BIBLE CHARACTERS AS DEPICTED BY THE BRILLIANT AND NOTED PREACHER, T. De Witt Talmage. (continued 2)

Paul learned all he could get in the school of his immediate vicinity; then he went to a higher school, and there mastered the Greek and the Hebrew, and also perfected himself in belles-lettres, until in after years he astonished the Cretans, the Corinthians and the Athenians by quotations from their own authors.

I have never found any thing in Carlyle or Goethe or Herbert Spencer that could compare in strength or in beauty with Paul’s Epistles. I do not think there is any thing in the writings of Sir William Hamilton that shows such mental discipline as you find in Paul’s argument about justification and the resurrection. I have not found any thing in Milton finer in the way of imagination than I can find in Paul’s illustrations drawn from the amphitheater.

There was nothing in Robert Emmet pleading for his life, or in Edmund Burke arraigning Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall, that compared with the scene in the court room when, before robed officials, Paul bowed and began his speech, saying: “I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day.”

I repeat the assertion that a religion that can capture such a man as that must have some power in it. It is time people stopped talking as though all the brains of the world were opposed to Christianity. Where Paul leads we can afford to follow.

I am glad to know that Christ has in the different ages of the world had in His discipleship a Mozart and a Handel in music; a Raphael and a Reynolds in painting; an Angelo and a Canova in sculpture; a Rush and a Harvey in medicine; a Grotius and a Washington in statesmanship; a Blackstone, a Marshall and a Kent in law.

The time will come when the religion of Christ will conquer all the observatories and universities, and then, through her telescope Philosophy will behold the morning star of Jesus, and in her laboratory see that “all things work together for good,” and with her geological hammer discover the “Rock of Ages.”

Instead of cowering and shivering when the skeptic stands before you and talks of religion as though it were a pusillanimous thing, take your New Testament from your pocket and show him the picture of the intellectual giant of all the ages, prostrated on the road to Damascus, while his horse is flying wildly away. Then ask the skeptic what it was that frightened the one and threw the other.

Oh, no! It is no weak Gospel. It is a most glorious Gospel. It is an all-conquering Gospel. It is an omnipotent Gospel. It is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation.

Jesus and Paul were boys at the same time in different villages, and Paul’s antipathy to Christ was increasing. He hated every thing about Christ. He was going down then with writs in his pockets to have Christ’s disciples arrested. He was not going as a sheriff goes—to arrest a man against whom he has no spite—but Paul was going down to arrest those people because he was glad to arrest them. The Bible says: “He breathed out slaughter.” He wanted them captured, and he also wanted them butchered.

It was particularly outrageous that Saul should have gone to Damascus on that errand. Jesus Christ had been dead only three years, and the story of His kindness, generosity and love filled all the air. It was not an old story, as it is now. It was a new story. Jesus had only three Summers ago been in these very places, and Saul every day in Jerusalem must have met people who knew Christ, people with good eyesight whom Jesus had cured of blindness, people who were dead and had been resurrected by the Savior, and people who could tell Paul all the particulars of the crucifixion—just how Jesus looked to the last hour—just how the heavens grew black in the face at the torture. He heard that recited every day by people who were acquainted with all the circumstances, and yet in the fresh memory of that scene he goes out to persecute Christ’s disciples, impatient at the time it takes to feed the horses at the inn, not pulling at the snaffle, but riding with loose rein—faster and faster.

Truly, Paul was the chief of sinners. No outbreak of modesty when he said that. He was a murderer. He stood by when Stephen died, and helped in the execution of that good man. When the rabble wanted to be unimpeded in their work of destroying Stephen, and wanted to take off their coats but did not dare to lay them down lest they be stolen, Paul said: “I will take care of the coats.” So they put their coats down at the feet of Paul, and he watched them, and he watched the horrid mangling of glorious Stephen.

Is it not a wonder that when Paul fell from the horse he did not break his neck—that his foot did not catch somewhere in the trappings of the saddle, and he was not dragged and kicked to death? He deserved to die—miserably, wretchedly and for ever—notwithstanding all his metaphysics, eloquence and logic.

It seems to me as if I can see Paul today, rising up from the highway to Damascus, brushing off the dust from his cloak and wiping the sweat of excitement from his brow, as he turns to us and all the ages, saying:

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

If it had been a mere optical illusion on the road to Damascus, was not Paul just the man to find it out? If it had been a sham and pretense, would he not have pricked the bubble? He was a man of facts and arguments, of the most gigantic intellectual nature, and not a man of hallucinations; and when I see him fall from the saddle, blinded and overwhelmed, I say there must have been something in it.

I have been reading this morning, in my New Testament, of a Mediterranean voyage in an Alexandrian ship. It was in the month of November.

On board that vessel were two distinguished passengers—one, Josephus, the historian, as we have strong reasons to believe; the other, a convict, one Paul by name, who was going to prison for upsetting things—or, as they termed it, “turning the world upside down.”

This convict had gained the confidence of the captain. Indeed, I think that Paul knew almost as much about the sea as did the captain. He had been shipwrecked three times already, and had dwelt much of his life amid capstans, yardarms, cables and storms, and he knew what he was talking about.

Seeing the equinoctial storm was coming, and perhaps noticing something unseaworthy in the vessel, he advised the captain to stay in the harbor. But I heard the captain and the first mate talking together. They say, in effect:

“We can not afford to take the advice of this landsman, and he a minister. He may be able to preach very well, but I do not believe he knows a marlinespike from a luff tackle. All aboard! Cast off! Shift the helm for headway. Who fears the Mediterranean?”

They had gone only a little way out when a whirlwind, called Euroclydon, made the torn sail its turban, shook the mast as you would brandish a spear, and tossed the hulk into the heavens. Overboard with the cargo! It is all washed with salt water and worthless now, and there are no marine insurance companies. All hands, ahoy, and out with the anchors!

Great consternation comes on crew and passengers. The sea monsters snort in the foam, and the billows clap their hands in glee of destruction. In the lull of the storm I hear a chain clank. It is the chain of the great apostle as he walks the deck or holds fast to the rigging amid the lurching of the ship. The spray drips from his long beard as Paul cries out to the crew, in tones of confidence:

“Now, I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God—whose I am and whom I serve—saying: ‘Fear not, Paul. Thou must be brought before Cæsar; and lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.’”

Fourteen days have passed, and there is no abatement of the storm. It is midnight. Standing on the lookout, the man peers into the darkness, and, by a flash of lightning, sees the long white line of breakers, and knows they must be coming near to some country, and fears that in a few moments the vessel will be shivered on the rocks.

The ship flies like chaff in the tornado. They drop the sounding line, and by the light of the lantern they see it is twenty fathoms. Speeding along a little farther, they drop the line again, and by the light of the lantern they see it is fifteen fathoms. Two hundred and seventy-six souls within a few feet of awful shipwreck!

The managers of the vessel, pretending they want to look over the side of the ship and undergird it, get into the small boat, expecting in it to escape; but Paul sees through the sham, and he tells them that if they go off in the boat it will be the death of them.

The vessel strikes! The planks spring! The timbers crack! The vessel parts in the thundering surge! Oh, what struggling for life! Here they leap from plank to plank. There they go under as if they would never rise, but, catching hold of a timber, they come floating and panting on it to the beach.

Here strong swimmers spread their arms through the waves until their chins plow the sand, and they rise up, and ring out their wet locks on the beach. When the roll of the ship is called, two hundred and seventy-six people answer to their names.

Paul was the most illustrious merely human being the world has ever known. He walked the streets of Athens and preached from yonder pile of rocks, Mars Hill.

Though more classic associations are connected with Athens than with any other city under the sun—because here Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Pericles, Herodotus, Pythagoras, Xenophon and Praxiteles wrote, chiseled, taught, thundered or sung—yet, in my mind, all those men and their teachings were eclipsed by Paul and the Gospel he preached there and in the near-by city of Corinth. Standing yesterday on the old fortress at Corinth, the Acro-Corinthus, out from the ruin at its base arose in my imagination the old city—just as Paul saw it.

I have been told that, for splendor, the world beholds no such wonder today as that ancient Corinth, standing on an isthmus washed by two seas—the one sea bringing the commerce of Europe, the other sea bringing the commerce of Asia.

From her wharves, in the construction of which entire kingdoms had been absorbed, war galleys with three banks of oars pushed out and confounded the navy yards of all the world.

Huge handed machinery, such as modern invention can not equal, lifted ships from the sea on one side and transported them on trucks across the isthmus and sat them down in the sea on the other side.

The revenue officers of the city went down through the olive groves that lined the beach to collect a tariff from all nations. The youth of all peoples sported in her isthmian games and the beauty of all lands sat in her theaters, walked her porticos and threw itself upon the altar of her stupendous dissipations. Column, statue and temple bewildered the beholder. There were white marble fountains into which, from apertures at the side, there gushed waters everywhere known for health-giving qualities. Around these basins, twisted into wreaths of stone, there were all the beauties of sculpture and architecture; while standing, as if to guard the costly display, was a statue of Hercules of burnished Corinthian brass. Vases of terra cotta adorned the cemeteries of the dead—vases so costly that Julius Cæsar was not satisfied till he had captured them for Rome. Armed officials paced up and down to see that no statue was defaced, pedestal overthrown or bas-relief touched.

From the edge of the city the hill held its magnificent burden of columns and towers and temples (one thousand slaves waiting at one shrine), and a citadel so thoroughly impregnable that Gibraltar is a heap of sand compared with it. Amid all that strength and magnificence Corinth stood and defied the world.

Oh, it was not to rustics who had never seen any thing grand that Paul preached in Corinth. They had heard the best music that had come from the best instruments in all the world; they had heard songs floating from morning porticos and melting in evening groves; they had passed their whole lives among pictures and sculpture and architecture and Corinthian brass, which had been molded and shaped until there was no chariot wheel in which it had not sped, and no tower in which it had not glittered, and no gateway that it had not helped to adorn.

Ah, it was a bold act for Paul to stand there amid all that and say:

“All this is nothing. These sounds that come from the Temple of Neptune are not music, compared with the harmonies of which I speak. These waters rushing in the basin of Pyrene are not pure. These statues of Bacchus and Mercury are not exquisite. Your citadel of Acro-Corinthus is not strong, compared with that which I offer to the poorest slave who puts down his burden at that brazen gate. You Corinthians think this is a splendid city; you think you have heard all sweet sounds and seen all beautiful sights. But, I tell you, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Following up Paul’s line of thought, we may say the Bible, now, is the scaffolding to the rising Temple, but when the building is done there will be no further use for the scaffolding.

PHARAOH.

One of the most intensely interesting things I saw in Egypt was Pharaoh of olden times—the very Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. The inscription on his sarcophagus and the writing on his mummy bandages prove beyond controversy that he was the Pharaoh of Bible times. All the Egyptologists and the explorations agree that it is the old scoundrel himself.

Visible are the very teeth with which he gnashed against the Israelitish brick makers. There are the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the over-burdened people of God. There is the hair that floated in the breeze off the Red Sea. There are the very lips with which he commanded the children of Israel to make bricks without straw.

Thousands of years afterward, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration; but his skinny bones can not again clutch his shattered scepter. He is a dead lion.

PONTIUS PILATE.

At about seven o’clock in the morning, up the marble stairs of a palace and across the floors of richest mosaic and under ceilings dyed with all the splendors of color and between snowbanks of white and glistening sculpture, passes a poor, pale and sick young man of thirty-three years, already condemned to death, on his way to be condemned again. Jesus of Nazareth is His name.

Coming out to meet him on this tesselated pavement is an unscrupulous, compromising, time-serving and cowardly man, with a few traces of sympathy and fair dealing left in his composition—Governor Pontius Pilate.

Did ever such opposites meet? Luxury and pain, selfishness and generosity, arrogance and humility, sin and holiness, midnight and midnoon.

The bloated-lipped governor takes the cushioned seat, but the prisoner stands, his wrists manacled. In a semicircle around the prisoner are the Sanhedrists, with eyes flashing and fists brandished, prosecuting this case in the name of their religion.

The most bitter persecutions have been religious persecutions, and when Satan takes hold of a good man he makes up by intensity for brevity of occupation. If you have never seen an ecclesiastical court trying a man, then you have no idea of the foaming infernalism of those old religious Sanhedrists.

Governor Pilate cross-questions the prisoner, and he finds right away that he is innocent; so he wants to let him go. His caution is also increased by some one who comes to the governor and whispers in his ear. The governor puts his hand behind his ear, so as to catch the words almost inaudible.

These whispered words are a message from Claudia Procula, his wife, who has had a dream about the innocence of this prisoner and about the danger of executing him, and she awakens from this morning dream in time to send the message to her husband, who was at that hour on the judicial bench.

And what with the protest of his wife, the voice of his own conscience and the entire failure of the Sanhedrists to make out their case Governor Pilate resolves to discharge the prisoner from custody.

But the intimation of such a thing brings upon the governor an equinoctial storm of indignation. They will report him to the emperor at Rome. They will have him recalled. They will send him up home, and he will be hanged for treason, for the emperor has already a suspicion in regard to Pilate, and that suspicion does not cease until Pilate is banished and commits suicide.

So Governor Pontius Pilate compromises the matter, and proposes that Christ be whipped instead of assassinated. So the prisoner is fastened to a low pillar, and on his bent and bared back come the thongs of leather, with pieces of lead and bone intertwisted, so that every stroke shall be the more awful.

Christ lifts Himself from the scourging with flushed cheek and torn and quivering and mangled flesh, presenting a spectacle of suffering in which Rubens, the painter, found the theme for his greatest masterpiece.

But the Sanhedrists are not yet satisfied. They have had some of the prisoner’s nerves lacerated; but they want them all lacerated. They have had some of his blood; now they want all of it, down to the last corpuscle.

So Governor Pontius Pilate, after all this merciful hesitation, surrenders to the demoniacal cry:

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

But the governor sends for something. He sends a slave out to get something. Although the constables are in haste to take the prisoner to execution, and the mob outside are impatient to glare upon their victim, a pause is necessitated.

Yonder it comes—a wash basin. Some pure, bright water is poured into it, and then Governor Pilate puts his white and delicate hands into the water and rubs them together, and then lifts them dripping, for the towel fastened at the slave’s girdle, while he practically says:

“I wash my hands of this whole homicidal transaction. I wash my hands of this entire responsibility. You will have to bear it.”

Behold in this that ceremony amounts to nothing, if there are not contained in it correspondences of heart and life.

It is a good thing to wash the hands. God created three-fourths of the world water, and in that act commanded cleanliness; and when the ancients did not take the hint, He plunged the whole world under water, and kept it there for some time.

Hand washing was a religious ceremony among the Jews. The Jewish Mishna gave particular directions how that the hands must be thrust three times up to the wrist in water, and the palm of the hand must then be rubbed with the closed fist of the other.

All that was well enough for a symbol, but here is a man in the case under consideration who proposes to wash away the guilt of a sin which he does not quit and of which he does not make any repentance. Pilate’s wash basin was a dead failure.

Ceremonies, however beautiful and appropriate, may be no more than this hypocritical ablution. In infancy we may be sprinkled from the baptismal font, and in manhood we may wade into deep immersion, and yet never come to moral purification. We may kneel without prayer and bow without reverence, and sing without any acceptance. All your creeds, liturgies, sacraments, genuflections and religious convocations amount to nothing unless your heart-life go into them.

When that bronzed slave took from the presence of Pilate that wash basin he carried away none of Pilate’s cruelty, wickedness or guilt.

Nothing against creeds; we all have them—either written or implied. Nothing against ceremonies; they are of infinite importance. Nothing against sacraments; they are divinely commanded. Nothing against rosary, if there be as many heartfelt prayers as beads counted. Nothing against incense floating up from censer amid Gothic arches, if the prayers be as genuine as the ceremony is sweet. Nothing against Epiphany, Lent, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Good Friday, Whitsuntide or Palm Sunday, if these symbols have behind them genuine repentance, holy reminiscence and Christian consecration.

But ceremony is only the sheath to the sword; it is only the shell to the kernel; it is only the lamp to the flame; it is only the body to the spirit. The outward must be symbolical of the inward. Wash the hands, by all means; but, more than all, wash the heart.

Behold, also, as you see Governor Pontius Pilate thrust his hands into his wash basin, the power of conscience. He had an idea there was blood on his hands—the blood of an innocent person, whom he might have acquitted if he only had the courage.

Poor Pilate! His conscience was after him, and he knew the stain would never be washed from the right hand or the left hand; that, until the day of his death, though he might wash in all the lavers of the Roman Empire, there would be still eight fingers and two thumbs red at the tips.

Alas for this Governor Pontius Pilate! That night, after the court had adjourned and the Sanhedrists had gone home and nothing was heard outside the room but the step of the sentinel, I see Pontius Pilate arise from his tapestried and sleepless couch and go to the laver and begin to wash his hands, crying: “Out! Out, crimson spot! Tellest thou to me and to God and to the night my crime? Is there no alkali to remove these dreadful stains? Is there no chemistry to dissolve this carnage? Must I to the day of my death carry the blood of this innocent man on my heart and hand? Out, thou crimson spot!”

Against the disappointing and insufficient laver of Pilate’s vice, cowardice and sin I place the brazen sea of a Savior’s pardoning mercy!

QUEEN OF SHEBA.

What is that long procession approaching Jerusalem? I think, from the pomp of it, there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry the news up to the palace:

“The Queen of Sheba advances.”

Let all the people come out to see. Let the mighty men of the land come out on the palace corridors. Let King Solomon come down the stairs of the palace before the Queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon and the saffron, the calamus and the frankincense, and pass it into the treasure house. Take up the diamonds until they glitter in the sun!

The Queen of Sheba alights.

She enters the palace.

She washes at the bath.

She sits down at the banquet.

The cup bearers bow. The meat smokes. The music trembles in the dash of the waters from the modern sea. Then she rises from the banquet, walks through the conservatories, gazes on the architectural marvels, and asks Solomon many strange questions. Thus she learns about the religion of the Hebrews, and then and there she becomes a servant of Jehovah.

The Queen of Sheba is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the spices that she brought, and all the precious woods which are intended to be turned into harps and psalteries and into railings for the causeway between the Temple and the palace and the $1,800,000 in money—she begins to think that all these presents amount to nothing in such a palace; and she is almost ashamed that she has brought them, and she says within herself:

“I heard a great deal about this place and about this wonderful religion of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest anticipations. I must add more than 50 per cent to what has been related. It exceeds every thing that could have been expected. The half was not told me.”

What a beautiful thing it is when social position and wealth surrender themselves to God! When religion comes to a neighborhood, the first to receive it are the women. Some men say it is because they are weak minded. I say it is because they have quicker perception of what is right, more ardent affection and capacity for sublimer emotion.

After the women have received the Gospel, then all the distressed and the poor of both sexes—those who have no friend except Jesus. Last of all come the greatly prospered. Alas, that it is so!

Do you know where Sheba was? Some say it was in Abyssinia; others say it was in the southern part of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a great way off from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem the Queen of Sheba had to cross a country infested with bandits and go across blistering deserts.

Why did not the Queen of Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire about this new religion, and have the delegates report in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon? She wanted to see for herself and hear for herself. She could not do this by work of committee. She felt that she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba, and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by Oriental shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the jewels of eternity.

Bring out the camels. Put on the spices. Gather up the jewels of the throne and put them on the caravan. Start now—no time is to be lost. Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan—dust-covered, weary and exhausted—trudging on across the desert and among the banditti until it reaches Jerusalem, I say: “There is an earnest seeker after truth.”

SALOME.

This is the anniversary of Herod’s birthday. The palace is lighted. The highways leading thereto are all ablaze with the pomp of invited guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and all the mighty men of the land are coming to mingle in the festivities.

The table is spread with all the luxuries that royal purveyors can gather. The guests, white robed and anointed and perfumed, come and sit at the table.

Music! The jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartee is indulged. Toasts are drank. The brain is befogged. The wit rolls on into uproar and blasphemy. They are not satisfied yet. Turn on more light. Pour out more wine. Music! Sound all the trumpets. Clear the floor for a dance. Bring in Salome, the beautiful and accomplished princess. The door opens, and in bounds the dancer. The lords are enchanted. Stand back and make room for the brilliant gyrations. These men never saw such “poetry of motion.” Their souls whirl in the reel and bound with the bounding feet.

Herod forgets crown and throne and every thing but the fascinations of Salome. All the magnificence of his realm is as nothing compared with the splendor that whirls on tiptoe before him. His body sways from side to side, corresponding with the motions of the enchantress. His soul is filled with the pulsations of the feet and bewitched with the taking postures and attitudes more and more amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

What is on this platter?

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

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

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

SAUL.

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

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

Let us see.

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

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

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

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

Saul has set the city ablaze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOLOMON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE GENTILE MOTHER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZACCHÆUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All regretted to see such choice of company.

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

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

NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE.