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

ATHALIAH

Grandmothers are more lenient with their children’s children than they were with their own.

At forty years of age, if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used; but at seventy, the grandmother, looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is apologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for whip.

There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother takes out her pocket handkerchief and wipes her spectacles and puts them on, and looks down into the face of her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says:

“I don’t think he meant to do it; let him off this time; I’ll be responsible for his behavior in the future.”

My mother, with the second generation around her—a boisterous crew—said one day: “I suppose they ought to be disciplined, but I can not do it. Grandmothers are not fit to bring up grandchildren.”

But here we have a grandmother of a different hue.

I have been at Jerusalem, where the occurrence that I shall describe took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient Temple and climbing the towers of the king’s palace.

Here is old Athaliah, the queenly murderess.

She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren.

The executioner’s knives are sharpened; the palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and struggle and death groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill!

But while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman—a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name—stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had, somehow, as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs—her heart in her throat, lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction.

Get her out of the way as quickly as you can, for she carries a precious burden—even a young king.

With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient Temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is kept secreted in that church apartment.

Meanwhile, old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction and thinks that all the royal family are dead.

But the six years expire, and it is now time for the young Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push back into disgrace and death old Athaliah.

The arrangements are all made for political revolution. The military come and take full possession of the Temple, swear loyalty to the boy Joash, and then stand around for his defense. See the sharpened swords and burnished shields! Every thing is ready.

Now Joash, half affrighted at the armed tramp of his defenders, scared at the vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full regalia. The scroll of authority is put into his hands, the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the glad people clap and wave, huzza and trumpet.

Athaliah is aroused, and asks:

“What is that? What is that sound over there in the Temple?”

She hurries out to see, and on the way they meet her and say:

“Why, haven’t you heard? You thought you had slain all the royal family, but Joash has come to light.”

Then the queenly murderess, frantic with rage, laid hold on her mantle and tore it to tatters, and cried out until she foamed at the mouth:

“You have no right to crown my grandson. You have no right to take the government from my shoulders. Treason! Treason!”

While she stood there, making this cry, the military started for her arrest, and she took a short cut through a back door of the Temple and ran through the royal stables; but the battle-axes of the military fell on her in the barn-yard, and for many a day, when the horses were being unloosed from the chariot after drawing out young Joash, the fiery steeds would snort and rear while passing the place, as they smelt the taint.

The first thought which I hand you from this subject is that the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility.

When a woman is good she is apt to be very good, and when she is bad she is apt to be very bad; and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort. She would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for embalmers and undertakers. She would clear the land of all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put an end to every thing that could in any wise interfere with her imperial criminality.

Athaliah folds her hands and says: “The work is done; it is completely done.”

Is it?

In the swaddling clothes of that church apartment are wrapped the cause of God and the cause of good government.

That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the Christian reformer; it is Joash, the friend of God; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently.

Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you can not kill him. Eternal defenses are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba, will snatch him up from the palace nursery, and will run up and down with him into the house of the Lord, and there she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and utter obliteration.

DAVID.

David, the shepherd boy, is watching his father’s sheep.

They are pasturing on the very hills where afterward a Lamb was born of which you have heard much—“the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

David, the shepherd boy, was beautiful, brave, musical and poetic. I think he often forgot the sheep in his reveries. There in the solitude he struck the harp-string that is thrilling through all ages. David the boy was at work gathering the material for David the poet and for David the man.

Like other boys, David was fond of using his knife among the saplings, and he had noticed the exuding of the juice of the tree; and when he became a man he said: “The trees of the Lord are full of sap.”

David the boy, like other boys, had been fond of hunting the birds’ nests, and he had driven the old stork off the nest to find how many eggs were under her; and when he became a man he said: “As for the stork, the fir trees are her house.”

In boyhood he had heard the terrific thunder storm that frightened the red deer into premature sickness; and when he became a man he said: “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.”

David the boy had lain upon his back, looking up at the stars and examining the sky, and to his boyish imagination the sky seemed like a piece of divine embroidery, the divine fingers working in the threads of light and the beads of stars; and when he grew up he wrote:

“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers.”

When he became an old man, thinking of the goodness of God, he seemed to hear again the bleating of his father’s sheep across many years, and to think of the time when he tended them on the Bethlehem hills, and he cries out: “The Lord is my shepherd.”

There is one scene in the life of David that you may not have pondered.

You have seen him with a harp, playing the devil out of Saul; with a sling, smashing the skull of Goliath; with a sword, hacking to pieces the Philistines; with a scepter, ruling a vast realm; with a psalm, gathering all nations into doxology.

But now we have David playing the fool.

He has been anointed king, yet he is in exile and is passing incognito among the Gathites. They are beginning to suspect who he is, and they say:

“I wonder if this is not the warrior, King David? It looks like him. Is not this the man about whom they used to make poetry, and about whom they composed a dance, so that the maidens of the city, reeling now on one foot and now on the other, used to sing: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands’? Yes, he is very much like David; he must be David; he is David.”

David, to escape their hands, pretends to be demented; and he said within himself:

“If I act crazily, then these people will not injure me. No one would be so much of a coward as to assault a madman.”

So, one day, while these Gathites are watching King David with increased suspicion, they see him standing by the door, running his hands meaninglessly up and down the panels—scrabbling on the door as though he would climb up, his mouth wide open, drooling like an infant.

I suppose the boys of the streets threw missiles at him, but the sober people of the town said:

“This is not fair. Do you not see that he has lost his reason? Do not touch this madman. Hands off! Hands off!”

So David escaped. But what an exhibition he made of himself before all the ages!

There was a majesty in King Lear’s madness after Regan and Goneril, his daughters, had persuaded him to banish their sister, Cordelia, and all the friends of the drama have been thrilled with that spectacle.

The craziness of Meg Merrilies was weird and imposing, and formed the most telling passage in Sir Walter Scott’s “Guy Mannering.”

There was a fascination about the insanity of Alexander Cruden, who made the best concordance of the Bible that the world ever saw—made it between the mad houses.

But there was nothing grand, nothing weird, nothing majestic, nothing sublime about this simulation on the part of David. Instead of trusting in the Lord, as he had trusted on other occasions, he gathers before him a vast audience of all generations that were to come, and, standing on that conspicuous stage of history, in view of all the ages, he impersonates the slavering idiot.

Taking the behavior of David as a suggestion, I wish to show you how many of the wise, the brave and the regal sometimes play the fool. Those men as badly play the fool as did David who, in any crisis of life, take their case out of the hand of God.

David, in this case, acted as though there were no God to lift him out of the predicament. What a contrast between his behavior, when this brave little man stood up in front of the giant ten feet in height, looking into his face, and this time, when he debased himself and bedraggled his manhood by affecting insanity in order that he might escape from the grip of the Gathites! In the one case, he played the hero; in the other case, he played the fool.

There came a time when David fled from his pursuers. The world runs very fast when it is chasing a good man. The country is trying to catch David, and to slay him. David goes into the house of a priest, and asks him for a sword or spear with which to defend himself.

The priest, not being accustomed to use deadly weapons, tells David that he can not supply him; but suddenly the priest thinks of an old sword that had been carefully wrapped up and laid away—the very sword that Goliath formerly used. He takes down that sword, and while he is unwrapping the sharp, glittering and memorable blade it flashes upon David’s mind that this is the very sword that was used against himself when he was in the fight with Goliath, and David can hardly keep his hand off it until the priest has unwound it.

David stretches out his hand toward that old sword, and says: “There is none like it; give it me.” In other words: “I want in my own hand the sword that has been used against me, and against the cause of the Lord.” So it was given him.

Here passes through these streets, as in imagination I see him, a wonderful man. Can it be that I am in the very city where lived and reigned David—conqueror, king and poet? David—great for power and great for grief!

He was wrapped up in his boy, Absalom, who was a splendid boy, judged by the rules of worldly criticism. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot there was not a single blemish. The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant shock of hair that, when once a year it was shorn, what was cut off weighed over three pounds.

But, notwithstanding all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a bad boy, and broke his father’s heart. He was plotting to get the throne of Israel. He had marshaled an army to overthrow his father’s government.

The day of battle had come; the conflict was begun. David, the father, sat between the gates of the palace, waiting for tidings of the conflict.

Oh, how rapidly his heart beat with emotion! Two great questions were to be decided—the safety of his boy and the continuance of the throne of Israel.

After a while a servant, standing on the top of the house, looks off, and he sees some one running. He is coming with great speed, and the man on top of the house announces the coming of the messenger.

David watches and waits, and as soon as the messenger from the field of battle comes within hailing distance the father cries out. Is it a question in regard to the establishment of his throne? Does he say: “Have the armies of Israel been victorious? Am I to continue in my imperial authority? Have I overthrown my enemies?” Oh, no.

There is one question that springs from his heart to his lip, and springs from the lip into the ear of the besweated and bedusted messenger flying from the battle field—the question:

“Is the young man—Absalom—safe?”

When it was told to King David that, although his army had been victorious, his son had been slain, the father turned his back upon the congratulations of the nation, and went up the stairs of his palace, his heart breaking as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and then again pressing them against his temples, as though he would press them in, crying:

“O Absalom! My son! My son! Would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom! My son! My son!”

Stupendous grief of David, resounding through all succeeding ages!

DEBORAH.

A text of five words, and four of them one and the same, is found in the fifth chapter and twelfth verse of Judges: “Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake!”

It seems that the men of Israel had lost their courage. Trampled into the dust by their oppressors, the cowards had not spirit to rise.

Their vineyards destroyed, their women dishonored, their children slain, the land was dying for a leader worthy of the cause.

A holy woman by the name of Deborah saw the desolation, and, putting her trust in the Lord, sounded the battle-cry, and by the help of General Barak launched into the plain ten thousand armed men.

The Canaanites, of course, came out with a larger force. They came out against Israel with nine hundred iron chariots, each of these iron chariots having attached to the sides of it long and sharp scythes, so that when these engines of war were driven down to battle, each one of the nine hundred was ready to cut two great swaths of death.

But, when God gives a mission to a woman, He also gives her strength and grace to execute it.

The nine hundred iron chariots of the Canaanites could not save them. They fly! They fly—horse and horseman, chariot and charioteer, officers and troops—in one wild and terrific overthrow. Sisera, their leader, is so frightened in the conflict that he can not wait until his team turns around. He leaps from the chariot and starts, full run, for the mountains.

Then this epic of the text was composed to celebrate the grand womanly triumph: “Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake!”

DORCAS.

Impressed as I am with the mosque at Joppa, the first I ever saw, and stirred as I am with the fact that this harbor once floated the great rafts of Lebanon cedar from which the Temple at Jerusalem was builded, Solomon’s oxen drawing the logs through this very town on the way to Jerusalem, nothing can make me forget that this Joppa was the birthplace of the sewing society that has blessed the poor of all succeeding ages in all lands.

The disasters to Joppa when Judas Maccabæus set it on fire and when Napoleon had five hundred prisoners massacred in this neighborhood can not make me forget that one of the most magnificent charities of the centuries was started in this seaport by Dorcas—a woman who with her needle embroidered her name ineffaceably into the beneficence of the world.

I see her sitting in the village home. In the door way and around about the building, and even in the room where she sits, are the pale faces of the poor.

She listens to their plaint.

She pities their woe.

She makes garments for them, and she adjusts the manufactured articles to suit the bent form of this invalid woman and to that cripple who comes crawling upon his hands and knees. She gives a coat to this one and sandals to that one. With the gifts she mingles prayers and tears and Christian encouragement.

Then she goes out to be greeted on the street corners by those whom she has blessed, and all through the way of her walk the cry is heard: “Dorcas is coming!”

The sick look up gratefully in her face as she puts a hand on the burning brow, and the lost and the abandoned start up with hope as they hear her gentle voice, as though an angel had addressed them; and as she goes out the lane, eyes half put out with sin think they see a halo of light about her brow and a trail of glory in her pathway.

That night a half-paid shipwright climbs the hill and reaches home. There he sees his little boy well clad, and he asks: “Where did these clothes come from?” They tell him: “Dorcas has been here.”

In another place, a woman is trimming a lamp; Dorcas brought the oil.

In another place, a family that had not been at table for many a week are gathered now, for Dorcas brought them bread.

But there is a sudden pause in that woman’s ministry. They say: “Where is Dorcas? Why, we have not seen her for many a day. Where is Dorcas?”

Then one of these poor people goes up and knocks at the door, and finds the mystery solved. All through the haunts of wretchedness the news comes:

“Dorcas is sick!”

No bulletin flashing from the palace gate, telling the stages of a king’s disease, is more anxiously waited for than the news from this sick benefactress. Alas for Joppa! There is weeping and wailing. That voice which has uttered so many cheerful words is now hushed; that hand which had made so many garments for the poor is cold and still; that star which had poured light into the midnight of wretchedness is dimmed by the blinding mists that go up from the river of death.

In every God-forsaken place in that town; wherever there is hunger and no bread; wherever there is guilt and no commiseration; wherever there is a broken heart and no comfort—there are despairing looks, streaming eyes and frantic gesticulations as they cry:

“Dorcas is dead!”

They send for the apostle, Peter. He edges his way through the crowd around the door, and stands in the presence of the dead. What expostulation and grief all about him!

Here stand some of the poor people, who show the garments which this good woman had made for them. Their grief can not be appeased.

Peter, the apostle, wants to perform a miracle. He will not perform it amid the excited crowd, so he kindly orders that the whole room be cleared. The door is shut against the populace.

The apostle stands now with the dead. Oh, it is a serious moment, you know, when you are alone with a lifeless body! The apostle gets down on his knees and prays, and then he comes to the lifeless form of this one all ready for the sepulcher, and in the strength of Him who is the resurrection he exclaims:

“Tabitha, arise!”

There is a stir in the fountains of life; the heart flutters; the nerves thrill; the cheek flushes; the eye opens; she sits up!

We see in this subject Dorcas the disciple, Dorcas the benefactress, Dorcas the lamented, Dorcas the resurrected.

If I had not seen that word disciple in my text, I yet would have known this woman was a Christian. Such music as that never came from a heart which is not both chorded and strung by Divine grace.

Before I show you the needle-work of this woman, I want to show you her regenerated heart—the source of a pure life and of all Christian charities.

I wish that the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters of this congregation would imitate Dorcas in her discipleship. Before you sit with the Sabbath class, before you cross the threshold of the hospital, before you carry a pack of tracts down the street, before you enter upon the temptations and trials of tomorrow, I charge you, in the name of God and by the turmoil and tumult of the Judgment Day, O women, that you attend to the first, last and greatest duty of your life—the seeking for God and being at peace with Him.

Now, by the courtesies of society, you are deferred to, and he were far less than a man who would not oblige you with kind attentions; but when the trumpet shall sound, there will be an uproar, and a wreck of mountain and continent, and no human arm can help you. Amidst the rising of the dead, and amidst the boiling of the seat and amidst the live, leaping thunders of the flying heavens, there will be no chance for these courtesies.

But, on that day, calm and placid will be every woman’s heart who has put her trust in Christ; calm, notwithstanding all the tumult, as though the fire in the heavens were only the gildings of an autumnal sunset—as though the peal of the trumpet were only the harmony of an orchestra—as though the awful voices of the sky were but a group of friends bursting through a gateway at eventime with laughter, and shouting: “Dorcas the disciple!”

Would to God that every Mary and every Martha would this day sit down at the feet of Jesus!

Further, we see Dorcas the benefactress.

History has told the story of the crown; the epic poet has sung of the sword; the pastoral poet, with his verses full of the redolence of clover-tops and arustle with the silk of the corn, has sung the praises of the plow. I tell you the praises of the needle.

From the fig-leaf robe prepared in the Garden of Eden to the last stitch taken last night on some garment for some church fair, the needle has wrought wonders of kindness, generosity and benefaction. It adorned the girdle of the high priest; it fashioned the curtains in the ancient Tabernacle; it cushioned the chariots of King Solomon; it provided the robes of Queen Elizabeth; and in high places and in low places, by the fire of the pioneer’s back-log and under the flash of the chandelier—everywhere, it has clothed nakedness, it has preached the Gospel, it has overcome hosts of penury and want with the war-cry of: “Stitch, stitch, stitch!” The operatives have found a livelihood by it, and through it the mansions of the employers have been constructed.

Amidst the greatest triumphs in all ages and lands, I set down the conquests of the needle.

I admit its crimes; I admit its cruelties. It has had more martyrs than the fire; it has butchered more souls than the Inquisition; it has punctured the eye; it has pierced the side; it has struck weakness into the lungs; it has sent madness into the brain; it has filled the potter’s field; it has pitched whole armies of the suffering into crime, wretchedness and woe.

But, now that I am talking of Dorcas and her ministries to the poor, I shall speak only of the charities of the needle.

This woman was a representative of all those women who make garments for the destitute, who knit socks for the barefooted, who prepare bandages for the lacerated, who fix up boxes of clothing for Western missionaries, who go into the asylums of the suffering and destitute bearing that Gospel which is sight for the blind and hearing for the deaf, and which makes the lame man leap like a hart, and brings the dead to life with immortal health bounding in their pulses.

What a contrast between the practical benevolence of this woman and a great deal of the charity of this day!

Dorcas did not spend her time planning how the poor of Joppa were to be relieved; she took her needle and relieved them. She was not like those persons who sympathize with imaginary sorrows, and go out in the street and laugh at the boy who has upset his basket of cold victuals; nor was she like that charity which makes a rousing speech on the benevolent platform, and goes out to kick the beggar from the step, crying: “Hush your miserable howling!”

The sufferers of the world want not so much theory as practice; not so much tears as dollars; not so much kind wishes as loaves of bread; not so much smiles as shoes; not so much “God bless yous!” as jackets and frocks. I will put one earnest Christian man, who is a hard worker, against five thousand mere theorists on the subject of charity.

There are a great many who have fine ideas about church architecture who never in their lives helped to build a church. There are men who can give you the history of Buddhism and Mohammedanism who never sent a farthing for the evangelization of the adherents of those religions.

There are women who talk beautifully about the suffering in the world who never had the courage, like that of Dorcas, to take up the needle and assault it.

I am glad that there is not a page of the world’s history which is not a record of feminine benevolence. God says to all lands and peoples: “Come, now, and hear the widow’s mite rattle down into the poor-box.”

The Princess of Conti sold all her jewels, that she might help the famine-stricken. Queen Blanche, wife of Louis VIII. of France, hearing that there were some persons unjustly incarcerated in the prisons, went out and took a stick and struck the door, as a signal that all might strike it; and down went the prison door, and out came the prisoners. Queen Maud, the wife of Henry I., went down amidst the poor and washed their sores, and administered to them cordials. Mrs. Retson, at Matagorda, appeared on the battle field while the missiles of death were flying around, and cared for the wounded.

But why go so far back? Why go so far away?

Is there a man or woman in this house who has forgotten the women of the sanitary and Christian Commissions? Has any one forgotten that, before the smoke had gone from Gettysburg and South Mountain, the women of the North met the women of the South on the battle field, forgetting all their animosities while they bound up the wounded and closed the eyes of the slain? Have you forgotten Dorcas, the benefactress?

I come now to speak of Dorcas the lamented. When death struck down that good woman, oh, how much sorrow there was in Joppa!

I suppose there were women living in Joppa possessing larger fortunes; women, perhaps, with more handsome faces; but there was no grief at their departure like this at the death of Dorcas. There was not more turmoil and upturning in the Mediterranean Sea, dashing against the wharves of that seaport, than there were surgings to and fro of grief in Joppa because Dorcas was dead.

There are a great many who go out of life and are unmissed. There may be a very large funeral; there may be a great many carriages and a plumed hearse; there may be high-sounding eulogiums; the bell may toll at the cemetery gate; there may be a very fine marble shaft reared over the resting place. But the whole thing may be a falsehood and a sham.

By this demise the Church of God has lost nothing; the world has lost nothing. It is only a nuisance abated; it is only a grumbler ceasing to find fault; it is only an idler stopped yawning; it is only a dissipated fashionable parted from his wine cellar—while, on the other hand, no useful Christian leaves this world without being missed. The Church of God cries out like the prophet: “Howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen.” Widowhood comes and shows the garments which the departed had made. Orphans are lifted up to look into the calm face of the sleeping benefactress. Reclaimed vagrancy comes and kisses the cold brow of her who charmed it away from sin, and all through the streets of Joppa there is mourning—mourning because Dorcas is dead.

I suppose you have read of the fact that when Josephine was carried out to her grave there were a great many men and women of pomp and pride and position that went out after her; but I am most affected by the story of history that on that day there were ten thousand of the poor of France who followed her coffin, weeping and wailing until the air rang again, because when they lost Josephine they lost their last earthly friend.

Oh, who would not rather have such obsequies than all the tears that were ever poured in the lachrymals that have been exhumed from ancient cities! There may be no mass for the dead; there may be no costly sarcophagus; there may be no elaborate mausoleum. But in the damp cellars of the city, and through the lonely huts of the mountain glen, there will be mourning—mourning because Dorcas is dead.

I speak to you of Dorcas the resurrected. The apostle came to where she was, and said: “Arise!” And “she sat up.” In what a short compass the great writer put that: “She sat up!”

Oh, what a time there must have been when the apostle brought her out among her old friends! How the tears of joy must have started! What clapping of hands there must have been! What singing! What laughter! Sound it all through that lane! Shout it down that dark alley! Let all Joppa hear it! Dorcas is resurrected!

You and I have seen the same thing many a time—not a dead body resuscitated, but the deceased coming up again after death in the good accomplished. If a man labors up to fifty years of age, serving God, and then dies, we are apt to think that his earthly work is done. No! His influence on Earth will continue till the world ceases. Services rendered for Christ never stop.

Here is a Christian woman. She toils for the upbuilding of a church through many anxieties, through many self-denials, with prayers and tears, and then she dies. It is fifteen years since she went away. Now the Spirit of God descends upon that church; hundreds of souls stand up and confess the faith of Christ.

Has that Christian woman, who went away fifteen years ago, nothing to do with these things? I see the flowering out of her noble heart. I hear the echo of her footsteps in all these songs over sins forgiven—in all the prosperity of the church. The good that seemed to be buried has come up again. Dorcas is resurrected.

After a while all these womanly friends of Christ will put down their needles for ever. After making garments for others, some one will make a garment for them; the last robe which we shall ever wear—the robe which is for the grave.

You will have heard the last cry of pain. You will have witnessed the last orphanage. You will have come in worn out from your last round of mercy. I do not know where you will sleep, nor what your epitaph will be; but there will be a lamp burning at that tomb and an angel of God guarding it, and through all the long night no rude foot will disturb the dust. Sleep on—sleep on! Soft bed, pleasant shadows, undisturbed repose! Sleep on!

EHUD.

Ehud was a ruler in Israel. He was left-handed, and, what was peculiar about the tribe of Benjamin, to which he belonged, there were in it seven hundred left-handed men; and yet, so dextrous had they all become in the use of the left hand, the Bible says they could sling stones at a hair’s breadth and not miss.

Well, there was a king by the name of Eglon, who was an oppressor of Israel. He imposed upon them an outrageous tax.

Ehud, the man of whom I first spoke, had a divine commission to destroy that oppressor. He came, pretending that he was going to pay the tax, and asked to see King Eglon. He was told the king was in the Summer house, the place to which his majesty retired when the heat was too great to sit in the palace. This Summer house was a place surrounded by flowers, springing fountains and trees—the latter filled with warbling birds.

Ehud entered the Summer house, and said to King Eglon that he had a secret errand with him. Immediately all the attendants were waved out of the royal presence. King Eglon rises up to receive the messenger. Ehud, the left-handed man, puts his left hand to his right side, pulls out a dagger, and thrusts Eglon through until the haft went in after the blade. Eglon falls.

Ehud comes forth to blow a trumpet of right amidst the mountains of Ephraim; and a great host is marshaled, and proud Moab submits to the conqueror, and Israel is free.

I learn first, from this subject, the power of left-handed men. There are men who, by physical organization, have as much strength in their left hand as in their right hand; but there is something in the writing of the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Judges that implies Ehud had some defect in his right hand, which compelled him to use the left.

Oh, the power of left-handed men! Genius is often self-observant, careful of itself, not given to much toil, burning incense to its own aggrandizement; while many a man, with no natural endowments, actually defective in physical and mental organization, has an earnestness for the right, a patient industry, an all-consuming perseverance, which achieve marvels for the kingdom of the Lord. Though left-handed as Ehud, they can strike down a sin as imperial as Eglon.

But I do not suppose that Ehud, the first time he took a sling in his left hand, could throw a stone a hair’s breadth, and not miss. I suppose it was practice that gave him the wonderful dexterity.

Go forth to your spheres of duty, and do not be discouraged if, in your first attempts, you miss the mark. Ehud missed it.

ESAU.

Esau had the birthright given him.

In the olden times this meant not only temporal but spiritual blessing.

One day Esau took this birthright and traded it off for something to eat. Oh, the folly! But let us not be too severe upon him, for some of us have committed the same folly.

After Esau had thus parted with his birthright, he wanted to get it back. Just as though you, tomorrow morning, should take all your notes and bonds and government securities, and should go into a restaurant, and in a fit of restlessness and hunger throw all those securities on the counter and ask for a plate of food, making that exchange.

This was the exchange Esau made.

He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and he was very sorry about it afterward; but “he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

There are sins which, though they may be pardoned, are in some respects irrevocable; and you can find no place for repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears. After wasting forty years, you can not get back the neglected advantages of boyhood and youth.

FELIX AND DRUSILLA.

A city of marble was Cesarea—wharves of marble, houses of marble, temples of marble. This being the ordinary architecture of the place, you may well imagine something of the splendor of Governor Felix’s residence.

In a room of that palace—floor tesselated, windows curtained, ceiling fretted, the whole scene affluent with Tyrian purple, and statues, and pictures, and carvings—sat a very dark-complexioned man by the name of Felix, and beside him sat a woman of extraordinary beauty, whom he had stolen by breaking up another’s domestic circle.

She was only eighteen years of age, a princess by birth, and unwittingly waiting for her doom—that of being buried alive in the ashes and scoria of Mount Vesuvius, which in sudden eruption, one day, put an end to her abominations.

Well, one afternoon Drusilla, seated in the palace, weary with the magnificent stupidities of the place, says to Felix:

“You have a very distinguished prisoner, I believe, by the name of Paul. Do you know he is one of my countrymen? I should very much like to see him, and I should very much like to hear him speak, for I have heard so much about his eloquence.

“Besides that, the other day, when he was being tried in another room of this palace, and the windows were open, I heard the applause that greeted the speech of Lawyer Tertullus, as he denounced Paul. Now, I very much wish I could hear Paul speak. Won’t you let me hear him speak?”

“Yes,” said Felix, “I will. I will order him up now from the guard room.”

The clank of a chain is heard coming up the marble stairway, there is a shuffle at the door, and in comes Paul—a little old man, prematurely old through exposure—only sixty years of age, but looking as though he were eighty.

Paul bows very courteously before Governor Felix and the beautiful woman by his side. They say:

“Paul, we have heard a great deal about your speaking. Give us, now, a specimen of your eloquence.”

Oh, if there ever was a chance for a man to show off, Paul had a chance there!

He might have harangued them about Grecian art, about the wonderful water-works which he had seen at Corinth, about the Acropolis by moonlight, about prison life in Philippi, about “What I Saw in Thessalonica,” or about the old mythologies.

But, instead, Paul said to himself: “I am now on the way to martyrdom, and this man and woman will soon be dead; so this is my only opportunity to talk to them about the things of eternity.”

And, just there and then, there broke in upon the scene a peal of thunder. It was the voice of Judgment Day speaking through the words of the decrepit apostle. As the grand old missionary proceeded with his remarks, the stoop begins to go out of his shoulders, and he rises up, and his countenance is illumined with the glories of a future life, and his shackles rattle and grind as he lifts his fettered arm, and with it hurls upon his abashed auditors the bolts of God’s indignation.

Felix grew very white about the lips. His heart beat unevenly. He put his hand to his brow, as though to stop the quickness and violence of his thoughts. He drew his robe tighter about him, as under a sudden chill. His eyes glare and his knees shake, and, as he clutches the side of his chair in a very paroxysm of terror, he orders the sheriff to take Paul back to the guard room.

“Felix trembled, and said: ‘Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.’”

I propose to give you two or three reasons why I think Felix sent Paul back to the guard room and adjourned this whole subject of religion.

The first reason was: He was unwilling to give up his sins. He looked around; there was Drusilla. He knew that, when he became a Christian, he must send her back to Azizus, her lawful husband; and he said to himself: “I will risk the destruction of my immortal soul sooner than I will do that.”

Delilah sheared the locks of Samson; Salome danced Herod into the pit; Drusilla blocked up the way to Heaven for Felix.

Another reason why Felix sent Paul back to the guard room and adjourned this subject was: He was so very busy. In ordinary times he found the affairs of state absorbing, but those were extraordinary times. The whole land was ripe for insurrection. The Sicarii, a band of assassins, were already prowling around the palace, and I suppose he thought: “I can not attend to religion while I am so pressed by affairs of state.” It was business, among other things, that ruined his soul.

Aye, with thousands of the present day, it is the annoyance of the kitchen, and the sitting room and the parlor—the wearing economy of trying to meet large expenses with a small income. Ten thousand voices of “business” drown the voice of the Eternal Spirit.

GALLERY OF CHARACTERS.

I see the Gallery of the Prophets and Apostles.

Who are those mighty ones up yonder? Hosea, Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, John and James.

There sits Noah, waiting for all the world to come into the ark.

Moses is waiting till the last Red Sea shall divide.

Jeremiah is waiting for the Jews to return.

John of the Apocalypse is waiting for the swearing of the angel that Time shall be no longer.

Glorious spirits! Ye were howled at; ye were stoned; ye were spit upon. They have been in this fight themselves, and they are all with us. Daniel knows all about lions. Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus. For Joseph, a pit; for Daniel, a wild beast den; for David, dethronement and exile; for John the Baptist, a wilderness diet and the executioner’s ax; for Peter, a prison; for Paul, shipwreck; for John, desolate Patmos; for Vashti, most insulting cruelty.

In that gallery, prophetic and apostolic, they can not keep their peace. Daniel cries out: “Thy God will deliver thee from the mouth of the lions!” David exclaims: “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Isaiah calls out: “Fear not! I am with thee. Be not dismayed.” Paul exclaims: “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

I see the Angelic Gallery. There they are. There is the angel that swung the sword at the gate of Eden, the same whom Ezekiel saw upholding the throne of God, and from which I look away, for the splendor is insufferable. Here are the guardian angels. That one watched a patriarch; this one protected a child. That one has been pulling a soul out of temptation. All these are messengers of light. Those drove the Spanish Armada on the rocks. This turned Sennacherib’s living hosts into a heap of one hundred and eighty-five thousand corpses. Those, yonder, chanted the Christmas carol over Bethlehem, until the chant awoke the shepherds. These, at Creation, stood in the balcony of Heaven, and serenaded the new-born world wrapped in swaddling clothes of light.

And there, holier and mightier than all, is Michael, the archangel. To command an earthly host gives dignity; but this one is leader of the twenty thousand chariots of God, and of the ten thousand times ten thousand angels.

I think God gives command to the archangel, and the archangel to the seraphim, and the seraphim to the cherubim, until all the lower orders of Heaven hear the command and go forth on the high behest.

GIDEON.

The seventh chapter of the Book of Judges contains a detailed report of the strangest battle ever fought.

God had told Gideon to go down and thrash the Midianites, but his army is too large; for the glory must be given to God, and not to man. And so proclamation is made that all those of the troops who are cowardly, and want to go home, may go; and twenty-two thousand of them scampered away, leaving only ten thousand men.

But God says the army is too large yet; and so He orders these ten thousand remaining to march down through a stream, and commands Gideon to notice in what manner these men drink of the water as they pass through it. If they get down on all-fours and drink, then they are to be pronounced lazy and incompetent for the campaign; but if, in passing through the stream, they scoop up the water in the palm of the hand and drink, and pass on, they are to be the men selected for the battle.

Well, the ten thousand men march down into the stream, and the most of them come down on all-fours, and plunge their mouths, like a horse or an ox, into the water and drink; but there are three hundred men who, instead of stooping, just dip the palm of their hands in the water and bring it to their lips—“lapping as the dog lappeth.”

Those three hundred brisk, rapid and enthusiastic men are chosen for the campaign. They are each to take a trumpet in the right hand and a pitcher in the left hand, and a lamp inside the pitcher; and then at a given signal they are to blow the trumpets, throw down the pitchers and hold up the lamps. So it was done.

It is night. I see a great host of Midianites, sound asleep in the valley of Jezreel.

Gideon comes up with his three hundred picked men, and when every thing is ready the signal is given, and they blow the trumpets, throw down the pitchers and hold up the lamps.

The great host of Midianites, waking out of a sound sleep, take the crash of the crockery and the glare of the lamps for the coming on of an overwhelming foe; and they run, and cut themselves to pieces, and most horribly perish.

The lessons of this subject are very spirited and impressive. This seemingly valueless lump of quartz has the pure gold in it. The smallest dewdrop on the meadow at night has a star sleeping in its bosom, and the most insignificant passage of Scripture has in it a shining truth. God’s mint coins no small change.

HEZEKIAH.

Luxurious living is not healthy. The second generation of kings and queens and of lords and princes is apt to be brainless and invalid.

The second crop of grass is almost always short.

Royal blood is generally scrofulous. You will not be surprised, then, to hear that King Hezekiah had disorders which broke out in a carbuncle, virulent and deathful. The Lord told him he must die.

But Hezekiah did not want to die. He turned his face to the wall, so that his prayer would not be interrupted, and cried to God for his life.

God heard the prayer and answered it, saying: “Behold, I will heal thee.” But there was human instrumentality to be employed.

This carbuncle needed a cataplasm. That is a tough word that we use to show how much we know. If in the pulpit we always used words the people understood, we never should have any reputation for learning.

Well, this carbuncle needed a cataplasm, which is a poultice. Your old mother, who doctored her own children in the time when physicians were not as plentiful as they are now, will tell you that the very best poultice is a fig, and that was what was used upon the carbuncle of King Hezekiah. The power of God, accompanied by this human instrumentality, cured the king.

In this age of discovery, when men know so much it kills them, and write so wisely it almost kills us, it has been found out that prayer to God is a dead failure. All things are arranged according to inexorable law.

Ah, my friends, have we been so mistaken? Does God hear and answer prayer, or does He not? Why come out with a challenge in this day, and an experiment, when we have here the very experiment?

Hezekiah was sick unto death; he prayed for his life; God heard him, and added fifteen years to that lifetime. The prayer saved him, the lump of figs applied being merely the God-appointed human instrumentality.

JEHOIAKIM.

We look in upon a room in Jerusalem. Two men are there.

At the table sits Baruch, the scribe, with a roll of parchment and an iron pen in his hand. The other man is walking the floor, as if strangely agitated.

There is an unearthly appearance about his countenance, and his whole frame quakes as if pressed upon by something unseen and supernal.

This is Jeremiah, in the spirit of prophecy. Being too much excited to write with his own hands the words that the Almighty pours upon his mind about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, he dictates to Baruch, the scribe. It is a seething, scalding, burning denunciation of Jehoiakim, the king, and a prophecy of approaching disasters.

Of course, King Jehoiakim hears of the occurrence, and he sends Jehudi to obtain the parchment and read its contents.

It is winter. Jehoiakim is sitting in his comfortable winter house, by a fire that glows upon the hearth and lights up the faces of the lords, princes and senators who have gathered to hear the reading of the strange document.

Silence is ordered. The royal circle bend forward to listen. Every eye is fixed.

Jehudi unrolls the book gleaming with the words of God, and as he reads Jehoiakim frowns; his eye kindles; his cheek burns; his foot comes down with thundering indignation.

King Jehoiakim snatches the book from Jehudi’s hand, feels for his knife, crumples up the book, and goes to work cutting it up with his penknife. Thus God’s book was permanently destroyed, and the king escaped.

Was it destroyed?

Did Jehoiakim escape?

In a little while King Jehoiakim’s dead body is hurled forth to blacken in the sun, and the only epitaph that he ever had was that which Jeremiah wrote:

“Buried with the burial of an ass.”

To restore the book which was destroyed, Baruch again takes his seat at the table, while Jeremiah walks the floor and again dictates the terrible prophecy.

It would take more penknives than cutler ever sharpened to hew into permanent destruction the Word of God. He who shoots at this eternal rock will feel the bullet rebound into his own torn and lacerated bosom.

When the Almighty goes forth armed with the thunderbolts of His power, I pity any Jehoiakim who attempts to fight Him with a penknife.

That Oriental scene has vanished, but it has often been repeated. There are thousands of Jehoiakims yet alive who cut the Word of God with their penknives.

King Jehoiakim showed as much indignity toward the scroll when he cut one way as when he cut the other. You might as well behead Moses as to behead Jonah. Yes, Sir, I shall take all of the Bible or none. Men laugh at us as if we were the most gullible people in the world for believing in the genuineness of the Scriptures; but there can be no doubt that the Bible, as we have it, is the same—no more, no less—as God wrote it.

As to the books of the New Testament, the great writers of the different centuries give complete catalogs of their contents. Polycarp, Ignatius and Clemens Romanus, in the first century, give a catalog of the New Testament books; Tertullian and Justin Martyr, in the second century; Cyprian and Origen, in the third century; Augustine, Jerome and Eusebius, in the fourth century. Their catalogs of the different books of the New Testament silence the suggestion that any new books could have been stealthily put in.

As to the books of the Old Testament, Christ sanctioned them by recommending them to the Jews. If any part of the Old Testament had been uninspired, Christ would have said: “Search the Scriptures—all except that Book of Jonah,” or “Search the Scriptures, except the Book of Esther.” When Christ commends to all the canon of the Old Testament Scriptures, He affirms its genuineness.

There never could have been any interpolations in the Bible, for the Jews were constantly watching, and there were men whose lifetime business it was to attend to the keeping of the Scriptures unadulterated.

JEHU.

Joram, wounded in battle, lies in a hospital at Jezreel. The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off and sees against the sky horsemen and chariots.

A messenger is sent out to find who is coming, but he does not return. Another messenger is sent, but with the same result.

The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off upon the advancing troop, and gets more and more excited, wondering who are coming. But long before the cavalcade comes up, the matter is decided.

The watchman can not descry the features of the fast approaching man, but he exclaims:

“I have found out who he is. The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”

By the flash of that one sentence we discover Jehu’s character. He came with such speed not merely because he had an errand to do, but because he was urged on by a headlong disposition, which had won him the name of a reckless driver, even among the watchmen. The chariot plunges until you almost expect the wheels to crash under it, or some of the princely party to be thrown out, or the horses to become utterly unmanageable. But he always goes so; and he becomes a type of that class of persons to be found in all communities, who in worldly and in religious affairs may be styled reckless drivers.

To this same class belong all those who conduct their worldly affairs in a headlong way, without any regard to prudence or righteousness. The minister of Christ does not do his whole duty who does not plainly and unmistakably bring the Gospel face to face with every style of business transaction. We have a right, in a Christian manner, to point out those who, year by year, are jeopardizing not only their welfare, but the interests of many others, by reckless driving.

As a hackman, having lost control of a flying span, is apt to crash into other vehicles, until the property and lives of a whole street are endangered, so a man driving his worldly calling with such loose reins that, after a while, it will not answer his voice or hand, puts in peril the commercial interests of scores or hundreds.

There are today in our midst many of our best citizens who have come down from affluence into straitened circumstances, because there was a partner in their firm, or a cashier in their bank, or an agent representing their house, or one of their largest creditors, who, like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, was a furious driver.

When I see in the community men with large incomes, but larger outgoes, rushing into wildest undertakings, their pockets filled with circulars about gold to be found in Canada and lead in Missouri and fortunes of all sorts everywhere, launching out in expenditures to be met with the thousands they expect to make, and with derision dashing across the path of sober men depending upon their industry and honor for success, I say: “Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”

When I see a young man, not content gradually to come to a competency, careless as to how often he goes upon credit, spending in one night’s carousal a month’s salary, taking the few hundred dollars given him for getting a start in the purchase of a regal wardrobe, lazy or ashamed to work, anxious only for display, regardless of his father’s counsel and the example of the thousands who, in a short while, have wrecked body, mind and soul in scheming or dissipation, I say: “Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”

When this world gets full power over a man, he might as well be dead. He is dead! When Sisera came into the house of Jael, she gave him something to drink, and got him asleep on the floor. Then she took a peg from the side of her tent, and with a mallet she drove the peg through the brain of Sisera into the floor. So the world feeds and flatters a man, and when it has him sound asleep it strikes his life out.

JESUS AT EMMAUS.

Two villagers, having concluded their errand in Jerusalem, have started out at the city gate, and are on their way to Emmaus, the place of their residence.

They go with a sad heart. Jesus, who had been their admiration and their joy, had been basely massacred and entombed.

As with sad face and broken heart they pass on their way, a stranger accosts them. They tell him their anxieties and bitterness of soul. He, in turn, talks to them, mightily expounding the Scriptures. He throws over them the fascination of intelligent conversation. They forget the time, and notice not the objects they pass, and, before they are aware, have come up in front of their house.

They pause before the entrance, and attempt to persuade the stranger to tarry with them. They press upon him their hospitalities. Night is coming on, and he may meet a prowling wild beast, or be obliged to lie unsheltered from the dew. He can not go much farther now. Why not stop there, and continue their pleasant conversation? They take him by the arm, and they insist on his coming in, addressing him in the words: “Abide with us; for it is toward evening.”

The candles are lighted. The tables are spread. Pleasant sociabilities are enkindled. They rejoice in the presence of the stranger guest. He asks a blessing upon the bread they eat, and he hands a piece of it to each.

Suddenly, and with overwhelming power, the thought flashes upon the astonished people: “He is the Lord!” And as they sat in breathless wonder, looking upon the resurrected body of Jesus, He vanished. The interview was ended. He was gone.

The journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus will soon be ended. Our Bible, our common sense and our observation reiterate this fact in tones that we can not mistake, and which we ought not to disregard.

JOB.

Job had it hard. What with boils and bereavements and bankruptcy, and a fool of a wife, he wished he was dead; and I do not blame him.

His flesh was gone, and his bones were dry. His teeth wasted away until nothing but the enamel seemed left. He cried out: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.”

There has been some difference of opinion about this passage. St. Jerome and Schultens and Doctors Good, Poole and Barnes have all tried their forceps on Job’s teeth. You deny my interpretation, and ask: “What did Job know about the enamel of the teeth?”

He knew every thing about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the Earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, Horace, Solomon and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body.

To other provoking complaints, I think Job had added an exasperating toothache, and, putting his hand against the inflamed face, he said: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.”

A very narrow escape, you say, for Job’s body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooth’s enamel; but, as Job finally escaped, so, thank God, have they.

Paul expresses the same idea by a different figure when he says that some people are “saved as by fire.”

A vessel at sea is in flames. You go to the stern of the vessel. The boats have shoved off. The flames advance; you can no longer endure the heat on your face. You slide down on the side of the vessel, and hold on with your fingers, until the forked tongue of the fire begins to lick the back of your hand, and you feel that you must fall, when one of the life-boats comes back, and the passengers say they think they have room for one more. The boat swings under you—you drop into it—you are saved.

So some men are pursued by temptation until they are partially consumed, but, after all, get off—“saved as by fire.”

But I like the figure of Job a little better than that of Paul. With God’s help, some men do make narrow escape for their souls, and are saved as “with the skin of their teeth.”

JONAH.

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh on an unpleasant errand. He would not go. He thought to get away from his duty by putting to sea.

With pack under his arm, I find him on his way to Joppa, a seaport. He goes down among the shipping, and says to the men lying around on the docks: “Which of these vessels sails today?”

A sailor answers: “Yonder is a vessel going to Tarshish. I think, if you hurry, you may get on board her.”

Jonah steps on board the rough craft, asks how much the fare is, and pays it. Anchor is weighed, sails are hoisted, and the rigging begins to rattle in the strong breeze of the Mediterranean.

Joppa is an exposed harbor, and it does not take long for a vessel to get out on the broad sea. The sailors like what they call a “spanking breeze,” and the plunge of the vessel from the crest of a tall wave is exhilarating to those who are at home on the deep.

But the strong breeze becomes a gale—the gale a hurricane. The affrighted passengers ask the captain if he ever saw any thing like this before. He answers:

“Oh, yes. This is nothing.”

Mariners are slow to admit danger to landsmen.

But, after a while, “crash!” goes the mast, and the vessel pitches so far “a-beam’s-end” that there is a fear she will not be righted. The captain answers few questions, but orders the throwing out of boxes and bundles and so much of the cargo as they can get at.

At last, the captain confesses there is but little hope, and he tells the passengers they had better begin praying. It is seldom that a sea captain is an Atheist. He knows there is a God, for he has seen Him at every point of latitude and longitude between Sandy Hook and Queenstown. Captain Moody, commanding the Cuba, of the Cunard line, at Sunday service led the music and sang like a Methodist.

The captain of this Mediterranean craft, having set the passengers to praying, goes around the vessel, examining it at every point. He descends into the cabin to see whether, in the strong wrestling of the waves, the vessel has sprung a leak, and he finds Jonah asleep.

Jonah had had a wearisome tramp, and had spent many sleepless nights about questions of duty, and he is so sound asleep that all the thunder of the storm and all the screaming of the passengers disturb him not.

The captain lays hold of him, and begins to shake him out of his unconsciousness with the cry: “Don’t you see that we are all going to the bottom? Wake up and go to praying, if you have any God to go to. What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God—if so be that God will think upon us—that we perish not.”

The remainder of the story I will not rehearse, for you know it well. To appease the sea, they threw Jonah overboard.

The devil takes a man’s money, and then sets him down in a poor landing place. The Bible says Jonah paid his fare to Tarshish. But see him get out. The sailors bring him to the side of the ship, lift him over “the guards,” and let him drop with a loud splash into the waves. He paid his fare all the way to Tarshish, but he did not get the worth of his money. Neither does any one who turns his back on his duty and does that which is not right.

The worst sinner on shipboard, considering the light he had, was Jonah. He was a member of the Church, while they were heathen. The sailors were engaged in their lawful calling—following the sea. The merchants on board, I suppose, were going down to Tarshish to barter. But Jonah, notwithstanding his Christian profession, was flying from duty. He was sound asleep in the cabin. Oh, how could the sinner sleep?

If Jonah had been told, one year before, that any heathen sea captain would ever waken him to a sense of danger, he would have scoffed at the idea; but here it is done. So now—men in strangest ways are aroused from spiritual stupor.

If, instead of sleeping, Jonah had been on his knees confessing his sins from the time when he went on board the craft, I think God would have saved him from being thrown overboard. But he woke up too late. The tempest is in full blast, the sea is lashing itself into convulsions, and nothing will stop it now but the overthrow of Jonah. So Jonah was cast overboard.

JOSEPH.

The Egyptian capital was the focus of the world’s wealth. In ships and barges, there had been brought to it: From India, frankincense, cinnamon, ivory and diamonds; from the North, marble and iron; from Syria, purple and silk; from Greece, some of the finest horses of the world and some of the most brilliant chariots; and from all the Earth, that which could best please the eye, charm the ear and gratify the taste.

There were temples aflame with red sandstone, entered by gateways that were guarded by pillars bewildering with hieroglyphics, wound with brazen serpents and adorned with winged creatures—their eyes, beaks and pinions glittering with precious stones.

There were marble columns blooming into white flower buds; there were stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in full bloom.

Along the avenues—lined with sphinx, fane and obelisk—there were princes who came in gorgeously upholstered palanquin, carried by servants in scarlet, or else were drawn by vehicles, the snow-white horses, golden-bitted and six abreast, dashing at full run.

There were fountains from stone-wreathed vases climbing the ladders of the light. You would hear a bolt shove, and a door of brass would open like a flash of the sun. The surrounding gardens were saturated with odors that mounted the terrace, dripped from the arbors and burned their incense in the Egyptian noon.

On the floors of mosaic the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in letters of porphyry, beryl and flame. There were ornaments twisted from the wood of the tamarisk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There were footstools made out of a single precious stone. There were beds fashioned out of a crouched lion in bronze. There were chairs spotted with the sleek hide of the leopard. There were sofas footed with the claws of wild beasts, and armed with the beaks of birds.

As you stand on the level beach of the sea on a Summer day, and look each way, there are miles of breakers, white with the ocean foam, dashing shoreward; so it seemed as if the sea of the world’s pomp and wealth in the Egyptian capital for miles and miles flung itself up into white breakers of marble temple, mausoleum and obelisk.

This was the place where Joseph, the shepherd boy, was called to stand next to Pharaoh in honor.

What a contrast between this scene and his humble starting—between this scene and the pit into which his brothers threw him! Yet Joseph was not forgetful of his early home; he was not ashamed of where he came from.

The bishop of Mentz, descended from a wheelwright, covered his house with spokes, hammers and wheels; and the king of Sicily, in honor of his father, who was a potter, refused to drink out of any thing but an earthen vessel.

So Joseph was not ashamed of his early surroundings, or of his old-time father, or of his brothers. When the latter came up from the famine-stricken land to get corn from the Egyptian king’s corn crib, Joseph, instead of chiding them for the way they had maltreated and abused him, sent them back with wagons, which King Pharaoh furnished, laden with corn; and old Jacob, the father, was brought back in the very same wagons, that Joseph, the son, might see him and give him a comfortable home all the rest of his days.

Well, I hear the wagons, the king’s wagons, rumbling down in front of the palace. On the outside of the palace, to see the wagons depart, stands Pharaoh in royal robes; and beside him stands Prime Minister Joseph, with a chain of gold around his neck, and on his hand a ring given by Pharaoh to him, so that any time he wanted to stamp the royal seal upon a document he could do so conveniently.

Wagon after wagon rolls on down from the palace, laden with corn, meat, changes of raiment and every thing that could aid a famine-stricken people.

I see aged Jacob, one day, seated in the front of his house. He is probably thinking of his absent boys (for sons, however old they get, are never to a father any more than boys); and while he is seated there, he sees dust arising, and he hears wagons rumbling, and he wonders what is coming now, for the whole land had been smitten with the famine, and was in silence.

But after a while the wagons have come near enough, and he sees his sons on the wagons, and before they come quite up, they shout:

“Joseph is yet alive!”

The old man faints dead away. I do not wonder at it. The boys now tell the story how that the boy, the long-absent Joseph, has got to be the first man in the Egyptian palace.

While they unload the wagons, the wan and wasted creatures in the neighborhood come up and ask for a handful of corn, and they are satisfied.

One day the wagons are brought up, for Jacob, the old father, is about to go to see Joseph in the Egyptian palace.

You know, it is not a very easy thing to transplant an old tree; and Jacob has hard work to get away from the place where he has lived so long. He finally bids good-by to the old place, and leaves his blessing with the neighbors; and then his sons steady him, while he, still determined to help himself, gets into the wagon—stiff, old and decrepit.

Yonder they go—Jacob and his sons, his sons’ wives and their children, eighty-two in all—followed by herds and flocks, which the herdsmen drive along. They are going out from famine to luxuriance; they are going from a plain country home to the finest palace under the sun. Joseph, the prime minister, gets into his chariot and is driven down to meet the old man. Joseph’s charioteer holds up the horses on the one side; the dust-covered wagons of the emigrants stop on the other.

Joseph, instead of waiting for his father to come, leaps out of the chariot and jumps into the emigrants’ wagon, throws his arms around the old man, and weeps aloud for past memories and present joy.

The father, Jacob, can hardly think it is his boy. Why, the smooth brow of childhood has now become a wrinkled brow—wrinkled with the cares of state—and the garb of the shepherd boy has become a robe royally bedizened!

But as the old man finally realizes that it is actually Joseph, I see the thin lip quiver against the toothless gum, as he cries out: “Now let me die, since I have seen thy face; behold, Joseph is yet alive!”

LAZARUS.

We stand in one of the finest private houses of the olden time. Every room is luxurious. The floor—made of stones, gypsum, coal and chalk, pounded together—is hard and beautiful. From the roof, surrounded by a balustrade, you take in all the beauty of the landscape.

The porch is cool and refreshing, where sit the people who have come in to look at the building, and are waiting for the usher. In this place you hear the crystal plash of the fountains.

The windows, reaching to the floor and adorned, are quiet places to lounge in; and we sit here, listening to the stamp of the horses in the princely stables.

Venison and partridge, delicate morsels of fatted calf, and honey, figs, dates, pomegranates and fish that only two hours ago glided in the lake, and bowls of fine sherbet from Egypt—these make up the feast, accompanied with riddles and jests that evoke roaring laughter, with occasional outbursts of music, in which harps thrum and cymbals clap and shepherd’s pipe whistles.

What a place to sit in!

The lord of the place, in dress that changes with every whim, lies on a lounge, stupid from stuffed digestion. His linen is so fine, I wonder who washed it and who ironed it. His jewels are the brightest, his purple the rarest.

Let him lie perfectly quiet a moment, until we take his photograph. Here we have it:

“A certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.”

How accurate the picture! You can see every pleat in the linen and every wrinkle in the shirt. What more could that man have? My lord, be happy!

After a while he leans over the balustrade, and says to a friend in shining apparel:

“Look at that fellow—lying at my gate! I wonder why the porter allows him to lie there. How disgusting! But our dogs will be let out of the kennel very soon, and will clear him out.”

Yes, they bound toward him. “Take hold of him!” cries the rich man from the balustrade.

The dogs go at the beggar with terrible bark; then take lower growling; then stop to yawn; and at the coaxing tone of the poor wretch, they frisk about him, and put their soft, healing tongues to his ulcers, driving off the flies and relieving the insufferable itch and sting of wounds which could not afford salve or bandage.

Lazarus has friends at last. They will for a while keep off the insults of the street, and will defend their patient. That man is far from friendless who has a good dog to stand by him. Dogs are often not so mean as are their masters. They will not be allowed to enter into Heaven, but may they not be allowed to lie down at the gate? John says of the door of Heaven: “Without are dogs.”

But what is the matter with that beggar? He lies over, now, with his face exposed to the sun. Lazarus, get up! He responds not. Poor fellow, he is dead!

Two men appointed by the town come to carry him out to the fields. They dig a hole, drop him in and cover him up. People say: “One more nuisance got rid of.”

Aha! That is not Lazarus whom they buried; they buried only his sores. Yonder goes Lazarus—an angel on his right hand, an angel on his left, carrying him up the steep of Heaven—talking, praising, rejoicing. Good old Abraham stands at the gate, and throws his arms around the new comer.

Now Lazarus has his own fine house, and his own robes, and his own banquet, and his own chariot; and that poor and sickly carcass of his, that the overseers of the town dumped in the potter’s field, will come up at the call of the archangel—straight, pure and healthy—corruption having become incorruption.

Now, we will go back a minute to the fine Oriental house that we spoke of. The lord of the place has been receiving visitors today, as the doorkeeper introduced them.

After a while there is a visitor who waits not for the porter to open the gate, nor for the doorkeeper to introduce him. Who is it coming? Stop him there at the door! How dare he come in unheralded?

He walks into the room, and the lord cries out, with terror-stricken face:

“This is Death! Away with him!”

There is a hard thump on the floor. Is it a pitcher that has fallen? An ottoman upset? No. Dives has fallen. Dives is dead.

The excitement in town is great. The grooms rush from the barns to see. All the great folk of the neighborhood, who used to sit at his dinners, come in. The grocer from whom he got his spices, the butcher from whom he got his meats and the clothier from whom he got his garments come to find out all about it.

The day of burial has arrived. Dives is carried down out of his splendid room, and through the porch into the street. The undertaker will make a big job of it, for there is plenty to pay. There will be high eulogies of him pronounced, although the Bible represents him as chiefly distinguished for his enormous appetite and his fine shirt.

The long procession moves on, amid the accustomed weeping and howling of Oriental obsequies. The sepulcher is reached. Six persons, carrying the body, go carefully down the steps leading to the door of the dead. The weight of the body on those ahead is heavy, and they hold back. The relics are left in the sepulcher, and the people return.

But Dives is not buried there.

That which they buried is only the shell in which he lived. Dives is down yonder in a deeper grave. He who had all the wine he could drink asks for a plainer beverage. He wants water. He does not ask for a cupful, nor even for a teaspoonful, but “just one drop,” and he can not get it.

He looks up and sees Lazarus, the very man whom he set his dogs on, and wants him to put his finger into water and let him lick it off.

Once Lazarus wanted just the crumbs from Dives’ feast; now Dives wants just a drop from Lazarus’ banquet. Poor as poor can be! He has eaten his last quail’s wing. He has broken the rind of his last pomegranate. Dives the lord has become Dives the pauper. The dogs of remorse and despair come not with healing tongue to lick, but with relentless muzzle to tear. Now Dives sits at the gate in everlasting beggary, while Lazarus, amid the festivities of Heaven, fares sumptuously every day.

You see that this parable takes in the distant future, and speaks as though the resurrection were passed and the body of Lazarus had already joined his spirit, and so I treat it.

Well, you see a man may be beggared for this life, but be a prince in eternity. A cluster of old rags was the entire property of Lazarus. His bare feet and his ulcered legs were an invitation to the brutes; his food the broken victuals that were pitched out by the house-keeper—half-chewed crusts, rinds, peelings, bones and gristle—about the last creature out of which to make a prince—yet for eighteen hundred years he has been one of the millionaires of Heaven. No more waiting for crumbs. He sits at the same table with the kings of eternity, himself one of them. What were the forty years of his poverty compared with the long ages of his royalty?

Let all the Christian poor be comforted. Your good days will be after a while. Stand it a little longer, and you will be all right. God has a place for you among the principalities. Do not be afraid of the dogs of distress, for they will not bite; they will help to heal. Your poverty may sometimes have led you to doubt whether you will have a decent funeral. You shall have grander obsequies than many a man who is carried out by a procession of governors and senators. The pall-bearers will be the angels that carried Lazarus into Abraham’s bosom. The surveyors have been busy. Your eternal possessions have been already laid out by God’s surveyors, and the stake that bounds the property on this side is driven into the top of your grave, and all beyond is yours.

You can afford to wear poor clothes now, when for you in the upper wardrobes is folded up the royal purple. You can afford to have coarse food here, when your bread is to be made from the finest wheat of the eternal harvests. Cheer up! Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

See, also, that a man may have every comfort and luxury here, and yet come to a wretched future. It is no sin to be rich. It is a sin not to be rich, if we can be rich honestly. I wish I had five hundred thousand dollars—I suppose I might as well make it a million. I see so much suffering and trial every day that I say, again and again, I wish I had the money to relieve it.

But alas for the man who has nothing but money! Dives’ house had a front door and a back door, and they both opened into eternity. Sixty seconds after Dives was gone, of what use were his horses? He could not ride them. Of what use were his rich viands? He could not open his clenched teeth to eat them. Of what use were his fine linen shirts, when he could not wear them?

The poorest man who stood along the road, watching the funeral procession of Dives, owned more of this world than did the dead gormandizer. The future world was all the darker because of the brightness of this.

That wife of a drunken husband, if she does wrong and loses her soul, will not find it so intolerable in hell as others, for she has been in hell ever since she was married, and is partially used to it.

But this rich man, Dives, had every thing once—now nothing. He once had the best wine; now he can not get water. He had, like other affluent persons of the East, slaves to fan him when he was hot; now he is being consumed. He can afford no covering so good as the old patches that once fluttered about Lazarus as he went walking in the wind.

Who among my hearers will take Dives’ fine house, costly plate, dazzling equipage and kennel of blooded dogs, if his eternity must be thrown in with it?

NOAH.

Noah did the best and the worst thing for the world. He built an ark against the deluge of water, but he also introduced a deluge against which the human race has ever since been trying to build an ark—the deluge of drunkenness.

In the opening chapters of the Bible we can hear his staggering steps.

Shem and Japhet tried to cover up the disgrace, but there is Noah—drunk on wine at a time in the history of the world when, to say the least, there was no lack of water.

Inebriation, having flooded the world, has never receded.

Abigail, the fair and heroic wife who saved the flocks of Nabal, her husband, from confiscation by invaders, goes home at night and finds him so intoxicated she can not tell him the story of his narrow escape.

Uriah came to see David, and David got him drunk, and paved the way for the despoliation of his household.

Even the church bishops needed to be charged to be sober and not given to too much wine; and so familiar were the people of Bible times with the staggering and falling motions of the inebriate, that Isaiah, when he comes to describe the final dislocation of worlds, says: “The Earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.”

OTHNIEL.

The city of Debir was the Boston of antiquity—a great place for brains and books.

Caleb wanted it, and he offered his daughter Achsah as a prize to any one who would besiege or storm and capture that city.

It was a strange thing for Caleb to do; and yet the man who could take the city would have, at any rate, two elements of manhood—bravery and patriotism.

Besides, I do not think that Caleb was as foolish in offering his daughter to the conqueror of Debir as thousands in this day who seek alliances for their children with those who have large means, without any reference to moral or mental acquirements.

Of the two evils, I would rather measure happiness by the length of the sword than by the length of the pocket-book. In one case there is sure to be one good element of character; in the other, there may be none at all.

With Caleb’s daughter as a prize to fight for, General Othniel rode into the battle. The gates of Debir were thundered into the dust, and the city of books lay at the feet of the conquerors.

The work done, Othniel comes back to claim his bride. Having conquered the city, it is no great job for him to conquer the girl’s heart; for, however faint-hearted a woman herself may be, she always loves courage in a man. I never saw an exception to that.

The wedding festivity having gone by, Othniel and Achsah are about to go to their new home. However loudly the cymbals may clash and the laughter ring, the parents are always sad when a fondly cherished daughter goes away to stay; and Achsah, the daughter of Caleb, knows that now is the time to ask almost any thing she wants of her father.

It seems that Caleb, the good old man, had given as a wedding present to his daughter a piece of land that was mountainous, and, sloping southward toward the deserts of Arabia, it was swept by some very hot winds. It was called “a south land.”

But Achsah wants an addition of property; she desires a piece of land that is well watered and fertile.

Now, it is no wonder that Caleb, standing amid the bridal party, his eyes so full of tears because his daughter was going away that he could hardly see her at all, gives her more than she asks. She said to him: “Thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water.” And he gave her the upper springs and the nether springs.

That passage occurs in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Joshua, nineteenth verse, but I never saw it till a little while ago; and as I came upon it I said: “If God will give me grace, I shall preach a sermon on that before long.”

The fact is that, as Caleb, the father, gave Achsah, the daughter, a south land, so God gives to us His world. I am very thankful that He has given it to us.

But I am like Achsah in the fact that I am not satisfied with the portion. Trees, flowers, grasses and blue skies are very well in their places; but he who has naught except this world for a portion has no portion at all. It is a mountainous land, sloping off toward the desert of sorrow, swept by fiery siroccos. It is “a south land”—a poor portion for any man who tries to put trust in it.

PAUL.

The Damascus of Bible times still stands, with a population of 135,000 people. It was a gay city of white and glistering architecture, its minarets and crescents and domes playing with the light of the morning sun; embowered in groves of olive, citron, orange and pomegranate; a famous river plunging its brightness into the scene—a city by the ancients styled “a pearl surrounded by emeralds.”

A group of horsemen are advancing upon that city. Let the Christians of the place hide, for that cavalcade coming over the hills is made up of persecutors.

Their leader is small of stature and unattractive in some respects, as leaders sometimes are insignificant in person—witness the Duke of Wellington and Dr. Archibald Alexander. But there is something very intent in the eye of the man at the head of this troop, and the horse he rides is lathered with the foam of a long and a quick travel of 135 miles. He cries “Go ’long” to his steed, for those Christians must be captured and must be silenced, and that religion of the cross must be annihilated.

Suddenly the horses shy off, and plunge until their riders are precipitated. Freed from their riders, the horses bound snorting away.

You know that dumb animals, at the sight of an eclipse or an earthquake, or any thing like a supernatural appearance, sometimes become very uncontrollable.

A new sun had been kindled in the heavens, putting out the glare of the ordinary sun. Christ, with the glories of Heaven wrapped about Him, looked out from a cloud and the splendor was insufferable, and no wonder the horses sprang and the equestrians dropped.

Dust-covered and bruised, Saul attempts to get up, shading his eyes with his hand from the severe luster of the heavens, but unsuccessfully, for he is struck stone blind as he cries out: “Who art Thou, Lord?”

Jesus answered him:

“I am the One you have been chasing. He that whips and scourges those Damascine Christians whips and scourges Me. It is not their back that is bleeding; it is Mine. It is not their heart that is breaking; it is Mine. I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”

From that wild, exciting and overwhelming scene there rises up the greatest preacher of all ages—Paul; in whose behalf prisons were rocked down, before whom soldiers turned pale, into whose hand Mediterranean sea captains put control of their shipwrecking craft, and whose epistles are the advance courier of the Resurrection Day.

I learn, first, from this scene that a worldly fall may precede a spiritual uplifting. A man does not get much sympathy by falling off a horse. People say he ought not to have got into the saddle if he could not ride. Those of us who were brought up in the country remember well how the workmen laughed when, on our way back from the brook, we suddenly lost our ride. At the close of the great Civil War, when the army passed in review at Washington, if a general had toppled from the stirrups it would have been a national merriment.

Here is Paul on horseback—a proud man, riding on with government documents in his pocket, a graduate of a most famous school in which the celebrated Dr. Gamaliel had been a professor, perhaps having already attained two of the three titles of the school: Rab, the first; Rabbi, the second; and was on his way to Rabbak, the third and highest title.

I know from Paul’s temperament that his horse was ahead of the other horses. But without time to think of what posture he should take, or without any consideration for his dignity, he is tumbled into the dust. And yet that was the best ride Paul ever took. Out of that violent fall he arose into the apostleship. So it has been in all the ages, and so it is now.

You will never be worth any thing for God and the Church until you lose fifty thousand dollars, or have your reputation upset, or in some way, somehow, are thrown and humiliated. You must go down before you go up.

Joseph finds his path to the Egyptian court through the pit into which his brothers threw him.

Daniel would never have walked amid the bronze lions that adorned the Babylonish throne if he had not first walked amid the real lions of the cave.

Paul marshals all the generations of Christendom by falling flat on his face on the road to Damascus.

Men who have been always prosperous may be efficient servants of the world, but will be of no advantage to Christ. You may ride majestically seated on your charger, rein in hand, foot in stirrup, but you will never be worth any thing spiritually until you fall off. They who graduate from the School of Christ with the highest honors have on their diploma the seal of a lion’s muddy paw, or the plash of an angry wave, or the drop of a stray tear, or the brown scorch of a persecuting fire.

In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand there is no moral or spiritual elevation until there has been a thorough worldly upsetting.

Again, I learn from the subject that the religion of Christ is not a pusillanimous thing. People of this day try to make us believe that Christianity is something for men of small caliber, for women with no capacity to reason, for children in the infant class, under six years of age, but not for stalwart men.

Look at this man who is mentioned in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Do you not think that the religion that could capture such a man as that must have some power in it?

Paul was a logician; he was a metaphysician; he was an all-conquering orator; he was a poet of the highest type. He had a nature that could swamp the leading men of his own day, and, hurled against the Sanhedrim, he made it tremble.