gate of Sarepta, found a poor woman, a widow, gathering a few sticks,
that she might bake the last morsel of bread and share it with her
child, after which there was nothing more to hope for. The famine was
doing its awful work among the cities of the coast. The hills back of
Sarepta were scorched, and the beautiful valleys on either side of
the city were cracked in great fissures. In her distress this widow,
in her person had wasted to a skeleton, faltering, trembling, as she
staggered out to gather a few sticks to bake her last cake for self and
child, and then to die. Her cheeks were sunken, her eyes hollow, and
her nerves seem never to have known what rest meant. As she walked she
staggered; when she stood she reeled. She was leaning against her gate,
the sticks in her arms when the Tishbite saluted her with the request,
“Fetch me, I pray thee, a drink of water.”

In a moment she was going toward her water pot. “Bring me, I pray thee,
a morsel of bread in thy hand,” the prophet called after her while on
the way to get the water.

“Bread!” Distressed and sorely tried, the poor woman breaks down, and
discloses the sad condition of her home in the ever-memorable words,
“As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal
in a barrel and a little oil in a cruse, and behold, I am gathering two
sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it
and die.”

She may or she may not have been an Israelite. She may have been one of
the seven thousand who had not bowed unto Baal, and possibly knew who
it was who addressed her. At all events she must have heard of this
“lighted fire-brand, fallen out of the clouds, and hurled by the hand
of Jehovah” at the wicked Ahab. She may even have heard that in the
midst of the drought Ahab had divided the country between himself and
Obadiah, to seek if possible, amidst its former fountains and brooks
a little “grass to save his horses and mules alive,” though it did
not matter to this hardened wretch of a king if his subjects died by
the thousands. So this demand of Elijah must have been a real trial
to her faith. Nor did her distressed condition change the demand of
the Tishbite. “Do as thou hast said,” he commanded, “but bake me a
little cake first!” What, serve this stranger from Gilead before her
starving child? Surely how could she, with her mother heart, obey such
an order? But, noble woman, staggering under the request, she placed
the gathered sticks on the fire, went to the barrel and took out the
last handful of meal, and poured the last drop of oil from the cruse,
and baked for God’s prophet the cake, and served him _first_! Was
there ever such unselfish self-surrender? But for her poverty and her
appearance, she might have passed for an angel who had strayed away
from heaven, got caught in the famine and could not find her way back.
If God had not been behind this exorbitant demand of the prophet it
had been simply heartless. But, along with the demand were the words,
“for the Lord God of Israel hath said it.” If God said it, that was
the end of all questionings, this angel in human form, reduced in her
poverty, staggered off to meet the demand. There may have been no
small stir in heaven when it became known that she had gone to bake
her last cake for the man of God, and then to die without tasting it
herself. If the jasper walls had that moment let down around her, and
all the glorified had gathered about that oven, she would have felt
perfectly at home without a change of raiment. But that “last cake”
was never baked. As the trembling widow stood by the heated oven, in
sublime obedience to God’s requirement, even as Abraham once stood by
his altar fires on Moriah, with the bound Isaac upon it, there came
the gracious “_Fear not!_” She had gone to a point in her faith where
God always breaks down. He saw it all, and out of divine compassion He
answered, “The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse
of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.”
And the record goes on to say that she, and the prophet, and her house,
had enough through the years of the famine. There was so much meal and
oil that even the widow’s poor and starving relations came to partake
thereof. That is the way God blesses--it always overflows upon others.

How this incident at Sarepta glorifies God, whom the Scripture teaches
us to know in His unapproachable greatness and in His affable mercy
and condescension! As we sat by the little brook in Sarepta, amid
the noontide glow of an Oriental sun, and read afresh this charming
story, and then raised our eyes to look on the little chapel which
the crusaders had erected on the reputed site of the widow’s home,
the thought of such a God flooded us with His precious nearness, for,
in our human needs, we love to feel His comforting presence in our
hearts. The Jehovah, the Almighty God, the maker of worlds, the ruler
of systems beyond human vision, whose perfect will is done in heaven
by angels, who holdeth the dew of heaven, the rain in the clouds, the
waters of the oceans in His hands, who gives and withholds the needed
bread and water, He is our Father, and exercises a father’s care, so
that the individual is not forgotten of Him. He holds not only the
whole, but the single parts; He looks not only into the palace of
kings, but into the cottages of poverty. The need and misery of a poor
widow are not too insignificant for Him; He observes her sighs and
tears, and her silent, desolate cottage is for Him a place worthy of
the revelation of His glory and goodness.

Matchless widow of Sarepta! As long as the name of Elijah lives, with
its imperishable renown, so long shall thine be found side by side with
it in the unfading annals of the church of God!

But our story runs on. The wicked Ahab had died, and Jehoram, his son,
reigned in his stead. The great hero, prophet of the kingdom of the
ten tribes, had also passed over the Jordan, and somewhere among the
valleys, overshadowed by the lofty dome of Nebo, the “chariot of fire
and horses of fire” came down and translated the first and greatest
of the prophets. His mantle, however, fell upon Elisha, the son of
Shaphat. Elisha had scarcely returned from the land of Moab, whither
he had gone to relieve the armies of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, out
of the horrors of a water famine, when there met him a certain widow
of the wives of the sons of the prophets, and cried unto him in her
distress. Of what particular prophet she was the widow the record does
not state, nor is her name given. Josephus and the rabbis will have
it that she was the widow of Obadiah, who, they think, had exhausted
his fortune in the provision for the persecuted prophets in the time
of the drought, in the reign of Ahab, when, faithful to God, amidst
the splendors of Ahab’s corrupt court, he hid such of the prophets as
escaped out of the hands of Jezebel, the wicked queen, hid them in
caves, feeding them on bread and water through the sore distress of the
three years’ famine, and so had fallen into debt, basing their claim
upon the woman’s statement that her husband “feared the Lord,” which
is also stated in respect to Obadiah. But whether she was the widow of
Obadiah or not, she was greatly in need, and, in her distress, appealed
to Elisha, who was the acknowledged head of the prophetic school.

But what a calamity had come into her widowhood! Her husband had not
only been taken from her by death, but now, after bravely struggling
to provide for her family, the creditors had come to take her two sons
to be bondsmen. If that will not touch a mother’s heart we do not know
what will. And so she hastens away to relieve her burdened heart in the
ears of the sympathizing prophet. He listened to her story, and then
asked, “What hast thou in the house?”

What a question to ask a mother whose sons were about to be sold into
slavery for debts! What could she have of value she would not gladly
dispose of to save her children?

She answered, “Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house!” Not
anything? Oh yes, there is “a pot of oil.” She was in a more deplorable
condition than the widow of Sarepta, for she, aside from the cruse of
oil, had a “handful of meal.” But this one was entirely destitute, even
of the oil so essential in the preparation of food--she had only a
little pot for anointing purposes. But even this was enough for God and
faith to work on.

“Go,” said Elisha, “borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors,
even empty vessels; borrow not a few.” Comforted in her heart, she
went home and told her anxious sons what the prophet had said. “It is
vessels you want, is it mother?” “Yes,” she answered, the prophet said,
“borrow not a few!”

So all that morning, and far into the afternoon, the widow’s sons were
calling on their neighbors for empty vessels, crocks, great waterpots,
casks, firkins, in short, anything that would hold oil. As the boys
were going empty-handed down the streets and returning loaded with
vessels, the people began to wonder what that poor widow of the prophet
should want of so many vessels, especially as it was known that she
had nothing in her house. But the boys kept at their work until every
neighbor was borrowed empty, and her house looked more like a depot for
freight, than a poor woman’s cottage. All the rooms were filled, the
open court was filled, and all the approaches were filled. The widow’s
sons, if their industry in borrowing and carrying home vessels would
save them from being sold into slavery, they certainly would escape
out of the hands of their mother’s creditor, for was there ever such a
sight of empty vessels! And not until there were no more to be borrowed
did they cease from their work.

And now the supreme moment came. The prophet had told her, after the
vessels were all in, she should shut the door upon herself and upon her
sons. Only her boys should be witnesses to the mighty deliverances
of God. The locking of the door had no other object than to keep
aloof every interruption from without. The action in question was not
an ordinary, simply external, operation, but an act which was to be
performed by the command of the man of God, and with the heart directed
towards God, that is, in faith, so that it was to be completed, not
in the noise and distraction of everyday life, but in quietness and
solitude. And we may also well believe she first asked God’s blessing
upon her undertaking, so far carried on in faith, for though her house
was full of vessels, they were all as yet empty.

The prayer ended, she took down her ointment jar--and Oh, it was such
a very little pot! Holding it in her hand, she told her oldest son to
bring one of the smallest jars, for how could the little vessel in her
hand fill even the smallest of the borrowed utensils? As she tipped the
little pot, the golden stream began to flow, and it kept on flowing
until the vessel was filled to the brim, to the utter astonishment
of herself and sons. This one filled, another was quickly brought.
And as the oil flowed, the poor woman’s faith grew, and the sweat was
now rolling down the faces of her sons as they brought up the empty
vessels, and removed the full ones. Her face fairly shone as she filled
the last vessel, and in her excitement cried out, “Bring me yet a
vessel!” “Why, mother,” both the sons speaking at once, “there is not a
vessel more!” So when the last was filled to the brim, “the oil stayed.”

As she looked over the sea of vessels all filled to the brim with
golden oil, out of the gladness of her heart she hastened to tell
Elisha what had happened at her house. She had oil in her vessels and
thanksgiving in her heart, and she must tell it out, and who was better
prepared to share her joy than the prophet who had listened to the
story of her distress.

And he said, “Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt.” The religion that
comes from heaven looks well after its creditors. The debt was paid,
her sons were spared to her, and a surplus was left for them to live
upon.

What a beautiful lesson of faith! We suppose if any of her neighbors
had known that all these empty borrowed vessels were for the purpose
of experimenting with a little pot of anointing oil, it would have
created a sensation. Some, doubtless, would have said, the creditor,
in threatening to take her sons, has driven that poor widow out of her
mind. Why, such a thing as filling these pots, and firkins, and great
casks of ten and fifteen gallon capacity, with a little pot of oil has
never been heard of in Israel, and we can’t understand who could have
put such an absurd idea into the poor woman’s head. Indeed, there was
good reason for shutting the world out, for, if they had seen her take
down the little pot of oil and attempted to pour into the vessels, they
would have laughed her to scorn. But then, we Christian people should
know that the things which are impossible with men, are perfectly
possible with God. Yea, He loves to multiply the impossibilities of
men, that no flesh may glory in His presence.

Then also the number of vessels borrowed speak well for the faith of
this woman. Our Lord tells us, over and over, according to our faith
shall it be done unto us. If her faith had been small, and she had been
content with a few vessels, the oil would have ceased to flow when the
last vessel was filled. If our heavenly Father is ever pleased with the
action of His earthly children, it must be over the audacious faith of
a poor woman who, in her poverty and distress, borrows of her neighbors
empty vessels for Him to fill out of His gracious benevolence.

But not all women, in the time of the prophets, were widows and poor,
but even the rich needed the consolations God only can give in times
of trouble. And so our story runs on from the widow of Sarepta and the
widow who, in her extremity, appealed to Elisha, to the rich woman of
Shunem.

Over against Jezreel, under the base of _Jebel Duhy_ (the so-called
“Little Hermon”) amid luxuriant gardens of lemon, orange and fig trees,
which cast their refreshing shades over the hot and sultry bridle-path,
is the village of _Sulem_, in which we recognize the ancient Shunem,
rendered so dear to every lover of the Bible by the beautiful, sweet
story of the rich Shunammite woman who prepared a prophet’s chamber in
her house, where Elisha often found a shelter from the oppressive heat
of the noontide sun as he passed that way.

The little city, in the division of the land, under Joshua, was
allotted to the tribe of Issachar, and is three miles north of Jezreel,
five miles from Mount Gilboa, about four miles from Nain, where our
Lord raised the widow’s son, and is in full view of the sacred spot
on Mount Carmel. In the southern section of the village, at the base
of the hill Moreh, flows out a transparent stream of sparkling water,
which renders the fields green and beautiful, said to be the finest in
the world.

Amid these enchanting and picturesque scenes lived the Shunammite. The
Bible gives her no name. She needs none. She is simply “a great woman.”
Standing in her doorway, in three directions, she could look out over
the fields of grain, and see the slow movements of the heavily loaded
camels drudge up from the seaport of Acre, or down through the great
plain of Esdraelon from the mountains of Naphtali or the hill country
of Gilead, beyond the Jordan. If Elisha came from Carmel, he would
approach Shunem by the Acre road. Accompanied by Gehazi, one of the
sons of the prophets, she could see them trudging along the dusty camel
path at a great distance, and she said to her husband, “Behold now, I
perceive that this is an holy man of God.” So much for the personal
appearance of Elisha. He carried a good face, which commended itself
even to this discerning woman. Prompted by the manly bearing of the
prophet, he had scarcely reached the gate when she stood before him,
and pointing to her home, “she constrained him to eat bread.”

It appears that Elisha passed frequently through Shunem. No doubt
Carmel, which lay in the middle of the northern part of the kingdom,
was the place where the faithful worshippers of Jehovah, who lived in
the north, came together from time to time, and were strengthened in
their faith, and instructed by the prophet. This would call Elisha to
pass up from Carmel to Shunem and the north. “And so it was, that
as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread.” Happy
household! Most gracious hospitality! That sweet home, amid the olive
groves of Shunem, ever afterwards became the resting place of the good
Elisha.

The pious, but keen-sighted woman, who at the first recognized in
Elisha “an holy man of God,” was not deceived or disappointed when she
became more fully acquainted with him in his frequent stops. Indeed,
she must have been very favorably impressed with his bearing, for she
proposed to enlarge her hospitality. She said to her husband, “Let us
make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall,” that is, upon the
flat roof of the house, with walls which would be a protection against
storms, “and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool
and a candlestick.” Beautiful and thoughtful provision. In such a room
Elisha would be protected from every interruption, such as it was
hardly possible to avoid entirely in the house, and there he might pass
his time in quietness.

Elisha wished to make some return to his hostess, who had received and
entertained him so liberally and so often, but he did not know what
would be acceptable to her a woman of wealth. In order to learn this,
he does not address himself directly to her, but directs his servant
to ask the necessary questions, that she may express herself with
less embarrassment and less reserve. He asks, “What is to be done for
thee? Wouldest thou be spoken for to the king, or to the captain of
the host?” This question presupposes that Elisha at that time stood
in favor and respect at court. The king, in this instance may have
referred to Jehu, whom Elisha caused to be anointed. The commander of
the army is named in connection with the king as the most powerful and
most influential man at court.

This excellent woman sent a most beautiful reply to the prophet. “And
she answered, I dwell among my own people.” She asks no recompense
for the good she had done. She wishes to have nothing to do with the
court of the king, and the great ones of the world. She had no favors
to ask, and desired no political honors. Hers was a contented life.
Perhaps, in this reply, she wished to show, at the same time, that she
had not entertained the prophet for the sake of any return, but for
his own sake, and for the sake of God. She had received him in the
name of a prophet, and not for the sake of a reward, or any temporal
gain. She loved God, and therefore loved His servant, and she showed
him kindness, because this was the law God had written upon her heart.
Although she lacked that which was essential to the honor and happiness
of an Israelitish wife, namely, a son, yet she was contented, and no
word of complaint passed her lips--a sign of great humility and modesty.

But the noble-hearted Elisha could not endure the thought of receiving
all these favors without making some return, and he felt all the
more bound to do something for her. To be barren, in those days, was
regarded as a disgrace, so the prophet summoned her into his presence.
But out of modesty and respect she only came to the door. Elisha
announced to her that her home is to be blessed in the birth of a
son. There were the disabilities of nature, and the woman regarded
the announcement as improbable of realization, and, in true Oriental
language, replied, “Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto
thine handmaid,” that is, do not deceive me, by exciting vain hopes in
me. The Lord, however, according to His grace and truth, remembers even
the desires which we cherish in silence, as no doubt this woman had
done, but did not express, and He often gives to those who yield to His
holy will without murmurs or complaints just that which they no longer
dared to hope for. It makes a great difference whether we doubt of the
divine promises from unbelief, or from humility or want of confidence
in ourselves, because we consider the promises too great and glorious,
and ourselves unworthy of them.

But God remembered this noble woman of Shunem, who had shown such
kindness to His servant, and, according to the promise, a son was
born into the great woman’s home. A ray of sunshine had indeed broken
through the parted clouds and entered that home--sunshine such as had
never been there before, and such as outshone all her estates.

Below the village, stretching away towards the south and east, were the
wheatfields, and the child, as children sometimes will, slipped out
from under the mothers watchful care, into the field where the reapers
were at work. Absorbed in the work of the reapers, neither the father
nor the son realized the intense heat pouring down out of a clear sky
upon the field at the hottest season of the year. Presently, this child
of promise, which had gladdened the hearts of his parents and brought
such joy and sunshine to their home, came up to his father and said,
“My head, my head.”

It was scarcely barley harvest when we crossed this plain with the
glare of the sun out of a clear sky shining in our face, and with blood
heated and thirsty withal, and the danger of a sun-stroke, we thought
of the words of the child, and ever since they have had a new meaning.
At once the father directed a lad to carry the child “to his mother,”
and when the lad had brought him “he sat on her knees till noon, and
then died.” All the mother’s hope turned to ashes, and her joy into
grief, made all the more bitter because it was her only child. As she
sat in her house with the dead child folded to her bosom, her soul
cried out: “What is life?” Though passing fair, it is but as

  A flower just opened in the sun,
  And wilted, withered, ere the day is done;

  A vapor swiftly floating in the sky,
  That vanished as it caught our eye;
  A fragrant perfume borne upon the gale,
  That’s gone before we could its sweets inhale.

  A bright pinioned warbler but just flitting by
  Is lost, while we gaze in the depths of the sky;
  A bud just bursting when the cruel frost
  Steals all its beauty and its fragrance is lost.

  Strains of sweet music floating on the air,
  Soon turned to moans and wailings of despair;
  A glowing smile while flashing o’er the face,
  Suddenly to glistening tears give place.

The grief-smitten mother carried the body of her precious child into
the upper chamber and tenderly laid it on the “bed of the man of God,
and shut the door upon it.” Doubtless, for the present, she intended to
keep the death of the child from the husband and father. Evidently she
cherished the secret hope that the prophet, who had promised her a son
in the name of Jehovah, and had not deceived her, could help to restore
him. At all events she acted promptly. She called her husband to send a
young man out of the field to make ready with all haste to go to Mount
Carmel, and when ready she said to the servant, “Drive, and go forward;
slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee.”

Elisha, from his outlook on mount Carmel, saw a cloud of dust in the
plain of Esdraelon, and he called the attention of Gehazi to the flying
figures at the head of it. On swept the riders over the plain. Elisha
once more put his hand up to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun,
and said, “Behold, it is the Shunammite; run now,” and ask, “Is it well
with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child?” By
sending his servant to meet her, Elisha showed how highly he esteemed
this woman. However, to the salutation of Gehazi, she returned only
the short, indefinite answer, “It is well,” in order, doubtless, not
to be detained by further explanations. She would at once hasten to
the prophet himself. When she came near him, overcome by grief, which
she had repressed until then, she threw herself at his feet, in the
manner of Orientals, and sobbed out her great sorrow, at the same time
imploring his assistance. Gehazi could not understand it. He thought
her conduct in clasping his master’s feet an offence against his
dignity, and “came near to thrust her away.” But Elisha said, “Let her
alone.” Give the poor grief-stricken woman a chance to compose herself
and to tell her trouble.

Presently, the stricken mother called the prophet’s attention to
his own promise, meaning to say thereby, I did not complain of
my childlessness, and did not demand a son; now, however, I am
grief-smitten, for it is better never to have a child than to have one
and lose it.

The grief and the lamentation of the woman moved the compassionate
heart of the prophet so much that he desired to bring her relief as
soon as possible. He therefore said to Gehazi, “Gird up thy loins,
and take my staff in thine hand and go thy way; if thou meet any man,
salute him not.” This shows that he was to go as quickly as possible.
He was even to refrain from saluting any one. It is well known that
salutations are far more ceremonious in the Orient than with us, and
inferiors always remain standing until persons of higher rank pass by,
and thus annoying delay was often occasioned. This command to hasten
would draw off the attention of the mother from her excessive grief,
and, possibly, Elisha may have hoped that life had not yet entirely
left the child, and that utter decease might yet be prevented by swift
interference. But the importunity of the woman, that Elisha himself
should come, proceeded from the conviction that the child was already
completely dead, and that now not Gehazi, but only the prophet himself,
who had promised her the son, could help. To this deep confidence he
promptly responded.

Gehazi carried out his commission by hastening on to Shunem, and
placing the prophet’s staff upon the face of the child, and, by means
of the divine power, of which the staff was the symbol, he was to
execute a prophetical act in awakening the child out of the death-sleep.

Before Elisha, with the sorrowing mother, arrived at Shunem, Gehazi had
discharged his commission, although in vain, and was on his way back
again, when he met the prophet, and said, “The child is not awaked.”
Though he had the external symbol of the prophet’s power, yet it lacked
the spirit of Jehovah, which was the special gift of God, and which
even Elisha might not delegate, according to his own will and pleasure,
to his servant.

The want of success of Gehazi’s commission spurred on the prophet all
the more to do what he could in order to restore the child to life.
Having reached the house of sorrow, and the little chamber where the
loving hands of the mother had laid the body of her child, Elisha shut
the door, and “prayed unto the Lord.” In that awful hour of a mother’s
heart-crushing suspense, God heard His servant’s cry, and gave back the
precious child to life again.

The closing scene is very beautiful indeed. The mother having been
called, when she reached the chamber, Elisha said, “Take up thy son!”
We are not told whether the mother heart first leaped to embrace the
child, or, out of modest gratitude, she first fell at the prophet’s
feet in a flood of grateful thanksgiving. The bread of kindness she
had been casting upon the waters, in honoring God’s servant, now all
returned to her. She certainly was reaping with tears of joy, and, had
she lived in this gospel age, she could have heard the Lord of life
saying, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My servants, ye did it
unto Me.” Marvels of marvels, that prophets’ homes do not dot our land
in this day of gospel light.

  As Elisha broke asunder
    Death’s cold hands and said, “Arise,”
  Give the child back to his mother--
    So Thy power doth still suffice.

Immortal woman of Shunem! Home-builder for the prophets of the Lord;
the saints in glory salute thee to-day, and the saints on earth are
thrilled with thy worthy example. There is scarcely a story in the Old
Testament which is more beautiful than the one related of this “great
woman” in White Raiment, who built a prophet’s chamber in her own house
at Shunem, where the servant of the Lord might turn in out of the glare
of the noontide sun and find rest.

From the incidents connected with the beautiful life of the rich woman
of Shunem, to the time of Queen Esther, there is a period of about four
hundred years, and they are years of turbulance on the part of the
people and admonitions on the part of God, until finally He suffered
them to be led away into captivity.

The scene of our next woman in White Raiment is in the reign of
Ahasuerus, son of Xerxes, who lived B. C. 462. After several severe
conflicts he was settled in peaceable possession of the Persian Empire,
and, in honor of his victory, appointed a feast in the city of Shushan,
which continued for one hundred and eighty days, after which he gave a
great feast to all the princes and people who were in Shushan for seven
days.

[Illustration: HADASSAH IN THE PERSIAN COURT.]

Queen Vashti, at the same time, made a like feast, in her apartment for
the women.

On the seventh day of the feast, Ahasuerus commanded the seven
chamberlains to bring Queen Vashti before him, with the crown royal on
her head, that he might show to the princes and people her beauty.

This she refused, for the act would be contrary to the usage of Persia,
very indecent and unbecoming a lady, as well as the dignity of her
station. Whereupon the king was incensed, and fearing the influence
among the people of the realm in encouraging women to disobey their
husbands, called a council of seven, to determine what should be done.
The council advised putting away the queen, and she was removed from
her high position as queen, and a collection of virgins was ordered
throughout the realm for the selection of a successor.

There lived at this time in Shushan a Jew named Mordecai, a descendant
of Babylonish captives and who was a porter at the royal palace.
Mordecai, not having children, brought up Hadassah, his uncle’s
daughter. Her life opened like a cactus flower on the thorny stem of
the captivity, but nevertheless is an exquisite jewel with a royally
superb setting, and gleams and sparkles in Hebrew history.

Her mother named her Hadassah, for the myrtle tree, which was not only
beautiful, with its glossy, dark-green leaves and luxuriant clusters of
white bloom, but was useful for perfumery and spice. It was the emblem
of justice, and bearing it may have added strength to her character.
Her Persian name was Esther, for the planet Venus. Orientals held the
myrtle sacred to the goddess of Love.

Esther, being fair and beautiful, was made choice of among other
maidens in this collection of virgins which had been ordered, and was
carried to the king’s palace and there committed to the care of Hegai,
and was assigned to the best apartments.

This captive young woman was discreet. Those who have great beauty do
not always have discretion. Depending upon the power of their personal
charms, they neglect to cultivate the mind and soul. Physical beauty,
like fruit, begins to decline as soon as it reaches its best. Mental
and spiritual beauty grow with the years as long as the hygienic laws
of grace are obeyed. But she was not only discreet, but also amiable.
Amiability costs only self-control and unselfish love, and it is the
best possible investment. Genuine amiability is God’s gift to those who
trust Him to cleanse them from all that is contrary to love.

Then also this Hebrew maiden must have known severe discipline. She
showed its effect in the gentle deportment that won the favor of the
officers that guarded the king’s harem. She submitted her taste in
dress and ornament to the one who had the responsibility of preparing
her for the royal presence, and in the docility with which she heeded
the advice of Mordecai.

These graces of mind and heart commended her to the king’s favor and
she was advanced to higher honor, and subsequently, when Queen Vashti
was deposed, Esther was crowned in her stead. Thus she was raised at
once to the highest place that the world could give a woman at that
day--as the queen and favorite of the mightiest monarch of his time.

This event was celebrated by a great feast which the king made to all
his princes, called Esther’s feast, and which was attended with high
honor, and by the presentation of gifts, “according to the state of the
king.”

About this time Haman, the chief minister or vizier of King Ahasuerus,
was promoted, so that his seat was “above all the princes.” The Targum
and Josephus interpret the description of Haman, the Agagite, as
signifying that he was of Amalekitish descent, the sworn enemies of
the Israelites in their march through the desert, and the sparing of
whom cost Saul, the first king of Israel, his crown. This Haman was the
king’s favorite, and all the under officers and servants were required
to pay reverence unto him.

But there was one man who would not bow. This was Mordecai, the
porter at the royal palace. He would not salute Haman, the idolatrous
descendent of the old enemies of his people. This greatly displeased
Haman, but he scorned to lay hands on Mordecai, and knowing him to
be a Jew, resolved to destroy him and his people. He took council and
determined by lot on the day for the accomplishment of his purpose.

To do this successfully he must deceive the king and entrap him to
do a wicked act. So he said to Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people
scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces
of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither
keep they the king’s laws; therefore it is not for the king’s profit
to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they
be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the
hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into
the king’s treasuries.” And so this hateful Amalekite, by offering
to pay into the king’s treasury more than $10,000,000, obtained the
royal decree to put all the Israelites in the hundred and twenty-seven
provinces of Ahasuerus, extending from India to Ethiopia, to death.

When Mordecai heard of the decree, he and the Hebrews made great
lamentation, and he made Queen Esther acquainted with the plot to
destroy her people, and entreated her to go in unto the king and make
supplication for their rescue. At first she excused herself, but being
led to understand that she, too, was included in the decree, she put
her life on the hazard for the safety of her countrymen. It was no
light matter for the beautiful young queen to risk her life to save
her people. Surrounded as she was by the luxury and elegance of that
magnificent Persian court, keenly alive to the charm of all lovely
things, it meant much for her to go down to the grave in the brilliant
morning of her youth.

But when Mordecai turned to her for help, he reminded her that she
had come to the kingdom for such a time as that. His faith asserted
that God would deliver His people; and, if she failed to do her part,
she and her father’s house would perish. She said she would make the
attempt. “If I perish, I perish,” was her wail of submission.

However, in her great undertaking, she displayed a humble dependence
upon the God of Israel; she also showed great prudence and wisdom. She
asked her people to fast and pray three days; and all her maidens--who
were selected, no doubt, on account of their sympathy with her
faith--would also fast and pray. When the books are opened it may
appear that the Hebrews were led, through the deliverance that she
wrought for them, to the penitence that made it possible for God to
take them back to the fatherland.

[Illustration: ESTHER PLEADING FOR HER PEOPLE.]

At the end of the fast she put on her royal apparel and went unto the
king while he was seated upon his throne. The first gleam of hope
lighted up her distressed heart when Ahasuerus held out his golden
sceptre.

It has been said that men’s hearts are reached through their stomachs.
Whether this was true of Ahasuerus, or whether Esther knew of this
avenue or not, she certainly showed great tact when she desired to
make a banquet for the king and his favorite prince, Haman, which the
beautiful queen would prepare, where he could then hear her request.

It would have been a most natural thing to do, after Esther had risked
her life by going uncalled into the presence of the king, and when
she found him graciously disposed to partake of her feast, to throw
herself at once upon his mercy, and beg for her life and the lives of
her people. But no. She must have great power over him to get him to
undertake the difficult task of setting aside one of his own decrees.
Probably her faith in God was not yet strong enough for her to make a
sure move. She saw that she was not yet sure of her ground, nor firm
in her faith; so, when he made the great offer even of dividing his
kingdom with her, she simply asked that he and Haman should honor her
with their presence at another banquet.

Doubtless, as she sat at the second banquet with the perfect
self-control that they have who rely only on God, having used every
device to fortify her position in the good graces of the capricious
despot, her keen Hebrew insight weighed every light expression from his
lips, although she knew a sword of doom hung over her jewel-crowned
head, and yet she was calm and self-contained, as if she had no thought
but to please him. Thus she led the king on until her power over him
was at its height, and when he again offered her half the kingdom, she
asked only for her life and the lives of her people.

It must be that, although Haman was present at this banquet, he did
not hear the request of Queen Esther, for he went forth from the feast
“that day joyful and with a glad heart.” But when he saw Mordecai, in
the king’s gate, and that he still refused to bow to him, “he was full
of indignation.”

So when he reached his own residence, he called his friends, and took
counsel with them, and they advised him to cause a gallows to be built,
eighty feet high, and to ask the next morning to have the king order
Mordecai to be hanged thereon.

But matters had taken a different turn at the palace. The king could
not sleep that night. To pass the long, wakeful hours, he called for
the reading of the records of the kingdom. As they were reading before
the king, it was found written in the chronicles of the conspiracy of
Bigthan and Terish, and that Mordecai had discovered the plot, and that
nothing had been done for him as a reward.

In the meantime the morning drew on, and Haman had entered the court of
the palace to confer with the king about the hanging of Mordecai. We
can well believe the mind of Ahasuerus was in a bad frame to talk about
hanging the man who had saved his life by discovering the plot of the
king’s chamberlains. But the king did not know what dark deeds were in
the heart of Haman as he ordered him to be called. When Haman came into
the presence of Ahasuerus, the king asked what should be done with the
man whom he wanted to honor.

The king’s favorite, who had just shared two private banquets with
the king, was so inflated with himself that he did not think there
was another man in the Persian empire in whom Ahasuerus would be so
delighted to honor as himself, so he advised that the royal apparel be
brought forth and the king’s horse and his crown, and given to one of
the noble princes to array the man whom the king delighted to honor,
and take him through the city on horseback with a proclamation, “This
is the man whom the king delighteth to honor.”

The command was given to Haman to thus honor Mordecai, which he did,
with not very good grace, for, when he had finished his task, he
“hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered,” and
related his mortification to his wife and friends.

After all, for the moment at least, it must have seemed to Haman and
his friends as a strange act on the part of the king, for while they
were yet talking over the humiliation, the king’s chamberlains came,
requesting Haman to hasten and come to the banquet Esther had prepared.
It must have seemed to Haman that Esther had really gone into the
banqueting business, so frequently had he been honored of late.

When the king and Haman sat down to the banquet the king again asked
Esther what was her petition. Whereupon she humbly prayed the king
that her life might be given her and her people, for a design was laid
for the destruction of her and her kindred. At which the king asked
with much anger who it was that durst do this thing. She told him that
Haman, then present, was the author of the wicked plot, and she laid
the whole scheme open to the king. Who can tell how much her own chance
of salvation depended on her courage, self-control and tact? A look,
even the droop of an eye-lid, might have betrayed her into the hands
of the most cringing and unscrupulous of royal favorites, and sent her
and her whole race to their death. But God held her steady in nerve and
growing in faith, as He does all who put their whole trust in Him.

The king rose up with much wrath from the banquet and walked out into
the garden.

Haman saw his opportunity. Quickly he stood up to plead for his life.
Perceiving that there was evil determined against him by the king, he
prostrated himself before the queen upon the couch on which she was
sitting to supplicate for his life; in which position the king found
him on his return.

The motive for Haman’s unhappy attitude before the queen was
misunderstood by the king, and he spoke in great passion, “What, will
he force the queen before me in the house!”

At which words the servants present immediately covered Haman’s face,
as was the usage to condemned persons, and the chamberlain, who had
called Haman to the banquet, acquainted the king with the gallows he
saw in his house there prepared for Mordecai, who had saved the king’s
life.

The king ordered Haman should be forthwith hanged thereon, which was
accordingly done. A feast was then consecrated in commemoration of the
deliverance of the Jews, called the feast of Purim.

This story of Esther, which has in it the real romance of life, has
also a consummate blending of works and faith. Preparing a banquet of
every luxury that could please a dangerous tyrant, and at the same time
fasting and praying in heart-humbling agony for Divine deliverance.

CHAPTER VII.

Womanhood in the Time of the Saviour’s Nativity.

  AN ANGEL BY THE ALTAR OF INCENSE--HIS MESSAGE--AN ISRAELITISH
    HOME--IN THE SPIRIT OF ELIJAH--THE DESERT TEACHER--THE
    ANNUNCIATION--THE VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH--MARY’S
    MAGNIFICAT--JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM--THE NATIVITY--HOME LIFE IN
    NAZARETH--AFTER SCENES IN MARY’S LIFE--HER RESIDENCE AND DEATH
    AT EPHESUS--THE PROPHETESS ANNA--HER WAITING FOR REDEMPTION IN
    JERUSALEM--THE LESSON OF HER PURE AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE.

Isaiah, looking adown the ages to the coming of Christ’s Kingdom,
likened it to waters breaking out in the wilderness and streams in
the desert. For centuries there was no voice of prophet in Israel
or revelation from God to His chosen people, when suddenly the long
silence was broken. It was in the days of Herod the Great, when sin and
misery had reached their climax, and when the yearning for Messiah’s
appearance was more intensely felt than ever. The Temple, so often
the scene of the manifestation of the glory of God, became again the
centre, whence the first rays of light secretly break through the
darkness.

One of the priests, named Zacharias, while performing his duty in
the service of the sanctuary, burning incense before the Lord, had a
vision, in which he was assured that his prayer was heard, and great
distinction conferred upon him in a twofold answer: First, the Messiah
shall indeed appear in his days; and, secondly, that he shall himself
be the father of the forerunner, who is to prepare His way--an honor
he could not have ventured to anticipate. What human tongue could have
foretold it to him, or how could he have ventured to hearken to the
voice of his own heart, without direct revelation? Zacharias sought
first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all other things
were added to him.

In the service of the sanctuary the burning of incense before the
Lord was considered exceedingly important and honorable. The people
were accustomed to unite in the outer court in silent supplication,
while the priest in the sanctuary offered the incense, which was ever
regarded as the symbol of acceptable prayer.

Remaining longer in the sanctuary than was strictly necessary, the
people, who were waiting in the outer court of the Temple, feared
that some misfortune, or sign of the divine displeasure, had befallen
him, for they “marveled that he tarried so long.” And when he finally
appeared “he could not speak.” While standing before the altar,
awaiting the signal to sift the precious incense, a heavenly messenger
appeared unto him. When Zacharias saw the angel he was troubled, and
fear fell upon him. The heavenly messenger quickly answered, “Fear not,
Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear
thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.”

Both Zacharias and Elizabeth were of the priestly race, and he himself
was a priest of the course of Abia, and she was of the daughters of
Aaron. Both, too, were devout persons, walking in the commandments of
God, and waiting for the fulfillment of His promise to Israel. But in
the midst of the glorious revelations the angel had made, strange to
say, Zacharias had asked for some sign or confirmation of the glad
tidings. The angel answered, “I am Gabriel” (the Might of God) “and,
behold, thou shalt be dumb.” As faith is to be the chief condition
of the new covenant, it was needful that the first manifestation of
unbelief should be emphatically punished, but the wound inflicted
becomes a healing medicine to the soul. The aged priest was constrained
to much silent reflection, and, according to the counsel of God, the
secret was still kept for a time.

There is here a remarkable coincidence between Zacharias and Abraham on
the one side, and Elizabeth and Sarah on the other; not only in the
fact of their lack of an heir during so many years, but also in the
frame of mind in which they at length received the heavenly message.
In these parallel histories, the man of the olden times is strong in
the faith, the woman weak; while under the new covenant it is the man
whose faith falters. On the very threshold of the new dispensation
woman, in the person of Elizabeth, takes her place in the foreground
by the heroism of a living faith. It is also quite in keeping with
Divine wisdom that in this case unbelief in view of the rising sun of
the gospel salvation is much more severely punished than under the old
dispensation.

[Illustration: THE ANGEL’S MESSAGE.]

The sight of Zacharias struck dumb awakened among the people an
expectation of some great and heavenly event; soon will “the things”
done in the priest’s house be “noised abroad throughout all the hill
country of Judea,” and the voice of “him that crieth” shall soon
resound over hill and valley.

The sacred duties performed, retirement was next in order. As a priest,
in the “course of Abia,” the twenty-four courses in the services of the
temple relieved each other weekly, each course ministering during a
whole week. So Zacharias and Elizabeth leave Jerusalem for their home
among the picturesque hills of Judea, south-west of Bethlehem. How
beautiful are the pictures of these Israelitish homes into which the
Bible bids us so often to look. The familiar vine and fig-tree; the
flower-planted courts; the waterpots filled for quenching thirst; the
basin and towel and servant to bathe the heated, often dust-covered,
feet; the domestic scene morning and evening in the grinding of the
food in the familiar hand-mill, the work always performed by the women;
the delightful views from the housetops in the cool of the evening;
the maidens busy in filling the waterpots; the halting of visitors
in the outer court, waiting for some damsel to open the door; the
thousand little touches of real life which are always so charming to
the observer. In addition to these outward signs, the good manners and
propriety, the atmosphere of true courtesy; the youth rising up before
the hoary head; the child learning at his mother’s knee, or inquiring
of father or elder; a joyousness, such as a mind at peace with God only
can exert, are all manifest in these Bible pictures which ages can not
dim. Yet most striking are the proofs that in every household children
were desired, and gladly welcomed.

Notwithstanding a barren wife in an Israelitish home was often a cause
for divorce, Zacharias was pre-eminently a man of hope. As a pious
husband and lover, he had faithfully and tenderly clung to his beloved
Elizabeth through the long years of youth and middle age, and even
after hope had died out of their longing hearts. Both had learned “the
patience of unanswered prayer”--a lesson not easily mastered by the
bravest of us. But now the hope was to be realized, the “reproach among
men” was to be taken away. In that home among the hills of Judea was to
be a child in the arms of its mother. The name of the child, and he a
son, was to be John (Jehovah shows grace). Many homes would rejoice in
his birth, and he would be God’s man, eating nothing to inflame carnal
passions, and filled with the Holy Spirit, he would become prophet
and reformer. The grossly literal hope of the people for Elijah’s
appearance in the flesh would be spiritually fulfilled, for Elizabeth’s
son was to have the spirit and the power of the Tishbite; and thus
gifted of the Almighty, was to be the forerunner of the Christ. All
that was spoken of the Messiah’s messenger by Isaiah, as “the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His
paths straight,” and by Malachi, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and
he shall prepare the way before me,” were fulfilled in this son of many
prayers.

In due time he was born, and on the eighth day, in conformity with the
law of Moses, was brought to the priest for circumcision, and, as the
performance of this rite was the accustomed time for naming a child,
the friends of the family proposed to call him Zacharias after the
name of his father. The mother, however, required that he should be
called John--a decision which Zacharias, still speechless, confirmed
by writing on a tablet, “his name is John.” The judgment on his want
of faith was then withdrawn, and the first use which he made of his
recovered speech, was to praise Jehovah for his faithfulness and mercy,
a proof that the cure had taken place in his soul also.

A single verse contains all that we know of Elizabeth’s child of
promise for the space of thirty years--the whole period which elapsed
between his birth and the commencement of his public ministry. The
record is, “The child grew and waxed strong in the spirit, and was in
the desert till the day of his showing unto Israel.” But we must not
forget that through his childhood and youth he was under the care of a
wise, loving mother. Elizabeth’s unfaltering faith and prudent counsel,
we must believe, exerted a lasting influence over this child of the
desert.

The child thus supernaturally born, was surely a sign that God was
again visiting His people. His providence, so long hidden, seemed once
more about to manifest itself in the person of Elizabeth’s son, who,
doubtless must be commissioned to perform some important part in the
history of the chosen people. Could it be the Messiah? Could it be
Elijah? Was the era of their old prophets about to be restored? With
such grave thoughts were the minds of the people occupied, as they
mused on the events which had been passing under their eyes, and said
one to another, “What manner of child shall this be?”

So when John passed out from under the wise training of Elizabeth, his
reputation for extraordinary sanctity, and the generally prevailing
expectation that some great one was about to appear, were sufficient
to attract to him a great multitude from “every quarter.” Brief and
startling was his first exhortation to them, “Repent ye, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His preaching of repentance, however,
meant more than a mere legal ablution or expiation, it meant a change
of heart and life. While such was his solemn admonition to the
multitude at large, he adopted towards the leading sects of the Jews a
severer tone, denouncing Pharisees and Sadducees alike as “a generation
of vipers,” and warning them of the folly of trusting to external
privileges as descendants of Abraham. He plainly told them, “the axe
was laid to the root of the tree,” that formal righteousness would be
no longer tolerated. Such alarming declarations produced their effect,
and many of every class pressed forward to confess their sins and to
accept John’s ministry.

This son of Elizabeth is one of the most striking characters in the
Bible. Destined from before his birth to be a prophet, his life was
worthy of his high office. Pure, unsullied, earnest, fearless, humble,
he much resembled his great predecessor, Elijah. Like him, he was an
ascetic, and like him, he had his time of fearless outspeaking and
of reproval of kings, and hypocrites; and like him, also, a time of
depression, as when he sent to Christ to ask, “Art thou He that should
come, or shall we look for another?”

A noble example of the fearless manner in which he proclaimed the truth
is illustrated in the denunciation of the unlawful marriage of Herod
Antipas, the Tetrarch. He had married a daughter of Aretas, King of
Petra, but seeing Herodias, the wife of his half brother, Philip, he
became infatuated with her, divorced his own wife and married Herodias,
who abandoned Philip to marry him. Herodias was a grand-daughter of
Herod the Great. This unprincipled woman wrought the ruin of Herod
Antipas. Aretas, angry at the treatment of his daughter, made war upon
Herod. John reproved Herod for all this, and he evidently had not
minced words. Neither had he spoken in such low whispers that he might
seem to others to disapprove the crime, but still escape the notice of
the king. He thundered out his denunciations in a way to make even the
royal couple alarmed, and caused them to shut John up in prison, lest
his growing popularity should undermine the security of Herod’s throne.
And then Herodias secured the execution of John, which angered the
Jews, for they counted John as a prophet and held the subsequent defeat
of Herod by Aretas as a judgment upon him for this wicked deed.

Such, in brief was the son of the most highly and signally honored
Woman in White Raiment in sacred history, Mary, the mother of Jesus,
only excepted. The strong faith of the pious Elizabeth, as developed
in her noble son, has been a blessing to the whole race of man. The
clear shining faith to grasp the promises of God are most beautifully
exemplified in the pure, self-sacrificing, and devoted life of
Elizabeth.

Closely related to the events in the life of Elizabeth, as just
narrated, is the birth of our blessed Lord.

There is no person in sacred or in profane literature around whom so
many legends have been grouped as around the Virgin Mary, and there
are few whose authentic history is more concise. Doubtless the very
simplicity of the sacred narrative has been one cause of the abundance
of the legendary matter of which she forms the central figure.
According to the genealogy given by Luke, which is that of Mary, her
father’s name was Heli. She was, like Joseph, her husband, of the tribe
of Judah, and of the house and lineage of David. We are informed that
at the time of the angel’s visitation she was betrothed to Joseph and
was therefore regarded by the Jewish law and custom as his wife, though
he had not yet a husband’s rights over her.

The angel Gabriel, who had appeared to Zacharias in the Temple,
appeared to her and announced that she was to be the mother of the
long-expected Messiah; that in Him the prophecies relative to David’s
throne and kingdom should be accomplished; and that his name was to be
called Jesus. He further informed her, perhaps as a sign by which she
might convince herself that his prediction with regard to herself would
come true, that her relative Elizabeth was about to be blessed in the
birth of a child.

It appears that Mary at once set off to visit Elizabeth in her home
in the hill country of Judea. When she had reached her destination,
and immediately on her entrance into the house, she was saluted by
Elizabeth as the mother of our Lord, and had evidence of the truth
of the angel’s saying with regard to her cousin Elizabeth, Mary then
embodied her feelings of exultation and thankfulness in the hymn known
under the name of the _Magnificat_. The hymn is founded on Hannah’s
song of thankfulness (1 Sam. ii, 1-10), and exhibits an intimate
knowledge of the Psalms, prophetical writings and books of Moses, from
which sources almost every expression in it is drawn.

In approaching this exquisite bit of Hebrew poetry uttered by Mary we
may profitably consider, first, its beauty of expression; and second,
its nobility and grandeur of sentiment. The hymn consists of four
stanzas of four lines each, and its literary character is best brought
out by a translation which so arranges it. The first stanza reads:

  My soul doth magnify the Lord,
  And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,
  Because He hath looked upon the humility of His bondmaiden;
  For behold, from henceforth all generations shall pronounce me
    blessed.

In this stanza three points of parallelism appear in the first two
lines. In the first occurs the word “soul,” and in the second the
word “spirit,” which we understand to be but different designations
of the same elements of our natures. Whatever difference in the use
of these terms in other places it is evident that here according to
the ordinary requirements of Hebrew poetry, the two words are chosen
because of their similarity in meaning. The other synonymous terms are
the words “magnify” and “rejoice;” “the Lord” and “God my Saviour.”
Thus is introduced the so-called Magnificat. The characteristic of
Hebrew poetry is not that it is arranged in rhyme and measured feet,
but in the grander rhythm belonging to parallelisms of thought. Such
a rhythm has far more freedom and force than that which consists of
mere similarity of measure and sound. Hence it is that the poetry of
the Bible is so readily translated into other languages, and loses so
little of its force in the process; whereas poetry which depends upon
the peculiarities of any given language is incapable of translation.
The essential thing in Hebrew poetry is sublimity of thought and
diction, accompanied by a substantial repetition of the sentiment in
terms that are nearly synonymous. The thoughts are thus held before the
mind till it can fully see their grandeur and beauty, and receive those
shades of impression which come from repeated efforts at statement.

In the second couplet of the above stanza Mary gives the reason for
her rejoicing. She was of humble origin, and, before her neighbors and
friends, was to be humbled still further. But, as is so often the case,
what was Mary’s extremity was God’s opportunity, and He was to glorify
Himself by making the weak things of the earth confound the mighty. As
He brought Moses from the wilderness and David from the sheepfold, so
was He to bring Mary from the seclusion of Nazareth and the humiliation
in the stable at Bethlehem to a position of honor attained by no other
woman, and all generations were henceforth to call her blessed.

The second stanza reads:

  For the Mighty One hath done great things for me;
  And Holy is His name.
  And His mercy is unto generations and generations
  Of them that fear Him.

Here the great things spoken of as done to Mary (in the first line)
correspond, or rather constitute, the mercy (of the third line) which
flows forth from the gospel from age to age; and the holiness of His
name mentioned in the second is that characteristic of God which evokes
the fear mentioned in the fourth line.

The third stanza may be literally rendered as follows:

  He hath exercised the strength which is in His arm;
  He hath scattered abroad those who were proud by reason of the
    thoughts of their hearts;
  He hath cast princes down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly,
  The hungry hath He filled with good things, and the rich hath He sent
    empty away.

In this, as all through the hymn, we have the flavor of Hebraistic
forms of speech. In their poetical conceptions they did not think of
God as an abstract being, but as having a mighty arm with which He
swayed the nations and dashed their foolish plans in pieces, as one
might break a potter’s vessel with a rod of iron. How little do men
know the flimsiness of the schemes which they organize against the Lord
and His anointed! The third and fourth lines of this stanza contain a
double parallelism and a twofold antithesis. He casts down the kings
and lifts up the lowly people; He fills to fullness the hungry, and
sends the rich away empty.

In the fourth stanza we read:

  He hath taken hold to help with Israel His servant,
  In order that He might call to mind the mercy characteristic of His
    nature
  (According as He hath spoken unto our fathers)
  To Abraham and his seed for ever.

What a glorious conception this is of Israel, the hero of God, and
who was not a servant, but a son, for that is the true meaning of the
word rendered “servant.” The word is also one of endearment. And so we
are reminded, in the second line, of His tender mercy. The only mercy
of which He could have spoken to our fathers was His own, expressing
itself in the whole scheme of salvation as revealed in the Bible. It
was a peculiar plan of mercy revealed to Abraham and his spiritual
descendants.

Such, in brief, are the noble conceptions and the lofty figures of
speech of this exquisite hymn of Mary. And we ask involuntarily,
Whence comes it that so humble a maiden should thus in the beauty of
her diction and the sublimity of her conceptions have rivaled, if not
eclipsed, all the poets both of ancient and modern times?

It might seem a short answer to this question to say that Mary was
inspired. But such an answer does not satisfy the reasoning mind. God
in His wisdom does not ordinarily see fit to disregard the secondary
causes which He has created. We are led to look, therefore, to the
character and condition of Mary herself as a partial explanation of
the character of this piece of literature. And, upon examining the
hymn, we find that it is largely composed of sentences from the Old
Testament, embodying the Messianic expectations of the Jewish people.
It sounds like an echo, not only of David’s and Hannah’s, but also of
Miriam’s, and of Deborah’s harps; yet independently reproduced in the
mind of a woman, who had laid up and kept in her heart what she had
read in Holy Scripture. Out from the large body of sacred literature
which was the rare heritage of her people, she had extracted that
which was best and noblest and most appropriate. We do not, however,
deny the direct inspiration of this hymn; but we would emphasize the
broader conceptions of Providence, how the Holy Spirit can use a mind
well stored with the deep things of God, as evidently was the mind of
Mary, for, from beginning to end, this hymn assumes a sympathizing
acquaintance with the history of the Jewish people, and of all the
noble conceptions of the Deity with which the history of that people
has made the world familiar.

The unity of God is assumed without question. It is the Lord Jehovah
that her soul magnifies. It is the only true God her Saviour in which
her spirit rejoices. Nor is it a God of mere power, but a God of love
and tenderness, whom she adores. It is one who has regard not for men
alone and the great ones of the earth, but for the humble woman who
occupies the most contracted sphere that falls to the lot of any. And
in this the power of the God she adores appears pre-eminent, for he is
able to make great things out of small. It was He who took Israel as a
little vine and made him a great nation. It was He that multiplied the
widow’s cruse of oil and handful of meal till she had a superabundance.
It was He who lifted Rahab out of her wicked and heathen surroundings
and placed her in the line of royal women in whom all the families of
earth were to be blessed. It is He that notes the sparrow’s fall, that
numbers the hairs of our heads, that hears the prayers we offer in
secret when the door is shut, and that rewards us openly. It is He that
can exalt the humblest life and make it gleam with the sunshine of His
own glory. “Not many mighty, not many noble, are called ... but ... God
hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty ... yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought the
things that are.”

Only such a God could lift on high so humble a maiden, and turn upon
her the gaze of all the nations of the earth. But the God of Israel
well might do it, for He is the Mighty One, and able to do great
things, and His mercy is upon them that fear Him from generation
to generation. In Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and in all their
subsequent history, He had shown the strength of His arm. The wrecks of
the nations that opposed Him strew the whole pathway of history. And as
He raised Joseph from prison and exalted Daniel from the lion’s den,
so should He ever lift up the meek, and help His servant Israel, and
remember His promises to Abraham and His seed forever. Only one who is
familiar with such a history could write such a hymn. Surely it is a
great thing to be educated into such thoughts as these. To breathe in
such sentiments in the very atmosphere of one’s home and in the social
circles in which one daily moves is the highest of earthly privileges.
It is only in such a hymn as this of Mary that we get a proper
conception of the grandeur and nobleness of the thoughts underlying
Hebrew history. In her Magnificat, Mary breathed the thoughts of those
that surrounded her. From the days of pious Hannah down to those of
Elizabeth, the women of Israel had been moved by such longings and
animated by such hopes as have never been possible to any other people.
They had the promise made in Eden that the seed of the woman should
bruise the head of the serpent who led the world astray. And now to
her, to this humble virgin of Israel, had the fulfillment of this
promise come, and truly blessed was she among women. For here was the
performance of those things which had been told her from the Lord. The
great crisis of the world’s history had arrived, and she was the chosen
channel through which the hope of the nations was come.

O, blessed Woman in White Raiment, may thy hymn of praise, divinely
inspired, be often upon our lips, and the sweetness of its precious
truths continually in our hearts!

The words of the angel in respect to Elizabeth having been confirmed by
this personal visit of Mary to her home in the hill country of Judea,
she returned to Nazareth.

Soon after this the decree of Augustus, the Roman emperor, that all the
world should be taxed, was promulgated, and Joseph and Mary traveled to
Bethlehem to have their names enrolled in the registers of their tribe.
It would seem that the Israelites still clung to their genealogies and
tribal relations, and, though the undertaking was a severe strain upon
Mary, and notwithstanding, according to the Roman custom, her name
could have been enrolled without her personal presence, this woman,
who was to be the most blessed of women, greatly preferred to accompany
her husband on this journey of over seventy miles, much of the way up
and down steep, rocky hills. Traveling in the East, under its most
favorable conditions, is a slow, tiresome affair, especially for women.
But Mary drudged along the mountain path, in company with her husband,
all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Her love for the city of David
seems to have overcome all difficulties. Possibly a contemplative mind
like hers may have perceived that this decree of Cæsar Augustus was but
an instrument, in the hand of Providence, to fulfill ancient prophecy
with respect to the birthplace of the Messiah, for Micah had declared
that out of Bethlehem Ephratah, though little among the thousands of
Judah, “yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler
in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
So, while it would seem that an arbitrary decree decided where Christ
is to be born, God had manifested His wisdom in the choice of the
time, place and circumstances, and was faithful in the fulfillment of
the word of prophecy, ever carrying out His plans through the free
acts of men. In this instance the great Roman Cæsar, even without his
knowledge, became an official agent in the kingdom of God.

So it came to pass, in the fullness of time, and in the beloved city of
David, Bethlehem Ephratah, Mary brought forth the Saviour of the world,
and humbly laid Him in a manger. Here, amid these humble surroundings,
in the stall of an inn, among the beasts, was the advent of the Son of
God, the Saviour of the world. And, behold, the Life which was to lift
“empires off their hinges” and turn the “stream of centuries out of
its course”--a life which was to revolutionize the world and transform
humanity--had begun.

The place where the inn stood is now occupied by an enormous pile of
buildings, known as the “Church of the Nativity.” Down in the crypt of
this church, reached by fifteen stone steps, and in the eastern wall
of it, is a silver star, around which are the words: “_Hic de Virgine
Maria Jesus Christus natus est_”--“Here Jesus Christ was born of the
Virgin Mary.” One can not with indifference behold such a spot as this.
To us it was a sacred and hallowed place, and we felt subdued and
reverent while beholding the place where began the greatest life earth
has ever contained. To the Christian, Bethlehem stands first among
the holiest places on the face of the globe, and we were hushed into
reverence by its sacred associations and charmed by its natural beauty.

The “inn,” the scene of the nativity, stood on the crest of a hill that
rapidly falls away to a valley seven hundred feet below. At its base
is the “well” for the waters of which David so greatly longed. On the
opposite side is a hill still more precipitous than the one on which
Bethlehem stands. The little valley between the hills gradually opens
out eastward, where once stood the wheatfields of Boaz, in which Ruth
gleaned after the reapers. Just beyond this, scarcely a mile from the
“city of David,” is the field where the shepherds were “keeping watch
over their flock by night, when lo, the angel of the Lord came upon
them,” with this glad proclamation, “Behold, I bring you good tidings
of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Then suddenly night
was turned into day by the radiant brightness of a multitude of the
heavenly host, filling earth and sky with their song:

  “Glory to God in the highest,
  Peace on earth, good-will to men.”

The visit of the shepherds to the inn, the circumcision and
presentation in the Temple, the visit and adoration of the wise men who
saw His star in far off Persia, the cruel massacre of the children of
Bethlehem by Herod, and the flight into Egypt, are rather scenes in the
life of Christ than that of his mother, and are fully described in “THE
CHRIST LIFTED UP.”

However, in passing, it may be well to pause long enough to observe
how the presentation in the Temple brings the limited circumstances of
Joseph and Mary to our notice. The custom of ceremonial purification
by a Jewish mother in the sanctuary with a sacrifice is fully stated
in Lev. xii. Two offerings were required, a burnt and a sin offering.
When Mary presented herself with her babe in the court of the women,
in the Temple, the proper offering was a lamb for a burnt offering,
and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin offering; but with that
beautiful tenderness which is so marked a characteristic of the Mosaic
law, those who were too poor for so comparatively costly an offering
were allowed to bring instead two turtle-doves or two young pigeons.
Mary, instead of the lamb and dove, brought the offering of the
poor--two doves. With this offering in her hand, she presented herself
to the priest.

One incident more occurs in the presentation in the Temple. At the
moment when Mary had completed her consecration, an old man came
tottering through the throng. It was the aged Simeon, “just and devout,
waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Taking from Mary’s arms her
precious infant, and, as with face aglow and eyes kindled with heavenly
fire, in speaking his holy rapture, one passage is specially directed
to her, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.” This
“sword,” we must believe, entered her heart as later she saw her Son on
the cross.

In the return from Egypt after the death of Herod the Great, it appears
to have been the intention of Joseph to have settled at Bethlehem at
this time, as his home at Nazareth had now been broken up for a year or
more, intending there to rear the infant King, at his own royal city,
until the time should come when he would sit upon David’s throne and
restore the fallen kingdom to its ancient splendor. But “when he heard
that Archelaus did reign in Judea,” he turned aside into Nazareth, as
well he might, if he knew the life and character of the new prince,
thinking, no doubt, the child’s life would be safer in the tetrarchy of
Antipas than in that of Archelaus.

Henceforward, until the beginning of our Lord’s ministry, so far as is
known, Mary lived in Nazareth, in a humble sphere of life, the wife
of Joseph the carpenter, pondering over the sayings of the angels,
of the shepherds, of Simeon, and those of her Son, as the latter
“increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” Two
circumstances alone, so far as we know, broke in on the otherwise even
flow of her life. One of these was the loss of Jesus out of the company
of the homeward journey, when he remained behind at Jerusalem upon the
occasion of His first visit to the Temple. His mother is the first to
speak. “Son,” she said, “why hast thou thus dealt with us?” His reply
gave the keynote of His life, “Wist ye not that I must be about my
Fathers business?” The other was the death of Joseph. The exact date
of this last event we can not determine. But it was probably not long
after the other.

From this time on Mary is withdrawn almost wholly from sight. Four
times only is the veil removed, which is thrown over her, and surely
not without reason.

1. The first is at the marriage of Cana. It is thought from the
interest Mary took in it that the bride or bridegroom, were friends, if
not relatives of the family. “And Jesus was called, and His disciples.”
The disciples were invited out of respect for their Lord. This
unexpected addition to the company may have been the cause of Mary’s
evident embarrassment, and she appeals to her Son by saying, “They have
no wine.” It is impossible to know all that was in her heart. Possibly
from the Jordan had come wonderful news concerning her Son which had
inspired her with the hope that now at least, after so long waiting,
the time of His manifestation was at hand. What if He should use the
present opportunity to show His power! Might she not at least mention
it to Him? But, mark His answer, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”
While His reply, in the original, does not have in it the severity it
has in the plain English, yet He would have her understand that in
His divine character He could not acknowledge her, nor be influenced
by her suggestions. Henceforth there must be room between her and Him
for His Father. And so He told her with all the tenderness that words
and looks could convey that the matter she hinted at was a matter
between Him and His Father. Mary quickly acceded to this. By woman’s
enlightened intuition she perceived His meaning, and so she said to
the servants, “Whatsoever He saith unto you do it.” In confident
expectation, she believed He would supply the need. Her beautiful faith
in Him was unshaken.

2. The second time Mary comes to view is in the attempt which she and
others made to speak with Jesus in the midst of His conflict with the
Scribes and Pharisees at Capernaum, when they sought to destroy His
good name and influence by applying that most horrible and loathsome
epithet, “He had Beelzebub.” We can hardly realize what satanic forces
were massed against Jesus at that time. And Mary, who probably, with
some friends, stood on the outside of the crowd, became alarmed, and
would rescue Him from the malice of His enemies. So she sent a message,
which probably was handed on from one person to another, begging Him
to allow His friends to speak to Him. Again He refuses to admit any
privilege on account of their relationship. “Who is my mother, and who
are my brethren?” He loved His mother, but infinite wisdom saw best
that she must in no way influence His divine work, which He could not
share with another and be the Saviour of the world. He must tread the
winepress of men’s malice alone.

3. The third time Mary comes to our notice is at the foot of the
cross. She was standing there with Mary Magdalene, Salome, and other
women, having no doubt followed her Son as she was able throughout
that terrible morning of our Lord’s several trials. It was now three
o’clock in the afternoon, and He was about to expire. Standing near the
company of the women was John, and, with almost His last words, Christ
commended His mother to the care of this disciple. And from that hour,
John assures us, he took her to his home. If, by “that hour,” John
means immediately after the words were spoken, Mary was not present at
the last scene of all. The sword had sufficiently pierced her soul,
and she was spared the hearing of the last loud cries and the sight of
the bowed head. However we might have understood His relation to Mary,
while the great scheme of human redemption was being wrought out, He
now turns in beautiful and touching tenderness to her, who tenderly
loved Him, even when she could not fully understand His work.

4. The fourth and last time Mary is brought to our view is in the
company of the one hundred and twenty believers, assembled at
Jerusalem, waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. This is the
last view we have of her. The Word of God leaves her engaged in prayer
in the “upper room,” with the women, and with His brethren. From this
point forward we know nothing of her. It is very probable the rest of
her life was spent in the home of John, cherished with the tenderness
which her sensitive soul would have specially needed, and which she
undoubtedly found in him who had borne the distinction of “that
disciple whom Jesus loved.”

When the disciples “were scattered abroad” after the martyrdom of
Stephen, and the apostles assumed the charge of important centres, we
read of John being minister of the church at Ephesus. No doubt Mary
removed with John to Ephesus, where, tradition says, she died, and
where she was buried. Probably she died before John was banished to
Patmos. While at Ephesus, we visited her sepulchre. It is on the north
side of Mt. Prion, half way up the mountain side. The tomb is cut out
of the solid rock, and in full view of the church, which doubtless she
loved so well.

We have already dwelt at considerable length upon the beautiful
character of Mary in connection with her song of rejoicing in the house
of Elizabeth and known as the Magnificat. So far as Mary is portrayed
to us in the Scripture, she is, as we should have expected, the most
tender, the most faithful, humble, patient and loving of women, but a
woman still, and how she herself regarded her relation to her divine
Son is best expressed in her own words:

  “My soul doth magnify the Lord,
  And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

[Illustration: THE MINISTRY AT EPHESUS.]

No doubt she was a comfort in the home of John. The dark shadows of the
cross were dissipated when she saw Jesus alive after His resurrection,
and communed with Him, and, doubtless, saw Him ascend to heaven in a
cloud, and had heard the angels assure His disciples, as they had seen
Him depart, in like manner He would come again. She was comforted in
the wonderful scene at Pentecost, when three thousand acknowledged
Jesus as their Saviour as well as her Saviour. She lived to see the
Gospel spread through Judea and Samaria, and the great centres in Asia
Minor. She had nobly done her work at Jerusalem and at Ephesus--had
told, as none could tell it, the sweet story of the infant Jesus and
her glorified Saviour. On account of her presence there was a strange
interest about the services of the great church at Ephesus, because the
mother of Jesus was among the worshippers. Even the life and ministry
of the beloved John was made richer because of her helpful presence.

But now she is growing old. Her earthly mission is drawing to a close.
She can not stay longer to bless the people who had learned to love
her. Indeed, her affections had already stolen away and preceded her
upward. The glad day has come for her to go. Her weary feet will
soon stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. The low murmur of voices
and the subdued sobbing of loved ones around her she heeds not, as
a strange light breaks upon her, and she hears celestial symphonies
from the glory shore. White-winged messengers--jasper walls--pearly
gates--golden streets--life’s river--and she is with Him in the land
where swords can never enter stricken hearts!

We can not close this chapter without making mention of Anna the
Prophetess. It would seem that at the coming of the Saviour into the
world, earth and sky clapped their hands for joy, and the mountains
and hills broke forth into singing. Not only did Zacharias prophesy,
saying “Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel;” and Mary sing her hymn
of praise, in which she exclaimed, “My soul doth magnify the Lord;”
and the angels who sang, “Glory to God in the highest;” and the aged
Simeon, who, coming into the Temple, and taking the child in his arms,
burst forth in doxology, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in
peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,”
but also Anna the Prophetess. Scarcely had the sweet strains of the
aged Simeon ceased, when the prophetess, coming into the court of the
women, in the Temple, and seeing Mary presenting herself with her babe,
caught the meaning of the scene and added her voice of praise, “and
spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.”

It was very fitting that women should have such a prominent part in
these human and angelic songs over the nativity of Him who, in after
years, proved women’s best friend. Who alone, of all earth’s great
teachers, wept with and over woman’s broken heart; who alone pitied
woman taken in sin; who alone stood up in defence of woman against
cruel criticism; who alone placed in contrast a poor penitent woman
over against a well-washed, and we had almost said, “white-washed,”
Pharisee; who, on the way to the cross, had words of comfort for
womanhood, in the ever-memorable exclamation, “Daughters of Jerusalem,
weep not for Me!” And why should not these daughters weep for one who
had elevated them to their true position? Surely, they might well weep,
for they had never had such a friend.

Anna was a daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, and of very
great age--eighty-four years. Her age is specially mentioned, to show
that, though she had passed but few years in the married state, she had
reached this advanced age as a widow; a fact redounding to her honor
in a moral sense, and ranking her among the comparatively small number
of “widows indeed,” whom Paul especially commends. It is somewhat
remarkable that the name of Anna’s father should be mentioned, and not
that of her husband. Perhaps her father survived her husband, and may
also have been known as one who waited for the consolation of Israel.
The pious words Anna uttered in the presence of Mary and her child in
the court of the women can not be the only reason of her being called a
prophetess. Such an appellation must have been caused by some earlier
and frequent utterances, dictated by the Spirit of prophecy, by reason
of which she ranked among the list of holy women who, both in earlier
and later times, were chosen instruments of the Holy Spirit. If the
spirit of prophecy had departed from Israel since the time of Malachi,
according to the opinion of the Jews, the return of this Spirit might
be looked upon as one of the tokens of Messiah’s advent.

In Simeon and Anna we see incarnate types of the expectation of
salvation under the Old Testament, as in the child Jesus the salvation
itself is manifested. At the extreme limits of life, they stand in
striking contrast to the infant Saviour, exemplifying the Old Covenant
decaying and waxing old before the New, which is to grow and remain.
Old age grows youthful, both in Simeon and Anna, at the sight of the
Saviour; while the youthful Mary grows inwardly older and riper, as
Simeon lifts up before her eyes the veil hanging upon the future.
Joseph and Mary marveled at the revelations, not because they learned
from Simeon’s prophecy anything they had not heard before, but they
were struck and charmed by the new aspect under which this salvation
was presented.

There is something very beautiful in this aged Anna, the prophetess,
who “departed not from the Temple, but served God with fastings and
prayers night and day.” And the reason given for this consecrated
devotion is, she “looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” This aged saint,
into whose obscure but loyal keeping the spirit of true religion has
always retired in times of a degenerate and formal faith, under the
Divine Spirit, refused to depart from the courts of the sanctuary day
nor night. Many a long and weary year she had waited for redemption
in Jerusalem, and had watched with eager eyes the long procession of
fathers and mothers as they presented, according to custom, their
first-born at the altar steps. But the Child for whose coming she had
waited with such spiritual patience had not come.

At length the supreme day of her life had dawned, and with an unusual
expectancy she goes early to her accustomed vigil. As the humble Joseph
and Mary draw near, unheralded of men and with no sign of lineage or
worth beyond the rank and file of common people, the clear vision of
the aged prophetess discovers the King, and with a joy that blossomed
into song, she unites with the devout Simeon, who like herself,
was also “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” the praises that
redemption had at last come to Jerusalem. There was providential
coincidence in her coming in just at “that instant,” when Simeon
was prophesying and when the babe was in the Temple, for a divine
propriety, so to speak, seemed to require that the new-born Saviour
should first receive the homage of the elect of Israel.

[Illustration: ANNA, THE PROPHETESS.]

With this temple scene, the aged Anna comes into and goes out of
history, but in its light certain great facts are made luminous
forever, namely, that Jesus the Christ comes into our common humanity
along no royal road, but through the great common gateway of common
people. Jesus touches life at its majority points, meeting our needs
and our weakened nature with a brotherhood that loves us and lifts us
up. Christ’s first welcome into the world was not through Herod, nor
the famous Council of the Seventy, nor through the wise Scribes, or
great Pharisees, but through the trembling arms of an aged man and
woman.

To pause upon the romantic fitness of this temple scene were easy, when
the heart of the old and the new, the beginning and the end of life
throb together, but rather we turn to the mission of Christ to old age
as embodied in this incident of Simeon and Anna. Age is to a well-spent
life what the fruit is to the vine, the garnered and best part of it.
That ripeness of experience, of mind, of judgment, which comes alone
from long and patient drudging on until the mile-posts are many, that
calm which comes at the sunset--these are the crowns that come to the
soul as it stands on the delectable mountains with the Celestial City
in full view. Youth is clear-visioned and hopeful, early life is busied
with palpable ambitions, and later on is occupied with the harvesting
of ventures and the fruitage of success. But age has nothing but a
memory and a hunger, therefore it was a fitness and a providence that
Simeon and Anna should reach out their trembling hands in initial
welcome to the Son of God.

Again, Anna stands as the type of the spiritually-minded, to whom
in old age are vouchsafed the revelations of God. Her attitude was
very significant. She “departed not from the Temple,” that is, she
was watchful. She served God “with fastings and prayers,” peculiarly
expressive of Old Testament piety, with its minute attention to
precept and ceremony. That to this woman it was permitted, under the
Spirit’s guidance, that morning to come into the court of the women
at the “instant,” indicates a perpetual spiritual condition, rather
than a sudden impulse or illumination--the habit of one who walked and
talked with God “night and day.” These reveal the spiritual qualities
of the prophetess of Jehovah, where an obedient will and loving heart
are linked to far-sighted spiritual vision in the discernment of the
providence and truth of God. To such elect souls revelations are always
coming, because of spiritual affinities and the unerring insights of
love. Therefore it was no accident, this coming into the courts of the
Temple at the “instant,” but in accord with a world-wide and unbroken
law of spiritual discernment, for spiritual truths are spiritually
discerned.

She that desires this spiritual sense must do as Anna did, wait upon
God in prayer. She “served God.” She was spiritually-minded. An intense
desire always precedes possession. Our Lord said, “Blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled.” Do we hunger after righteousness, with a hunger that joins
a great longing with a strong will? Then shall we possess it, for
these powers of the mind and heart wait with sure benediction upon
the prayers of earnest souls. This desire lies at the threshold of
spiritual-mindedness. It is synonymous with love. Do I love God? Is my
eye single and my heart pure? If so, I shall see Him. If not in the
court of the women, as Anna did, in the inner courts of an unending
eternity.

The other factor that enters into this spiritual life is abiding.
Anna “departed not from the Temple.” She waited patiently. Go back
to that night in Shiloh, ere the lamps of God had gone out, and note
how Samuel the child became Samuel the prophet by waiting on God in a
listening attitude and prompt obedience. Follow Paul from the vision on
Anti-Lebanon to the prisons of Nero, and the roadway of his Christian
life is literally paved with waiting and prompt obedience, and both
the seer and the apostle give us the rule of spiritual expansion, and
set the step for all the regiments of the heavenly-minded. An eminent
divine has said, “Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should
have known,” and a greater than this divine has said, “He that doeth
truth cometh to the light.” The secret of all soul degeneracy, of a
seared conscience and a blunted moral sense, alas! we all know too
well, is disobedience to the heavenly visions. Like Eli, our eyes are
grown dim, and like Paul’s fellow-travelers to Damascus, we hear a
sound, but no articulate voice of call. “To obey,” said the great and
good Samuel to the disobedient Saul, “is better than sacrifice.” It is
because of disobedience to the clear visions of duty there is so much
of moral “near-sightedness” in the modern Christian life. The options
of spiritual life or death are always with us, to see or not to see, to
know or not to know. Here is the power and the peril of the Church our
Saviour purchased at the price of His own blood; here is her strength
and her weakness; for the dominant danger in the Church of our time,
with its wealth, its average moralities and its social compromises,
is unspirituality, when the lines of division between a refined
worldliness and a perfunctory Christianity are so vague that both seem
so near alike to many professed followers of Jesus as not to know where
worldliness ends and the Christian rule commences. An unspiritual life
is the real apostacy which clogs the chariot wheels of God and dims the
eye to the King in His excellent glory.

Do you wonder at the high honor heaven conferred upon this aged
prophetess, who “departed not night nor day from the Temple,” lest she
should miss the opportunity of a lifetime, of making her the first
woman to witness for Christ? It was in perfect keeping with God’s
eternal plan of exalting the humble of this world who have loyal
hearts. Rebekah, with cheerful alacrity, watered the ten camels of
Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, when he called her to be the bride of
Isaac; Rachel was driving her father’s sheep to the well in Haran when
she won the heart of Jacob, the heir of promise; Miriam watched the
little craft among the rushes of the Nile, before she led the women in
triumphal song at the Red Sea; Ruth gleaned in the fields of Bethlehem
to relieve her own and Naomi’s necessities, when she attracted the
attention of Boaz; Esther lived a modest, retired life in the house
of Mordecai, the porter at the royal palace, when she was called to
be queen over the Persians. Poverty and homely toil are no hindrance
to holy zeal in Christian service; nor are they hindrance to high
communion with the Eternal.

These are truths attested by revelation and by history. We are
sometimes tempted to question humility as a stepping-stone to
exaltation, and to complain of our lot; tempted to think ourselves
hemmed in and circumscribed, thus to lack all opportunity for large
service or large vision, or large attainments of any kind. Nothing
is more common among those whose life is crowded with what is termed
coarse and common toil, who are loaded down with many cares, and
confined in what seem to them narrow bounds, to count others vastly
more highly favored than themselves, and to regard themselves as out of
range of all spiritual visions or special divine communications! Let
her who is left to think such thoughts, or to place such estimate on
her lot in life, remember that no eye of Scribe or Pharisee, of priest
or king, saw or recognized the Son of God that day when Mary presented
Jesus in the Temple. Such vision was reserved for the aged prophetess,
who was looking for redemption in Jerusalem.

What is the lesson? This, that the waiting and the morally qualified
are the chosen channels of divine communication; that to such the
revelations of God unfold wonderful visions. Heaven and earth meet
where the truly devout are found watching “night and day” by the altars
of prayer. If doxologies of the soul are to be rendered in the ear of
mortals, they shall hear them whose hearts are open towards the throne
of grace, and whose longings are for “redemption in Jerusalem!” and who
are “waiting for the consolation of Israel.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Womanhood During our Lord’s Galilean Ministry.

  CHRIST AND WOMANHOOD--NOONTIDE AT JACOB’S WELL--THE LORD’S WONDERFUL
    TACT--FIELDS WHITE TO THE HARVEST--AN UNINVITED GUEST AT SIMON’S
    FEAST--COLD HOSPITALITY--A CONCISE PARABLE--FORGIVING SIN--A STREET
    SCENE--HUMBLE CONFESSION--MOST GRACIOUS WORDS--COAST OF TYRE AND
    SIDON--SYRO-PHŒNICIAN WOMAN--STRANGELY TESTED--HER HUMILITY--WENT
    AWAY BLESSED.

We now come to the beautiful ministries of womanhood during our Lord’s
earthly mission. No teacher had ever lived who sought to elevate women
as did the Saviour. The most casual reader of our Lord’s acts of mercy
as He moved among the people, must have noticed how often He wrought
some of His most wondrous works among women. He talked with a woman
of questionable character by the wayside, He stretched out his hands
over one whose very touch was considered unclean, and tenderly said,
“Thy sins are forgiven!” He called another, whose shrinking fear, after
she was healed, caused her to sob out her confession, “Daughter, be of
good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.” What a sweet picture
that is of the mothers who bring their little children to Him that “He
should touch them,” and their faith was rewarded not by a mere “touch,”
but He took the mothers’ darlings in His arms and blessed them. With
a yearning of divine pity He brings back to life three persons that
motherhood and sisterhood might be comforted. Surely womanhood must
have been precious in His sight, and there is a peculiar force in the
word _precious_ as of God’s own choosing. When He speaks of precious
things, or permits in His inspired servants such ardent language, we
may be assured there is a deep meaning in the expression, and that
whatever is spoken of, is of great value, costly and rare. “I know the
thoughts that I think toward you,” says the dear Lord, “thoughts of
peace and not of evil.” And they are so continuous! “How great is the
sum of them? If I should count them they are more in number than the
sand!” We have walked the wide beach, as it stretches on for miles and
miles in one unbroken line of white sand. Could we count a single rod
of it? Yet these thoughts of our Lord outnumber the sand on the shore
of the sea. And how precious they are, because begotten of pure love;
and royal with kindness; and tender with compassion; and fragrant with
blessings; exquisite with sweetness; infinite, incessant, immeasurable.

In our love, we mainly dwell upon the thought of what God is to us,
and so are apt to forget what we are to Him. “He has chosen Israel for
His peculiar treasure.” “The Lord’s portion is His people.” Does He so
esteem us? Does He hold us close to His heart, and say, I love thee
“since thou wast precious in My sight!” The mother thinks of her child,
the wife of her husband, the lover of his beloved. And how sweet are
these thoughts of our dear ones. Unbidden they crowd upon the soul;
comforting, tenderly cherished and precious are the thoughts of the
absent for one another! Memories of form and feature, look and smile,
word and deed, affection and purpose, are ever present. Does God, the
Infinite, thus think of us! Oh, wondrous alchemy of grace that can turn
such poor unworthy souls into gems so beautiful, so priceless, so dear
to the Infinite heart of God; so highly esteemed that if even the least
were lost, it would be a loss to Him. Then, also, the trial of our
faith is “much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be
tried with fire.” If we bear this in mind, we shall better understand
the Saviour’s acts as we read the story of His love for womanhood. Oh,
ye tired, troubled ones, put into God’s crucible, did you ever feel
that you were forgotten, overlooked, too long or too severely tested?
God is watching with an eye that never slumbers. The trial going on is
precious to Him. He tempers the heat when too strong, and adds fuel
when too light. He creates the smith to blow the coals; and here, be
sure, He makes no mistake. You would not have chosen as He has; and
yet the process must go on, for it is a precious one; so much so that
our Beloved can not trust it to other hands than His own. He will not
let you be harmed. “Many shall be purified and made white and tried.”
Are you not glad He has chosen you among these? The trial is painful to
you, but precious to Him, and “will be found unto praise and honor, and
glory,” walking with Him in White Raiment, as those who “are worthy.”

Through human personality is God best made known. There is a revelation
in nature; the movements of planets, the return of seasons, the
regularity and uniformity of natural laws, reveal a fixed order in
the universe; the balanced relationship, the correspondences and
adaptations in nature reveal mind as the centre of activities; wisdom
speaks out in the organizations, kingdoms and beneficent purposes of
nature, while beauty shines from the splendor of the world. All this
is very good, but it is not conclusive. It is written of the Son of
God, that He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him. He
recognized the sore need of humanity, and the Father’s plan to meet
that need, and gave Himself a willing offering. Christ is the living
manifestation of God’s love. To be “able to save to the uttermost all
who come unto God by Him,” was the joy set before Him for which He
endured the cross and now ever liveth to make intercession for us.
Surely His thoughts of us must have been most precious, and, in view
of the great price He paid for our redemption, let us never minify our
lives however humble our lot:

  “A commonplace life,” we say and we sigh,
      But why should we sigh as we say?
  The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky
      Makes up the commonplace day.
  The moon and the stars are commonplace things,
  And the flower that blooms, and the bird that sings.
  But dark were the world, and sad our lot,
  If the flowers should fail and the sun shine not--
  And God, who studies each separate soul,
  Out of the commonplace lives makes His beautiful whole.

If we partake of the Divine nature, we will want to share in His work
of saving, and thus enter into the joy of our Lord. To be able to touch
life hopefully, and to see it expand and grow day by day into the
similitude of the All-perfect, is to experience a joy not of earth.
Womanhood has come into her kingdom in the sense of having reached a
place of large opportunity, in the use of her God-given power. Our
Saviour has honored woman by giving her a place in his heart and work,
and most loyally does she “lay her hands to the distaff and with her
hands hold the spindle” in the making of the great fabric of human
destiny.

[Illustration: CHRIST AND WOMANHOOD.]

How womanhood, in the days of the Saviour’s incarnation, manifested
her appreciation, will be amplified in this and the next chapter, and
her loving ministry does credit to her head and heart, for we read, as
He journeyed with his disciples from place to place, “Certain women,
which had been healed of infirmities, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna,
and many others, ministered unto Him of their substance.” How beautiful
is all this. Women actually following Jesus, as disciples, and out of
their means ministering to His physical necessities. Heathenism has no
place, socially for women, as we have shown in our introductory. Christ
sought to bless and elevate womanhood.

The skill of our Lord’s wayside teaching is beautifully brought out in
the scene at Jacob’s well. In one of His tours through Samaria our Lord
reached Jacob’s well, in the neighborhood of Sychar, about noon, and
being weary, sat down upon the stone seat in the little alcove erected
over the well. It offered a shelter from the glare of the noontide
sun. John, in his gospel, tells us that Jesus, “being wearied with His
journey, sat thus on the well.” The words in the original imply that
He was quite tired out with His journey, and doubtless overcome with
the extreme heat. In His exhaustion, He seems to be quite anxious, if
possible, to obtain a little rest, while the disciples had left Him, to
procure in the nearby city, the necessary bread.

The disciples had scarcely departed, when a lone woman, with face
veiled, and on her head a great stone waterpot, came to the well to
draw water. It was an unseasonable hour, for morning and evening only
would the well be thronged by women, whose duty it is to carry the
water for household use. For some reason, possibly because she was
in no good repute, this woman avoided the throng at the well in the
morning or evening hours, and availed herself of this unseasonable time
to come for water.

The scene before us is pathetically picturesque. The Son of God resting
in the refreshing shade of the little alcove, and a woman of doubtful
character coming in out of the noontide glare and heat of the sun to
draw water. We almost wonder if our Lord, in His exhausted and fevered
condition, had not been casting around in His mind how He might obtain
a cup of refreshing water from the depth of the well. And now is His
opportunity. With the nicest tact and politeness He asks, “Give me
to drink!” To ask for a drink of water in the East is a proffer of
good-will. Under no circumstances would an Oriental ask or receive
water or bread of one with whom he was unwilling to be on good terms.
So when Jesus said to the woman, “Give me to drink,” it was as if He
had said, “I wish you well; I feel kindly towards you and yours.”

We are somewhat surprised at the conduct of the woman after such kindly
salutation. Instead of quickly offering Him a drink, she proceeds to
ask, “How is it that thou being a Jew askest drink of me, which am a
woman of Samaria?” She would recognize the nationality of Jesus by
His dress. The color of the fringes on the Jewish garments was white,
while those of the Samaritans were blue. Possibly His appearance and
accent in His speech would also identify Him. However, in explanation
of her conduct, she goes on to say, “the Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans.” So that while this non-intercourse between the two
people was not absolute, a request of such a nature might surprise
a Samaritan. And yet we must confess she is more ready to conduct a
religious discussion with the Son of God Himself than to offer cups of
cold water.

But with what wonderful tact Jesus drew the mind of this woman away
from the religious differences between Jews and Samaritans. He was not
to be drawn off from the main point at issue. He had asked for water,
for He was really thirsty. She had come to the well for water, for it
supplied a need. When she came to the well her aspirations reached
no farther than a pitcher of water. So, with water for a text, Jesus
proceeds to tell this Samaritan that good as the well was, and great as
Jacob was, all who drank of that water would thirst again. The best the
world had to offer could never satisfy her thirst. She could not help
but see the truth of these words. They were but the echo of her daily
experience.

Now the divine Teacher proceeds to uncover another well to this woman.
“Whosoever,” Jesus proceeded to say, and the whosoever included all
Samaritans and the world as well, “drinketh of the water that I shall
give him, shall never thirst; for the Holy Spirit that I shall put in
him shall be a well of water springing up into everlasting life--it
shall satisfy his thirst and he shall be continually refreshed.”

How deftly Jesus turned this conversation into a spiritual channel! It
was done so easily that the woman was not conscious of the change. She
thought he was talking about literal water, though the seriousness in
his tones had awakened her utmost attention. She knew what it was to
thirst, and the labor of coming to the well to carry away pitchers full
on her head, only to repeat the labor with each returning day. He had
awakened in her a desire, though that desire was no higher than water,
and she said, “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come
hither to draw.” Though the woman did not understand His words, she was
really, in her mind, struggling with the great problem of not thirsting
any more, and of doing away with the necessity of daily coming to
Jacob’s well. How the Lord delights to lead inquiring minds to the
higher things of life! He saw, doubtless, by supernatural intuition,
the sinful blemishes in her life, as well as the deeper aspirations
of her soul which His words had awakened. How shall He get at the
plague-spot which corrupted the fountain of her life?

In a tender, pathetic tone he said to the woman, “Go, call thy
husband!” It was a painful request to make of this poor woman, but He
could not trifle. He must be faithful. The request had its desired
effect. It drew off the woman’s attention from her desire for fountains
of water, to see the wretched condition of her life.

Yet, with a frankness that showed an honest soul, she replied, “I have
no husband!”

Ah! that was the point this wisest of Teachers was bringing her to. He
did not want to see her husband, but He wanted her to see herself. His
words probed to the plague-spot in her soul. She admitted her guilt,
but could not quite bring her will to give up her manner of life.

When Jesus told her that she was living with the fifth man, and he not
her husband, she perceived that He was a prophet, and was ready with
another batch of theological questions. “I know I am not what I ought
to be,” she said in effect, “but then there are some things I don’t
understand, and now, since you are a prophet, perhaps you can inform
me. We Samaritans claim that our way is right, and you Jews claim that
your way is right. Both can’t be right; tell us what we are to do?”
Referring to her Samaritan ancestors, she continued, “Our fathers
worshipped in this mountain,” pointing to Mt. Gerizim, under the shadow
of which they almost stood, and which had a special sacredness as the
mount of blessing. It was also claimed by the Samaritans that their
worship was earlier, and, therefore, older than that at Jerusalem.
However, it is not clear that she meant to urge this as one of the
reasons in favor of Mt. Gerizim, on the summit of which the Samaritan
Temple stood. In the Scriptures which the Samaritans possessed (the
Pentateuch) the name of Gerizim had been inserted in the place of
the holy city of the Jews. On the other hand, the claim of the Jews
was exclusive. Men must worship in Jerusalem. If the woman regarded
the supremacy of Gerizim or Jerusalem an open question, it showed
her candor and a willingness to accept the revelation of the truth,
whatever it might be.

But see how our Lord sweeps the idol of locality from this inquirer’s
mind, “Believe me,” he said, “the hour cometh when ye shall neither
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.” Men have
ever looked upon their places of worship as sacred. Islamism has its
Mecca, the heathenism of India its Baneras and Ganges, the idolaters of
China their sacred mountains, the apostates of modern times their holy
shrines. Jesus abolishes local limitations, and announces that what one
worships is of more importance than where; that God is a Spirit, and
that true worship is unlimited by time, place or form.

[Illustration: THE NOONTIDE HOUR AT JACOB’S WELL.]

Such wonderful words had never fallen upon the ears or entered the
heart of this woman. No priest or scribe had ever uttered such sublime
conceptions of our relations to God. She had thought him a “prophet,”
but such utterances are almost divine. She thinks of the Messiah, and
answers, “I know that when Messias cometh, which is called Christ; when
He is come, He will tell us all things.” This was in accordance with
the Samaritan view of Christ. While showing a desire for a fuller
knowledge she thinks of a higher authority of the expected Messiah. In
this He did not rebuke her. He lets her question, yet is never turned
from His purpose. Step by step His love lifted this inquiring mind,
until at last she was ready for such an avowal of His nature and office
as He had never given to Scribe or Pharisee or disciple, “I that speak
unto thee am He!”

Wonderful news! Filled with surprise and joy, she “left her waterpot”
on the well, and ran into the city, forgetting all about her own need,
as well as the request of the Saviour for a drink of water. Her haste
shows how absorbed she had become in the wonderful words from the lips
of Him who declared Himself the long-expected Son of God. And He, the
blessed Lord, was so intent on saving a soul that He had forgotten all
about His thirst and His weariness.

Just as she had left the well, the disciples came, having made the
necessary purchase of food, and “marveled that He talked with the
woman,” yet were mysteriously restrained from asking Him why He did
so. Presently they spread their noonday meal, but observing that Jesus
did not share with them their meal, they urged Him, saying, “Master,
eat.” But great was their surprise when He answered, “I have meat to
eat that ye know not of.” They could not understand that the chance to
help an inquiring soul was more to Him than food or drink, and said to
one another, “Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?” He astonished His
inquiring disciples yet more, when knowing the thoughts uppermost in
their minds, said, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,” and
to carry out the mission for which I am in the world.

In the meantime the flying feet of the woman had reached the city, and
she hastened from street to street delivering her message, “Come, see a
Man who told me all that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?”

The theological questions over which Jews and Samaritans contended,
whether Jerusalem or Gerizim was the place where “men ought to
worship,” had dropped entirely out of her mind. But she proved an
excellent evangelist, for presently the people came flocking out of the
city in the direction of Jacob’s well, pouring out of every gate, and
led over the fruitful plain by the woman.

It must have been a grand sight, and showed that Jesus was not mistaken
when, looking into the face of the woman, He saw a pearl of great
beauty and worth beneath the rough exterior of this semi-heathenish,
yet quick-witted, sprightly and susceptible Samaritan.

As the Saviour lifted up His eyes over the plain and saw the
approaching multitude, He was evidently well satisfied in withgoing His
weariness and thirst while talking to this Samaritan Magdalene as she
came with her water-pitcher to the well, and not only was He satisfied
with the results of His labors, but He seems also to have been pleased,
for, as the host filled the plain, He called the attention of his
disciples to the beautiful sight, and exclaimed, “Say not ye, there
are yet four months, and then cometh harvest!” Doubtless this was true
in the physical world, but spiritual conditions do not have to depend
upon the slow processes of the natural world, and the well-sown seed
amid the glare of the noontide, was already ripening unto the harvest.
Behold the thronging people! said our Lord. “Lift up your eyes, and
look on the fields; for they are white already to the harvest.”

  “Laborers wanted!” The ripened grain
    Waits to welcome the reaper’s cry;
  The Lord of the harvest calls again;
    Who among us shall first reply,
    “Who is wanted, Lord? Is it I?”

  The Master calls, but the servants wait;
    Fields gleam white ’neath a cloudless sky.
  Will none seize the sickle before too late,
    Ere the winter’s winds come sweeping by?
    Who is delaying? Is it I?

As the people thronged the well to hear and see the Man who had
revealed the hidden life of the woman, He must have taught this people
with wise, loving words, for they forgot all about their prejudices
and hate and begged Him, though of a race with whom the Samaritans had
no dealings, to stay among them. And He graciously complied with their
request, and it took Him two whole days to harvest that whitened field.
And the record is, “Many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Him
for the saying of the woman.”

But what a testimony is all this to that Samaritan woman. What, if her
previous life had not been of good repute? What though she was a social
outcast? One thing she discovered that noonday, as she came out to draw
water from Jacob’s ancient well, that the Man who laid open her inner
life in such modest words and patient forbearance, was none other than
the long-expected Messiah, and she was altogether too generous-minded
to lock up the glad tidings in her heart, but at once, without
commission or priestly authority, witnessed for Christ, published the
glad tidings of salvation through the streets of Sychar, and brought
her whole city to a knowledge of her Saviour. And so this woman became
the first gospel preacher in Samaria. That was before church councils
had decided women may not speak for Jesus.

Jacob’s well is no longer used, and the grain fields, which “Stood
dressed in living green” before the Saviour’s eyes, have long been
trodden under foot of Islam’s hordes, yet the living spring of water
which our Lord opened there to the poor, sinful, yet penitent woman,
is as deep and fresh as ever, and has flowed on and out over the earth
to remotest nations, and will quench the thirst of souls to the end of
time.

We see also in this beautiful scene at Jacob’s well that Christ’s
intercourse with women was marked by freedom from Oriental contempt of
womanhood, and a marvelous union of purity and frankness, dignity and
tenderness. He approached this woman as a friend who wished her well,
and yet as her Lord and Saviour. And, to the good sense of womanhood
be it said, when the light of truth broke over her inquiring mind, she
believed! And behold how she loved Him! Forgetting her errand to the
well, yea, even leaving her pitcher, she hastened to publish the glad
news. Surely the Saviour “must needs go through Samaria,” on His way
from Judea to Galilee, and His resting in the little alcove of Jacob’s
well, for the moment sheltered from the glare of an Oriental midday
sun, was more than a geographical “_must_.” It was the necessity of
love laid upon His heart to meet and to help that woman who came with
an empty stone pitcher to the well at the same hour of the day, but
went away with a heart filled with “living water ... springing up into
everlasting life.”

Some time after this, on one of those days while Jesus was teaching in
lower Galilee, a Pharisee, by the very common name of Simon, invited
our Lord to a feast. Why he invited Him is not stated. Possibly he
may have been impressed with the character and teaching of Christ,
and disposed, in a social way, and at his own table, to give Him a
further hearing, thinking, perhaps, by coming in personal contact with
our Lord, aside from the throngs which attended upon His ministry, he
could the better satisfy himself as to the merits of this new Teacher
in Israel, and so invited Jesus to dine with him. Our Lord had not
yet broken with the Pharisees, and was still anxious, if possible, to
conciliate them, if by any means He might win them, and withal, willing
to show his good-will, accepted the invitation.

However gracious the invitation may have been given, it is quite clear
that the hospitality was meant to be qualified. These Pharisees who
loved the uppermost seats at feasts, knew how to entertain. But in
this feast, all the ordinary attentions which were usually paid to
honored guests were strangely omitted. There was no servant with basin
of water and towel for the weary and dust-covered feet, no anointing
of the head, no kiss of welcome upon the cheek, nothing but a somewhat
ungracious admission to a vacant place at the table, and the most
distant courtesies of ordinary intercourse, so managed that this Guest
from among the common people might feel that he was receiving honors
in the house of a rich and influential Pharisee. Many a poor man’s head
has been turned by such feigned and mock courtesies. It would have been
a thousand times better to the head and heart of Simon if he had never
invited the Lord, than to assume in His presence what he was not at
heart.

Our Lord must have keenly felt these omissions. But, since he had been
invited, He made the best of this empty show at hospitality, only we
may be quite sure He was clothed in His usual gentleness and modest
dignity. We may well believe our Lord showed no signs of being piqued
at the slights put upon Him, nor embarrassed in the presence of His
host and the distinguished guests present. While Jesus cared little for
show or etiquette, yet it was but natural that He should have keenly
felt these omissions so gracefully shown to the others at this feast.

But before us rises another scene. “Behold, a woman in the city, which
was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s
house, brought an alabaster box of ointment.” How thoughtful these
women are! This one was not satisfied with merely following the throng,
but she takes with her the most costly gift at her command. What a
contrast between her and Simon, who haughtily thought within himself
that anything was good enough for this lowly Prophet of Nazareth.

When this woman, whose character seemed to have been well known, too
well indeed for her own comfort, reached Simon’s house, she found the
door thronged by a crowd of people who had doubtless followed Jesus,
and now stood, and looked, and listened--for privacy seems a thing
impossible in the free and easy life of Orientals. For a moment she
lingered amidst the throng. While there, men, as they passed in to the
feast, gathered their robes as they passed her, lest by a passing touch
she should defile them. As she sees the scanty preparations, the cold
reception, her woman’s heart is made indignant. “Would that I were
worthy to ask Him beneath my roof, or would that I could bid Him come
and sit at meat with me; all that I have were His to minister in any
way to His comfort. But I, alas, am so far down and He so holy--there
is no chance for me.” So she thinks.

Then lo, that face is lifted, the eyes meet hers. He, all pitiful,
reading her heart looks an invitation that she can not resist. And then
in the presence of the Pharisees, as they start with horror, every man
shrinking from this infamous intruder, every face filled with scorn,
she hurries across to the side of the Lord Jesus and falls at His feet.
She pours forth her penitence in a flood of tears; then, startled that
she should thus have bathed His feet, she loosens her hair and wipes
them with reverent hands, and tenderly kissing His feet, she draws from
the folds of her dress a pot of unguent, and pours its fragrance upon
them.

Who she was or how she had come to know Jesus, or when she had been
moved by his preaching and converted by the grace of His words we do
not know. It is quite likely, having been attracted like others to be
one of His auditors somewhere, she had heard His gracious words of love
and pity, and had gladly on her part accepted their healing influences.

But when the Pharisee saw the marked attention of this woman of the
street to his Guest, he commenced talking to himself in his heart,
“This man, if He were a prophet,” he muttered to himself, “would know
who and what manner of woman this is that is thus lavishing her love
upon His feet, for she is a sinner, whose very touch is pollution.”
No doubt Simon was shocked beyond measure, especially when he saw
Jesus allowed it, and was glad at that moment that his cold caution
at the commencement of the feast had prevented him from giving Jesus
too cordial a welcome. “I am glad now I did not compromise my honor or
forfeit the good opinion of those of my set; that I wasted none of my
perfume upon His head; that I gave Him no kiss of welcome; yea, even
that I did not bid a servant wash His feet. Such acts of hospitality
would, in a measure at least, have committed me, in the eyes of the
people, to Him as a friend, and would have exposed me to the criticisms
of my brethren. I fear I have already gone too far, but will get out of
it as quickly as possible, and when I extend another invitation He’ll
know it. In my opinion, He is not only no prophet, but is altogether
too free with the common people to make Him desirable among my fellow
Pharisees.”

To be sure, Simon did not utter these thoughts aloud, but his frigid
demeanor, and the contemptuous expression of countenance, which he
did not take the trouble to disguise, showed all that was passing in
his heart. He little realized that Jesus had read his thoughts as
unerringly as if he had written them upon the walls of his dining-room,
and at once proceeded to lay open the heart of His host to himself
in a manner he had never thought it possible, and He did it by first
relating a little parable, and thus addressed the Pharisee:

“Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee!”

“Master, say on,” was the somewhat constrained reply.

“There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. The one owed five
hundred pence, and the other fifty; and when they had nothing to pay he
freely forgave both. Tell me, then, which of them will love him most?”

The construction of this parable is marvelous for its conciseness,
naturalness and simplicity. In its application Jesus makes Simon
condemn himself for his uncharitable judgment. He is compelled to admit
the whole force of the great scheme of salvation by pardoning grace.
It doubtless never entered Simon’s poor, proud, but sinful heart that
he, too, was a debtor and needed to be as freely forgiven as the woman
whose touch he considered pollution, and yet this is one of the lessons
taught by the comparison here drawn between the abandoned woman and
the proud Pharisee. It is pitiable to see the bitterness of the world
towards a lost woman. And yet why should not her companion in sin
suffer as much as she? But he never does. Let us be fair. Cast her out,
if you feel called on to be her judge, but at least do the same by him.

The fact remains that this poor woman knew she was an outcast. No
one would forgive her. Never could she regain her social standing.
But Simon? Ah! Simon was really quite a model man. As the world
judges worth, she stood at one extreme and he at the other. Simon was
eminently respectable. As a Pharisee he belonged to one of the first
families; he was recognized in Church and State; he had social position
which introduced him to the refined and educated. If he met a public
speaker of eminence, or a man of reputation, he honored him by inviting
him to dinner. Let us not too severely pass upon the conduct of Simon.
He was undoubtedly a worthy man. Christ’s reference to him in the
parable implies that his outward life was not that of a hypocrite or a
mere formalist. But this parable makes him a bankrupt debtor. He can
no more pay his fifty pence than the woman her five hundred pence. So
both were sinners, and both needed to be forgiven. Here there was no
difference. Both had broken the law of God, and both were in need of a
Saviour.

We see again that penitence breaks down the wall that separated from
God. This poor woman saw her dreadful sin and turned from it in an
agony of repentance. She sought the Lord. He was the only friend to
whom she could turn in her need. She was sure of His sympathy and help.
She desired forgiveness and found it. She had been alienated from God,
but through her penitence had reached a comprehension of Christ’s
character impossible to the self-satisfied Pharisee. She was far more
at one with God, as He was revealed in Christ, than was the dignified
gentleman, indignant at her presence in his house.

This woman felt a great need. She was sin-burdened, and needed a divine
deliverer, and the Saviour proved to be an all-sufficient helper.
How was it with Simon? Why, he relied on himself. He felt no need
of Christ’s help. He was self-satisfied--a very good man in his own