable disposition—and his record, divinely recorded, that he had "wholly followed the Lord God of Israel!" (Ex. 14).
And how truly we can maintain fellowship with our brethren in the "Apostles' fellowship" if we are of this mind giving place to each other, harboring no secret affronts, claiming, with them, our part of the inheritance, and finding our joy in the company of our brethren, to us, and to Him, the "Beloved of the Lord." Until that day, of which we often sing, arrives.
“Not we alone—Thy loved ones all complete,
In glory round Thee there with joy shall meet:
All like Thee, for Thy glory like Thee, Lord,
Object supreme of all, by all adored!”
Now we must pass again over long periods, this time over five hundred years. What changes have taken place! There have been judges in Israel, and, finally, kings. The people clamored for a King like the rest of the nations, and they were permitted to have one of their own choosing, a "man-of-the-world" as we would say to-day, head and shoulders over everyone else, Saul, the son of Kish. They went in for this world's best and they paid dearly for it, and came, besides, under the anger of God. "I gave thee a king in Mine anger," God said, "and took him away in My wrath" (Hos. 13:11).
Then God gave them David—His own choosing—for their King, of whose house and lineage came Mary, the Mother of the Lord. He slew the Philistine giant when, as a mere stripling, he set out against the common foe of Israel: and now David, this "man after God's own heart," has gone to his rest, leaving Solomon, his son, to reign in his stead.
A glorious reign in the day of which the Children of Israel were blessed above all that had been heretofore, and which was a type of the glorious reign of Christ. He was given wisdom and power; he builded a house for the Lord God of Israel, and his fame and honor were world-wide. "He spake three thousand proverbs and his songs were a thousand and five.”
But once more the cloud falls on a scene of human decadence from the things of God. Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, ascends the throne, a wicked man, and in his days the cry of division goes forth through the Kingdom: "To your tents, O Israel! See to thine own house, David!" And so there are now two kingdoms—that of Israel, with the Ten Tribes, and that of Judah with the remaining two, and Joram, the son of the unrighteous Ahab, reigns over the former.
Word goes out concerning a very distinguished army officer in Syria, named Naaman, in full command over all the armies of the Syrian King, noted for valor and courage, and, by God's allowing, having brought freedom and independence to his country—word goes out that he has been stricken by that fatal disease—leprosy. The King's valued commander a leper! What a disaster of the first magnitude!
For himself it means social and political extinction—the "several house," far from the haunts of men—and a slow and dreadful death from that hopeless malady.
His various campaigns have comprised amongst their number some raids or attacks in the land of Israel, and a little maid has been brought away captive and installed in his house in attendance on his wife.
This little maid has a missionary spirit in her, and when she hears the commotion and the dismay she gathers up her courage and delivers her message. How earnestly she gives it! Not "imparting information" in a cold calculating sort of way, but with genuine pity and compassion in her heart. "Would God," she cries, "that my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy (ver. 3). The heart-stricken man is told what she says, and her words are conveyed also to the King, whose judgment is requested on the matter.
“Go to—go, "he says to Naaman," and I will give you a letter to the King of Israel. "The letter was written, and the gifts collected and prepared. They were" ten talents of silver and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment," and Naaman, the leper, and his retinue set out on their journey. The letter completely ignored the prophet of whom the little maid made mention, and asked the King of Israel himself to recover Naaman of his leprosy (ver. 6). The Syrian King probably looked on the prophet as a sort of paid healer at his Monarch's bidding.
And in due time the deputation drives up to the royal entrance of the King's house in Samaria. He rends his clothes with rage and astonishment when he reads the letter. We can easily imagine his amazement at the request, and the assumption that he possessed miraculous powers. There was tremendous commotion in the palace, and very likely a consultation as to defense against this war-like challenge from Syria.
Elisha the prophet hears of it, and rebukes the King for his action in rending his clothes, instead of being aware that God had still a testimony in Israel, far as the kingdom had departed from him. Elisha was jealous of the testimony, and he preserved it for God, and he commanded that Naaman should forthwith be sent to him, as the prophet in Israel.
And Naaman came, with his horses and his chariots and his royal gifts, and stood at the door of Elisha. "Now," said he to himself, “I shall be treated as I should be; there will be an imposing ceremony as the prophet comes out and strikes his hand over the affected part. I shall distribute his Majesty's gifts in return, and go back to my own country healed. It will certainly be very surprising, and I must say I wonder how they do it.”
But No! it was not to be thus: there was to be no ceremonial, no waving of a healing hand, no acceptance of gifts—instead, a messenger comes out to him from the prophet's house with the prophet's message, "Go, wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean" (ver. 10).
Now it was Naaman's turn to be angry. He turned away in a rage. "If I am to wash in a river to be cured," he cried, "have I not my own rivers of Abana and Pharpar in the land of Damascus, which are superior far to all the waters of Israel?" And he would have made for home again at once.
But he had wise and cool-headed servants, and they gathered round him to give him their advice. Have we not often found that masters and mistresses, no matter how high in their circles of society, will be amenable to correction from a confidential servant, when all their own friends can say will have no weight whatever with them? And Naaman was no exception to the rule.
See him as he listens to them, look at the varying expressions on his face, and finally behold him brought round to do the prophet's bidding.
This plain uninteresting Jordan! Down into it to wash like anyone else! What a proposition for him—one of the principal men of Syria! And yet he goes. Those servants, in their overcoming persuasion, would remind us of the Holy Spirit leading a soul for whom God has purposes of blessing into the light and good of that blessing, and one feels that the figure is divinely suggested here.
Once he goes beneath the waters—there is no change—twice he dips himself—still no difference; but, after the seventh time, O the joy of it! "His flesh came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." The “social and political extinction "was a dream of the past—the" several house "would not be for him—the long and lingering death—once so inevitable, affrights him no more. He lives, he is clean!
Once more he stands at the prophet's door—this time to be received by the prophet himself and blessed as he departs—a new man—in the renewed days of his health and the knowledge and praise of God, to his own country. Would he not sing with us to-day?
“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day,
And there have I, though vile as he,
Washed all my sins away.”
Chapter 6
BAPTIZED IN THE JORDAN
THIS chapter must stand alone. Though we are still considering the associations of the River Jordan, there is now a Person on the scene in connection with that river who, though that glory is veiled for the time, is the Lord of Life and Glory, and who is not to be put on a plane with anyone in His earthly experiences: He is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity—the Son of, and co-equal with, the living God. "Jehovah possessed Him in the beginning of His way—before His works of old." When "He prepared the heavens He was there," when "He appointed the foundations of the earth He was by Him as One brought up with Him"... “daily His delight—rejoicing always before Him, and His delights were with the sons of men " (Prov. 8:22, 31).
He was there—this Pre—eminent One—when the "morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:7), and He shall be there when the "Voice of many angels round the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, and the ten thousand times ten thousand and the thousands of thousands" shall be lifted up in one united volume to praise Him; and He shall be there when "every creature in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea shall cry ' Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever! '" ( Rev 4:11-14). And all we who have trusted in Him, and have been "plunged beneath that flood," shall be there—there to wonder and adore, there to join in His praise, and to worship Him for all eternity—Jesus, our Blessed Lord, the sent One—the "Root and Off spring of David, and the bright and Morning Star" (Rev. 22:16).
How we shall rejoice to see the day of His triumph! The "gates shall have lifted up their heads" and the "everlasting doors shall have been opened wide," and the "Lord of hosts, the Lord mighty in battle, Who only has clean hands and a pure heart shall receive the blessing of Jehovah" (Psa. 24), the "Heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession" (Psa. 2:8). Truly He will lead captivity captive in that day, as He enters those gates with the triumphs of His toil!
At the time now under our consideration there were many looking for the "Consolation of Israel." There was the aged Prophetess Anna, who spoke to all of the Redemption which should be wrought by the coming Messiah, and who "departed not from the temple, but served God with prayers and fasting night and day." Her interests were in the things of God. She was attached to His center, she desired no place in worldly circles, either for her enjoyment or for the scope of her talents (for, there is no doubt, she was a clever woman naturally), and her compensation was that she was let into the mind of God as to the near approach of His blessed Son, in lowly guise coming to this world as its Savior and Redeemer. Women in Scripture are typical of devotedness and affection, when associated with the things of God, and Anna was certainly a type of the Church waiting in affection for the coming of her Lord.
Simeon, that just and devout man, was also in an attitude of expectation, and it was "revealed to him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ" (Luke 3:25, 26). You will find man in Scripture taking the place of energy and activity in the service of God, as woman is of responsive affection. Both have their distinctive places.
“Joseph of Arimathæa, an honorable counselor," was another who "waited for the Kingdom of God" (Mark 15:43).
And none of them was disappointed.
The shepherds were watching their flocks as usual on the hill-side on that wonderful night in this world's history, when suddenly the "angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of 'the Lord shone round about them" (Luke 2:9). And how the vast company of the heavenly host sang of "the good tidings of great joy" the angel of the Lord brought to this sorrowing world—"Unto you is born this day in the city of David (David, the shepherd-king) a Savior, which is Christ the Lord!”
The shepherds journeyed forthwith to Bethlehem—the "Bethlehem Ephrata" of prophecy, and found, as it was said, "The Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes—lying in a manger," and having seen Him and worshipped, they returned to their flocks, telling all whom they met on their way what they had heard concerning the Child: and they praised and glorified God for all they had seen.
And now we come to one “clothed in camel's hair, a leather girdle round his loins, and his food locusts and wild honey. "He is" John the son of Zacharias," the forerunner of the Messiah, and he is" preparing the way of the Lord, and making straight His paths, for all flesh is to see the Salvation of God "(Luke 3:4-6). He is in Bethabara beyond Jordan baptizing there. The people are all coming to him. They profess their desire to pass from the old Jewish dispensation into the new day of God's ordering when everything typified in the old regime was now to be fulfilled in Christ." God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, "was now to speak for the last time," By Son "(an abstract thought)," who was appointed Heir of all things, and by whom also He made the worlds " (Heb. 1:1, 2), and the baptism of John brought in its subjects—in figure—and, as it were, through the waters of death, to the Leadership of Christ and the acknowledgment of God's new order in Him.
And as he baptizes, there comes to Him the Lord Himself—"the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world," also, as having taken the position of God's faithful Man down here, to recognize God's order, and, in His baptism, to fulfill all righteousness.
Again the river of God's utmost pleasure flowed through the land of Havilah and compassed it about— it passed through the land of the bdellium and the onyx stone. God's perfect Man on earth passes out of a scene which God has refused and into a scene which God has accepted—He Himself the Sun and Center of it. In Him is the finest gold—in Him the land of Havilah restored for God—in Him the preciousness— the "chief things of the ancient mountains and the precious things of the lasting hills" (Deut. 23:15).
Upon Him and Him alone as He rose from the waters of Jordan did the Spirit descend like a dove and alight: and for Him, and Him alone, came the heavenly voice, "This is My beloved Son, in whom is all My delight" (Matt. 3:17).
How jealously the Person of the Son was guarded by God all through His journey down here!
This world refused Him room in the inn, and allotted to Him at His birth the manger—the lowliest of all places. But the Father opened the heavens to announce His coming by means of the angelic host, and sent the three wise men of the East from afar to render to Him their homage and to offer their gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
Simon the Pharisee denied the blessed Lord the ordinary courtesies shown to a guest when in His gracious condescension He accepted his invitation to eat with him (Luke 7:36). But the woman of the street—the guilty sinner—was divinely raised up and moved to wash those neglected feet with her tears and to dry them with the hairs of her head, and from the priceless alabaster box of ointment which she brought for the purpose, to anoint them towards the day of His burial. The Pharisee and those with him at the table in that guesthouse must have been profoundly moved at the sight, and as for the woman herself she went away rejoicing, for her sins were forgiven her, and had she not gazed on the Face of Him who was the Savior of the world?
Man came and sealed the great stone that had been rolled across the entrance to the Sepulcher, as if finally to exclude Him from the world and to shut Him in forever from view. He had been refused to Pontius Pilate and the robber accepted in His stead; He had been crucified on the Cross of Calvary and driven from the world He came to save, and now it was thought that by sealing this stone which shut Him in, His body could never be recovered and the last trace of the Son of God—the Heir whom they had slain—would be wiped off the earth.
How reverently Joseph of Arimathæa, that honorable counselor who waited for the Kingdom of God, had laid that sacred Body in the tomb—the tomb in which none had lain before; Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, standing by, with his offering of myrrh and aloes, identifying himself now publicly with the despised "Gallilean!”
But God rolled away the stone, and raised His blessed Son from the dead. Never could He be holden by death; never could that which was so pre-eminently of God's world down here be allowed to perish. It must be raised—a sweet savor and an acceptable sacrifice. The atoning work is done—the ransom paid— and now the message goes forth as it came from the risen One Himself to Mary of Magdala, in view of the empty tomb, "Go, tell My brethren I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God" (John 20:17).
“The storm that bowed that blessed Head
Is hushed forever now:
And rest divine is ours instead
Whilst glory crowns His brow.”
And now that last day on earth comes round, and He leads His disciples—His loved disciples—out as far as Bethany. Bethany, fragrant with its happy memories. There it was Martha served—there it was that, to the joy of his sorrowing sisters, Lazarus, their brother, was raised again; there it was that Mary chose the better part and sat at His feet listening to His word and there in the hour of that resurrection joy they three made Him a supper and the house was filled with the odor of the anointing—the response to His love.
And "Re lifts up His hands and blesses them—He is taken up and a cloud receives Him out of their sight." He is now at the Father's right hand, a glorious Man in heaven—the blessed First Fruits of the new creation, and the Earnest for us of that "Inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away.”
In like manner shall He come again to receive us unto Himself. The disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and in the power and fullness of that last blessing to await the promise of the Father. We can take up their joy in the words of the well-known hymn:
“Lord, we rejoice that Thou art gone
To sit upon Thy Father's throne:
Thy path of shame and suffering o'er—
Thou liv'st to grieve and mourn no more.”
Chapter 7
JEWISH CAPTIVES AT THE RIVER CHEBAR
WE go back again now in our history for many years until we come to the days when Ezekiel, the priest, the son of Buzzi, stood with the captives by the river "Chebar in the wilderness." This river was in Mesopotamia, which was part of the Chaldean territory of which Babylon was the seat of power, and in which territory the Jews were then held captive. We read of their melancholy feelings in Psa. 137 "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion." They that led them away captive "asked of them a song, saying, ' Sing us one of the Songs of Sion.'" "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" was their reply. How beautifully the official singers—the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun sang the Lord's songs in the days of King David, accompanied with harps and psalteries and cymbals! You will read it in 1 Chron. 13:8. It must have been wonderful to hear those sweet singers, as they sang the praises of God and the glories of His coming Messiah.
We read again of the "sons of Asaph" in their hereditary place as the chief singers in the wonderful Passover of the good King Josiah (2 Chron. 35). It was a great day of Revival in Jerusalem, and it is recorded that there was "never such a Passover as that since the days of Samuel the Prophet." Josiah was a king "whose heart was tender, and who humbled himself before God." By a "tender heart" one would understand a heart easily affected by Divine influences, not a heart of stone such as the stubborn and ungodly have; but a heart easily affected by Divine influences will have a high appreciation of Christ. A loved servant of the Lord defined "believing on the Son" as "entering into God's mind concerning His Son." We have the type of that in Josiah's Passover. His tender heart was responsive to God, and the result was he had a wonderful appreciation of Christ, as evidenced in that Passover. All the people joined him. We may say that in those days kings were held in conduct and lives to be representative of the people whom they governed, and God treated the people accordingly. How it must have gladdened the heart of God to see that Passover!
Now Ezekiel the priest, as we have said, was with his fellow-captives by the River Chebar. It was the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity. This Judean king had been carried away with his mother and servants, the princes and officers in the eighth year of his reign, when he was only twenty-six years old. The new over-lord made Jehoiachin's uncle, Mattaniah, king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah. He was the last King of Judah, and he was finally subjected to the most cruel treatment by the King of Babylon.
His sons were slain in his presence, and then his eyes were put out, and in the fetters of a slave and the ignominy of a vanquished man he followed his nephew Jehoiachin into captivity.
All this came upon the nation as a judgment from God for their rebellion and iniquity. God Himself said of them, "They were a rebellious nation that had rebelled against God." "Impudent children and stiff-hearted" (Ezek. 2:3, 4). We see what sin is in the eye of God, and what rebellion against Him—often though He had pleaded with them, "Turn ye! Turn ye! for why will ye die?"—will bring upon those who persist in it as they did.
Reader, have you wandered far from God, and have you been led captive by the enemy? The Songs of Zion silenced in your lips and voice, and you yourself finding your pleasure now in the land of the stranger. There was once a response in your heart to the things of God—you joined with those who praised Him—you lifted your voice with theirs, and you went with them gladly to the house of God; but now your lips are silent—the harp and the cymbals are laid aside, and you, who should enter spiritually into the line of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun, are wandering songless and unresponsive by the hostile rivers of Babylon. A stranger without a home, a captive without liberty, and a slave without freedom. From our land of song and sunshine we would call to you:
“From the land of hunger—
Fainting, famished, lone,
Come to love and gladness,
My son! My son!”
And as we call we would keep ever looking for you across the deserts wild and bare in the hope of your returning, for we miss you. We all miss you. Don't mind if you are wretched and undone, come as you are, and give gladness to the heart of the Lord. What joy there was of old when the captive came back to their land! Read of it in the third chapter of Ezra. Could the world for which in their ignorance and rebellion they thirsted have given any such happiness as they experienced that day when they saw the foundations of the new Temple laid down? A heart restored for God—a taking-up once more of Christian privilege and blessing—the dark clouds gone—the clear shining after rain—as in the sweetness of a Father's forgiveness and love the wanderer returns to His sheltering side, and takes that place-ever waiting for him since he left it in the circle of Divine blessing and Divine goodness. Can anything compare with it? So you who have gone astray, come back—we are longing for your return, and to meet you as we sing
“Welcome, wanderer, welcome!
Welcome back to home.
Thou hart wandered far away.
Come home! Come home!”
Ezekiel was a faithful man. God took him up for His own purpose and revealed to him His own mind concerning His people Israel, It has been pointed out to us that Ezekiel was addressed not as priest or prophet, but as "Son of man," showing how thoroughly God was removed from His people in His anger and could recognize no official representative of them as once He did. So in these days of brokenness and ruin God takes up for Himself this servant and that servant apart from all officialdom to minister to His people, and whatever gift He gives in this respect is for the whole Church, even if the whole Church, by reason of its "parties" and its sorrowful divisions, does not recognize such. The true and heavenly man will always recognize what is of God, and will give such a rightful place.
Chapter 8
CONTINUANCE
WE learn the meaning of continuance in a wonderful way in the Scriptures. There is a great deal about it and the blessings attaching to it. And we get such lessons of it in rivers: you sit down by the riverside and there you see the water flowing past you—ever flowing—day in and day out those waters flow on from some seemingly inexhaustible source—less in their volume in the drought of summer and at their fullest flood-tide in the rains and melting snows of winter; but, as we said before, ever flowing, and ever impressing the observant mind with the vast thought of continuity.
Now we will assume that you have in these your bright young days accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior—the light "above the brightness of the sun," has in Divine goodness shone into your heart, revealing your state before God as a sinner, lost and undone, and bringing before your wondering eyes the blessed Savior Who bore your sins on the tree, and whom God raised again from the dead a "Prince and a Savior," having "obtained eternal redemption.”
With what interest you started on your heavenly road—with what joy you entered into eternal life—a life of which you could give such good account—it was no unintelligible term to you—you were outside, in your heart, of a scene in which your Lord was rejected and disowned, and you lived, in glad response, inside that scene of which the One you loved and trusted was the Sun and Center.
Are you going to be like a river—a great river—continuing—"Continuing in His love?" (John 15:9). It is sorrowful to think of those who have started well. And now, like a river which has failed in the drought of summer, instead of its liquid depths, the murmur of its gentle falls, and the singing of its shallow streams, there is but the uninteresting dried-up gravel-bed, there are but rocks and stones, and there is a long silence, as of death. Should this little book come before you who have drifted away—you whose voice, once heard in the praise of God, is now silent, you who have told out the story of redeeming love in the streets or the mission-halls or the meeting-rooms—you whose life is now like the dried-up bed of a once pleasant river, come back; come back again! What a welcome awaits you!
The river of the love of God knows no exhaustion. The burnt-offering is a continual one (Ex. 29:42) and He, the ever blessed Lord "abideth a priest continually" (Heb. 7:3). "Ever living to make intercession for us." You have "dropped out"—dropped out, it may be, lamentably (if there is any dropping-out which is not lamentable)—but He has gone on, unchanged and unchanging; the Father stands looking out on the distant road and the far-off hill for the welcome sight of His returning son.
And now, young people, as you stroll along by your riverside there is something to remind you there of your lessons in hydrography, for you are expected to know all about the chief rivers of the world and the countries through which they flow and from which they derive their source.
You have the lordly Amazon, the first river of the world, with its great length of four thousand miles, traversing the vast American continent, and finding its eventual outflow into the broad waters of the Atlantic. And second in rank comes the Nile, in Scripture the "river of Egypt," with its stretch of three thousand six hundred miles, emptying itself through its well-known "Deltas" into the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. How historic is that river!
And far away in China—the "Land of Sinim" in Scripture, and now a scene of strife and turmoil, with a vast population of more than four hundred millions, and hundreds of thousands of desolate Christ-less homes into which the light of the Gospel has never shone—this great river, the Yangtse, third in rank, the source of many a devastating flood, empties its cold waters, which have run their three thousand four hundred sad miles, into the waves of the North Pacific.
What a sad country is China; but God has His own purpose concerning it, and we may feel assured He will bring blessing and salvation out of the present dreadful upheaval.
Then there are the great world cataracts, that of Niagara with its ceaseless thunder, and, in the depths of winter, the glory of its ice-bound palaces; the Victoria Falls of the Great Zambezi River in Africa which enters the sea at Mozambique after its one thousand six hundred mile journey; and the series of minor falls—no less stupendous in their heights though less in magnitude—sweeping through the canons and rocky steeps of the famous Yosemite Valley.
What testimonies to the wonderful hand of God! and the varied might of His creation! And you come home to your own longest river, the Thames, starting its two hundred and ten mile journey from its home in the Cottswold Hills, down past England's "stately homes" and her green fields—joined here and there by its pleasant tributaries, murmuring past old-world villages and ancient mills, until it reaches the vast metropolis with its population of nearly eight million souls, from which stage in its progress it becomes navigable to ocean-bound steamers, and merges its widened depths, finally, in the gloom of the North Sea.
How like out own lives, our own courses down here! We may compare our Christian life, as it should be, with the likeness of a river.
We start on our heavenly road—it may be from some small spring on the mountainside. The tributaries which join on in the way, one would liken to light and blessing from God widening us out—giving us scope to grow in grace, and as the river widens farther and becomes navigable, so we would see our usefulness developing in bearing the burdens of the Saints—and ministering to their wants. We should be dependable in the hour of need, and we should always be of use in the Church of God.
A river-trip is a very pleasant experience, and we should be so available for the people of God that it would be a pleasure to them to ask us for a service as well as a joy to ourselves. A river is set off much by its boats sailing along, and the saint of God is much set off among his brethren and before God who is a minister of kindness to them. And when the rain comes—a type of ministry of Christ from above—("He shall come down like showers upon the new-mown grass")—the river drinks in this gentle and beneficent rain, and overflows its banks. There is a great need of that overflow for God to-day. May we all know something of it! The overflow of blessing and the fragrance after the summer rain on the new-mown grass. Hither should our faces be set, and not on the supposed disabilities of the way. There are no disabilities with God; there are no "cannots" with Him.
It will be interesting for us now to consider a few of those who have continued for God down here, and the blessings which ensued for them, and the usefulness which their lives, in thus continuing, "gave to His service.”
We think of Enoch in the old-world days, days which were astonishingly wicked. He "walked with God," and he "was not, for God took him." All through his long life, for the ancients lived many hundreds of years, this godly man in an ungodly world maintained a place on this earth for God and continued to the day when God took him. How wicked was his day can be gathered from his prophecy quoted by Jude: his righteous soul was vexed, and he was used of God to express His mind as to the judgment of those evil-doers, and farther on his vision took him to the day when this world should be thoroughly purged of all its evil. And he had the testimony that he pleased God.
One day, when, it may be, evil was at its very worst, this man of God was taken home out of it all—no pain of death—no sorrow—no anguish, he went quietly and happily home—underneath were the everlasting arms bearing him safely to the land he lived for—"the city whose maker and builder is God.”
Then we have Noah—what an example of continuance!—building his ark in view of a doomed world for the space of one hundred and twenty years; preaching righteousness all that time to the unrighteous world around him: he was scoffed at and ridiculed, for they could scoff before the Flood as well as after it; human nature does not change. Yet on he went—"till the rains descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it." And great indeed was the fall of that godless world; but Noah was saved in the ark and those with him, and when the floods had spent their force he stepped out upon a new world, and he claimed it, and his own right to live in it, by sacrifice for God.
Let us come on to Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, who passed through the forty years of the wilderness and came out for God at the end—preserved for their faithfulness to him and their continuance in well-doing.
Also we have the daughters of Zelophehad, five in number, a type of human weakness which may be made available for God to use, and show His power through. They had the thought in their minds of continuance and not extinction, and they laid their claim to that which should be theirs and would enable them to find their place and their sustenance in the land of Promise, and to root and ground themselves in His love. And Achsah, the daughter of Caleb (Judg. 1:13-15), she had her "south land"—pleasant, fruitful, and towards the sun, but what was it without the water-springs?
She asked intelligently for them, and her father gave her "the upper and the nether springs." It is a great thing to have the upper and nether springs.
The Spirit of God will teach us the mind of heaven, and we will answer thereto. Our response (in the nether springs) will be heavenward, and Christward, and how we shall then enjoy that country of the South!
And we must bring Josiah, the King of Judah, into out roll of continuers. "He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord—he walked in the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left" (2 Kings 22:2). And see the result of that good King's faithfulness. Of the Passover which he commanded to be kept in his kingdom, as written in the book of the Covenant, it is recorded—"There was none such holden from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of Israel, nor of the Kings of Judah" (chap. 23:22).
How it answers in our day to a wonderful appreciation of Christ—"Christ our Passover." Josiah was a faithful man continuing for God, and God valued it, and used him and blessed him. And finally we would touch on the beloved Apostle Paul. Hear that chosen vessel of the mind and purpose of God saying as he pens his Epistle to Timothy to teach him, as well as every child of God to our own day, how to act in a day of declension and brokenness—"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith—henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness," and this not only for him but for "all who love His appearing" ( 2 Tim. 4:7, 8).
Do not then drop out, young or old; the enemy will seek to overthrow you, but God can "drive out nations from before thee, greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in" (Deut. 4:38). The power of God is manifest to-day on behalf of the weakest of His people. You can be carried through to the end—through, in the full light of all you have been, and will be, taught—through, happily, with your brethren, till you and we—His whole Church—enter with joy and singing into "the immediate presence of our Lord to be forever at home with Him.”
Chapter 9
THE LORD'S RETURN
As "all rivers flow into the sea"—a well-known saying—so shall we all reach our home at last—there will not be one missing. "Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost," the Lord Himself says in His prayer to the Father (John 17:12). And again (chap 10:29), "My Father which gave them Me is greater than all; and none is able to pluck them out of His hand, I and My Father are one." We shall not be left out nor shall we be forgotten. But there is a glorious moment awaiting the whole Church of God, and that moment may arrive before these sentences are finally penned: that supreme moment is the return of the Lord Jesus in the air for His people.
For long years the Church had lost sight of that blessed prospect. She passed through the dark ages of her history without the joy of it. The testimony was not utterly lost, however, for here and there there were faithful souls and faithful companies who had the truth and who went, for the truth's sake and in affection for Christ, through many sore persecutions and trials.
The Scriptures, which were a dead letter to many, became, in the goodness of God, more freely printed and more accessible, though the enemy followed the advancing light with his fiercest hatred and lust for destruction; but the "Word of God grew and prevailed mightily" once more, as in the days of the Apostles (Acts 19:20). And the truth came to be widely scattered abroad. Now we find the Scriptures are available in every country in the world and in the language of each country.
Many years ago it is now since the truth was revived of the Lord's personal return for His people—a private coming to take them away before the judgments of God fall on an evil, an increasingly evil world.
Since that time many have been waiting—waiting expectantly for that glad day! Many have been gathered home by reason of years and the finishing of their course; but to-day the cry still goes forth, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh," and it is joy to wait for Him and to look forward to being associated with Him as He establishes eventually His reign of a thousand years of blessedness over a world molded entirely to His will and in complete subjection to God.
What has come to be called the "Rapture," that is, the Lord's private coming for His own, is now so accepted everywhere that it seems unnecessary to refer to the Scriptures which proclaim it: nevertheless it may help us all to look at them once more.
While the Lord Himself speaks of it in John 14:3, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself," and again (verse 18), "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you," there is no doubt the special manner of His coming thus for His people was the subject of a special revelation to the beloved Apostle Paul, and it is through him we learn what that coming will be like and how we who live and remain shall be changed and accompany all the saints—"Old Testament" and "New Testament"—who have been "asleep" up "to meet the Lord in the air, and so forever to be with the Lord." Nothing can be clearer on this point than the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:51, 54, and 1 Thess. 4:13-18). It would be a wresting of the Scriptures to give them any other interpretation.
As we know, we are now living in the "times of the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24), in which passages the Lord is speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem; after verse 24 He speaks of the end—the final judgments of Israel and the days immediately preceding the reign of the Son of Man.
The sixty-ninth week of Daniel's "seventy weeks" (Dan. 9:24) ended when the Messiah was "cut off and had nothing" (ver. 26), and the seventieth week is yet to run, and will not commence until after the Lord has come for the Church, and taken us to be with' Himself. Then the remaining week will be taken up—the interregnum in which the Church was gathered out being over, God will resume His dealings with His ancient people.
It will be noted in Dan. 9:24 how Israel had departed from God. He speaks to Daniel of them as thy people, and not His people; but these judgments determined are for the eventual recovery of His people, as they shall be once more in the coming day. There shall be a remnant for God out of the Twelve Tribes of Israel associated with their known and loved Messiah in that day.
Whatever the controversies and speculations may be to-day about the Tribes of Israel, missing or otherwise—and there is much unprofitable speculation, both as to them and prophecy in general—we know they will be all gathered and classified happily in that coming day.
As regards these seventy weeks of Daniel (seventy weeks of years) one feels the blessed Lord had that in His mind in Matt. 18:21, 22, when answering Peter as regards the limit of forbearance with an erring or trespassing brother. "Until seventy times seven," the period determined to make reconciliation for iniquity, as far as all Israel was concerned.
All Christians feel to-day that these "times of the Gentiles" are fast closing in. We cannot shut our eyes to the trend of things without and the rapid spreading of lawlessness and iniquity. Nevertheless we must remember, when waiting for the blessed Lord to return, it is not upon signs or tokens that our eyes are to be fixed or our minds focused, but on Himself, and if there should be any sign desired, the surest that can be pointed to is the affectionate response—the heartfelt cry of those who wait—the longing of those who long to see His face, as given expression to in the words, "Lord Jesus, come!”
Thank God, we can say that response to His love, that desire for His coming, is growing in volume and in earnestness throughout the Church of God to-day, and, depend upon it, the returning Lord will respond.
“Mary," we read in John 20:11, "stood without at the sepulcher weeping." The world had become, to the loving heart of Mary Magdalene, a sepulcher, and a place where they had tried to put her crucified Lord out of sight forever. Heavenly messengers were sent to cheer the weeper and to point out to her that "He had overcome the world" and was risen, and in the midst of her weeping He came and revealed Himself to her. What wondering joy was hers, and what joy shall be ours—it may be any moment now—when we cry adoringly "Rabboni" as we see Him face to face!
Let us look up the Old Testament Scriptures for some further types of the Church meeting her Lord. Take the well-known type of Isaac and Rebekah. As Rebekah on her journey was coming near to where Isaac was, Isaac was also in movement, “he went out to meditate in the field at the eventide (Gen. 24:63). He came the journey from the way of the well, "Lahai-roi," the well of "Him who liveth and seeth me." How fulfilled in Christ—the joy of the Father's heart—ever in His presence from and to all eternity (John 6:57, "The living Father hath sent me"), and "he (Isaac) lifted up his eyes and saw"; and, simultaneously, Rebekah lifted up her eyes and saw him, and went to the "man who walked in the fields to meet her." A true picture of our gathering together unto Him.
We have another wonderful type of the Church and Christ in the song of Deborah (Judg. 5). Here we have in Deborah the Church calling upon the Lord to take to Him His great power and reign. In verse 12 she gives the incitement to song; four times the word "awake" is repeated—complete earthly number—as if awakening the whole company to the fact that Barak is going to lead captivity captive, and that there is a time of joy for the people of God to be ushered in by His doing so.
Woman in Scripture is a type of responsive affection, as shown in one who serves and ministers as Martha did and who sits at Jesus' feet as Mary did, and always in a self-effacing way, as Rebekah did when she covered herself with a veil.
Man is a type of activity for God—taking up the responsibilities in connection with the way and fulfilling them. How beautifully Deborah recognized this as she called on Barak to lead captivity captive; she did not essay to do so herself. Her highest reach was a "mother in Israel," a very high and blessed reach indeed, and so she shines out also as a type of the Church of God.
How sadly distorted this godly order of things was at the fall of our first parents. The woman was responsive to evil and in sad activity in leading her husband captive in disobedience to God. The man had utterly given up his own proper place and attitude, and had become an equally sad example of complete departure from God. They could be permitted no longer to dwell in that unsullied atmosphere, and God had to close that scene from henceforth; but it will be occupied once more and filled to His pleasure in that coming day, by that glorious Man—His Son from heaven—Jesus Christ our Lord in Whom all the nations of the world shall be blessed.
And now we all await with joy that day. What a privilege to be able, as we wait, to give pleasure to the heart of God in our allegiance to His blessed Son! To be apart from the things of this world, detached from them, and, as has often been said, "attached" to Him. What is His will? Heavenly light shows us what His will is; how happy are they who do it! Have you left those associations which are not of Christ—have you cleared yourself from all complicity in that which you know is displeasing to Him? Surely He is worthy of it, and what joy to meet the One for whose sake you have gained more than this empty world can ever give—the sense of His abiding love—the smile of His approval, and the happy fellowship of your brethren in the Lord. These are privileges not to be lightly esteemed or their priceless value lost sight of. And when He comes it will not be a Stranger. "No stranger there shall greet us." It will be the One in Whom we trusted. Who guided and led us all our way, into Whose welcoming Presence we shall be introduced forever.
Now, young and old, this little book is sent out from the picturesque slope of this little Irish hillside to you all. I began with the young, and I find I have wandered on to those who are grown. It may not be the way people generally write books "; but if this little book will interest and help and lead someone nearer to the Savior, and more happily into the circle of His love, then it will not be penned in vain.
The sun shines on the surrounding hills—the wind goes singing through the heather—the song of summer is in the land, and one looks from one's window on a beautiful country, valleys and streams below, and the majestic heights above silhouetted against a cloudless sky. Wonderful are the works of God!
But a brighter day is coming, a more beautiful country awaits us—no shadow is there—no stain of sin—no dark moment of death before. No sorrow, no sadness, nor weeping. The "place is prepared" for the people of God. He is coming to "receive us unto Himself." Not one of those who are redeemed by His precious blood shall be left behind, and—
“We shall dwell with God's Beloved
Through God's eternal day.”
J. W. McC.