Ruth, an idyll of the olden time

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RUTH

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I. An Idyll of the Olden Time 9

II. The Parting, The Cleaving and the

Chapter I An Idyll Of The Olden Time

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Antiquity has a beauty all its own.

" The past will always win A glory from its being far."

Outlines grow soft and gracious in the far off. The great stands cleared of hard detail. The good is stripped to the very essence of it and stands all worthy. The ancient fascinates with the charm of all history, is suffused with the mystery of the ages. What one sees in the old world is only more effective than what he sees in the new for that which it suggests to the imagination. It is not what you see, but that with which it floods the imagination and wakens the historic sense, that enthralls you on the Rhine, in Egypt, in Palestine, or in the Place de la Concorde.

I bring you in these studies a book full of the color and flavor of a very high and genuine antique. Few bits of literature antedate it. It is io Ruth

as rich and smooth as the ' ' Old Falernian ' ' of which the Latin poets were wont to sip and sing. ' The " Book of Ruth " is a simple Idyll of the very olden time ; told us, may be, by the prophet Samuel, when he was not in preaching mood, or, possibly, when he was at the very best of his preacher's art. But whoever or whenever the writer may have been or lived, he did almost the daintiest bit of literature that ever was in this recital of an incident of the times, which had fallen under his own eye or had been handed down from his predecessors.

The author, with perfection of art, is completely hidden. We have no possible interest in his discovery. His characters are not puppets, obviously performing by wire-pulls of the man behind the screen, who is forever peeping round the corner to see the effects ! They just stand there and live and move and talk in the very freedom and fulness of nature.

^ I said that the prophet was not in a preaching mood, or else was in the best of that mood, for he stays to draw no moral, awards no praise nor blame. Like a master, he just lets the play go on, apparently caring nothing to make his personages seem one thing or another, merely setting them out and letting them go. And how sweetly, beautifully, grandly they do it ! The pictures which we shall see stand, each in itself, so complete and absolute in the perfection of an almost incomparable simplicity of beauty, — they rise so

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by a pen-stroke, and stand immortal in a sentence or two ; they are changed, related, and moved so as by touch of a magician's wand, only that the magician is nature, that the effect of the whole is an absolute unity. The subordinate figures and scenes are merely traced and glanced at. No tragic attitudes are struck at the death of the father and the sons, on which a novice, or a bungler, or a prophet-preacher who was less than a master would certainly have shaken himself out for effect. That would have been sheer bungle and excrescence. Family, famine, flight, death, marriages, ten years of life, deaths again, are all managed amply in a half dozen curt sentences. The womanly, gossiping wonder at Bethlehem on the return of Naomi and Ruth is admirably put — so as to be perfectly clear — yet half hidden in a single Hebrew feminine pronoun, one simple question and one magnificent burst of pathetic reply, — a reply so full of the austere beauty and grand dignity of an utter sorrow that the gossiping wonder of the women is awed into respectful silence, — that it bows all hearts in every age into reverence for the sorrows and the soul out of which such answer could come. All their life in Moab and Bethlehem is set out and covered in a few half parentheses, which yet command into clearest view the elaborated detail with which the main incidents are so effectively enrobed. At the end there is no grand glorification over the setting of this sweet woman of Moab into the motherhood of David and David's greater son, but a cold genealogical table half

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covering, yet fully revealing, the object of the book. While the incidents not making directly to the outcome, but merely filling in the needful backgrounds, are dealt with so summarily, these main figures and incidents in chief are dwelt on with a lingering and unhurried fulness in which you can see how the heart of the poet is feasting itself on the gracious beauty of the scenes which he so graphically portrays, — how he has fallen in love with the personages so unconsciously taking their places in world's history not only, but in its highest literature as well.

The purity, simplicity and dignity of the style /of the story is wonderful. Its beauty in all the drapery of circumstance is admirable. The clear-cut individuality, distinctness and natural interplay of its personages is perfection itself. The easy and absolute pre-eminence of its three chief figures merely set out and off by all the rest, is accomplished with a master's skill, while the sententious but unforced brevity of the whole is past praise. Its series of incidents, persons, and dramatic situations pass before the reader with a vividness and enchanting beauty to which I hardly know where in letters sacred or profane to point out any near approach. Perhaps the story of the raising of Lazarus may equal it in its delicate touches. I have read that Franklin, while minister to France, was at a gathering of the literati of France, where each was to read some choice fragment of literature. He chose and read this story of Ruth. When he had finished, several

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of the group hastened to thank him for the strangely beautiful selection, and to ask him where he had found it. Of the literary art and merit of the little, old story too much cannot well be said. This rural idyll of the old time went fitly into the series of "Little Classics," which, I suppose, stands on the shelves of most of your libraries. It is a gem of purest ray, — a "classic" for all time. Through three thousand years to come as through the three thousand years of its past popularity, will it be admired and loved by all lovers of good letters.

To the story, then. The time is somewhere in the rough four hundred )^ears following the death of Joshua, midway, perhaps. During this period, from something more than fourteen hundred years before Christ to about eleven hundred, fifteen judges ruled, some of them women, some men, some good in the main, some bad on the whole, but all mixed, like Samson, though on the average better than he, and all of them quite as good as the times and the people deserved or could appreciate. The man for any time must be of it. Some of them held something like a regular governing office. Others sprang up at an emergency and then settled back into the mass of the people. Some of them swayed an authority which reached all the tribes. Others had influence with but one or two of them, or only on one or other side of the Jordan. They were raised up with special qualities for special occasions. That Jehovah used them for an occasion is no token

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that he approved them as characters or sanctioned their performances. Judas, Pilate, false witnesses and murderers, were used of God in effecting the atonement for the sins of the world. Even the devil has his function in the scheme of grace.

Israel through all this time was ever and anon lapsing into idolatry and outrageous sin ; was ever being caught of judgment and tossed back into sacrifice and worship ; was in no real sense a nation, but a disorderly and confused grouping of loosely-gathered tribal families, less than half recovered from an absolute savagery, fighting for a precarious foothold on either side of the Jordan. They never got fairly down to the Meditteranean, their boundary on the one hand, nor out toward the Euphrates on the other. They were often worsted and pushed close to the last ditch, but always preferred slavery, under whatever of heathenisms, to death. The ' ' chosen people ■ ' were in a sad, chaotic case for the most part, often in peril of starvation through irregular tillage, and in jeopardy from the incursions of fierce neighbors, or hatcheled under the express judgments of their neglected and forsaken God.

Somewhere in this chaotic time lived a Jewish family of note at Bethlehem, Elimelech's. ' 'What's in a name?" Why, much, as we shall see. Elimelech is an aristocratic name, a pious name. ' ' God is king ' ' is its meaning. A branch of royalty its bearer. ' ' Naomi ' ' means ' ' my pleasantness, f ' * ' my delight, ' ' ' 4 my glory. " ' ' Orpah ' ' is a fawn. "Ruth" is either a " friend" or a

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' ' rose. ' ' Our Ruth is the sweet ' ' rose ' ' of Moab. This family of property, standing, and good blood in Bethlehem, — town yet to be of great repute in the sacred history of the world, — had fallen into straits. Crops had failed. Enemies had ravaged their fields and rifled their properties, likely. They were destitute, afflicted and tormented. What shall they do ? "We at least have feet left to w r alk with," said Elimelech, embittered. "Out of this everlasting peril and turmoil of harrassed and ravaged Israel let us get ! The Jordan is fordable, let us hope, and there are the safe mountains and splendid pastures and the secure heritage of stout, unvexed Moab the other side." They decide and they go. To be sure Israel is the people of God. With them are his altars and his promises. They are turning their backs on Jehovah and his people, but then that people is shamed, tormented, starving, at lowest ebb. To be sure there is explicit and oft-reiterated Divine prohibition of this kind of thing which they are doing. They — this peculiar people — are not to have anything to do with the idolators around them, must not touch them save with the keen edge of the sword or the glittering point of the spear. These old-time Jews haven't religion enough to be set at converting anybody else. Who has not enough for that must not touch anybody else lest he be himself perverted. Not having their religion in saving measure for others, they must be kept carefully away from idolatry lest they themselves become idolators. Just so

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now. Multitudes haven't enough of Christ to touch the world anywhere with salvation, so not enough to touch it at all without plunging into all its defilements.

Elimelech and Naomi, — a woman not much likely to be led blind by any husband, and none the worse a wife or woman for that, — Elimelech and Naomi know all these prohibitions, understand them clearly enough, but they say, "We can't stay here with our boys to perish. Besides, these boys of ours will be pushing off into these endless wars and getting themselves killed. What does this musty old prohibition amount to, any way ? And surely this people and church of God are not much good to anybody. Just as well off outside it. One has got to take care of himself and his children, it is likely. Jehovah doesn't do it much here, anyhow. He will help them who help themselves, I reckon. Come, get we out of this to Moab." So they argued and so they went. Now do not let us be too sharp on them. For a living, if driven to it, are there not amongst us some who would venture to transgress some word of God ? Even in our better light and richer grace and dearer revelation of God in Christ than any which had come to Elimelech and Naomi, are there not some in our churches who, not famine-struck nor for sheer life, but for trifling allurements of pleasure, convenience, repute, applause or gain, would venture some like defiance of some will of God ? Some like desertion of His People ? Some kindred insult to His honor ?

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There is a Christian man doing a business which he has no right to touch with so much as a finger. His life is in it. He has defied God and moved over into Moab ! There is one doing a business, right enough in itself, but in methods and on principles that defy God's law. He has gone over into Moab. There is a woman chasing tinselled, painted, enamelled, naked fashions which Christian woman has no right to follow. She has turned her back on Zion and God and moves in Moab and is, more is the pity, bringing up her children there, or having Moabitish servants do it for her. Here are at least nominal Christian folk chasing hungrily after every toy, vanity, pleasure of world, flesh and Devil, saying, " Shall we stay here under the shadow of Christ's church and wing, and mope and starve and see these gay things out there ? Come, let us up and off" and out to Moab!" And they go, — flocking, they and theirs, — which is worse! That they who are of Israel should rear their children as half heathens and idolators, as in Moab ! Do not let us, then, put too much blame on Elimelech and Naomi, that they in their blind, confused old time, their but very partial light, and their great temptation, should have turned their backs on a people, — God's people by His election, indeed, — but not very much yet by their own choice, and about as much hatchelled by His judgments as blessed in His favors, and gone to the hills of stout, safe and stable — though idolatrous — Moab; that they should have disregarded a command of His

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which seemed to them very inconvenient and not very important and gone just over the border into Moab to save themselves from very great and very imminent sufferings and perils. Precisely, who is quite qualified for the first stone-flinging? Martyrstuff is not common! The prophet-preacher does not moralize about their sin. Perhaps they did wisely, then ? But see ! He writes down a fact here of, it may be, some solemn significance.

Elimelech did not starve nor meet any further inconvenience in Israel and Bethlehem, but he presently died in Moab ! And Jehovah, in those days, however He may have forgotten it in ours, certainly did take a strong, clear hand in the affairs of men. Elimelech soon died in Moab. May be it was not wise of him in his mere human desire, judgment, and will, to defy the command of God, turn his back on His people and move to Moab. It looks like that. That is worth thinking on. Verily, it looks as if it would have been worth his while to take his chances with God and His people.

Moses did better when he, in harder case, chose affliction with His people rather than a place aud heirdom in the palaces of kings. I do believe that it is worth a man's while to take all the chances with God and His church rather than against them. He, with one, or without one, is the majority in this universe. Things have got to go His way, and all that will not do that must crash and burn. And while you are thinking on it, are there not in our time many and many of

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these chasers out into Moab who have come to grievous hurt of it? To sin, shame, and a temporal ruin ? To wreck of character, name, and even to death in spiritual things ? Dead names, are there not, on our church lists ? Can you get more than half of the people on your church records to answer the roll-call to duty for instant service ? Dead names on the lists ; dead weights on the church's hands ; dead wood to clutter the clear flow of the river of salvation ! Souls so dead that no voice can wake them to privilege or obligation — so dead that one fears that they will never so much as hear the sound of the trumpet of the First Resurrection !

When you think of it, friends, conscious of having run a good deal into Moab after its vanities, idols, sins, — when you think seriously of it — are you not getting something numb, insensible, incapable of spiritual motion already, — cold, cold in hand and foot and limb, — a chill creeping, creeping clear up to the heart ? This, my friend, this is — what? Is it dying or a paralysis from which one may recover? Is it Elimelech's doom upon a sorer than Elimelech's sin ? Would it not be wise for you to come straight back to Israel and Israel's God to-day, without a moment's hesitancy ? Come ! I am persuaded it would be wise. Come and bring back with you sons and daughters of Moab as well as your own, to trust under the wings of our God ! Come now, for it was not long after Elitnelech went to Moab that he died. I am afraid

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that some of us may have been over there about as long as we ought to expect the divine patience to let us live there !

Elimelech was dead. It might have been well then for the sons if Naomi had taken the solemn hint and gone back to God and Israel. But the sons were grown. They had gotten well used to Moab and liked it. If they had ever had any particular love for Bethlehem they had forgotten it. They had found their friends and formed their attachments over here. In truth, two fair daughters of the idolatrous race had found lodgment in their hearts: Orpah the "Fawn," and Ruth the ' ' Rose. " ' ' A little difference in race, ■ ' they said, ' ' but what of that ? Moab is descended from Lot anyway, and so of kindred.' ' "I hope we know that it is a good thing to mingle the qualities — the strength, beauty and blood of diverse strains,' ' said Mahlon. And Chilion answered, " Aye, aye, my brother " ; and then, "A trifle difference, too, in religion, may be, but these people have treated us well, enough better than the Jews treat strangers. They are just as good as we. What is a little matter of belief, anyway ? These folks honestly believe in Baal and Moloch and Ashtaroth. It doesn't matter what a man believes if he be sincere. It is the straight life that tells. Then these sweet little women ! They are enough better than we [and right true that was, too] and worth all the shrill Jewesses in Bethlehem. They are of good stock, too, and so fair, and they love us. No matter if

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there be a bit of difference in religion. We haven't enough of that to make any great contrast/ ' " Aye, aye, brother, you are wiser than your years," answered Mahlon ; " and those same little maidens, — we will marry them, in right honest fashion and with right good will. You shall set your Rose in your bosom and I will take my Fawn to my arms, let come what will." Well, what would you have had these boys do but marry them? And they did it, doubtless, with great merry-make, over there amongst the hills of Moab, very likely with some " harmless M ceremonies of libation to the goddess of heathen love. To be sure there was an old-time statute of Jehovah that they should do no such thing — denouncing hurt against it. But what of that ? Shall not a man marry the woman he loves, or a woman the man she loves, when he woos her and she can ? Besides, Mahlon and Chilion have become pretty well used by this time to disregarding the statutes of Jehovah.

Shall divergence of religious faith bar marriage between loving hearts ? Mahlon and his brother thought not, set their judgment against the command of God. Naomi evidently approved, and the wives proved sweet, gentle and gracious women, enough better than any of their own countrywomen would have been, they doubtless thought. Who shall say that the thing was not well and wisely done ? The Prophet-preacher does not preach about their sin, but only states a significant fact. Mahlon and Chilion both presently

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died childless, out of the loving arms of their sweet wives and of their mother, over there in the home in Moab. And in those days, however he may have forgotten it now, Jehovah did take a clear, strong hand in the affairs of men, and took pains, apparently, to see to it that disobedience should not seem the way of blessedness. May be he does not mind it now, but he used to do so. And it is singular that these three men of this family should have died so on the heels of their disobedience. Hark, now ! I am not drawing from this the lesson, which some would be sure to do, and which some of you may be expecting of me, that no Christian should ever encourage or marry an unrenewed suitor. While this was a very necessary requirement for the Jews of the olden time, surrounded on every hand by all grossness of idolatry, to which they were themselves mightily prone, I do not believe that it is a prohibition for Christians in our time, though I do believe that the chance of a blessed life in marriage and of a holy, heavenly home on earth, stands largely in the Christian character of the husband and the wife, the father and the mother. I believe that if there be no sympathy and union in these vastest and most tender common concerns of two souls in marriage, there can not be that highest and fullest felicity which God means when of twain he would make one flesh and of two souls one life. Out of unison in these great sections of heart, life, labor, hope and aim, there cannot be that complete harmony which is the

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supreme happiness of this wedded life. Separated so in character, interest and, alas, in destiny, how full of fear and pain must life be, and death ! May God of his heavenly grace grant it, that every Christian wife's husband and ever Christian husband's wife may come speedily to love and trust and rejoice in the blessed Christ ! Then these homes shall know a holy gladness in which they never shined before.

The only lesson which I am drawing is simply this, that not for any motive nor on any plea is there safety, wisdom, or hope of good in neglecting or transgressing the known will of God.

Stricken Naomi ! Her husband dead, her sons in their graves in unhallowed soil ! Stripped of her beloved, her possessions gone ! Nearer now to hunger and nakedness than ever before ; without support, protection, youth, vigor or courage, in those first days of her crushing woe ! Her heart, I think, began to be very sore for her part in the disobediences which have come to such disaster. O Naomi ! Stricken through and through, subdued, broken, turn you now to Israel and Israel's God — your forsaken people and your forsaken God ! Jehovah has given His people prosperity, plenty and peace. You are self-outcast, very naked, utterly needy and utterly helpless. Turn now thought, eyes, heart, feet, back towards those despised hills of Judea, those mountains of Zion, on which gloriously the morning sun, but more radiantly the light of God's favor glows, in* whose vales and on whose shining slopes dwell

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the chosen, happy people who through tribulation waited patient for the Lord till he should visit them with mercy, — who through darkness of all the night of their trouble, still believed and obeyed, and the sun of a splendid morning has dawned upon them. Naomi, Naomi ! They that wait on Jehovah in a patient suffering and obedience find blessedness alway. They who break away from the divine direction always stumble and come to grief, first or last. Naomi, perhaps there be better days for you yet in Israel. There is nothing for you here. May be you will find some poor wreckage of your old estate in Bethlehem. Jubilee coming may restore. Israel is careful of inheritances and kindly to its poor, then as now. The experiment of Moab is dead failure, — utter disaster any way. So, lonely, poor, helpless, broken with intolerable sorrow, full of misery, convicted in the great deep soul of her, for after all it was that kind of a soul, of her folly and her sin ; sick of empty, grave-filled Moab, homesick for her own people and her God, she turns towards the shining hills of Judah — away from Moab and the idols, towards Israel and Jehovah !

These two tender human hearts of Orpah and Ruth, stricken by the same blows that have broken Naomi, aye, they may come with her if they will, but she will walk the weary way back to God. These graves of husband and sons? Even them will she leave to walk her way in heart-break back to Israel and to God. I can see her, away there through the solemn vista of the

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ages, weeping, with Orpah and Ruth at her knees, weeping by the graves, spreading her hands on the turf and kissing the sod made sacred by the sleep it shelters. I see, then, the far-off look come into her furrowed but yet strong, beautiful, and noble face. She sees in her vision the sunset on the hills of Judah and the towers of Bethlehem. She is hearing the chant of the Priests in the Court of the Tabernacle and beholding the smoke of the Evening Sacrifice and the fragrant Incense from the altars of the God of her fathers. She is remembering how in the old days she, with Elimelech and Mahlon and Chilion used to go up together, proud and joyful, with the thronging thousands, to make their yearly offerings and render their grateful worship. " I will arise and go ' ' is the final resolution of her chastened soul. She tells it her weeping daughters, I think, there by the graves. Small need has she of preparation, for they are very poor, and the abjectly poor can move without inconvenience. And she must go afoot, to throw herself empty-handed upon her .people and her God. Strong and final in her decisions, she is ready by the morning for her weary journey — her face set Zionward. Naomi, after long self-will and error, separation from God and His people and His courts ; after long, — and, to her poor heart, terrible, — discipline of pain, poverty and desolating sorrow, with face set Godward, is walking humbly, penitently, and all unwittingly towards her glory, riches, peace and fame ! Here we must leave her now, only stop-

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ping, with no great art, for it needs little, to apply one reflection more.

The Church in every age and generation has, how many souls none can number, fitly typified by this Naomi in her disobedience and departure ; and many others, though not so many, like her in their sore and long chastisement, and many, albeit fewer still, like her in their penitent and broken-hearted return to peace and rest with Christ and His people. Many bear the name of Christ, hold some loose notion of loyalty, but separate themselves much from his own, from His ordinances and His Spirit, go away from their Zion into Moab for their fellowships and true heart-life and home, till they have, conscious^, little of life in Him, little of fellowship, joy or peace in His presence, communion or Spirit. They are walking after the devices of their own hearts, cold, careless, in the world and of it, dwelling at ease, not in Zion but in Moab ! One of two things now. They may be left at ease, untroubled, to burial in Moab, as not Christ's at all, as "let alone/ ' abandoned to their fate. They have chosen finally and must abide their choice. But if they be really Christ's, then surely as Heaven is pitiful and Christ is kind, will they be roused and tossed and driven by keen and winnowing troubles. Naomi had been lost with the idolaters over there, her name blotted out from the records of Israel and the book of God, but Elimelech died, Mahlon died, Chilion died, her living was taken away. So by sharpest

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handling of tribulation she was brought again to herself and her loving Lord.

O wanderer from your vows and your Christ, if you will not be won back by His patient mercies, sure as that Christ loves and salvation waits you, He will commission severities to bring you back, that in depth of trouble you may turn with a bleeding soul to His feet ! He may touch you in estate that prosperities wither and fortunes vanish, or in your flesh till it be weakening to decay, or in heart and home till the beloved fade away, or in your ambitions to crumble them. He may suffer that you fall into gross sins, so to appall you to shame and repentance, to His feet and life in Him. It took a fall into adultery and murder to bring David back from his lusts. Thousands from behind prison bars, or out of the disgrace and horror of outrageous offenses have fled afresh to their long-forsaken Lord ! In truth, there be perhaps many in the church, — self-confident, correct, at ease, whom nothing is so likely to startle into sense of peril and waken into a true life in Christ as some great lapse into gross sin. Would one of these men but steal a sheep and be caught at it, a prophet of the Lord could get down on him and be effective. "You miserable sinner and hypocrite ! In the Church, indeed ! That stolen sheep there ! Tremble ! Cry to God or perish ! " And, indeed, out there far away from Christ, worldly, unseeking for divine grace, lured of the Devil, here is the most likely way of the saving mercy of God. But, somehow, to every one of