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MEMORIES AND THEIR LESSONS. (continued)
"Oh take the green ears of an early life,
And lay them on God's altar."--Anon.
"It is one of the peculiar beauties of Scriptural
narrative, that no veil is ever drawn across the frailties or the sins of
those whom it describes--there is no flattery and there is no omission. In
the case of Jacob, we have the whole man placed faithfully before us--his
piety and virtues distinctly portrayed, that they may be imitated; his
infirmities and errors as candidly avowed, that they may be shunned.--Blunt.
"Look at those who are honest and good, for a wonderful
future lies before those who love peace." Psalm 37:37
"And Jacob went out from Beersheba."--Gen. 28:10.
If, in following the footsteps of the fugitive from the
Beersheba home to the Bethel dreamland, the first lesson suggested has
reference to parental duty and obligation, the next is surely that of
filial responsibility--the bliss and happiness of early piety, the shame
and degradation of early sin.
Had it not been for Jacob's scheming of a wicked
deceitful plot, he might have left his father's tent on his northern
pilgrimage with light heart and elastic step. Sin compels him to steal away
a coward and outcast. With all Canaan for his inheritance he is not to be
envied. He speaks of it in long subsequent years as "the day of his
distress" (Gen. 35:3). The iron had entered into his soul. He was filled
with fear; the inward shame of guilt and self-accusation; the consciousness
that he had brought this swift exile on himself by a web of falsehoods; all
the time knowing the right and doing the wrong. How the flagrant dishonor,
involved in the attempt to cheat and out-manoeuver his blind, unsuspicious
father--the unblushing lie, told with unscrupulous effrontery, "I am Esau
your firstborn;"--the loud and pathetic wail of injury, and the glance of
stifled resentment which rose from the lip and flashed from the eye of the
defrauded brother--how would one and all of these memories rise up before
him, as with trembling step he now pursued his way! Like Cain he had gone
forth with a curse-mark upon him. All the more terrible must have sounded in
his ear that despairing cry of the outwitted elder-born, when the latter
asserted (27:41) that it was only the pang which fratricide would inflict on
a father's heart, which prevented him obeying the impulse of instantaneous
revenge. Would even that purpose of repression be kept? Might it not before
the morrow be cancelled? The thought the dread at least--of so righteous a
penalty of his baseness would haunt the fugitive!
Young reader--still it may be within the curtains of the
modern tent, or perchance on the eve of setting out from it--let Jacob
instruct you by the reverse in his own miserable experience, the blessedness
of the spirit of him "in whom there is no deceit" (Ps. 32:2). The
night-winds of Bethel sighing around him, the shock of a life of isolation
and solitude succeeding that of home endearment, would have been nothing had
his been the inner sunshine of a pure heart and stainless soul. But a
defiled conscience, far more than an injured brother, was the nemesis that
was tracking his steps. He might moreover have had good reason to dread
that, with the forfeiture of human friendships, he had surrendered all claim
to a better guardianship. If, in anticipation of coming night-dreams, he had
thought of visitants from the spirit-land, it might only have been of
avenging angels--those flaming cherubim with burning swords, of which in
boyhood he had heard as having guarded the entrance to a forfeited Paradise.
He doubtless afterwards came to be, what might be called,
'a prosperous man.' He lived to see one of his sons the ruler of a great
kingdom; but at the same time, in righteous resurrection, these very acts of
early deceit and wrongdoing seemed ever and anon to be disentombed, and to
reappear in the guilt and punishment of others of his family. It is
certainly noteworthy, that his heaviest cares and sorrows arose from the
repetition of his own early crimes, especially in the two points which stand
out in most painful prominence in his history--unscrupulous deceit, and the
violation of the sacredness of human relationships. The bold subtlety and
cunning artifice of the Beersheba tent, had its counterpart and revenge in
the web of falsehood and outmaneuvering woven by the grasping, hard-hearted
LABAN; in the life of drudgery to which the predestined heir of Canaan was
subjected, toiling as a bondsman under exasperating demands more cruel than
the tyrant's lash. He tells us that his weary frame was well-near prostrated
with the burning sun by day, and the chilly frost by night--sleep was
banished from his pillow.
His breach of filial honor and devotion, on the other
hand, had its righteous recompense in the long story of family sorrow--the
living trial of a dishonored only daughter; the early grave of a beloved
wife; the cruel dissimulation by which jealous brothers led him to believe
that his dearest son had been devoured by wild beasts. The hairy mantle with
which he himself duped his own half-blind father, having its mimicked
retribution in the coat of many colors--the sight of which threatened to
bring down his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.
"God," says Bishop Hall in his "Contemplations" on this
passage, "comes oftentimes home to us in our own kind--and even by the sin
of others pays us our own when we look not for it." Even when the end of all
was near; when life's vesper chimes rang in the Patriarch's ear, there
seemed to mingle solemn remembrances, like the tolling of a funeral bell,
from that distant past. In the proudest hour of his waning existence he
sighs out the confession, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my
life been" (Gen. 47:9). Though he clung to the Rock of Ages, he heard the
boom of far-off billows, or rather the waves of saddened memory chafed at
his feet. He had salvation on his dying lips; but he could not, he dared not
say with Paul, "I have fought the good fight!"
Those are indeed to be envied, who, at life's evening
hour, are unconscious of having done anything to cause the blush of shame,
or to sadden the visions of the past--who can make the grand protest of
Samuel--"Here I stand. Testify against me in the presence of the Lord and
his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I
cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to
make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these, I will make it right." (1
Sam. 12:3). Doubtless one secret of this prophet's evasion of corrupt and
corrupting influences, arose from the sunny memories connected with a holy
infancy and childhood at Shiloh. Happy is he who can revert to similar
hallowed remembrances; who can look back on the long chequered vista of life
and think of the household history--the family surroundings--only in
connection with lofty principle and earnest faith, loving words and kindly
deeds--the FATHER who would recoil from a lie as from a demon's presence;
who would scorn all sinister dealing; all deflections from the path of
honor--compassing worldly ends by base and unworthy means--the MOTHER who
would rather her children should go penniless than stoop to the heartless
stratagem or equivocating deed, that would compromise fidelity to God or
man.
When such are the bonds which unite parent with son,
brother with sister, there can truly in the best, the noblest sense, be no
breaches in the circle. Oceans and continents may divide you; weekdays of
familiar greeting or the solemn hush of former Sabbaths may be exchanged for
the hum of the city and its fevered crowds. But it is not locality which
determines the true home and the true rest of the soul. It is not the grave
which can destroy it. The most lasting links of dear household life survive
and defy landmark and distance. Many a family are far nearer to one another,
some of whom may be in different continents; than those living all
unsympathetic and uncongenial under the same roof. Retain the love of the
Great Father of all; and the tie of sonhood, and sisterhood, and
brotherhood, go where you may, will be inviolate and unbroken. Yes, cleave
if you can to such sacred retrospects, cleave to them especially in moments
of fierce temptation, whether of assailed creed or assailed passion, and let
them serve to beat back the adversary. You may have little or no other
patrimony. It matters not. "No riches," says Lord Bacon, "are comparable to
the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." By the allegiance of the
soul to honor, purity, and integrity, you are served heir to that which is
better than thousands of gold and of silver. These are heritages which never
die, which no fire can consume, and of which no throws of capricious fortune
can defraud you. These are 'treasures' which will come to your help, and may
be the means of averting moral bankruptcy, in moments when you are brought
to feel the weakness of all that is strong, and the insecurity of all that
is human.
Beware of the false, conventional estimate of earthly
riches and honors. Virtue is wealth; principle is wealth. Raise your protest
against the world's perversion of a divine saying--"A man's life consists
not in the abundance of the things that he possesses" (Luke 12:15). Be
assured you can know no ruin and disaster, so fearful as the insolvency of
character. No darkening and eclipse of your earthly sky can equal the
blackness and the shame of evil-doing, the tyranny of servile vices, the
hell of a heart no longer pure. Age has no such decrepitude as that of
guilt.
Aye, and remember too, as in Jacob's case and experience,
THE POWER OF MORAL EVIL TO LIVE ON, AND PERPETUATE ITSELF. His early
failings and propensities clung to him. The foundations of truth had been
early shaken, and there was much in his character of the worldly-wise and
calculating, the crafty and fictitious to the very last; as if he never
could get altogether disentangled from the coil of the inward foe. The
foul wrong cannot be incarcerated within bars--chained to the hour or place
of its committal; it cleaves with remorseless tenacity; do what you will to
be rid of it. The violated conscience, like the broken mirror, cannot be
pieced together again so as never to show its flaws; the chime-bell, when
once cracked, can never again give forth the same clear ring of goodness. By
a natural and moral law, deterioration--unless arrested by other
counteractive forces of which we shall afterwards speak--becomes inevitable.
After the horror of the first plunge into sin, every fresh committal becomes
easier.
Thank God, however, we can assert the converse too. Just
as the base, or unworthy deed leaves the slimy trace of the serpent in its
path; so the resolute wrestling, the moral struggle with temptation will
preserve the fruits of victory far on in life, yes even to a dying day. The
impulses of good as well as those of evil send out their moral vibrations
through all space and all time.
You who have the dew of youth upon you, be assured, life
is no mimic, mythic battle. If you are to bear heroically the strain of the
contest, to conquer the demon-horde of passion, or the dark agony of doubt,
look well to your armor and lose no time in proving it. Delay may be
perilous. Your safety lies in early and immediate consecration to the divine
service. Be it yours, conscious of the danger of procrastination, to say in
the words of one of Bunyan's heroes, as a true recruit in the a great army
of the faithful--"Put my name down, sir, for I too am to be one of the host
of the Lord." Say not that you are temptation-proof. No man is; and one
false step, one deflection from the path, may result in the dreadful plunge
down the precipices of ruin. If you try to shape your own destiny
independent of God, and the soul, and eternity, be assured destruction is
ahead.
How all-momentous therefore to you are the words which
head this chapter--"the outset from home;" the first time alone in
the great world with its bewildering surroundings; commencing, each on his
own responsibility, to build the giant bridge--the infinite viaduct--which
spans immortal being, linking time with eternity--and to determine whether
it is to bear traces of untempered mortar and insecure foundation, or
whether it be work which is to endure. However gentle and tender the
restraints of the parental dwelling just left--perhaps by very reason of
these--there is apt often, at this new crisis, to steal over the spirit a
dangerous feeling of independence; what I might call a despotic
consciousness of self-power. The youthful pilgrim feels himself reveling in
a new sphere of untrammeled freedom. The old natural spontaneous obedience
is at an end; he is sovereign of a new realm of his own. The world is all
before him; he has his own paths to select and his own moral weaknesses to
indulge. He has no other arbiter for appeal but the bidding of his own sweet
will. Let him beware of too readily abandoning these home moorings, and of
drifting out without helm or compass amid the perils of a treacherous sea.
Now is the time to test the strength of character and the
stability of principle, when thus confronting alone, unwatched and unwarded,
and with no patrol over the Trinity of the world's forces--"the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." When the charmed Tempter
lulled asleep in the tent awakes, then is the time to have courage to repel
his insidious wiles, and to show that no new scenes or associations will
tempt to swerve from loyal allegiance to duty and to God. The first heroic
resistance of temptation, the first stern refusal to capitulate the moral
fortress is a noble point gained. The first refusal to resort to the
gambling table; the first refusal to conniving at fraud; the first turning
away with firm step from the haunt of intemperance; the first firm and
loathing recoil from the siren call of impurity. To be able, regarding one
and all of these, to say in the words of good Bishop Hooper at the stake,
when he had the offer to barter conscience for dear life, "If you love my
soul, away with it!"
All honor to those who show, at once and unmistakably,
their colors amid associates of doubtful principle or evil morals;
associates who may carry moreover contagion under a fascinating exterior and
congenial manners--it may even be in conjunction with culture and
accomplishment. Specially would I say, in these times, be on your guard
against the attempts, under many a subtle form, to tamper with the beliefs
of earlier days and often of more trusted teachers; as if it were something
noble to doubt, as if it were not something nobler still to
believe; groping your darksome way, not to a Bethel with its
angel-guarded pillow and heavenly voices, but to some defiled and desecrated
portals with their 'Ichabod' of departed glory.
"I do not presume," said the late Lord Lytton, "to
arrogate the office of the preacher; but believe me, as a man of books and a
man of the world, that you inherit a religion which in its most familiar
form--in the lowly prayer that you learned from your mother's lips, will
save you from the temptations to which life is exposed more surely than all
which the pride of philosophy can teach." Remember, you have no second
trial. Youth comes but once. "The outset" is a solitary landmark in your
life history. What would many who have been irrevocably ruined by folly and
passion give to have your chance again; the shadow moved back on the dial;
the white unblotted page yet to be written; the gates of an unexplored and
unsaddened future yet to be opened--standing, girded athletes, with the
possibilities of a glorious race before them!
At my first visit to the fairest of Italian cities, I was
enthralled, as all travelers are, with the two well-known colossal works of
Michael Angelo, his statues of "Morning" and "Evening." Both equally
challenge admiration. But there is one marked difference between them,
doubtless accidental so far as the great sculptor was himself concerned, but
which has conveyed to more than one spectator a suggestive spiritual lesson.
The figure of "Evening" is finished. Every feature of the face has received
its last touch; the chisel could do no more. It is a type, in breathing
marble, of the close of existence, the completed character, the moral
expression fixed forever, incapable of alteration. With the other, the
figure of "Morning," it is different. The face there remains in rough
outline. We can only discern the initial strokes of the master. All the
delicate work of hand and chisel still remain to be completed. Equally
significant and expressive symbol of Life's commencement, the outset
of the journey--the moral lineaments all unhewn, habits and character, and
bias unformed--the character yet to be molded.
Youthful reader, the chisel is still in your own hand.
Are the features to be loving or unloving; generous or selfish; noble or
base? When life's evening comes, is the living marble to take the shape of
scornful look and sensual lip and lowering brow; or is it to be the calm
restful "sleep of the Beloved;"--the image of the Pilgrim-dreamer who begins
life's battles with the angels, the bright ladder, and the realized divine
presence, and ends with the song of triumph?
Beware, we may still further venture to add, beware,
above all, of your BESETTING SIN whatever that may be. Keep your eye on the
loopholes that require to be specially guarded. Jacob's hereditary tendency,
the vice of Laban's family which had transmitted its moral taint to his
mother and himself as a fatal inheritance, was covetousness--the lust of
gain, the basest, perhaps the most ineradicable of the secondary lower
appetites, with its inseparable accompaniment of duplicity, unscrupulous
deceit, and degrading selfishness. Let whatever you feel to be your
master-temptation form the subject of wakeful vigilance and constant
self-scrutiny, taking with you the Word of God as your surest weapon of
defense in the hour of peril and conflict.
In an after episode in the life of Jacob (Gen. 32:10) he
expressly tells us that in this outset from the tent of Beersheba, he had in
his hand nothing but a pilgrim staff (Gen. 32:10). Happy for those in an
equally momentous epoch, when for the first time alone in the great world,
brought to grapple with the stern realities of life--their head bared to the
night and darkness--who have taken as the one trusted prop of their future
journey what has proved to thousands better than earthly supports--"Your
rod and YOUR STAFF they comfort me." "With this staff," said Dr. Marsh,
near the close of a saintly life, as he greeted friends in his sick-room by
holding out the Sacred Volume--"With this staff have I traveled through my
pilgrimage, and with this staff will I pass over Jordan."
Nor can I better close this chapter than in the weighty,
earnest words of another illustrious wayfarer whose acquaintance and
personal kindness will ever be to the writer a treasured memory. "You are
about," said the late Sir James Simpson addressing his students, "to pass
into the busy and bustling scenes of active life. The great city of the
world is already throwing open her gates to receive you. Through that city
you must now pass, whether through its darkness or its splendor, its
profligacy or its virtue, its misery or its happiness, and in it all the
honors of time and of immortality are to be gained or lost. . . Pursue
earnestly and undeviatingly the direct course of Christian and professional
duty, and then you need fear not. But tremble if you allow yourself to be
drawn aside from it at any one point. Temptations that may at first lure you
from your path with the gentle hand of a indulgence or a pleasure, will, if
yielded to, soon hold you with the iron grasp of a giant. Your future career
is a matter of your own selection, and will be regulated by the conduct
which you choose to follow. That career may be one of happiness and of
self-regret, one of honor or of obscurity, one of wealth or of poverty.
During it the present fond hopes of professional fame and fortune, that
breathe in the breasts of all of you, may be won or lost, may be fulfilled
or falsified, may be nobly realized or ignobly ruined."