Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters Part 6

Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters Part 6

Mind, I am not whitewashing him or mitigating his crime. I am trying to get at the forces that conspired to make him what he was, and among these I have no doubt at all that his master's complaisant permission of compromise was a very potent force. Of course he was wrong, of course there is no logical connection between what the master allowed in the Syrian general and the great lie Gehazi told. And yet there was a sort of ghastly logic in this poor wretch's procedure. There are many commandments. But duty is one thing, and if you weaken a man's sense of duty by breaking one commandment yourself, you must not be surprised if you find him breaking another commandment later on.

Gehazi was cured of the leprosy of Naaman. The prophet's angry word was not countersigned on high, and one hopes that he also shook off by G.o.d's a.s.sisting grace the ill-effects of Elisha's complacency. For the greater danger lay in _that_. And does it not still lie there?

Our young people, our children, our servants that minister to our comfort, our a.s.sistants and clerks that multiply our personal activities and help to build up our fortunes, is there no danger to their spiritual life in being exposed as they are to the spiritual influences which we give off every hour? They see the cavalcades of wealth, they gaze at the ingots of gold and the great white silver bars; they look with longing eyes at the silks with colours that come and go like the iris on the dove's neck. The luxuries of meat and drink appeal to them. The temptation to live for these things a.s.saults them.

And what help does Gehazi get from Elisha to-day? What help do young men in offices and shops get from masters and heads of departments?

What help do servants in London homes get from the daily examples of mistresses? What are the inferences drawn in the kitchen from things heard and seen in the dining or drawing-room? and what in the nursery?

Does a young man who sees to the very core of your business say to himself, "The master's profession of religion is hypocrisy--_all_ religion is hypocrisy?" Then may G.o.d help him, for he is smitten with the leprosy of Elisha; and may G.o.d help you, for it is a sorry business to evangelise Asiatics and send your own servants forth from your presence lepers white as snow.

Let every master and mistress pray, "_Search me, O G.o.d, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting_."

HAZAEL

BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.

"But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"--2 KINGS viii. 13.

Hazael was the chief minister and prime favourite of Benhadad, the Syrian king. He had been raised from a humble lot and promoted to that high post by the partiality of his sovereign, who had doubtless discerned his exceptional abilities, and certainly placed implicit trust in him. Just now the king was dangerously ill, and Hazael had been sent to inquire of the prophet of Israel as to the probable issue of the sickness. He put the question with seeming anxiety: "Will my master recover?" He spoke as if that was his dearest wish; perhaps he did wish it. But there were evidently other thoughts half-formed, lurking and hiding themselves in the background. Suppose the king should die and leave the throne vacant, what then? May there not be a chance for me? Elisha read these hidden thoughts, and looked the man in the face long and steadfastly, until the face turned crimson and the head was lowered with shame. And then the prophet said, "Thy master need not die of the sickness; nevertheless, he will die, and I see you filling a throne won by murder, and I have a picture before me of the terrible things which you will do to my dear land of Israel." And as this vision pa.s.sed before the prophet's eyes, he wept. Then Hazael gave the answer which stands at the head of this paper.

It is open to two interpretations. The Authorised Version gives one and the Revised Version the other. According to the first, it is an indignant denial; he recoils with horror from the picture of perfidy, cruelty, and enormous criminality which the prophet has sketched for him. I am not capable of such a thing, he says; "_Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing_?" According to the other reading it is not the crime that he revolts from, but the kingship and the greatness that he refuses to believe in. It seems so improbable and all but impossible that he, a man of obscure birth, should climb to such eminence. He exclaims against it as a piece of incredulous and extravagant imagination. "_What is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing_?"

Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed. For certainly both thoughts were in the speaker's mind. He did not believe at that moment that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power.

There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to which he was confident he would never rise. To both things he said, "It is impossible," and yet the impossible came to pa.s.s.

Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected development like this. Again and again it is the unlikely that happens in the lives which figure on its pages. They rise or they fall in a way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, antic.i.p.ated themselves. We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, "Impossible," and then, before we get far, the thing is done. Impossible, we say, that king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that Solomon, the wise, G.o.d-fearing youth, should give himself up to the sway of l.u.s.tful pa.s.sions and idolatries. Yet that comes to pa.s.s.

Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into a hero-patriot and king. Yet we see it. In the Bible stories greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low. The men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of evil. Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at him. Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant enough to strike you to the ground. Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of G.o.d, and he will think you are beside yourself: and then tell him that he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do this? Impossible! And yet the thing comes off.

Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind? Surely it is because we need both the warning and encouragement. It is to prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe. It is to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope, while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident with the wholesome and humbling word, "_Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall_." These men of the Bible were strangely mixed. They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions and surprises which are in us all. For that is the point: the thing comes home to us.

Believe me, we are all a riddle to ourselves. Each man is to himself, and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater mystery, G.o.d. None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each day's doings, and through the whole of life. They who believe that the saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably ignorant of human nature. G.o.d has made no man without putting some little bit of the Divine image in him. The worst has some lingering trace or ruin of it. And the best is not so entirely the temple of the Holy Ghost that no fouler spirits ever obtain entrance there. You may say that you do not believe in a devil. Well, that may be; but there is something like a devil in all of us at certain times, and I would rather believe that it comes from the outside than that it is born and bred and originates within. At any rate, there are in all of us the strange oppositions, the darkness and the light overlapping each other, the evil and the good ever contending, like Esau and Jacob, in the birth hour. The awful and the blessed possibilities are there, and which shall get the uppermost depends first on G.o.d, and then upon ourselves.

I.

Remember first, then, that we have all a lower side.

There is in us what I may call a lurking, crouching, slumbering devil, which needs constant watching and holding down with the strong hand of self-mastery and prayer. "Praying always with all prayer, and watching thereunto," says the apostle. In every one of us there is the possibility of falling, however high we stand and however near G.o.d we walk. Bunyan says, in his immortal story, "Then I saw in my dream that by the very gate of heaven there was a way that led down to h.e.l.l." No man, however ripe in goodness, however firmly rooted and grounded in faith, love, and Christian qualities, ever gets beyond the need of vigilant sentinel work--watching himself. He must always be buffeting himself, and keeping under his body, as Paul did, lest he himself should be a castaway. Let him grow careless, presumptuous, neglectful of prayer, and all the old tempers and pa.s.sions slowly steal in, and bit by bit obtain the mastery, and the Christian disgraces his profession, and the saint becomes a sinner again. Every Christian knows this. He knows the evil powers that are in him.

It is the man who has never fought with his temptation, never prayed, who especially needs to be reminded of it; young men and women who have been well brought up, who have kept themselves moderately straight so far, and who are full of good resolutions. I hear them say, "Oh I am strong enough. I am not such a fool as to throw myself away in the stupid game of the prodigal, in drunkenness, and gambling, and unclean living. I can hold myself in. I can go just as far as I please. I can indulge to a certain extent, and pull myself up just at the moment I please; and as for prayer and seeking G.o.d's help, thank my stars I can clear a safe course without all that. I shall not overstep the line you may depend upon it." "_Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this_?"

And I answer, yes--there is quite enough of the dog in you, or of the devil, if you like the word better, to do this and to do worse things--if you play with the dog and let it loose, and let it have a free run now and then. In my time I have heard scores of young men talk in this way. I have heard them laugh scornfully when danger was mentioned to them, and I have seen a few of them fortunate enough to grow up to manhood with a fairly unspotted character; a few, but not many--the greater part have gone wrong, and some deplorably wrong.

There is hardly one of us can keep that dog fastened up and chained down always, unless we rely upon a stronger power than our own. It gets loose at times with the best of us--it runs wild and plays dreadful havoc with those who are not the best; there is always in you the baser self--always the dry torches of evil pa.s.sions which a spark may kindle--always the moral weaknesses and l.u.s.ts, half-sleeping, which some stronger blast of temptation may awaken and bring out; and if you wish to escape the evil and hold fast to the good, you will commit your way unto the Lord, and put on the Christian armour, and strengthen yourselves by prayer. Do not presume too much--better men than you have fallen every day. G.o.d only can save you from yourselves.

II.

It is just as needful to remember the other side--the side of better possibilities.

Some of you are tempted to say at times with Hazael, "_Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things_?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life--in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with no promotion. It is sad to work with a conviction of that kind. You never work well if there is nothing to look forward to, and it is cowardly to give way to a conviction of that kind. Perhaps you are not specially clever--no, but there are better things than cleverness in the world, and things which have more to do with life's real successes.

If you have in you some power of plodding, to do steady work, doing it always honestly; if you have perseverance, self-control, a sense of duty, a determination to do always the thing that is right, all will be well--these are the qualities which lift a man up to the best places, and one of those places is being prepared for you if you are worthy to fill it. You say, perhaps, "I can never be a good man. I can never be a Christian. I am not made for these high things; it is not in me." I answer, "It is in you, or if it be not in you now, G.o.d will put it in you if you diligently ask Him."

Nay, truly, there are the germs of goodness in every one of us. Thy servant is something more than a dog, though he calls himself that, and nothing else. There is something of the religious emotion in you, and that means there is something of the Divine. You have dreams at times of a beautiful life, you have longings for it, sometimes you even set out to reach it--and these are all touches of G.o.d. They all prove that the Holy Ghost sometimes pays at least a pa.s.sing visit to your hearts.

You do not know what G.o.d can make of you until you trust and try Him.

There are greater things by far in you than you have guessed. Have confidence in Him, and He will bring them out. I can see a man of G.o.d in you, a pillar in the Church, an honour to the town. I can see a Christian mother in you, a half-sainted woman full of good works, bringing children up to n.o.ble lives. It is there in many of you, if you do not despise and neglect the gift that is in you, but use it and cultivate it prayerfully, and let G.o.d bring it to perfection.

MANa.s.sEH

BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.

"Mana.s.seh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem."--2 CHRON. x.x.xiii. l.

Fifty and five years--he wore the crown a longer time than any other of the house of David. Of all the kings that reigned in Jerusalem, this man's reign filled the largest s.p.a.ce; yet he is the one king of Judah about whom we are told least. In the modern city of Venice there is a hall which is adorned with the portraits of all the doges or kings who ruled that city in the days of its splendour--all except one--one who made himself infamous by evil deeds. Where his portrait ought to be, there is a black blank s.p.a.ce which says nothing, yet speaks volumes; which says to every visitor, Do not think of him, let him be forgotten.

In some such way Mana.s.seh is disposed of by the sacred writers. They hurry over the fifty-five years; they crowd them into half a chapter, as if they were ashamed to dwell upon them, as if they wanted the memory of them and of the man to be forgotten. And that was the feeling of all the Jews. Century after century, and even to the present time, Jews have held the man's name in abhorrence. Do not speak of him, they say. He was the curse of our nation. He denied our faith. He slew our prophets. He brought Jerusalem to ruin.

Yet, strange to say, the man so hated and cursed was once a nation's hope and joy. When his father, Hezekiah, lay sick unto death, his greatest grief and the profoundest sorrow of his people was caused by the thought that he was dying childless. They prayed for his recovery mainly on that ground. He recovered, and married, and a child was born, and the glad father called him Mana.s.seh, which means, G.o.d hath made me forget--forget my sickness and my sorrow; and all over the land the ringing of bells was heard and shouts of rejoicing, and the prophet Isaiah sang of the child's birth in those triumphant words which we have often heard since in another connection, "_Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given_"; and they thought that all would go well now that there was an heir to the throne, and they prayed that he might be st.u.r.dy and strong, and get over all the ailments of childhood. They hoped more from the child than they did from G.o.d. Their prayers were granted. G.o.d gave them their desire, and the result was such as to make us doubtful whether we are always wise in pressing such prayers.

We are never sure that it will be good for us, or good for our darling child, that its life should be spared and prolonged in some time of crisis. Often the early death which we dread may be far less cruel than the evil which waits beyond. Better to leave these things in G.o.d's hands, and say that will be best for all which seems right to Thee. A whole nation prayed for the birth and preservation of this son. That same nation came to curse the day on which he was born.

Strange that a father like Hezekiah had a child like this. Hezekiah was, I think, the best of the Jewish kings, wise and brave, gentle and strong, full of reverence and faith, pre-eminently a man who walked with G.o.d and strengthened himself by prayer, and fought as earnest and true a battle for religion and righteousness as we have recorded in the Old Testament. How came it that the son was in all respects his opposite? Did an evil mother shape him, or what? We cannot tell.

These are among the saddest mysteries of human life. The law that a child's training and environment determine the character of the man, often fails most deplorably. The wisest man may have a most foolish son; the G.o.dliest home may send forth a reprobate; the child of many prayers may live a life of shame. When a young man goes wrong, it is often both unjust and cruel to lay it on the home training, and to say that there has been neglect or want of discipline, or want of right example there. It is adding another burden to hearts already weighted with intolerable grief.

For the most part, children will follow their parents in what is good, and those nursed in prayer will grow up praying men. But there are hideous exceptions, and sometimes the most Christlike people have this cross to bear; and it is the most heart-crushing of all to see children turning aside from all that they have held dear, and by the whole course of their lives mocking the religious ideals and hopes which were cherished for them. G.o.d save all you fathers and mothers from this calamity, and G.o.d save all our young people from crushing tender hopes in this cruel way.

Mana.s.seh's life was spent in undoing what his father had done. It seemed to be his great ambition to overturn and destroy the sacred edifice which his father's hands, with untiring prayer and devotion, had raised. Hezekiah had taught his people to trust in G.o.d, and in reliance on His help to sustain a n.o.ble independence separate from heathen alliances. Mana.s.seh hastened to join hands with Babylon, and make his nation the va.s.sal of a great heathen empire. Hezekiah had swept the land clean of idols. Mana.s.seh filled every grove and hillside with these vain images again. Hezekiah had restored the Temple worship and the Mosaic ritual, and the moral law, and laboured to establish a reign of sobriety, purity, justice, and order. Mana.s.seh outraged all the moralities, and delighted in introducing everywhere the licentious abominations of the neighbouring peoples. Hezekiah had cultivated and encouraged prophecy, and gathered about him great and n.o.ble souls like Isaiah and Habakkuk. Mana.s.seh drove them from his presence, and finally slew them.

There were new lights in those days, as there are now. Men who sneered at all the old thoughts and ways, who swept Moses aside with disdain, and thought that David's psalms were poor and feeble things, and that the old-fashioned religion was narrow and provincial, and that the stories of victories won by faith and miracles wrought by prayer were worn-out fictions. They said that if the nation would prosper, it must turn its back on all this stuff, and follow new methods, and profess a new religion. Let them make the great empire, Babylon, their model, with its advanced civilisation, and science, and literature, and vast stores of wealth, with its worship, too, of the sun, and stars, and fire, its religion full of jollity and license, which contrasted so happily with the sober and severe worship of Jehovah, and did not trouble men with unwelcome moral precepts. See how great that empire had become, and how stationary and unprogressive was their own little kingdom, because it clung to the old ways. That was what the new party said. Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned trusts and beliefs and worship. We are wiser than our simple-minded fathers. We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy prophets. We will have all things new.

And Mana.s.seh, being a young man and as foolish as he was young, drank in greedily their counsels and made himself their leader. For it is ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all things so much better than those who have gone before. They want to try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better time than the old folks knew. That was the course which Mana.s.seh took, just as headstrong and irreverent youths take it now.

Then followed that time which the Jewish people never speak of without shame--a hideous reign of idolatry, and immorality, and injustice; an awful period of persecution for the few righteous and G.o.d-fearing people who were left when the prophets had been sought out and slain.

Isaiah sawn asunder, Habakkuk stoned to death, the faithful driven into dens and caves of earth. It is of this time that we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in that graphic account of the martyred faithful: "_They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being dest.i.tute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was not worthy_" (xi. 37, 38). A few years of this sufficed to pull down the whole fabric of religion which Hezekiah had so painfully and patiently raised. For it is so easy to destroy; so easy for folly and irreverence to pull down what wisdom and goodness have taken years in building; so easy for a vicious and irreligious son to bring shame and ruin upon the house which a G.o.dly father and mother have spent a lifetime in rearing with honour; so easy, by a few rash acts, to destroy the character and reputation which the prayers and training of years have sought to establish. It is the easiest thing in the world to undo and overturn; there is no cleverness and courage required for destroying, the cleverness and courage are called for in building it up.

Mana.s.seh succeeded to his heart's content. People followed him greedily, except the steadfast few. And presently the prophets were all gone, and the worship of the true G.o.d was nowhere practised except in secret, and the sacred names were no more mentioned, and the land gave itself up to all the foul rites and the shameful indulgences of the heathen world, And then G.o.d's retribution came swiftly. Where the rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together. These same Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Mana.s.seh carried off in chains and flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his projects, and to find out there that the old ways had been the best.

There we are told that he repented, that he was stricken with shame because of all the evil that he had done, and turned with prayer and humility to the G.o.d whom he had defied. And we are told that G.o.d was merciful and heard his entreaties, and accepted his repentance, and brought him back after sorrowful years of imprisonment to his land and throne. This is the part of the story which most people emphasise.