Page images
PDF
EPUB

bringing down the Christian. Solomon first married idolatrous wives, and then worshipped their false gods. The wickedness spoken of here is idolatry. Love is jealous, and can be easily pained. In such spirit God bemoaned over them saying, “Ephraim is joined to idols. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?" Alas! ours may be some idol of the heart, some sin that easily besets us. God will measure it and us, and we shall reap as we have sown; we shall sorrow according to the sin. Striking image is this ephah. And striking attitude is it of God as Supreme Judge and Arbiter, sitting enthroned in the midst of all circumstances, and weighing the actions of nations and men in His divine balances. The lead brought into the picture lay in the ephah resting, settled there, as did Israel rest in her idolatry. Thus was it with David in the case of Uriah, ere the prophet came to him. He had no conscience of his sin; he was resting in it. The woman was sitting in the midst of the ephah, reminding us we may be tranquil under sin, as if we were at home in it. The thought ought to fill us with a holy fear lest we enter into temptation. Observe how the lead was put down upon the mouth. You can almost hear it said, "That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." But what was done with it all?

"Behold, there came out two women . . . and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven." God is wanting to show how, in mercy to Israel, He will take it away, and put it down in its place, where was the beginning of idolatry-Shinar, the seed-bed of corporate hostility to God. These build it an house in Shinar. Can this be Babylon? No city now existing answers to the Babylon of Revelation. By no ingenuity of explanation can it be Rome; she has her own sins to answer for. Why not a city yet to be built at Shinar? Some believe it will be so; and as the ephah represents commerce, it may yet be a vast metropolis of commerce for the East. But whether it be a city yet to come, or merely mystical, a doom is to fall upon it. God is going to put His mark on this special wickedness. And should it mean a new centre of this world's godless traffic, as indicated by the house, it will be "set upon her own base," a thing to be seen by all, and finally to be doomed. And now think. What has God done with our own wickedness? Where have wings borne our sins?

Blessed for the child of God, "their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." Instead of Shinar, we have Calvary, where justice has spent itself, and we are "accepted in the Beloved." "Safe in the arms of Jesus."

XII.

The Crowning Day.

[blocks in formation]

Twelfth Part.

THE CROWNING DAY.

"Take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua.”—ZECH. vi. II.

HESE crowns were real. They were no mere

THE

visions, but realities to be seen, that the eye may affect the mind and the heart. It was God's way of illustrating the priestly royalty of His own Son, the supremacy of Him who is yet to govern the world. Mr. Krause remarks "it was thus, to the prophet's mind, the land of Israel-that little corner of the earth was yet the citadel of the world's hope, the hearth on which the sparks that were yet to kindle the earth were kept alive." And truly it is so; for there will take place the great re-action against the world's sin. As in the secret of the mountains the springs are fed which create the great rivers, so in the secret purpose of God they saw this re-action would come. Were we to trace the course of a stream, we should not count the large morasses or the stagnant pools; we should

« PreviousContinue »