"On eagles' wings, they mount, they soar,
Their wings are faith and love,
Till past the cloudy regions here
They rise to heaven above."
III.—THE EAGLE AND HER YOUNG.
"Her young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are, there is she" (ver. 30).
The eagle is one of the most rapacious of birds, and her terrible instincts are transmitted to her young, which "suck up blood." This is heredity in its most awful form, and is well fitted to shadow forth the grim heritage of woe which is handed down to their children by the drunkard, the libertine, and the thief. But in any form the thought is a solemn one, forcing even the Psalmist to wail, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." The fountain of the life is polluted, as well as the streams—"Her young ones also suck up blood."
But this is not the only way in which the eagle influences her young. Allusion is frequently made to the way in which she supports them in their first essays at flight. When the tired fledgeling begins to flutter downwards, she is said to fly beneath it, and present her back and wings for its support. And this becomes a beautiful illustration to the sacred writers of the paternal care of Jehovah over Israel: "As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange god with them" (Deut. xxxii. 12). "I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself" (Exod. xix. 4).
Let ours be the holy ambition to be worthy of that care. Let us try, like the young eagles, to soar and see for ourselves. Let us gaze upon the Sun of righteousness and rejoice in the fulness of His light, remembering the promise, that "they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles: they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."
"What is that, mother? The eagle, boy!
Proudly careering his course with joy.
Firm on his own mountain-vigour relying,
Breasting the dark storm, the red bolt defying:
His wing on the wind, and his eye on the sun:
He swerves not a hair, but bears onward, right on.
Boy, may the eagle's flight ever be thine,
Onward and upward, true to the line."
—G. W. DOANE.
The Lion.
"He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow."—2 Sam. xxiii. 20.
This text treats of the way in which lions were hunted in Bible lands before the introduction of firearms. A deep pit was dug in the woods, and carefully covered over with withered leaves, and when the monarch of the forest came out in search of his prey and stumbled into the trap, he was easily secured by the wily hunters, or forthwith despatched with their long-pointed spears. Benaiah, however, did a more valiant deed than this. He went down single-handed to the bottom of the pit and slew the lion in the depth of winter. Evidently he was one of those muscular giants whom all young Britons will delight to honour—a very Samson in sheer herculean valour, a brave and dauntless warrior, who was well worthy of a place among King David's mighty men.