THE LAMP AND THE LANTERN.
No. 3.
There is one other character, noticeable for none of those traits which mark the life of Saul; yet of an order to which no one, we think, will be unwilling to pay deserved tribute,—which next claims our attention.
Two men—the one in the prime of manly vigor, the other has passed the ordinary limits of human life—are standing on the banks of the Jordan. The one is arrayed in royal garments, the other in a pastoral garb,—for during many a long year has he led his flocks beside the still waters, and made them to lie down in the green pastures of Gilead.
The snows of four-score years have fallen softly upon his head, and his “brow has grown wrinkled like the brown sea sand from which the tide of life is ebbing.” The friends of his youth are asleep with their fathers; the playmates of his childhood have also been laid in the cold and silent sepulchres of Nebo or Pisgah. With the Poet he exclaims,
He is blind.
To him taste has lost its sweetness; music, its melody.
David—for it is he who wears the robes of royalty,—insists on his aged friend accompanying him to Jerusalem.
Noble-hearted old Barzillai replies, that he will go a little way with him beyond Jordan, but adds, “Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried in the grave of my father and my mother.”
How beautiful! how touching! how true to nature!
The winter of age is not severe enough to wither the blossoms of youth!——
A storm is raging on the sea of Galilee; the heavens are black with clouds; the moaning of the billows, as they dash against the sides of the vessel, falls on the ear with a peculiar loneliness; the winds are howling fearfully through the rigging; an occasional flash of lightning, as it darts athwart the waters, reveals to the eye many a face pale with fear, and many a form struggling nobly with the furious elements.
There is on that vessel an old weather-beaten sailor, whose home is the bosom of the lake. Hardship and exposure have rendered him perfectly reckless as to danger. His brow shows no signs of fear; his noble heart throbs only with emotions of fearless daring.
A familiar voice is heard above the fury of the winds, the roar of the waves.
The practiced ear of the sturdy old sailor quickly catches the sound, recognizes it as his Master’s voice, and with impetuous zeal and unshaken confidence, makes an attempt to rush into his embrace.
Though this Galilean fisherman doubtless possessed a rough exterior, yet his heart was easily warmed into expressions of the deepest love, and quickly melted to tears.
At one time we behold him, with that quick impetuosity which so peculiarly distinguished him, cutting off the ear of a high priest’s servant; at another, going out into retirement, and weeping with intense bitterness.
In no instance is his ardent temperament more plainly shown, than the one in which Christ appears to His disciples by the dim twilight of morning on the shores of Galilee. It is he who hastily girds his fisher’s coat about him, casts himself into the sea and swims with longing earnestness to the shore.
It is true there are some acts in this noble apostle’s life over which we should like to throw the mantle of forgetfulness; yet there is much worthy of admiration and imitation.
No one ever suffered more than he on account of his errors; no one of the apostles labored with more self-denying application for his Master’s cause; and we are sure no one received a richer reward.
We know not with any degree of certainty how he died, though tradition informs us that he was crucified, with his head towards the earth, thus showing he never forgot, to the last hour of his life, that one act of denial which caused him so many bitter tears, such intense anguish of spirit.
There are many other lovely characters which, did time permit, we should love to dwell upon.
Let us read God’s word with more diligence and greater earnestness in the future than we have in the past: let us lay its sacred truths up in our hearts, and practice them in our lives.
Oh! let us rejoice, that this lamp does not shed its light on a chosen few, but that its rays have penetrated many a land of darkened ignorance and fiendish cruelty, scattering joy and happiness in habitations where sorrow and misery once had their abode.
Let us thank God, that leaves from this Tree of Life have been wafted by propitious breezes throughout the length and breadth of the world. They are to be found in the hut of the Esquimaux, the hovel of the African, the wigwam of the Indian, in the cottage of the laborer, in the palace of the lord, floating on the surface of the Ganges, fringing the borders of the Nile.
Rural Retirement, Va.