ABIJAH.
We forget Abijah’s character in his eloquence. He carries a spell with him. Judging from his speech, one would suppose him faultless—entirely noble in every aspiration and impulse and sublimely religious and unselfish.
The whole Abijah is not here. This is but the ideal Abijah. Who ever shows himself wholly upon any one occasion? Who does not sometimes go forth in his best clothing?
We must read the account of Abijah which is given in the Book of Kings before we can correctly estimate the Abijah who talks in the Book of Chronicles.
It is, perhaps, encouraging that while men are upon the Earth they should not be so dazzlingly good as to blind their fellow men. Yet it is pitiful to observe how men can be religious for the occasion. Nearly all men are religious at a funeral; but few men are religious at a wedding.
Abijah has a great cause to serve, and he addresses himself to it not only with the skill of a rhetorician but with the piety of a mind that never tenanted a worldly thought. God knows the whole character—how bright we are in points, how dark in many places; how lofty, how low. Knowing all, He judges correctly, and His mercy is His delight. Neither God nor man is to be judged by one aspect, or one attribute, or one quality. We must comprehend, so far as we may be able, the whole circuit of character and purpose before we can come to a large and true conclusion.
But as we have to do with the ideal Abijah, let us hear what he has to say in his ideal capacity. We will forget his faults while we listen to the music of his religious eloquence.
Abijah comes before us like a man who has a good cause to plead. He fixes his feet upon a mountain as upon a natural throne, and from its summit he addresses a king and a nation, and he addresses his auditors in the sacred name of “the Lord God of Israel.” He will not begin the argument at a superficial point, or take it as starting from yesterday’s new raw history—history hardly settled into form. He will go back, and with great sweep of historical reference he will establish his claim to be heard. In II. Chronicles, thirteenth chapter and fifth verse, Abijah asks:
“Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?”
The binding covenant—the covenant that even pagans would not break. If you have eaten salt with a man you can never speak evil of him with an honest heart. You must forget your criticism in the remembrance of the salt. You are at liberty to decline intercourse and fellowship and confidence; you are perfectly at liberty to say: “I will have nothing to do with thee in any association whatsoever.” But you can not be both friend and enemy. You can not eat salt with a man and smite him in the face, or wound him in the heel, or hurt him in any way, at any time, in any line or point.
That was pagan morality.
We are fallen a long way behind it in many cases, for what Christian is there who could not eat all the salt a man has, and then go out and speak about him with bitterness, plunder him, frustrate his plans, anticipate him in some business venture, and laugh at him over his misplaced confidence?
Abijah recognized the perpetuity of the covenant. The kingdom was given to David for ever—if not in words, yet in spirit; if chapter and verse can not be quoted, yet the whole spirit of the divine communion with David meant eternity of election and honor. It is right to hold up the ideal covenant; it is right that even men who themselves have broken covenants should insist that covenants are right. We must never forget the ideal. Our prayers must express our better selves. A dying thief may pray. Again and again we have to fall back upon the holy doctrine that a man is not to be judged in his character by the prayers which he offers, inasmuch as his prayers represent what he would be if he could.
Abijah, having to deal with a perpetual covenant, charges Jeroboam with breaking it:
“Yet Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon, the son of David, is risen up, and hath rebelled against his Lord.”
All rebellion is wrong, unless it arises from a sense of injustice, untruthfulness or dishonesty. No man has a right to dissent from the national Church unless his dissent be founded upon conscience, a right conception of the nature of the Kingdom of Christ upon the Earth, which leads him to say to certain men: “Stand off.”
No part of the empire has a right to arise against the central authority, of which itself constitutes a part, merely for the sake of expressing political prejudice or selfish design. Every rebellion must be put down that can not justify itself by the very spirit and genius of justice. Separation becomes schism when it but expresses a whim, an aversion, of a superficial or technical kind; and every rebellion is wickedness, is born of the spirit of the pit, that can not justify itself by appeals to justice, nobleness, liberty and God.
Yet our rebellions have made our history.
We should have been in slavery but for rebellion. The rebels are the heretics that have created orthodoxy. We owe nothing to the indifferent, the languid, the selfish, the calculating, the let-alone people who simply want to eat and drink and sleep and die. That they were ever born is either an affront to nature or is the supreme mystery of human life.
Abijah, therefore, is perfectly right when he insists upon mere rebellion being put down; but when rebellion expresses the spirit of justice and the spirit of progress—the new revelation, the new day—all the Abijahs that ever addressed the world can only keep back the issue for a measurable period.
The accusation of Abijah was that Jeroboam had “gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial.” For “vain men” read “sons of worthlessness”—empty fellows, who will join any mob that pays best; men who will cheer any speaker for a half-crown an hour, and put out anybody on any plea on any side for extra remuneration.
Where do these men come from? Whose language do they speak? Whose image and superscription do they bear?
They are in every country; they worship in the sanctuary of mischief and bow down at the altar of selfishness. They know not what they do. They will make a cross for a day’s wages. Evil company follows evil men. Worthless fellows are soon dissatisfied with the company of righteousness; the intercourse becomes monotonous and suffocating. A bad man could not live in Heaven. It is not in the power of mercy to save men from hell, for they carry hell with them; they are perdition.
Who can wonder if desecration followed in the steps of worthlessness? Abijah asks:
“Have ye not cast out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and have made you priests after the manner of the nations of other lands, so that whosoever cometh to consecrate himself with a young bullock and seven rams, the same may be a priest of them that are no gods?”
Let them bring the offering, and then they may become priests and do what they please at altars that have no foundations, the incense of which is a cloud that Heaven will not absorb. William Rufus declared that church bread was sweet bread. How many men have eaten church bread who ought to have died of hunger! What responsibility attaches to some people in this matter! Church bread ought never to be given away—ought never to be dishonored with the name of a “living.” No man should be in the Church who could not make five times the money out of it that he ever made in it. It should be felt that if he put forth all his power—both his hands, his whole mind and strength—he could be the greatest man in the commonwealth.
Jeroboam would admit any one to the altar; he would make room if there was none; he would cast out a priest of the Lord to make room for a priest of Belial. This is the accusation which Abijah brings against Jeroboam and his company of rebels.
Now Abijah turns to state his own case. He tells us what he and his people are:
“But as for us, the Lord is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and the priests, which minister unto the Lord, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business. And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shew-bread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening; for we keep the charge of the Lord our God; but ye have forsaken Him.”
What a character Abijah gives himself!
Let us remember that we are dealing with an ideal man, and not with the real personality.
Take this, however, as an ideal representation, and how perfect it is in every line! “The Lord is our God.” We have a sound and vital theology; we have a clear upward look, and no cloud conceals the face divine; no idols have we—no images of wood, no pillars, no groves, no high places where idolatry may be performed as an entertainment.
The man reasons well. He insists upon having corner stones in any edifice or argument he puts up. When he accuses, he goes back to the covenant of salt; when he claims a right position, he claims that it is a theological one. He holds the right God. Losing the right theology, we lose all the detail with it. When the conception of God is wrong, no other conception can be right. It is only bold because it is true to say that if a man has not the right desire after the right God he can not keep correct weights and scales. The custom house, the inland revenue, the excise—call it what you please—may to some extent keep him up to the right mark, but in his soul he takes in every customer that comes near him; if he does not, he loses sleep. This applies to the so-called heathen as well as to the Christian. It is not necessary that a man should have a clear and perfect revelation of God, but that in his heart he feels that he is a creature, not a creator; a subject, not a sovereign; that he is under responsibility, and not above it. In that proportion only can he deal righteously and nobly with his fellow men.
“And the priests, which minister unto the Lord, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business.”
Here is apostolic succession before the time of the invention of the term. Here is an excellent pedigree, a most complete genealogy. Our priests are in the Aaronic line, and the Levites know their business and keep to it; every thing is in order in our Church.
That is beautiful, and that is right. We need not shrink from adding, that is necessary. We must have nothing to do with men who are not in the Aaronic and apostolic succession; they must not occupy our pulpits, nor be allowed to make pulpits of their own; no man must sell them wood or stone with which to construct a pulpit; they must be forbidden by the genius of law from ever preaching or attempting to preach.
When we let go the doctrine of apostolic succession we let go a vital treasure and blessing.
We may differ as to our definition of “apostolic succession,” but surely there can be no difference among frank and enlightened hearts and minds as to what apostolic succession is. No man is in the apostolic succession who is not in the apostolic spirit, and no man is out of the apostolic succession who is animated by the spirit of the apostles. That is not a spirit which is conferred by the tips of any fingers; that is the gift of God.
Do you see your calling, brethren? God has chosen you. What a Church is God’s! Not a Church of wax-works, all made at one factory, and all charged for in one invoice; but living men, characterized by innumerable individualities—some broad as the firmament, others beautiful and tender as little flowers that can only grow in the fullest sun-warmth; some military in argument and in discipline, others persuasive in pathos, sympathy and tenderness.
There is no monotony in God. One star differeth from another in glory; no two blades of grass are microscopically identical. There is a common likeness in the worlds and in the sub-economies of Nature, but the more penetrating our vision is made by mechanical and scientific aids the more wondrous in difference are discovered to be the very things which are supposed to be identical.
We must never allow the apostolic succession to be handed about without its being accompanied by the apostolic spirit. Every man is in the apostolic succession who believes in the apostles, who follows them as they followed Christ, and who would know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
“And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shew-bread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening.”
At that time piety was mechanical. It could not be otherwise. God never forces history. The days come, each with its own burden and its own blessing, its own dawn and its own apocalypse. We can not have today what is due tomorrow. God’s seasons move in measured revolution, and come to us in orderly and timely procession; and no man can hasten them by lighting his camp fire, or striking his matches, or kindling his little inflammable powder.
We can not imitate the Sun.
Some have tried to mimic the stars; but where is the image of the Sun that the Sun has not obliterated by one mid-day look?
The time came when all these ordinances were set aside. There was to be no more burning; there was to be no morning sacrifice and evening sacrifice and sweet incense, or shew-bread and candlestick of gold and lamps thereof for evening burning.
“Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more; but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”
So we may misuse history by going back and making that necessary which has already been abrogated. We may thus ill-treat the day of rest, by measuring it and weighing it in Jewish scales. We may cast a cloud over the day of jubilee that comes every week, by measuring its beginning and its ending by Jewish arithmetic; we may make the whole week sabbatic by Christian consecration. There will always be ordinances, because while man is in the body he needs external helps, collateral assistances and auxiliaries. He is not always equally awake; he is not always equally spiritual. He needs the communion of saints, the coming together in holy fellowship, all the associations of a sacred time and a sacred place, and through the active yet subtle ministry of these he comes to feel that he is in touch with God. “Here in the body pent” we need such aids as can penetrate our prison and minister to the liberty of the soul.
Now Abijah says, as a kind of climax:
“And, behold, God himself is with us for our captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”
How steadfastly Abijah abides by the altar! He can not be tempted one step from the throne of God. His appeal is sublime because it is religious. It is historically religious. “The Lord God of your fathers.” It would seem to be a solemn thing to cut off oneself from all the currents of history—to bury our fathers over again in a deeper grave; yea, to bury them at night-time, so that when the morning came we could not tell where they were interred.
Abijah will have a historic line. He maintains the doctrine of philosophic and personal heredity and organic unity. He will insist upon it that the men of his day represented the men of dead generations, and were to do what they would have done had they then lived. Not only was it historically religious, but it was religion accentuated by motives, such as act most powerfully upon human conduct—“for ye shall not prosper.” That appeal they could understand.
The double appeal constitutes God’s address to men. He is bound to point out consequences, though He would not have life built upon them. There is no other way of getting at certain people than by telling them that if they believe not they shall be damned. They are so curiously and fearfully made that only hell can excite their attention. The preacher does not declare this doctrine of fire, or mere penalty, for the sake of revealing God and acting upon human thought and conduct. He knows it is an appeal more or less tinctured with possible selfishness. He can not but despise the man who asks for Heaven simply because he has smelt the fire of hell.
But the Christian preacher will begin where he can. He has to do with all classes and conditions of men. All men do not occupy the highest point of thought—do not approach the Kingdom of Heaven from the noblest considerations—and he is the wise pastor, he has the great shepherd heart, who receives men by night, by day, through the gate of fear, through the portals of love; who keeps the door ajar for men, not knowing when they may come home.
He is but a poor preacher, and he knows it, who bids people come to God that they may get to Heaven; but he is aware that some people can only understand through the medium of such terms, if ever; and he really hopes for them that by experience they may eventually rise to a nobler level, and desire God for God’s own sake. He only is in the Spirit of Christ who would pray as much, give as much, suffer as much, if he knew he had to die this night, and be blotted out for ever, as he would do and give if he knew he were this night going into everlasting glory.
To be good in order to buy Heaven is not to be good. To be religious in order to escape hell is not to be religious.
Yet we must always so judge human nature as to provide for people who can only act through fear, and through love and hope of reward. Their education will be continued and completed, and some day they will look back upon their infantile beginning and pity themselves.
The great thing, however, is to begin. If we are afraid of hell, let us ask great questions. If we are in hope of Heaven, let us begin to do great services. Hell and Heaven have nothing to do with it in reality, but they have to do a great deal with it initially, instrumentally and educationally.
What was the upshot of the war? Who needs to inquire? When Omnipotence goes forth to war, what can be the issue of the battle? God takes out His glittering sword, and His hand lays heavy in judgment; can grasshoppers stand before Him? Oppose a wooden fence to a boundless conflagration, and you may act almost rationally—most rationally—as compared with those who set a grasshopper to oppose the march of God.
The writer in the Book of Kings takes a much worse view of Abijah’s character than we find in the Book of Chronicles. From the first Book of Kings we learn that Abijah endeavored to recover the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and made war on Jeroboam. No details are given, but we are also informed that he walked in all the sins of Rehoboam—idolatry and its attendant immoralities—and that his heart “was not perfect before God, as the heart of David, his father.”
In the second Book of Chronicles Abijah’s war upon Jeroboam is more minutely described, and he makes a speech to the men of Israel, reproaching them for breaking their allegiance to the house of David, for worshiping the golden calves, and substituting unauthorized priests for the sons of Aaron and the Levites. He was successful in the battle against Jeroboam, and took the cities of Bethel, Jeshanah and Ephraim, with their dependent villages. Nothing is said by the writer in Chronicles of the sins of Abijah, but we are told that after his victory he “waxed mighty, and married fourteen wives”—whence we may well infer that he was elated with prosperity, and like Solomon, his grandfather, fell during the last two years of his life into wickedness, as described in Kings. Both records inform us that he reigned only for the period of three years.