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.”