Part 11 (1/2)
And very much the same sad fate had happened to the Romans a little before St. Paul's time. They gave up their ancient respect for law; they broke the laws, and ran into all kinds of violence, and riot, and filthy sin; and therefore G.o.d took away their freedom from them, because they were not fit for it, and delivered them over into the hand of one cruel tyrant after another; and perhaps the cruellest of them all was the man who was emperor of Rome in St. Paul's time.
Therefore it was that St. Paul says to them: Love each other, and obey the laws, ”knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.”
As much as to say: ”Your souls have fallen asleep; you have been in a dark night, not seeing that G.o.d would avenge you of all these sins of yours; that G.o.d's eye was on them: you have fallen asleep and forgotten your forefathers' belief, that G.o.d loves law, and order, and justice, and will punish those who break through them. But now the Lord Jesus, the light of the world, is come to awaken you, and to open your eyes to see the truth about this, and to show you that you are in G.o.d's kingdom, and that G.o.d commands you to repent, and to obey Him, and do justly and righteously. Therefore awake out of your sleep; give up the works of darkness, those mean and wicked habits which were contrary to the good old laws of your forefathers, and which you were at heart ashamed of, and tried to hide even while you indulged in them. Open your eyes, and see that G.o.d is near you, your Judge, your King, seeing through and through your souls, keen and sharp to discern the secret thoughts and intents of the heart, so that all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with whom we have to do.”
And so I may say to you, my friends, it is high time for us to awake out of sleep. The people in England, religious as well as others, have fallen asleep of late years too much about this matter. They have forgotten that G.o.d is King, that magistrates are G.o.d's ministers. They talk as if laws were meant to be only the device of man's will, to serve men's private interests and selfishness; and therefore they have lost very much of their respect for law, and their care to make good laws for the future. And it is high time for us, while all the nations of Europe are tottering and crumbling round us, to awake out of sleep on this matter. We must open our eyes and see where we are. For we are in G.o.d's kingdom. G.o.d's Bible, G.o.d's churches, G.o.d's commandments, and all the solemn old law forms of England witness to us that G.o.d is King, set in the throne which judges right; that order and justice, fellow-feeling and public spirit, are His gifts, His likeness, on which He looks down with loving care and protection; and that if we forget that, and begin to fancy that law stands merely by the will of the many, or by the will of the stronger, or even by the will of the wiser--by any will of man in short; we shall end by neither being able to make just laws any more, nor to obey those which we have, by the blessing of G.o.d, already.
XXVIII--THE EDUCATION OF A HEATHEN
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise, and extol, and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase.--DANIEL iv. 37.
We read for the first lesson to-day two chapters out of the book of Daniel. Those who love to study their Bibles, have read often, of course, not only these two chapters, but the whole book.
And I would advise all of you who wish to understand G.o.d's dealings with mankind, to study this book of Daniel, and especially at this present time.
I do not wish you to study it merely on account of those prophecies in it, which many wise and good men think foretell the dates of our Lord's first and second comings, and of the end of the world. I am not skilled, my friends, in that kind of wisdom. I cannot tell you what G.o.d will do hereafter. But I think that the book of Daniel like the other prophets, tells us what G.o.d is always doing on earth, and so gives us certain and eternal rules by which we may understand strange and terrible events, wars, distress of nations, the fall of great men, and the suffering of innocent men, when we see them happen, as we may see any day--perhaps very soon indeed.
The great lesson, I think, that this book of Daniel teaches us is, that G.o.d is not the Lord of the Jews only, or of Christians only, but of the whole earth; that the heathens are under His moral law and government, as well as we; and that, as St. Peter says, G.o.d is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth G.o.d, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him. For the history of Nebuchadnezzar seems to me to be the history of G.o.d's educating a heathen and an idolater to know Him. And we must always remember, that as far as we can see, it was because Nebuchadnezzar was faithful to the light which he had, that G.o.d gave him more. Of course he had his sins; the Bible tells us what they were; just the sins which one would expect of a man brought up a heathen and an idolater; of one who was a great conqueror, and had gained many b.l.o.o.d.y battles, and learned to hold men's lives very cheap; of one who was an absolute emperor, with no law but his own will, furious at any contradiction; of a man of wonderful power of mind--confident in himself, his own power, his own cunning. But he seems not to have been a bad man, considering his advantages. The Bible never speaks harshly of him, though he carried away the Jews captive to Babylon. In all that fearful war, Nebuchadnezzar was in the right, and the Jews in the wrong; so at least Jeremiah the prophet declared. Nebuchadnezzar saved and respected Jeremiah; and Daniel seems to have regarded the great conqueror with real respect and affection. When Daniel says to him, ”O king, live for ever,” and tells him that he is the head of gold, and prays that his fearful dream may come true of his enemies and not of him, I cannot believe that the prophet was using mere empty phrases of court-flattery. He really felt, I doubt not, that Nebuchadnezzar was a great and good king, as kings went then, and his government a gain (as it easily might be) to the nations whom he had conquered, and that it was good that he should reign as long as possible.
And we may well believe Daniel's interest in this great king, when we consider how teachable Nebuchadnezzar showed himself under G.o.d's education of him, so proving that there was in him the honest and good heart, which, when The Word is sown in it, will bring forth fruit, thirty-fold or a hundred-fold, according to the talents which G.o.d has bestowed on each man.
This first lesson we read in the first chapter of Daniel. He dreamt a dream. He felt that it was a very wonderful one: but he forgot what it was. None of the magicians of Babylon could tell him. A young Jew, named Daniel, told him the dream and its meaning, and declared at the same time that he had found it out by no wisdom of his own, but G.o.d had revealed it to him. Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson, and confessed Daniel's G.o.d to be a G.o.d of G.o.ds and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing that Daniel could reveal that secret; and forthwith, like a wise prince, advanced Daniel and his companions to places of the highest authority and trust.
But Nebuchadnezzar required another lesson. He had learned that the G.o.d of the Jews was wiser than all the planets and heavenly lords and G.o.ds whom the Babylonian magicians consulted; he had not learned that that same G.o.d of the Jews was the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. He had learned that the G.o.d of heaven favoured him, and had helped him toward his power and glory; but he thought that for that very reason the power and glory were his own--that he had a right over the souls and consciences of his subjects, and might make them wors.h.i.+p what he liked, and how he liked.
Three Jews, whom he had set over the affairs of Babylon, refused to wors.h.i.+p the golden image which he had set up, and were cast into a fiery furnace, and forthwith miraculously delivered, and beheld by Nebuchadnezzar walking unhurt and loose in the midst of the furnace, and with them a fourth, whose form was like the form of the Son of G.o.d.
So Nebuchadnezzar was taught that this G.o.d of the Jews was the Lord of men's souls and consciences; that they were to obey G.o.d rather than man. So he was taught that the G.o.d of the Jews was no mere star or heavenly influence who could help men's fortunes, or bestow on them a certain fixed destiny; but a living person, the Lord and Master of the fire, and of all the powers of the earth, who could change and stop those powers at His will, to deliver those who trusted in Him and obeyed Him.
And this lesson, too, Nebuchadnezzar learned. He confessed his mistake upon the spot, just in the way in which we should have expected a great Eastern king to do, though not in the most enlightened or merciful way. He ”blessed the G.o.d of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent His angel, and delivered His servants who trusted in Him. Therefore I make a decree, that every people, nation, and language, which speak anything amiss against the G.o.d of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses be made a dunghill: because there is no other G.o.d that can deliver after this sort.”
But there was still one deep mistake lying in the great king's heart which required to be rooted out. He had learnt that Jehovah, the G.o.d of the Jews, was a revealer of secrets, a master of the fire, a deliverer of those who trusted in Him, a living personal Lord, wise, just, and faithful, very different from any of his star G.o.ds or idols. But he looked upon Jehovah only as the G.o.d of the Jews, as Daniel's G.o.d. He had not yet learnt that G.o.d was HIS G.o.d as well as Daniel's; that Jehovah was very near his heart and mind, and had been near him all his life; that from Jehovah came all his wisdom, his strength of mind, his success, and all which made him differ, not only from his fellow-men, but from the beast; that Jehovah, in a word, was the light and the life of the world, who fills all things and by whom all things consist, deserted by whose inward light, even for a moment, man becomes as one of the beasts which perish. In his own eyes Nebuchadnezzar was still the great self-dependent, self- sufficing conqueror, wiser and stronger than all the men around him.
He thought, most probably, that on account of his wisdom, and courage, and royalty of soul, the G.o.d of heaven had become fond of him and favoured him. In short, he was swollen with pride.
G.o.d sent him again a strange dream, which made him troubled and afraid. He told it to his old counsellor Daniel; and Daniel, at the danger of his life, interpreted it for him; and a very awful meaning it had. A fearful and shameful downfall was to come upon the king; no less than the loss of his reason, and with it, of his throne. But whether this came to pa.s.s or not, depended, like all G.o.d's everlasting promises and threats, on Nebuchadnezzar's own behaviour.
If he repented, and broke off his sins by righteousness, and his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, there was good reason to hope that so his tranquillity might be lengthened.
But the lesson was too hard for the proud conqueror; he did not take the warning. He could not believe that the Most High ruled in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. He still fancied that he, and such as he, were the lords of the world, and took from others by their own power and cunning whatsoever they would. He does not seem to have been angry, however, with Daniel for his plain speaking. Most Eastern kings like Nebuchadnezzar would have put Daniel to a cruel death on the spot as the bearer of evil news, speaking blasphemy against the king; and no one in those times and countries would have considered him wicked and cruel for so doing; but Nebuchadnezzar seems to have learnt too much already so to give way to his pa.s.sion.
Yet, as I said before, he had not learned enough to take G.o.d's warning. The lesson that he was nothing, and that G.o.d is all in all, was too hard for him. And, alas! my friends, for whom of us is it not a hard lesson? And yet it is the golden lesson, the first and the last which man has to learn on earth, ay, and through all eternity: ”I am nothing; G.o.d is all in all.” All in us which is worth calling anything; all in us which is worth having, or worth being; all in us which is not disobedience and shortcoming, failure and mistake, ignorance and madness, filthiness and fierceness, as of the beasts which perish; all strength in us, all understanding, all prudence, all right-mindedness, all purity, all justice, all love; all in us which is worth living for, all in us which is really alive, and not mere death in life, the death of sin and the darkness of the pit--all is from G.o.d the Father of lights, and from Jesus Christ the life and the light, who lighteth every man who cometh into the world, s.h.i.+ning for ever in the darkness of our spirits, though that darkness, alas! too often cannot comprehend, and embrace, and confess Him who is striving to awake it from the dead and give it light.
Hardest of all lessons! Most blessed of all lessons! So blessed, that if we will not let G.o.d teach it us in any other way, it would be good and advantageous to us for Him to teach it us as He taught it to Nebuchadnezzar--good for us to become with him for awhile like the beasts that perish, that we might learn with him to lift up our eyes to heaven, and so have our understandings return to us, and learn to bless the Most High, and not our own wit, and cunning, and prudence; and praise and honour Him that liveth for ever, instead of praising and honouring our own pitiful paltry selves, who are in death in the midst of life, who come up and are cut down like the flower, and never continue in one stay.
”All this came upon the King Nebuchadnezzar.” It seems that after he or his father had destroyed the old Babylon, the downfall of which Isaiah had prophesied, he built a great city, after the fas.h.i.+on of Eastern conquerors, near the ruins of the old one; and ”at the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, The kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat gra.s.s as oxen, and seven times shall pa.s.s over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar.”
What a lesson! The great conqueror of all the East now a brutal madman, hateful and disgusting to all around him--a beast feeding among the beasts: and yet a cheap price--a cheap price--to pay for this golden lesson.
Seven times past over him in his madness. What those seven times were we do not know. They may have been actual years: or they may have been, as I am inclined to think, changes in his own soul and state of mind. But, at the end of the days, the truth dawned on him.