136 NAOMI AND RUTH to cleanse the mind of falsehood, kindle trust and charity, than the most elaborate arguments, or the most eloquent appeals. Naomi is a typical home missionary, and Ruth is the pattern and prophecy of the success that crowns wise and loving labour. Naomi and Ruth and Boaz are still with ns, and their work goes on, blessing and enriching the world. Men may paint dark pictures of our social and political condition, and tell us we are in deep waters-and God knows we have troubles enough !-but it is not all trouble, nor is the sky unbroken! Forget not, all this moral beauty and religious fervour grew in Bethlehem in one of the gloomiest eras of Israel's history: after more than three hundred years of confusion, disorder, and moral decay, broken only by a spasmodic attempt here and there at something better. It was a bright flower growing in a dark bog-a rift in the clouds to let the light through. Genuine God-fed religion maintains itself in the private tranquillity of the home; it does not despair because of "votes of censure," the conflicts of " ins and outs," the noise of a blatant press, the frenzies of a fickle populace, or the forecasts of dismal prophets; but loves and suffers, prays and worships, enjoys and works, assured that the righteous God rules amongst men, and is a sure refuge for all those that put their trust in Him. If then we go to the Psalms of David when we pray and sing; if we find in Isaiah principles to guide our statesmanship at home and our policy abroad; if the Book of Job aids us in solving the problem of the presence of evil in a world administered in love; if from the Judges, and Kings, and Chronicles, we learn the laws which underlie IN GREAT BRITAIN NOW. 137 the building of nations; if the Proverbs condense wisdom into portable phrases we can take to business; if we go to the Gospels and Epistles to know Christ as our wisdom and sanctification, righteousness and redemption, then we ought to keep Ruth within hand-reach in every part of our homes, as a book that reveals the Divine in the home, and the human in God, as much, if not more, than any other book of the Old Testament; a book that says, in sorrow, "Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, and in acts of mercy to the needy of your own household"; a book that whispers the deep secret of human blessedness, even a true, sustained, and inspired, self-sacrificing love; a book that repeats to hearts blighted by bereavement and oppressed with care, the domestic evangel, God will do all things well, if only we are brave and trustful in Him. 超 "HUSHED was the evening hymn, The temple courts were dark, The lamp was burning dim Before the sacred ark! When suddenly a voice Divine Rang through the silence of the shrine. "The old man, meek and mild, The priest of Israel, slept; His watch the temple-child, The little Levite, kept; And what from Eli's sense was sealed, "O! give me Samuel's ear, The open ear, O Lord, Alive and quick to hear Each whisper of Thy word: Like him to answer at Thy call, And to obey Thee first of all." J. D. BURNS, Present Day Inspiration. "AND THE LORD CAME AND STOOD, AND CALLED AS AT OTHER TIMES, SAMUEL, SAMUEL. THEN SAMUEL ANSWERED, SPEAK, FOR THY SERVANT HEARETH." -1 Samuel iii. 10. Does God speak to our children to-day as He did to this lad Samuel? Do messages and forces that clear the day's work, chasten the spirit, gladden the heart, impart invincible energy and stimulate the larger life of the world, reach us now, as they did the dedicated soul of this son of Hannah three thousand years ago? Is it given to us to see the truth without intervening veil, to feel its glowing and irrepressible heat, and to utter it with persuasive and cleansing eloquence, or are God's prophets all dead, even to the last man, and the whole succession ended for ever and ever? I do not ask does God speak to us in an audible voice, and in dictionary English, freed from all the possible obscurities that cling like a glutinous coat to our every-day speech. For you know well enough that the form is not, and never can be, of the essence of a message. Methods 140 REVELATION AND are details. Spiritual impulse and enlightenment, life and power, are all in all, the Alpha and Omega of Inspiration. By telephone or telegraph, by written letter or printed page; by lucid speech or the sympathetic contact of a visible but voiceless human presence; by the magnetic and mysterious transfusion from a quickening biography of the influence of a far-away soul of real greatness, or the still more inexplicable potency of a haunting memory; ideas and impressions, convictions and enthusiasms, may find their way to us and subdue us to the finest issues. Science itself forbids a materialistic faith and pushes us, with pained eyes, to the rim of the unseen universe; and ill indeed should we have "learned Christ" if we did not know that, as it was "expedient" for the Apostles that the Incarnate Lord should leave the narrow streets of an earthly disciple-life, in order that the Spirit might take His place, and fill the expanding "City of God" as it spread over the wide world, so it is "expedient for us," not to hear the Voice of God approaching us by one sense in the stillness of the night, as did young Samuel, but rather to find Him standing over against all our faculties and experiences and filling the entire compass of our manifold and growing being. "Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more,” for “we look not at the things which are seen": the pipes of the organ, the structure of the vocal chords, the wires of the telegraphist; but at the things which are not seen, the message of Divine love, the evangel of pardon, the music that frees the heart of care and fills it with joy. "For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." |