[THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL]
AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF CHRISTIANITY.[5]
"They are Thy people and Thine inheritance."—Deut. ix. 29.
It is related of a certain royal chaplain that, being asked often by his sovereign to give a concise and convincing argument in favour of Christianity, he replied in two words—"The Jews." It is this subject which I offer for your consideration this afternoon—the history and character of the Israelite race as a witness to Christianity. The subject is certainly not inappropriate at this season, when the commemoration of the great Pentecostal Day is fast approaching, to which all the previous history of the nation had tended, which substituted the dispensation of the Spirit for the dispensation of the Law, and expanded the religion of a tribe into the religion of mankind. It is, moreover, forced upon our notice by that remarkable chapter in Deuteronomy which we have heard this afternoon, and which, by prophetic insight, brings out with singular distinctness the prominent character and subsequent career of the race. Only reflect upon such expressions as these:—"Go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven"; "Understand, therefore, this day that the Lord thy God is He which goeth over before thee"; "The Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people"; "Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you."
Read these passages in the full light which thirty centuries of the nation's history have thrown upon them. Study this contrast between their character and their achievements as it unfolds itself in all their subsequent history. Consider, on the one hand, not only the first conquest of Canaan to which the words more immediately refer, but the succession of far more brilliant victories over the great nations of the world, culminating in that most magnificent triumph of all—the triumph of Christianity. Consider, on the other hand, not only those early murmurings and idolatries in the wilderness to which the language more directly points, but that long catalogue of rebellions of which the subsequent history of Israel is made up, and which reached its climax in the martyrdom of the Lord of Life. Set these one against the other, and you will confess that the utterances of Deuteronomy are wonderful anticipations of the future, succinct epitomes of centuries yet to come. You may question, if you will, every single prophecy in the Old Testament, but the whole history of the Jews is one continuous prophecy, more distinct and articulate than all. You may deny if you will every successive miracle which is recorded therein, but again the history of the Jews is, from first to last, one stupendous miracle, more wonderful and convincing than all. Here you have a small, insignificant people—stiff-necked, rebellious, worthless; there you have the most magnificent spiritual achievements—the most signal moral victories. What conclusion can you draw, except that which is drawn for you in the words which I have read: "The Lord thy God is He that goeth before you"?—"They are Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power and Thy stretched out arm."
Look first at the capacities of the people themselves. They had no remarkable gifts which might have led us to anticipate this unique destiny. They had no intellectual qualities of a very high order like the Greeks—vivid imagination, subtlety of thought, æsthetic taste; no political capacity like the Romans, no organizing power or faculty of legislation which might secure for them the ascendency over the nations of the world. They were, moreover, a stubborn, exclusive, intolerant people—an unpractical people, without the power, or at least the will, to adapt themselves to the institutions, the feelings, and the prejudices of the people with whom they were brought in contact. They were believed, in consequence, to cherish an universal hatred against the rest of mankind; and they, in turn, were hated by all—hated, not with the hatred of an admiring envy, but the hatred of a supercilious scorn. Of all the tribes on the face of the earth the Jews, we should have said, were the very last to ingratiate themselves with the other races of mankind, and to lay the civilised world at their feet. And now turn from the people themselves to the land of their abode. Certainly this does not enable us to solve the enigma. Palestine does not occupy a large space in the Christian's imagination; for it is a very minute, insignificant spot in the map of the world. It is, moreover, incapable of expansion, for it is bounded on all sides either by sea or mountain ranges, or by vast and impracticable deserts. To a great extent all this country is mountainous and barren, and even this meagre and unpromising territory is not all their own. The sea-coast would have been valuable to a people gifted with commercial instincts. With commerce they might have extended their influence; but from the sea-coast they were wholly excluded. The Phœnicians on the north and the Philistines on the south occupied all the most important harbours; and this territory of the Jews was so unexpansive, so barren, so unpromising that they were placed at a still greater disadvantage when compared with the surrounding people. The Jews are surrounded on all sides, and by the most formidable neighbours. On the one side by Egypt, a country of the highest fertility, the foremost military power in the world, with an ancient civilisation which dated from a period long before the birth of the father of the Israelite people, whilst it stood foremost of the human race in works of art in its day. Who was Israel, then, that he could withstand Egypt? There, again, on the other side, was another mighty empire, first Assyria, then Babylon, the only rival of Egypt of the ancient world. In these places they had the same advantage of wide plains of exceptional fertility, a high and remote civilisation, an army of tremendous strength, and a centralisation under an absolute rule, with all the resources which a great and vast dominion could command. As Persia succeeded Babylon, and as Babylon succeeded Assyria, so Persia—far more mighty and terrible—overruns and conquers all Western Asia. Egypt itself falls. Palestine is a mere speck, surrounded by the huge dominions of the Persian monarch. What chance has Israel against such terrible neighbours? Must it not be crushed and ground to atoms and annihilated by its foes? But, at all events, it might have been supposed that, however stubborn and impracticable they were in their attitude towards others, they would at least be united amongst themselves—that they would be loyal to their country, that they would be faithful to their laws and institutions, that they would be true to their God. This internal cohesion would give them strength to resist—this absolute harmony would win for them an influence that would compensate for the superior advantages of their more powerful neighbours. But what do we find as a matter of fact? Their national history is one continuous record of murmuring, of rebellion, of internal feuds, of moral and spiritual defection. They have no sooner escaped from their Egyptian bondage, their necks still bearing the scars of the tyrants' yoke, than they fall into shameless idolatry. The worship of the golden calf is only the type and presence of still more guilty lapses in centuries yet to come; the revolt against Moses and Aaron only the type and shadow of the rebellious spirit to which Israel rose in the distant future. Again and again the religion of Jehovah is effaced, or almost effaced, from the mind of the nation. Again and again the hideous idolatries of Moloch—idolatries cruel, profligate, and shameless—supplant the worship of the Lord of heaven and earth. And the political condition of the nation is not one whit more hopeful than the religious. When unity alone can save the people then there is disruption. The Ten Tribes are severed from the House of David, never to be united again. The power of one kingdom is spent in neutralising the power of the other. This is a concise history of the race during the period from the disruption to the captivity. The career of Israel, from first to last, is a running comment upon the words, "Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart dost thou go to possess the land," for "ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you." Not once or twice only the Mighty Archer has strung His weapon and pointed His shaft, and His aim has been frustrated by Israel's disobedience. His chosen instruments have been snapped in His hands, starting aside like a broken bow. Indeed, the history of Israel is quite unique in the chronicles of nations. The chronicles of other nations record the qualities as well as the crimes of the people whose career they commemorate. They praise their patriotism, their prowess, their manifold virtues, their magnificent achievements. But the Bible, the chronicle of the Jews, is one uninterrupted catalogue of sins and shortcomings—one long bill of indictment against Israel. One only is true, one only is faithful, one only is victorious; for he fears not the nation, but the nation's God. So then, however we look at the matter, there is nothing which affords ground for hope; and when we question actual facts, we find they correspond altogether to those expectations we should have formed beforehand from the character and position of the nation. Never has any people lived upon the earth who passed through such terrible disasters as the Jews. Never has any people been so near to absolute extinction again and again, and yet have survived. Again and again the vision of the prophet has been realised. Again and again the valley of the shadow of death has been strewn with the dry bones of carcases seemingly extinct. Again and again there have been seasons of dark despair, when even the most hopeful, challenged by the Divine voice, could only respond, "O Lord God, Thou knowest!" But again and again there has been a shaking of the dry bones—the bones have come together, bone to bone; they have been strung with sinews and clothed with flesh; breath has been breathed into them, and they have lived, and have become an exceeding great army. Think of those many centuries of Egyptian bondage, when the life of the nation seemed to have been strangled in its infancy. Reflect next on that period in its youthful career, when it is fighting its way inch by inch, and struggling for very existence in Palestine, doing battle with nations greater and mightier than itself, and with "cities fenced high up to heaven." Look forward again, and we see its fate during the manhood of the nation under its king, the land now divided against itself and overrun by successive invaders. As of old so now again, but in a far more terrible sense, Israel finds himself face to face with the Anakims and with those great empires of the East before whom he appears but as a grasshopper. The end was inevitable. For a time Israel was a plaything in the hands of those terrible neighbours, tossed to and fro between two powerful rivals—Egypt on the one side, and Assyria and Babylon on the other—till at length, in a moment of victory, he is swept away, and his place knows him no more. Could anything seem more hopeless than the revival of the nation from the Babylonish captivity? Yet from Babylon, as from Egypt, Israel returned. A new lease of life was granted, and with it there followed a new lease of disaster also. His old fate pursued him still. The saying was fulfilled which had been spoken by the prophet: "That which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten, and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten." He was rescued from the fangs of Babylon only to be food for the Assyrians. He was drawn from the feet of the Assyrians only to be devoured by the insatiable Roman. And yet all the while—and this is the remarkable fact to which I ask your attention—amidst calamities the most overwhelming and suffering the most intense—exiled, enslaved, trampled under foot, only not annihilated—all the while he was hopeful, was jubilant, was triumphant still. He was always dying, and behold he lived. Century after century prophets had declared, in no ambiguous terms, that despite all these adverse appearances, despite all these wearisome delays, Israel had a magnificent future. The nations might rage, and the kings of the earth might do their worst—they were powerless against Israel's destiny. A sceptre should rise out of Jacob which would subdue the world, and a King should sit on David's throne before whose footstool all the nations of the earth should bow. A standard should be set up in Zion around which all mankind should rally. "Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee;" "The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves at the soles of thy feet;" "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolated cities to be inhabited."
And these hopes—these extravagant hopes—were more than realized. A King did rise out of Jacob to whom all the nations of the civilised world have rendered homage such as no sovereign received before or after—the homage of their heart, the homage of their lives. At the call of Israel the Gentiles flocked to the standard set up in Zion. From far and near, the cultivated Greek, the proud Roman, Assyrian and Egyptian, master and slave, are flocking around that standard. From east to west, from the ancient civilisation of India to the barbarous islands of the Pacific, Israel has dictated its sentiments, its belief, its morals, its laws and institutions to the nations. An influence far deeper, far wider, far more tenacious has appeared from that despised, insulted, down-trodden people than was ever achieved by the splendid literature of Greece or the historic empire of Rome. These are not theories, but facts—facts which some will attempt to explain away, but facts which none can deny. Here is the prophecy—there is the fulfilment. The prophecy is not a single isolated prediction of ambiguous meaning, but large and clear, written across the whole history of a nation from margin to margin. And the fulfilment corresponds to the prophecy; it is legible to all men, because stamped on the face of the world. Is there not here the manifestation of Divine providence? Do we not rightly claim the Jews as the principal witnesses to Christianity, or shall we set all this down as mere accident, a freak of fortune, a superficial correspondence without any essential connection? Shall it be regarded as mere accident that, within a few years after the appearing of this King who has thus gathered the Gentiles to His standard, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the nation scattered to the four winds of the earth—that the polity of Israel for ever ceased, that the Temple shook, and that revival was rendered thenceforward impossible? Shall we say that it is mere argument that for eighteen centuries—a period as long as that which elapsed from the proclamation of the law by Moses to the fulfilment of the law by Christ—this state of things has remained? Or should we not rather say that in this coincidence also there is a Divine significance—that He proclaimed with no uncertain sound the obituary of the old order and the commencement of the new—that God's seal is stamped upon the character of the Church, whereby Israel after the Spirit is substituted for Israel after the flesh? Do we ask what it was which gave the Jewish people this toughness, this vitality, this power? The answer simply is, "They are Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power, and by Thy stretched out arm." It was the consciousness of this close relationship with Jehovah, the omnipotent and ever-present God—it was the sense of their glorious destiny, which marked them out as the teachers of mankind. It was the conviction that they were the possessors of glorious truths, and that those truths must in the end prevail, whatever present appearances might suggest—this was the secret source of their strength, notwithstanding all their faults, and despite all their disasters. Do we ask again how it came to pass that, when Israel called to the Gentiles, the Gentiles responded to the call and flocked to its standard? Here, again, the answer is simple—"Because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel." The Gentiles had everything else in their possession, but this one thing they lacked—knowledge of God, their Father; and without this all their magnificent gifts could not satisfy—could not save them. Therefore, when at length the cry went forth, "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," they hurried to the fountains of salvation to slake their burning thirst. Culture and civilisation, arts and commerce, institutions and laws,—no nation can afford to undervalue these; but not only do all these things soon fade, but the people themselves fall into corruption and decay if the Breath of Life be wanting.
And as with nations, so with individuals. We may cultivate the intellect to the highest pitch; we may surround ourselves with all the luxuries and refinements of civilisation; we may accumulate all the appliances which make life enjoyable; but the time will come when these things will fail to sustain us. It may come in some season of bereavement, in the hour of sickness or of loss. It may come in the failure and decay of powers. It may come in the pains of our death-agony. It may come—and this is the most solemn thought of all—after we have passed the confines of the grave. But come it must sooner or later; for we are children of God, and we cannot with impunity ignore or deny the Father of earth and heaven. There only is rest and peace; there only is true life for the soul of man.
[THE VISION OF GOD.][6]
"And they shall see His face."—Rev. xxii. 4.