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Momen of the Bible

THE KITCHELL COMPOSITE MADONNA

mm Mt Biff^

Zhc Eminent

Dlvlnea

JOHN W. CHADWICK

RABBI OU8TAV OOTTHEIL

LYMAN ABBOTT

HENRY VAN DYKE

W. H. P. FAUNCE

RICHARD OREEN MOULTON

BISHOP JOHN F. HURST
EDWARD B. COE
BISHOP WILUAM C. DOANE
NEWELL DWIGHT HILUS
BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER
CARDINAL GIBBONS

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Ibarper & firotbcra publlabera

Dew Iffotd an& XonDon

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CopTiight, 1900, by Harpbk & Brothers.

';' CONTENTS

">^

PAGB

\ Eve 3

,^ * Sarah '. 21

-) , Rebekah 39

, ^^\^';^MIRIAM 57

^ A J '^.Deborah - . . 75

-'.,;••* Ruth, THE Gleaner 89

^ y " ^

^ . Hannah 105

^^\'\\ Jezebel 121

;' .^Esther 137

Mary Magdalen 149

Mary and Martha 161

The Blessed Virgin Mary 171

375351

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE KITCHELL COMPOSITE MADONNA FrMUUpitct

^EVE Facing pagt 4

•^ SARAH " 22

^ REBEKAH " 40

«^^M1RIAM ** 58

/ DEBORAH " 76

/^RUTH, THE GLEANER ** 90

y HANNAH ** 106

•OEZEBEL " 122

^ESTHER " 138

MARY MAGDALEN " 150

MARY AND MARTHA " 162

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY " 172

EVE

1^ goes without saying that Eve's place
among the women of the Bible is second
to no other. Her place in Christian the-
ology has been as important as her place as
"mother of us all," and yet, strangely enough,
her name is mentioned in the whole Bible but
four times — twice in the Old Testament and
twice in the New. This is not, however, the
only instance in which the importance of a term
in historical theology has been out of all pro-
portion with its prominence in the Bible. The
great doctrine of the Trinity is a remarkable
case in point It has played a leading part in
historical theology, but in the Bible there is no
mention of it whatsoever, whether or not, as
some think, there are statements in which it
exists potentially, and from which it can be log-
ically inferred.

The careful reader will notice that there are

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

in Genesis two very different accounts of wom-
an's first appearance on the creative scene; the
first in chap, i., 26-28; the second in chap, ii.,
4-25. They afford one of the happiest illustra-
tions of that theory of the Pentateuch's composite
character which was first broached by Astruc,
a French physician, midway of the last century.
It has been fiercely contested, but its acceptance
is now one of the commonplaces in which all
biblical scholars are agreed. As Hebrew docu-
ments both of these stories were doubtless of late
(and perhaps foreign) origin. Nothing could be
further from the truth than to suppose that the
Bible was written in its present order — first
Genesis, then Exodus, and so on. Large por-
tions of the Pentateuch were written during or
after the exile, and it 'did not reach its present
form until the Alexandrian period, after 330 b.c.
That the first account, that of the Elohist, so
called, is of a loftier strain than that of the Yah-
wehist, is universally agreed. No part of the
Bible is more frankly anthropomorphic than the
latter and the next following chapter, which re-
cites the story of the Fall. The god Yahweh

9
*

EVE

walks in the garden in the cool of the day, avoid-
ing the uncomfortable heat; he brings the ani-
mals to Adam to be named, and discovers that
there is none among them that will make a good
helpmeet for him; when. Adam hides himself
Yahweh cannot at first tell where he is; he
cross-questions him about the fatal tree; he is
afraid that he will eat of the tree of life and so
live forever, and, unable (apparently) to destroy
the virtue of the tree, he drives Adam and Eve
out of the garden and sets cherubim with flam-
ing swords to prevent their coming back. All
this is charmingly naive, but it does not attain to
the dignity of the first account of the creation.
There the word of God creates the man and
woman at once in His own image, while in the
second account the man is made from the wet
dust of the ground and the woman from a bone
of his body. An equally important difference is
that in the first account man is the climax of
creation, while in the second the creation of
man precedes the creation of the vegetable and
animal world.

The understanding that in the two narrations

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

we have a continuous history was fruitful of legen*
dary explanations from an early period Apocry*
phal, rabbinicali and Mohammedan writers have
conceived that the woman whose creation is de-
scribed in the first chapter of Genesis was Adam's
first wife, Lilith by namei and Eve his second.
Many and strange have been the changes rung
upon this fanciful interpretation. Eve herself
has hardly played a more dramatic part in graphic
and poetic art than Lilith. She is once men-
tioned in the Bible, in Isaiah xxxiv., 14, where
her name is translated " screech-owl " in the King
James translation and " night - monster " in the
Revised, with "Lilith" in the margin, which the
Polychrome Isaiah gives in the body of the text.
The legends conceived her as a mother of devils
begotten of Satan. Professor Cheyne says that
charms to annul her malign influence are pur-
chasable in the East London of to-day. In our
own time her legend has assumed its most poetic
form in Rossetti's brilliant and appalling " Eden
Bower."

"Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft, sweet woman."

EVE

She is made fundamental to the temptation of
Adam, and this idea is apparently embodied in
Michael Angelo's Sistine fresco of the Tempta-
tion and Expulsion, in which the serpent's hideous
coil about the tree develops in its branches into a
woman's sensual shape with streaming golden hair.
The " new woman," of whom we hear so much,
will perhaps incline to regard Lilith favorably,
seeing that the reason commonly assigned for
her inability to live happily with Adam is that
she claimed equality with him on the ground
that they were both made at one cast. (Some
of the legends say that at first they were joined
together back to back and that God hewed
them asunder.) Lilith and Adam quarrelled on
this score, and she, using a charm a fallen angel
had imparted to her, took to herself wings, with
all the golden riches of her hair, and flew away.
The "dazzling disarrangement" of her hair is
made much of by the fabulists and poets. Thus,
Mephistopheles to Faust, at the Walpurgis Night
carouse:

"Adam's first wife is she.
Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,
The splendid sole adornment of her hair I*'

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

And Rossetti, in a sonnet prophetic or conclusive
of the beauty of his "Eden Bower," has this:

" The rose and poppy are her flowers, for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo ! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck
bent,
And round his heart one strangling golden hair."

If Lilith 's simultaneous creation with Adam
signified her equality with him. Eve's manufact-
ure from a part of him was naturally held to sig-
nify her subordination and subjection and that
of woman, as such; in the language of an Eng-
lish jurist that "the man and woman are one and
that one is the man." This has always been the
Christian interpretation, taking its cue from
I Timothy ii., 11-13: "Let a woman learn in
quietness, in all subjection ... for Adam was
first formed, then Eve." The same inference is
drawn from the manner of the Fall: "And Adam
was not beguiled, but the woman was beguiled,
and fell into transgression." One reason among

many for the critical opinion that Paul did not

EVE

write the epistle to Timothy is that he holds
Adam strictly responsible and does not lay all the
blame on Eve. One of the many legends that
have offset the parsimony of Eve's biblical his-
tory represents her as the end of man's creation
in a quite literal fashion — made out of his tail I
Strangely enough, the legend anticipated science
in its view of the primitive man's terminal facili-
ties. Another legend gives a dozen reasons why
Eve was not made from this, that, or the other
part of Adam, but from the rib only, and then
says that she had all the faults and failings
which Yahweh had endeavored to avoid. ■ Clear-
ly the legend of Eve, if not the Genesis nar-
ration, is dominated by a spirit of hostility to
womankind. She is another with Potiphar's
wife and the wicked Jezebel and the rebel-
lious Vashti and the tricksy Delilah. She is
typical of the women who get men into trouble
and who give color to the story that, when
there was mischief in Persia, the king's first
question always was, "Who was she?" Like-
minded are Goethe's wizards, when they sing in

chorus :

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

"When towards the Devil's house we tread.
Woman's a thousand steps ahead."

To which the semi-chorus makes reply:

*^ But howsoe'er she hasten may,
Man in one leap has cleared the way.**

As to the beauty of Eve, the biblical version of
her story is silent, but the Talmudists and such
were well informed. The beauty of Sarah was
of great reputation among these, with good bib-
lical warrant. "All women in comparison with
Sarah are like monkeys in respect to men. But
Sarah can no more be compared to Eve than
can a monkey be compared with man." Milton,
whose Eve has contributed far more than the
Yahwehist's to the popular imagination of her
person and her mind, is not a whit behind the
Talmudists, and uses one of his most daring
idioms to express his thought:

"Adanj the goodliest man since born
His sons ; the fairest of her daughters Eve."

However criticism may impeach the general
conception of Milton's epic, it stands abashed in

1
I

EVE

the presence of his Eve, as if confronted by that
loveliness which Adam saw. The Milton who
drew her picture was no Puritan ascetic. The
warm blood of the Renaissance was in his veins.
Neither the primal pair nor their surroundings
suffer from any stint of sensuous charm. But
Milton also enforces with " damnable iteration "
the doctrine of Eve's inferiority " in the mind
and inward faculties," and even in her outward
semblance finds her less godlike than her mate.
Of all this Adam half repents, facing her loveli»
ness:

" So absolute she seems
And in herself complete . . .
Authority and Reason on her wait,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally " [/. e. to meet an occasion]. .

If Milton's Eve was not well instructed, espe-
cially in astronomy, it was not Adam's fault.
Have we not here, nor here alone, some inti-
mation of the didactic husband who made the
married life of Mary Powell burdensome? But
Milton himself was not more poetical than his
Eve. In this respect she did no violence to her
literary reputation. A " Gospel of Eve " circu-

. I

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

lated in the early Church, and the Mohamme-
dans ascribe to her a volume of prophecies.
These, however, were dictated by the angel
Raphael. The Gospel was presumably an orig-
inal work. Dr. South wrote that Aristotle was
" but the rubbish of an Adam," and, if Eve was
not a better talker than Aspasia, Milton and
many others who have praised her have made
some mistake.

The significance of Eve for her posterity, as
generally conceived, has been associated with a
single circumstance of her career, the only one
recorded in the Bible, excepting the birth of her
three children, Cain and Abel, and, after a long
interval, when she was one hundred and thirty
years old, Seth. That single circumstance was
her temptation and her fall, involving Adam
and, theologically, the whole human race. It is,
however, only by freely allegorizing the simple
story in Genesis, that the traditional theological
construction can be made out of its material.
Thanks to Milton, mainly, the popular identifica-
tion of the serpent with the Devil is complete.
There is not a hint of such identification in the

12 .

EVE

Old Testament. We first come upon it in the
Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, and Professor
Toy thinks it was current in Judea for only a
century or two b.c. St. Paul never states it dis-
tinctly, but it is implied in various passages.
The serpent of Genesis is a mere serpent, noth-
ing more or less. Even for the idea that he
represents allegorically the lower nature of man,
there is no exegetical support. The punishment
inflicted on him is appropriate to the animal
creature solely. Instead of walking in future
on the end of his tail, as represented in many
pictures and as implied in the text, he will crawl
upon his belly. Moreover, the story does not
seem intended to give an account of " original
sm." Such profound scholars as Professors Toy
and Cone are agreed upon this point. The easy
disobedience implies the sinful tendency which
all Jewish thought assumed in mankind, Paul's
as distinctly as any. As the story assumes that
man is naturally sinful, so it assumes that he
is naturally mortal. Adam and Eve would
have died if they had not eaten of the forbid-
den tree, unless they had eaten of the tree of

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

life. Why they did not eat of this before or
after their transgression we are not informed.
The serpent was apparently right in his as-
surance that they should not die if they ate
of the forbidden tree. They ate of it and did
not die. Yahweh was obliged to drive them
out of Eden, lest they should eat of the tree
of life and straightway become immortal.

The problem engaging those who framed
this story was not, it would seem, the problem
of original sin, but the problem of death, of
painful labor, of the travail of women in child-
birth, and incidentally of the relations of shame
and clothing. Quite differently from Wester-
marck, the great authority on this head, the
representation is that shame was the occasion of
clothing. Westermarck's delightful paradox,
which is well sustained, is that clothing was
the occasion of shame. Strangely enough the
temptation is represented as one appealing to
the higher nature of the glorious pair. Mil-
ton's sympathies are clearly with them where,
being tempted to win equality with divine be-
ings by one act of disobedience, they took the

EVE

risk. It was what he would himself have done.
His concession to the rabbis that the knowl-
edge won was of things sexually evil has no
justification whatsoever in the text. Some of
Milton's glosses are extremely interesting, es-
pecially his representation of Adam's eating of
the fruit because he prefet^ dying with Eve
to living without hen That also is a lovely
touch where Eve considers whether she shall
" corner " the forbidden fruit for her own advan-
tage or let Adam in, as the brokers say, " on the
ground floor,"

" Shjill I to him make known
As yet my change, and give him to partake
Full happiness with me, or rather not.
But keep the odds of knowledge to myself
Without copartner? So to add what wants
In female sex, the more to draw his love
And render me more equal, and perhaps —
A thing not undesirable-^'SOmetime
Superior ; for, inferior, who is free ?"

The incidental admission here that for wom-
en to learn the alphabet does not make them
less attractive in men's eyes is one that will
not find universal acceptance, and yet some with
cither sex.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

There is a nice touch of humor, possibly un-
conscious, in the Bible story at that point where
the naughty pair are trying to excuse them-
selves. Eve says, ^ The serpent beguiled me and
I did eat/' But in Adam's answer to the divine
interrogation there is a suggestion of the double
entendre : ^ The woman wAom thou gavest to be
with nu^ she gave me of the tree and I did eat"
Our federal head was not disinclined to make
over a part of his responsibility to his Creator.
At the same time he made it easier for Eve.
There is one touch on her part (Milton loquitur)
which must make Mr. Howells's women say,
" She has become as one of us." It is where she
upbraids Adam for not laying his commands
upon her and forbidding her to go ofiE by herself.
Note that he had made the concession only to
her eager importunity.

Of Eve's maternity the record gives no sign
beyond the birth of her three sons, and the in-
definite " sons and daughters" while she shared
the intolerable length of Adam's life— nine hun-
dred and thirty years. The story of Cain and

Abel reflects the rivalries of early agricultural

EVE

and nomadic life. It has been left to modern
art to body forth the mystery of the first death
smiting on the maternal heart. Eve, with the
dead Abel lying cold and still across her knees,
is one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture
in our Metropolitan Museum. It is not the less
beautiful because it represents a universal mys-
tery, involving the last mother whose son is dead
equally with the first For who is yet so wise
as to understand clearly and fully what death
means ?

The heart of Eve's pathetic story, for those
endeavoring to make it yield some moral lesson,
is the power for bane or blessing which the
woman has over the man's life. She falls and
he with hen Eve has many names in lit-
erature. Lady Macbeth is one of them ; Rosa-
mond Vincy is another. She has many names
in the workaday world, in which the average
man and woman choose the worse or better part

''Ah, wasteful woman, she that may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing we cannot choose but pay.
How has she cheapened Paradise ;

B 17

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

''How given for naught her priceless gift,
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine
Which, spent with due respective thrift.
Had made brutes men and men divine*

'O Queen, awake to thy renown,

Require what 'tis our wealth to give,
And comprehend and Wear the crown
Of thy despised prerogative."

John White CHadwick.

^»^

"^ — - —m^i-,t..m:bJmaiH^t^^

SARAH

S it is written " Sarah means princess.
If that name was given the First-
mother of the Hebrews in childhood
for her temperament, it was veritable prophecy.
All we know of her shows her a woman of
a strong, determined, and self - asserting will.
Originally the name was not spelled that way,
but Sarai. The change did not happen acci-
dentally, or from a whim of the bearer, but at
the bidding of God Himself, and for the pur-
pose of being a sign —

" That God will bless her and give Abraham a son of
her . . . that she shall be a mother of many nations,
kings of the peoples shall be of her."

In what manner the substitution of the one
letter for the other could become, as it were, a
seal of the covenant — this is still one of the
problems of the commentators. There exists

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

among the Jews a sort of cabalistic tradition
that the Hebrew letter yod signifies the creative
power of God in nature, while the letter hay
symbolizes the might of God in the state of
grace — ^that state into which Sarah had entered
after receiving the covenanted promises. For
corroboration of this view its propounders point
to the fact that the name of Sarah's husband
underwent a similar modification by the addi-
tion of the identical letter, with a like signifi-
cance. Abram became Abraham because God
had said to him,

** A father of many nations have I made thee, and I
will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make
nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee." —
Geti,^ xvii.

However this may be, the change of form in
no wise aflFects its root meaning, which is, to
rule. It fits the personality of the bearer so
well that those antiquarians who look upon the
ancient tales ^ relics merely and fragments of
defunct Semitic mythologies rely upon the co-
incidence of name and character as to one of
the supports of their hypothesis. They deny the

SARAH

historical character of the patriotic stories. But
even on their showing, the ancient^ or, if I may
use the term, the aboriginal, Hebrews show, in
this process transformation^ thb opposite ten-
dency to all the surrounding tribeSi The latter
invariably elevated their ancestors to the rank
of deities, seated them among the gods, and
instituted special rites of Worship to every one
of them. But if the mythologists are right, the
Hebrews dethroned their idols, called them by

human names, and told of their doings and their
mifedoings, their favor and their disfavor in the
eyes of Jehovah, with a coolness that proves that
the narrator, at all events, thought of no other
beings than ancestors of flesh and blood.

This is evidenced so clearly by their astonish**
ing power of characterization and individual-
i2ation. Why, right here before us we have a
picture which could not be drawn more distinct*-
ly by the hand of an accomplished artist of to-
day. By the side of Sarah, with her domineer-
ing, unsparing, and unyielding ways— ^Abraham,
a pattern of gentleness, kindness, forbtarancri, a
man possessed of that quality which the Germans

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

call Menschenfreundlichkeit This character is
so uniformly shown by the patriarch that one is
forced to the conclusion that the long peace in
the matrimonial tent was much more due to the
male than the female side, unless, indeed, we be-
lieve in Shiller's statement :

"Denn wo das Strenge mit dem Weichen
Sich vereint zum guten Zeichen,
Da giebt es einen guten Klang."

But, to be just, let us not forget that Sarah
wielded a sceptre by the magic of which she
could lord it over men's hearts after her own
will, even bring kings to her feet. If she came
into the world with a will of her own as her
dowry, nature further assisted her in developing
it by the great beauty of her face and the grace
of her stature. By these gifts she made her wish
a command and disarmed opposition. The
Scripture repeatedly calls her beautiful — so
beautiful, indeed, that she sometimes imperilled
the life of her husband. Hebrew folk-lore,
echoes of which reach our ear in the rabbinical
glosses to the sacred text, have kept alive some

SARAH

of the stories that were told of Sarah's beauty in
the tents of her descendants. Her rank, it was
said, was, in that respect, second only to Eve,
" the mother of all living," The latter, being the
direct creation of God, needs must be the high-
est ideal of female perfection (so the people's
mind reasoned), and therefore the special object
of hatred of Satan. With her at her post and
unshaken in her obedience, his chances of ruin-
ing the first home on earth, his chances of mis-
chief-making, would be poor ; but he also knew
that the only allurement that could tempt Eve
would be the vision of a higher degree of exist-
ence, and he laid his plan accordingly. "Ye
shall be like unto God, knowing good and evil."
The tempter succeeded only too well with Eve ;
Adam's fall followed as a matter of course — how
can it be otherwise with any man whose home
has been broken up f Too well, I said, but not
quite as he intended. For the wise men of to-
day assure us that, in a Paradise of God's own
planting, sinners can only " fall upwards." It is
a pretty long time since mankind has been fall-
ing in that direction — are we any nearer the goal

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

of •* knowing good and evil " ? Who is right,
England or the Boers ? The answer will not be
rendered until the last shot in this war has been
fired, and ten thousand graves filled that did not
rightfully belong to death, and ten thousand
homes devasted where, but for that discussion,
happiness and peace might still reign! And
what a solution it will be^^Das sich Gott
erbarm I

But this is aside from our purpose— we were
speaking of what the Palestinian legend told of
Sarah '4 beauty. It was of that nature over which
time has no power— nay, that grows more attract
tive with accumulating years. Of the things that
are unfavorable to the preservation of beauty, the
Orientals count travel as one that is most bane-
ful, even fatal to it Yet when Sarah arrived,
after a long journey through dusty deserts and
under a scorching sun, at the frontiers of Egypt,
she was more beautiful than ever, and this ex^
plains the curious speech of Abraham to his wife
at that juncture : *< Now I know that thou art a
woman beautiful to look at." Did he not know

that before ? Not so convincingly, explain the

SARAH

rabbles, as after he had seen that even travel
had left no trace on her countenance. But that
which under different conditions would have
filled his heart with joy now made him tremble
for' his own safety. Aliens had no rights what-
ever in those days. The Egyptians, he feared,
on seeing Sarah, would make short^work of him;
they would kill the husband and appropriate his
wife. In his anxiety he fell upon a curious de*
vice (so the legend tells). He made a box of
common wood, and placed Sarah in it Arrived
at the city gate, the tax-gatherer demanded the
king's impost.

** I am willing to pay it," said Abraham.

" Then tell me what thou carriest in the box ;
is it lamb-skins dyed violet ?"

*• I will pay for lamb-skins."

" Perhaps it is silken garments ?"

•* I will pay for silken garments."

" Perhaps it is pearls thou hidest there ?"

" I will pay for pearls."

" If thou dost not tell, we must open the box ";
and as they did so, a ray of light flashed over the
city, which excited the curiosity of the courtiers.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Thus it was that the news of the arrival of the
world-renowned woman reached the king's ears.
Forthwith he commanded that she be brought
before him. Once seen, he would not let her de-
part again, and it needed Divine intervention to
restore her to her husband.

The legend reads, better than the Bible story,
so far as the characters of the dramatis personce
are concerned. In the Bible we find Abraham
resorting to a falsehood to save his life, Sarah
consenting willingly. He said to her :

" It shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see
thee, that they shall say. This is his wife : and they
will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray
thee, thou art my sister : that it may be w.ell with me
for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee."

Considering that a question of life and death
is as severe a test as a man's conscience can be
subjecte<5 to, it is not fair to condemn him out-
right if he seeks to save himself by a subter-
fuge ; for the pretence was not a lie outright, a
half-truth only, since Sarah was his half-sister;
they were children of the same father, but not of
the same mother ; moreover, it was not fear for

SARAH

his own life alone by which he was actuated —
but anxiety for Sarah*s fate also. For what
would become of her if she remained unpro-
tected in the hands of her captor ? She would
be cast out again as she was brought in, or be-
come one of the handmaidens of the royal
household.

And so we see Sarah play her proud part
even unto the end, and hear not a word in miti-
gation of her conduct. Yet this might have
been easily done. For that queenly woman,
that held her surroundings in undisputed sub-
jection, was not a happy woman ; far from it ;
nay, carried death in her heart. The one recog-
nized token of heavenly favor was denied her —
she bore no children. In motherhood these an-
cient Hebrews saw the crown of womanhood.
For its absence earth had no compensation, as
the stories of Rachel and Hannah show. No
doubt Sarah was made to feel her inferiority to
the poorest woman that came to her tent asking
for food and shelter with a babe in her arms.
How deeply Abraham shared this humiliation

we learn from the answer he made to God

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

when, as it were, the Almighty Himself tried to
comfort him by His gracious promise :

" Fear not, Abram, I am with thee ; I am thy shield ;
thy reward shall be very great. And Abram said : Lord
God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and
the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus ?"

To the latter, or his son, it seems, belonged
the right of succession, according to the law of
the time. In her despair, Sarah resorted to a
step which must have filled her cup of bitter-
ness to the brim. She gave Abram her own
handmaid Hagar for his secondary wife, making
her a rival in the love^ of her husband. Who
was that Hagar ? Legend knows her pedigree.
She was a daughter of Pharaoh, the king of
Egypt, the same who coveted the possession of
Sarah in vain. Such was the attachment of the
Egyptian princess to the Canaanite woman that
she declared to her royal father her determina-
tion to accompany the stranger when the latter
was returned to her husband. What! cried the
king; thou wilt be no more than a handmaid to
her ! Better to be a handmaid in the tents of
Abraham than a princess in this palace. And

SARAH

the reason for this heroic resolve ? Why, the
Jewish theologians knew that as well. Sarah
was an active missionary of the new faith
among women, as Abraham was among men.
Hagar would not stay behind and join again the
idolatrous rites of her home. But — and here
we take up the thread of the biblical narrative
again — human nature remains human nature,
even in converts. No sooner did the hope of
motherhood spring up in her heart than " her mis-
tress was despised in her eyes." Sarah laid the
blame for this upon her husband, because in her
complaint to him she cried, '* The Lord judge
between me and thee." The kind-hearted soul,
as he was, what could he do but let Sarah dis-
cipline her maid as she found proper? "And
when Sarah dealt hardly with Hagar," she fled
from her face. But whither was she to go?
Her good angel convinced her erelong that she
must " return to her mistress and submit herself
under her hands." For the child must be born
in the house of Abraham, if his rights of succes-
sion wete to be recognized at all. This hap-
pened, and, for a time, peace was restored;

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

which, however, was not a long time. For that
which neither Sarah nor •'the Father of the
Faithful " dared to hope, in the face of repeated
promises of God, did occur — Sarah bore a son,
to whom the name of Isaac was given ; a name
which lends itself to various applications, be-
cause its root meaning is, to laugh ; and tlie
mother interpreted it in this wise: God has
made me a laughing-stock. She said this on
account of Hagar, who sneered at her mistress
for her vain hope to rob Ishmael of his rights as
the first-born of Abraham. The crisis was not
long in coming. Once upon a day Sarah over-
heard Ishmael taunting Isaac with his lower
rank in the household. This was more than
she could tolerate. Living together had become
impossible, and who should give way for the
other was not questionable to her. She de-
manded the sending away of the rival mother
with her son. But « the thing was grievous in
the sight of Abraham," and he flatly refused to
consent to so ruthless a measure ; we infer this
from the fact that it needed the reassuring

direction of God to make him yield :

SARAH

" And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be g^evous
in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy
bondwoman ; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee,
hearken unto her voice : for in Isaac shall thy progeny
be called. And also of the son of the bondwoman will
I make a nation, because he is of thy progeny."

The pathetic story of Hagar's wanderings in
the desert has been carried to the ends of the
earth by both Bible and Koran, and still appeals
to the hearts of men, while Sarah's triumph is
accounted a disgrace to her. It is the last act
of her life which is told in Scripture; of her
death we hear no more than that it occurred at
Hebron at the age of one hundred and twenty,
and that Abraham came "to mourn for Sarah
and to weep for her." The expression he came
affords the clue to a legend which casts a tragic
light over her death-bed. It tells that Abraham
had left his home to go to Moriah secretly, as
he was afraid to let the mother know the terrible
purpose of that journey. But when she learned
that he had. taken Isaac with him, and likewise
wood and fire and a knife, the horrible suspicion
dawned on her that her son might be the sacri-
fice the father would offer, and the thought so

c 33

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

terrified her that she died from the shock ! So
that Abraham came home only to " mourn and
to weep for Sarah," although her son was by his
side unharmed. Had she been alive she might
have received him back from the hands of God,
and heard with delight of the angel's voice that
restrained the hand of the over-devout father.
" Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do
thou anything unto him : for now I know that
thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld
thy son, thine only son, from me." But eye and
ear of the mother were closed forever to earthly
things, and the heart stilled forever beyond the
reach of the terrors to which human flesh, and es-
pecially mothers' hearts, are heir. Legends are
often of deeper significance than we see in them ;
they reflect thoughts and feelings which darkly
move the popular mind, but which it has not the
gift to clothe in words. Stories must serve as
mediums of expression. There ^Vas nothing in
the life of Sarah that appealed to the sympathy
of the people. She always carried her will with
a high hand, and no deed was recorded of her
that revealed tenderness of heart and self-renun-

SARAH

ciation. Even as a wife and a mother she did not
show the qualities that answer to the people's
intuitions. She was only venerated, but not
loved ; and this want a poet supplied by the in-
vention of a tale which showed that that prince-
ly woman, that proud mother, that spoiled child
of fortune, died of a broken heart !

Sarah was neither saint nor heroine. She
was not high-minded or sympathetic, and her
love of truth was not deep nor overmastering.
For all that, she must have been a great woman,
else she could not have played the part she did,
nor held the affection and veneration of her con-
sort to the end as she did. This is evidenced
by the care he took to secure a burial-place for
her ashes worthy of her station in life. He ac-
quired of the children of Cheth "the cave
(Machpelah) with all the trees that were in the
field, that were ii? all the borders round about."
He purchased it at their own price. Altogether
the transaction as described in the Bible speaks
well for the politeness of both contracting par-
ties. It is not at all unlikely that the Chethites
were moved by the sight of the grief which the

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

aged husband evinced at the loss of his wife.
Little, however, could they foresee the sacred
importance the transfer of the cave would as.
sume in the course of centuries ; that they were
surrendering a spot that would some day be
counted among the most famous on earth, and
be guarded from profanation with a sleepless
jealousy against the intrusion even of the eye of
the unbeliever! And by whom is this guard
kept? By those who recognize in the outcast
son of the handmaid, Ishmael, the God-chosen
son of Abraham, " the friend of God," while the
progeny of Sarah and Isaac are not allowed
even to approach the last resting-place of their
first parents I So little do we men know the
consequences of our actions, and whither they
shall lead after they have been caught up in
the currents of cause and effect — the same
which Emerson calls Fate.

GUSTAV GOTTHEIL.

REBEKAH

HE tendency in literature to idealize
woman is one which is, on the whole,
praiseworthy in its spirit and benefi-
cent in its results. It is praiseworthy in its
spirit because it is an indication of the reverence
in which woman is held by mdn. If the time
•should ever come when that reverence should
be abated and woman should appear to her
companion less than she now appears to him, if
she should ever exchange her supremacy of in-
fluence for an equality of power, he would lose
in the transfer almost as much as she. It is
beneficent in its results because our life depends
upon our ideals. Because she is idealized by
man, woman is inspired to her highest and
noblest self; and man is inspired to be worthy
the appreciation of the one the value of whose
judgment he possibly overrates.

Nevertheless, the philosophical student of

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

human nature must recognize the fact that wom-
an, no less than man, is composite in her char-
acter. She is not all celestial; all mothers are
not like Raphael's Madonnas, nor like the Ro-
man Cornelia ; in her, as in her brother, virtue
wins its victory by battle. If her temptations
are different, they are not less perilous to char-
acter than those which assail man. She does not
always win the victory. If Portia is true to life,
so also is Becky Sharp. In short, woman is
human, and the reverence to be paid to her is
reverence to be paid to a tempted, erring, some-
times defeated and sometimes victorious being,
who is both heir of earth and heir of heaven,
child of man, and child of God. Such a student
will not forget the splendid influence which in-
numerable wives have exerted over their hus-
bands, innumeriable mothers over their sons;
neither can he forget that Catherine de' Medici
deliberately debauched her son to gratify her
ambition; that the influence of Marie Antoi-
nette brought Louis to the guillotine; and the
influence of Henrietta her husband to the scaf-
fold.

REBEKAH

The truth here stated is recognized by the
Bible writers, who, presenting some idealized
pictures of woman's character, have also, in some
of their portraits, exhibited with great frankness
and fidelity this composite character of human
nature as it is manifested in woman's life. No-
where, perhaps, is this truth more clearly illus-
trated than in the portrait furnished us of Re-
bekah.

All that we know of her life is comprised in
three scenes — the courtship and marriage; the
birth of the twins ; the deception of the husband.

The story of the courtship is a charming pict-
ure of the patriarchal time. Abraham, in his
old age, fears lest his son Isaac shall marry a
pagan woman from the Canaanites, among whom
the patriarch has his home. Race and religious
feeling combine to make such a marriage abhor-
rent to him. So he calls to him his faithful
servant Eliezer and bids him go back to the
land from which Abraham has migrated, and
there from Abraham's country find a wife for
his son. Eliezer starts with unmistakable mis-
givings on this delicate mission of vicarious

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

courtship, taking with him presents to serve both
as a pledge of his good faith and as a means of
invitation to the maiden whom he may select.
As he draws near to the city of Nahor, where
his errand is to be consummated, his perplexity
increases. He hits upon an ingenious expedi-
ent to serve as a test of woman's character. In
the Orient it was the function of women to
come out from the city to the well, draw the
water for domestic purposes, and bear it back
to the city upon their heads. Eliezer resolves
that as these maidens come out in the evening
from the city to perform this service he will ask
for a drink of water. Any maiden would read-
ily grant such a request. But if any maiden
does more, and of her own free will draws for
his camels also, she shall be his choice. The
camel is a great drinker. To draw for ten is
no easy task. She who would undertake it
must needs have good health as well as bound-
less good-nature. He submits this test to the
God of Abraham in a very simple prayer. " Let
it come to pass," he says, " that the damsel to

whom I shall say. Let down thy pitcher, I pray

REBEKAH

thee, that I may drink ; and she shall say, Drink,
and I will give thy camels drink also: let the
same be her that thou hast appointed for thy
servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that
thou hast shewed kindness unto my master."
Even while he is offering his prayer Rebekah
comes out, goes down the hewn steps to the
well or cistern, fills her pitcher, and comes up
again. She is fair to look upon, and Eliezer
goes forward and prefers his request for a drink
of water. She answers in almost the very
terms of his petition. " Drink," she said, " and
I will draw water for thy camels also, until they
have done drinking." How he followed the
clew thus put into his hands, asked for the hos-
pitality of her home, was welconied to it, came
under her father's roof, but refused even to eat
a meal until he had disclosed his errand, nar-
rated the test which he had framed in his own
mind, and the manner in which Rebekah had
met it, and fulfilled his commission by offering
the hand of his master's son in marriage, need
not be narrated here in greater detail.

To the father and mother the whole matter

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

seems clearly to have proceeded from Jehovah.
They give their consent, but they will not de-
termine the issue of this maiden's life for her-
self. " We cannot," they say, " speak unto thee
bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before thee,
take her, and go, and let her be thy master's
son's wife, as Jehovah hath spoken." He brings
out the jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and
the bridal raiment, to plead for him and for his
master's son. His mission is so successful that
Rebekah, overruling the urgency of the parents
that she wait at least ten days before she leaves
her home forever, declares her decision to go at
once, and starts immediately upon her home-
ward journey. Her meeting with the husband
who has thus been chosen for her cannot be so
well told as in the simple narrative of Scripture :

** And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the
eventide : and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and be-
hold, the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted
up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off
the camel. For she had said unto the servant, What
man is this that walketh in the field to meet us ? And
the servant had said, It is my master : therefore she
took a vail and covered herself. And the servant told
Isaac all the things that he had done. And Isaac

REBEKAH

brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took
Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her:
and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."

In this first scene the best qualities of Re-
bekah show themselves. She is full of eager
life; glad to render service to an utter stranger;
joyously goes beyond his request in a serviqe
which involves no inconsiderable toil ; welcome;5
him with pleasurable hospitality, though she is
wholly ignorant of his purpose; is captivated
by the frank, simple, and sincere spirit of her
unknown lover's representative, not less than by
the generous gifts which in that lover's name
he bestows upon her; is led with that trusting
disposition, which is one of the most captivating
characteristics of the true woman, to put her
future destiny in the keeping of one of whom
she knows nothing save what his ambassador
has told her; and when the time of meeting
with her future husband comes, modestly veils
her beauty from his gaze until she has come
into the tent of his mother — become as it were
a part of the new household, and so may decor-
ously unveil herself. This life is full of promise;

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

and if the appeal to her ambition, made by the
bracelets and the ear-rings, the jewels of silver
and the jewels of gold, is not without its influ-
ence, yet it would be unjust to affirm that in
this incident there is anything derogatory to the
simplicity and the beauty of her character.

The next incident in her married life is the
birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob, thirty years
after the courtship and marriage. But during
those thirty years, anxious as was the patriarch
of olden time not to die childless, accustomed
as he was to think that the childless wife was
under some curse of the Almighty, Isaac's love
for his wife and his confidence in her never
seem to have lessened. In an age of almost
universal polygamy, he took no second wife;
and if this speaks much for him, it certainly also
speaks much for her. Little as there is told of
Isaac's domestic life, there is enough to indicate
that husband and wife lived bound together by
the bonds of a mutual affection, which did not
lessen with advancing years. Happy the hus-
band and wife who know how to grow old to-
gether with a love which is immortally young!

REBEKAH

The Scripture phrase "the God of Abraham,
of Isaac, and of Jacob " is more significant than
the casual reader is apt to think it. Jehovah
was the God of Abraham, the mystic man of
visions, who left his country and his kinsfolk to
find freedom to worship an unknown God in
some purer and better form than any known in
the land of his nativity. He was the God of
Isaac, the commonplace man, who never had a
vision, who fought no great battles, who wrought
no great achievements, the whole history of
whose life is that he was an honest farmer, liv-
ing in friendly and peaceable relations with
neighbors with whom to live peaceably was a
difficult art, and faithful to one wife in an age
when a moderate harem was the wellnigh uni-
versal rule. And he was the God of Jacob, who
began his life by a hard bargain with his brother,
followed it up by cheating his blind old father,
made his first prayer a contract with Jehovah
to serve him for good wages, and only through
the discipline of great sorrow — sorrow through
children that were unfaithful to him, sorrow

through poverty, which was very hard for such

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

a one as he to bear, and sorrow through exile

from his native land — came to sainthood.

The third scene in Rebekah's life is the one

which indicates the defect in her character. By

the custom of the patriarchal age the elder

comes into the rights and prerogatives of the

father. He is the priest and the king of the

little household empire. But this birthright is

not absolute nor inalienable; for good reason

the father may transfer it to a younger son.

When the twins were born it was intimated to

Rebekah that Jacob, the younger born, should

become the head of the household. Perhaps

his quieter and less stormy character, perhaps

this presage of his destiny, attached her more

strongly to Jacob than to Esau. Perhaps Esau's

marriage to daughters who wearied her life may

have operated, as similar marriages have often

operated, to alienate her ajffections from him.

It is certain that she was a partial mother.

When the impulsive Esau sold his birthright

because he was too impatient in his hunger to

wait the little time necessary to prepare a meal,

we may well believe that the mother applauded

REBEKAH

the bargaining shrewdness of her favorite son
in seizing the opportunity afforded to him, and
winning the consent of the careless Esau that
the father should take from him the headship
of the family and give it to Jacob. Neither,
however, the prophecy of Jehovah nor the bar-
gaining of Jacob satisfied her eager ambition.
She resolved to help Providence to accomplish
his purpose.

But if Jacob was Rebekah's favorite son, it is
not difficult to read between the lines the fact
that Esau was Isaac's favorite son. Isaac has
grown old, feeble, and blind. He calls Esau,
and intimates that the time has come to give to
him, officially, that blessing which carries with
it the recognition of his headship, the ratifica-
tion of his birthright. In the Orient a meal
taken together is a common symbol of a sacred
pledge. Isaac bids Esau take his bow and ar-
row, go out into the fields, hunt for game, bring
in the result of his hunting, and make a savory
meal. Of this the two will partake together,
and in this hour of sacred fellowship the father

will bestow upon the son his rank and place.
D 49

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

The mother overhears. Jacob's bargain, then,
is to be set aside ; Jehovah's pledge is not to be
fulfilled; her hopes are to be dashed to the
ground ; her favorite son is to be displaced ; and
this impetuous hunter, not fitted to be the head
of the household, is to be made so despite the
prophecy by what she regards as her husband's
wilful favoritism. She will thwart her husband's
purpose by her cunning. While Esau goes out
to hunt, she bids Jacob go to the neighboring
flock, fetch two kids, which she will so dress
that they will pass with her husband for veni-
son. Then he, not Esau, shall share with the
father in this pledge-giving meal ; he, not Esau,
shall receive the blessing and the birthright.
Jacob has no conscience against the deception,
but he is cautious ; he lets " I dare not " wait
upon " I would." My father, he says, may be
suspicious ; my brother is a hairy man, and I
a smooth one ; if he feels my hands and discov-
ers the deception he will curse me, not bless
me. The mother will, take the risk of that ; her
plans are all prepared ; and the willing, but not
strong, son follows the counsels of the braver

REBEKAH

but treacherous mother. He brings in the kids,
puts on enough of the skin upon his hands and
upon his neck to serve the purposes of decep-
tion, succeeds in the device, and before Esau
has gotten back from his hunt has shared in the
pledge-giving meal with his father, and received
from his father the blessing which serves in lieu
of a will and makes him head of the household.
It is not necessary here to trace the results
of this treachery — how it exiled Jacob from his
home, and how the penalty of the folly came in
later life in the deceit, treachery, and cruelty of
his own sons. Suffice it here to point out the
fact that if Rebekah hoped by this device to se-
cure for herself any advantage in making her
favorite son head of the household while she
lived, she was wholly disappointed in her ex-
pectations. Alarmed at the not unnatural
threats of the angry Esau, and directed by both
his parents to seek a wife from their kindred,
Jacob had hardly received his father's blessing
before he left his home, and apparently the
mother never saw him again. And here the
fragmentary story of Rebekah 's life ends. Of

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

her subsequent history, and even of her death,
we know nothing; only from Jacob's farewell
address to his sons upon his death-bed we know
that his mother was buried in what I may call
the family burying-ground, with Abraham and
Sarah, the father and mother in law, and with
Isaac, her husband. I cannot but believe that
this last honor was paid to the too partial moth-
er by the repentant son.

" That as Isaac and Rebekah lived faithfully
together, so these persons may surely perform
and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them,"
These words from the marriage service of the
Book of Common Prayer are Rebekah's noblest
monuments- Despite her defects of character,
despite her unjustifiable, yet not wholly inex-
plicable, favoritism, and her treacherous, yet not
wholly inexplicable, intervention for her favorite
son, this woman, so little heroine, has remained
for thirty -five centuries honored wherever the
Bible is known, not for great prophecies, great
statesmanship, great military achievements, or
great public service of any kind; not because

she was a saint, too high for temptation to attack

REBEKAH

or too strong to succumb to it; but because in
an age when the home, as we understand it, was
scarcely known she was a faithful wife, and, at
least this we may believe, in the main a faithful
mother. By the side of Deborah the warrior,
Huldah the prophetess, Vashti the queen, is in-
cluded in Hebrew literature the name of Re-
bekah the wife.

Lyman Abbott.

MIRIAM

IRIAM is the Hebrew form of that
name so dear to the Christian world
as Maria, Marie, or Mary, If we
had to choose two symbolical figures to illus-
trate the difiFerence between the Old Testament
and the New, we might well take the two wom-
en who bore the same name — Miriam, the sister
of Moses — Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The outline of Miriam's life is drawn in the
Hebrew Scriptures with a few broad strokes.
But it is wonderfully vivid and distinct.

There are three separate sketches of her, all
made out-of-doors, en pUin air^ and with graphic
realism. In each of them we see her in a differ-
ent attitude.

In the first, she is a little girl, standing on the
bank of the river Nile, watching over her baby
brother as he floats, in his ark of reeds, among
the tall flags by the water's edge.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

In the second, she is a woman, with a timbrel
in her hand, exulting over the destruction of the
Egyptians in the Red Sea, and leading the jubi-
lant women of Israel in their choric song and
dance.

In the third, she is an aged but animated
prophetess, taking part with her elder brother
Aaron in a public complaint against Moses, and
speaking words of reproach against him.

In all three sketches we recognize the same
figure. The character of Miriam has a marked
individuality.

She is not a feminine cipher, a mild nonentity,
a mere appendicle of man. She is a person of
force, with a mind and a will of her own ; lively,
independent, fearless, and, although sometimes
wrong-headed and perverse, on the whole a most
important factor in the life of the people.

It is interesting to see how she touches, even
in this brief outline of her life, the two extremes
of that much-disputed region, that debatable land,
"the sphere of woman."

In the domestic sphere she plays her part
well She is the faithful little nurse; the guar-

« 4

MIRIAM

dian of infancy ; quick, resourceful, devoted to
her task.

In the public sphere she is fitted for a leading
role. Her voice is inspiring; her action com-
mands a following. She is recognized as a power
in the community. Even when she goes wrong,
she is thought of as one whose character and
position entitle her to respect.

If to the scriptural account of her life we may
add the Jewish traditions which are given by
Josephus in the third book of his Antiquities^
we must admit that she rounded out the primi-
tive possibilities of a woman's career to the full.
For Josephus tells us that she was the wife of
that well-known leader among the Israelites,
Hur, who was chosen to be one of the judges of
the people while Moses went up into Mount
Sinai (Ex., xxiv. 14). The names of her children
are unknown; but her grandson, Bezaleel, was
famous as the principal artist in the construction
of the Tabernacle (Ex., xxxi. 2).

I propose in this little essay to retrace the
three sketches of her that are given in the Bible,
adding here and there a touch of local color

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

drawn from the history of Egypt and the legends
of Israel.

There will be no call for preaching or moraliz-
ing. If we can see Miriam as she really was, we
shall hear her speak for herself.

When Jochebed, the mother of Moses (hear-
ing that she could no longer hide her three-
months-old boy from the people whom Pharaoh
had commanded to destroy the male children of
the Israelites), launched her baby on the waters
of the Nile, she took every possible precaution
for his safety. She made a little basket-boat out
of the long, pliant, tenacious stems of the papy-
rus plant — a material often used in Egypt for
that purpose. She plastered it inside with clay
to make it smooth, and outside with bitumen
to make it water-tight The papyrus itself was
supposed by the Egyptians to be a protection
against crocodiles.

The careful mother did not send her baby-

OBBBB^BHi^^aBBBHaaa

MIRIAM

boat out on the broad current of the river. She
laid it among the reeds, by the edge of the
stream, in a place which she knew was frequent-
ed by the princess and the women of the court.

But her last precaution was the best of all.
She left the little sister Miriam to mount guard
over her brother's safety (Ex., ii. 4).

How old was the girl when she was intrusted
with this charge ? Ten years, say the legends.
But there is no reason to make her so old. Chil-
dren mature early in Egypt. The small water-
girl, Amina, who ran beside me while I visited
the ruined temples of the ancient Thebes was
but seven years old. Yet she had all the self-
possession and cleverness of a person three times
her age — a miniature woman carved in brown
sandal-wood.

Miriam was watching when the Egyptian
king's daughter came down to the river with
her maidens to wash.

To wash what ? Herself, some answer ; for it

was the custom of great ladies at this time to

bathe in the river Nile. It was supposed to be

good for their health.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Not at all, say others ; it was never the custom
for ladies of fashion to bathe in the river. When
they wanted a bath, they had it in-doors. The
princess and her maidens came down to the Nile
to wash their clothes — just what the Princess
Nausicaa and her maidens were doing when
Ulysses, shipwrecked, was cast up by the waves
on the shore of their island. Even the greatest
ladies, in primitive times, were not above doing
their own laundry-work.

Let us leave the question undecided. What
is certain is that the tiny ark, floating among
the reeds, was discovered and opened, and the
baby beamed forth. A proper child; when
the princess set eyes on him she fell in
love with him ; she must have him for her
own.

But the baby lifted up his voice and wept
Royalty was nothing to him. He wanted his
breakfast.

Then came Miriam's opportunity, and she
made the most of it. How innocently she step-
ped up ! just like any little girl strolling along

the river-side by chance, and attracted by curi-

MIRIAM

osity to look at the screaming baby and the
puzzled princess.

"A* nurse," said this small philosopher — "a
nurse, your Highness ! That is what you want.
Shall I fetch you one ?"

No sooner is the permission given than young
Presence-of-mind is running home to call her
mother. The business is done. Moses is safe.
The princess has taken him under her wing.
His mother has taken him back to her breast.
He is in no danger now, either of drowning or
of starving. Everything is well settled by the
ready wit of the girl Miriam.

Moses was worth saving.

I am not sure that the princess thought so
after he had been the instrument of bringing the
plagues on the land of Egypt.

But certainly Miriam thought so when the
passage of the Red Sea had been accomplished,
and she saw that her brother was indeed the

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

emancipator of Israel, the founder of a new
nation, the beginner of a glorious history for
the Hebrew race. It was worth while to have
had a share in the preservation of such a hero.

Miriam had a claim upon the gratitude and
reverence of the people because she had ren-
dered them this great service. The woman who
protects a precious life enriches the world.

But it was not only by this indirect service
that Miriam played her part in the national his-
tory of Israel. She was a direct contributor to
the commonwealth. Out of her heart and from
her lips came real and valuable additions to that
treasure of common thought and feeling and
aspiration which is the true wealth of the people.
She was a prophetess (Ex., xv. 20). She shared
with Moses and Aaron the most exalted place
and office in the life of the Hebrew folk. A
conscious ambassador and mouth-piece of the
will of the Eternal, a personal exponent of the
highest ideals and hopes of the nation, the
woman Miriam spoke to Israel for Jehovah, and
to Jehovah for Israel.

In the first great act of national rejoicing

MIRIAM

which followed the overthrow of the host of
Pharaoh in the Red Sea, Miriam's place was in
the foreground.

On the sea-shore of Arabia, where the rude
waves were tumbling the fragments of the wreck-
ed Egyptian army — horses, chariots, shields,
spears, broken armor, and pallid corpses — the
rescued Hebrews celebrated a festival of liberty,
and chanted a mighty ode of public joy. The
Song of Moses and Miriam is one of the oldest
national anthems in the world. It is also one
of the most splendid (Ex., xv.).

The spirit and movement of the song are well
expressed in the English verse of Thomas

Moore's paraphrase :

" Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea !
Jehovah has triumphed, — His people are free !
Sing, — for the pride of the tyrant is broken ;

His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave, —
How vain was their boasting! the Lord MIR but
spoken,
And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.
Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed, — His people are free!

^ " Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord !

His word was our arrow, His breath was our sword.
E 6s

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Who shall return to tell Egypt the story

Of those she sent forth in the shew of her pride?

For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of
glory,
And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide.

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea !

Jehovah has triumphed, — His people are free!"

This is powerful verse. But there is even
greater majesty and force in the form of the
ode as it stands in the Book of Exodus. How
grandly the antiphonal ascriptions of praise to
Jehovah come into the description of the over-
throw of Egypt's pride and power 1

*•*• Jehovah is a man of war :
Jehovah is his name !

" Thou didst blow with thy wind :
The sea covered them :
They sank as lead in the mighty waters.

^*'Who is like unto thee among the godsy Jehovah f
Who is like unto thee?
Glorious in holiness I
Fearful in praises/
Doing wonders r

Precisely what part Miriam had in the com- \

«
position of this famous poem we cannot tell. ;

But in weaving it into the conscious life of the \

66 \

MIRIAM

people she had at least an equal share with
Moses.

She took a timbrel in her hand, and all the
Hebrew women followed her with timbrels and
guitars, singing and dancing. She led the
female voices in the grand chorus :

^^Sing ye to Jehovah^ for he hath triumphed gloriously :
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."

The musical instruments used in this cele-
bration were brought from Egypt. Their shapes
and patterns may still be seen in the ancient
wall-paintings of Thebes and Memphis. The
freedom of women to take part in public life,
their equal right in religious ceremonies and
national festivals, are also in accord with Egyp-
tian custom and tradition.

Israel's long sojourn in the land of the Pha-
raohs was not without its benefits. Civilization
may be learned even in the hard school of bond-
age. A knowledge of music — the purest of the
arts — is of inestimable value in the development
of a people. Still more precious is a sense of
the liberty and dignity of woman.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

One (rf the greatest treasures that the He-
brews brought out of Egypt was Miriam, their
first prophetess.

There can be no true, complete national life
unless womanhood has a vital share in its con-
Hicts, its hopes, its ambitions, and its triumphs.

Ill

The limitations in Miriam's character came
out in the third episode of her life, described
in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Numbers.

She was now an old woman. But the post-
tion which she occupied among the people was
unchanged. She was still an exalted personage,
a leader of popular opinion. She appeared now
as a leader of discontent and revolt. Her com-
manding figure was no longer a symbol of unity.
It was a sign of discord and division.

Her brother, Moses, whose first wife was a
Midianite (Ex., li. 21), had married again. This
time his bride was an Ethiopian, a Cushite, a
dark-skinned woman from the African country
south of the Nile cataracts.

MIRIAM

Criticism on second marriage is not uncom-
mon, especially among relatives.

The new wife of Moses was not despised on
account of her color. In that day the land of
Cush was rich and royal. Its dark races spread
to the east and to the west Arabia and Baby-
lonia acknowledged their power. The Queen
of Sheba was probably a decided brunette.
Egypt itself was ruled for many years by an
Ethiopian dynasty.

But the bride of Moses was objectionable be-
cause she was a foreigner. The race-pride of
the Hebrews took offence at her. Miriam and
Aaron voiced the prejudice by speaking against
Moses because he had married this foreign
woman. Something of personal jealousy and
fear for their own influence mingled with their
feeling. For they said : " Hath the Lord indeed
spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken
also by us ?"

Was this merely an utterance of what is called
" a woman's prejudice," "feminine jealousy " ?

That can hardly be true. Aaron was a part-
ner in the complaint. Aaron was a man.

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

But that Miriam's part in the attempt at
social rebellion was the more important is clear-
ly indicated by the course of the story. Her
name is put first. She probably formulated the
objection. Her influence was most to be feared in
stirring up disafifection among the people against
the man who had led them to liberty, and who,
whatever his faults and mistakes may have been,
was supremely entitled to their loyal following.

Moses may have erred in marrying his dark
bride. But if so it was a personal mistake, not
a public crime. To break down the authority
of Moses was to imperil the hope of the nation.
This was Miriam's error. It was greater than
the fault of Moses because it was an offence
against the commonwealth.

Her punishment is described as swift and
signal. As she stood with her two brothers
alone in the tabernacle, whither the Divine
Voice had summoned them for judgment, the
pale plague of Egypt smote her. She became
a leper white as snow.

Aaron and Moses, filled with brotherly love

and pity, joined instantly in prayers that her

MIRIAM

punishment might be removed and her disease
healed. The prayers were granted. The sym-
pathy of the nation was shown in their anxious
waiting for the completion of the seven days
of her purification. "They journeyed not till
I Miriam was brought in again."

j Miriam died in Kadesh, while the children of

; Israel were still journeying through the desert,

I before they entered into the Promised Land.

' (Numb., XX. I.)

J Joseph says that they gave her a costly public

'j funeral, and buried her on the mountain of Zin,

and mourned for her thirty days.
I In the time of St. Jerome a tomb was shown

near Petra which was called, by tradition, the
" tomb of Miriam." But even this tradition has
I faded out. The last resting-place of the proph-

etess, like the sepulchre of her greater brother
Moses, is one of the secrets of God.

She belongs to the past. She is a heroine
of the Exodus, a living symbol of the times of
preparation, a forerunner of the coming woman.

Henry Van Dyke.

t '

DEBORAH

EHIND every song there lies a singer,
and behind one of the oldest, noblest
lyrics in the world — the " Song of Deb-
orah " — must be a woman worthy of our ac-
quaintance and our study. But to view her
heroic figure in its true proportions, we ought
to see it against the background of the free,
wild, primitive age in which she lived. In the
fourth and fifth chapters of the book of Judges
we have the picture drawn in bold, swift strokes,
and painted in colors that can never fade.

Looking on this picture, we see Israel without
a king, without any real leader, and the differ-
ent tribes scattered and separated. Civilization
was in its early stages. Weapons were rude,
implements few, and constant fear of foreign foes
often made travel impossible. In the absence of
any central government, there arose a succession
of dictators — " Judges," they are called — men of

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

energy and patriotism, who raised armies of vol-
unteers and aroused Israel to a brief resistance
against tyranny. Such was Gideon, who shook
off the yoke of the Midianites. Such was Sam-
son, whose physical prowess accomplished no
permanent good. But in Deborah's day there
was not even a Samson to lead the attack.
The Canaanites oppressed Israel cruelly, and
few Israelites dare stir abroad.

"In the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied,
And the travellers walked through crooked ways."

Jabin, king of the Canaanites, had nine hundred
chariots of iron, as much feared as the " armored
train " of modern warfare. When these chariots
swept across the plain, Israel's simple volunteers,
armed only with a few spears, must run to the
mountains. All trade had ceased, the crops'were
carried off by the foe, and it seemed as if the
God who led Israel out of Egypt had forgot-
ten them forever.

Then arose Deborah, with power to sing and
to act. She could not only write Israel's " Mar-

sellaise," but she could lead the armies that her

DEBORAH

songs inspired. For a time she sat " under the
palm-tree " and judged the people. Thus she
learned their poverty and despair. She saw
homes vanishing, children carried captive, and
faith in Jehovah dying out. At last she resolved
to act. If she had not the visions and voices of
Joan of Arc, she had her courage and faith in
the unseen. She selected her leader. She sent
for Barak, who lived in the north. He came,
and she commanded him to raise an army of ten
thousand men and strike a sudden blow. He
hesitated, and wanted her to go with him. She
consented. Messengers were despatched into
all the tribes, and a little later ten thousand
men assembled under Deborah and Barak.

What followed is worthy of any painter or
dramatist. The scene of the great battle was the
triangular plain of Esdraelon, in northern Pal-
estine — the "classic battle-ground of Scripture."
On the same plain the Crusaders struggled,
and over it again the armies of Napoleon passed
at a later day. It was filled with dry beds of
streams, which in the spring became rushing
torrents. These streams unite in the River

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Kishon, which passes through a deep bed into
the Mediterranean. But on this day the plain
was dry and well fitted for a Canaanite victory.
Deborah's army drew up on the slope of Mount
Tabor, and across the plain they could see the
famous nine hundred chariots of the foe driving
slowly to position — a terrifying sight. For soldiers
with only the rudest weapons to venture down
into that chariot-swept plain — was it not certain
death .^ Barak trembled and was silent. But
Deborah was ready. " Up, Barak !" she cried,
" and lead thy captivity captive ! Up ! for this
is the day in which the Lord hath delivered
Sisera into thine hands." Down the slopes of
Tabor rushed the ten thousand Israelites under
their woman leader. Out into the plain charged
the Canaanites with their chariots, and two na-
tions met in the shock of battle. Suddenly the
storm which had been brewing all the morning
broke forth, and torrents of rain poured down
from the heavens. " The stars in their courses
fought against Sisera." The plain became a
mass of mud in which the chariots were en-
tangled. The dry river-beds became torrents,

/
i DEBORAH

and Kishon foamed and plunged towards the
sea. The Israelites, seeing their God in the
storm, fought with marvellous courage, while
despair settled down on Canaan. The plain in
which they trusted became their ruin, and their
defeated leaders were swept off in the new-made
rivers to the sea. "Sisera lighted down from
his chariot and fled away on his feet, . . . there
was not a man left." One of the great victories
of the world had been won by Deborah.

There is no finer poetry than that in which
she sang the event :

"The rulers ceased in Israel, they ceased,
Until that Deborah arose,
That I arose a mother in Israel.

a • • ■ ■ a •

The Lord came down for me against the mighty."

We hear the storm breaking —

" They fought from heaven
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera."

We see the chariots floundering in the mire —

"Then did the horse-hoofs stamp
By reason of the prancings, the prancings of the
strong ones ;

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

The sorrow of Sisera*s mother is depicted with
delight :

"Through the window she looked forth, and cried,
The mother cried through the lattice :

'Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the wheels of his chariot ?* '*

Then all mere revenge is swallowed up in the
thought that this is, after all, not the victory of
Deborah, but of Jehovah :

" So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord,
But let them that love him be as the sun when he
goeth forth in his might."

No more picturesque imagery was ever em-
ployed, no sublimer song ever sung by a primi-
tive people, and no character in the Old Testa-

The river Kishon swept them away.

That ancient river, the river Kishon. J

O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength!" i

As for the chief captain, Sisera, slain with a
tent-pin, the song gloats over his downfall, re-
peating the phrases in almost savage glee :

"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay.
At her feet he bowed, he fell,
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

'^•^"«**'

DEBORAH

ment stands out in bolder relief than Deborah —
woman, minstrel, and soldier. Her song has
proved immortal, because her deed was heroic
and sublime. It was a barbarous song in some
respects, vindictive and relentless, with none of
the Christian spirit which in our time could
say, "Don't cheer, the poor fellows are dying."
Yet it was a song of vivid rhetoric, throbbing
with patriotism and full of zeal for righteous-
ness. Have not all the great songs of the
Church come out of struggling and suffering?
Dante's song is undying because he was " the
man who had been in hell." Milton was plunged
in blindness that he might " sing of things in-
visible to mortal sight." Luther's "A sure
stronghold our God is still " came out of great
tribulation, and Tennyson's " In Memoriam " was
the fruit of bitter sorrow. We think that to
make a poet we must surround him with leisure
and luxury. When God would make a singer, He
flings him out into the open. He lets him bear
the brunt of some sore struggle, and weighs
him down with some awful responsibility. Deb-
orah's lyric was the finest fruit of a heroic life.

F 8i

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

A people with such a poem in their literature
must have been taught that faith is mightier
than chariots. Israel was tempted to rely on
brute force, and to believe that God was " on the
side of the strongest battalions." Even we, at
the close of the nineteenth century, are still too
ready to believe that religion can be propagated
by gun and dynamite, and that the nation with
the largest battle-ships is the one most worthy
of respect and honor. Even to-day we see in
high places the philosophy of Cecil Rhodes
adopted as the ten commandments of diplo-
macy. How inevitably, then, must ancient Is-
rael have looked to armor and horses and spears
as the chief source of national advance ! But
Deborah's victory taught the people that the
decisive elements in any struggle are invisible,
that the chief requisite is a certain spirit in the
soldier — the spirit of faith in the living God.

Moreover, it was at first the faith of a single
woman. It was the grain of mustard-seed moving
the mountain. The mountain is vast but dead;
the seed is little but alive. One man or woman
who really believes is mightier than ten thou-

DEBORAH

sand who hesitate and question and cower. Ever
the wavering multitude, in Israel or in America,
is looking for the one strong soul that by faith
clasps Omnipotence and cannot fail.

And how striking it was that this leader
should, in that early age, be a woman I The
Hebrew respect for womanhood shines through
the whole Old Testament. Rarely, indeed, does
she go forth at the head of an army; but s1ie
constantly cherishes faith in the Eternal, and
teaches men to believe. She is thus the con-
servative power in national life, setting up the
old ideals that have fallen down, and recalling
men to their better selves. She teaches us that
the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the
strong; but that faith must prevail, hope must
never die, and love shall yet conquer all the
world. When a nation is trusting in force,
either boasting because of its weapons or de-
spairing because it has few, it is woman's place
to remind us of starry auxiliaries in every right-
eous cause, and to sing a song of confidence in
the unseen.

Through this victory Israel learned the value

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

of united effort. When Deborah began her work
the various tribes were separated, jealous, and
sometimes hostile. The plain of Esdraelon sepa^
rated those in the south from those in the north,
and the spirit of nationality was dead. But when
Deborah cried to all the tribes, " Awake !" the
nation awoke, never to sleep again. As in Mr.
Kipling's story of "The Ship that Found Her-
self," the various sections of Israel found their
unity in the face of the common danger. One
great faith makes one great people. When will
the prophet arise, man or woman, who shall make
the several and often competing churches of
Christendom realize their oneness of purpose, and
move like a mighty army against the paganism
which still envelops three-fourths of the globe ?
And for the tribes who did not heed Deborah's
call, what had she to say ?

''Why satest thou among the sheepfolds,
Hearing only the pipings for the flocks?
Gilead abode beyond Jordan ;
And Dan, why did they refuse to leave their boats ?"

But the song fairly scorches the little town
of Meroz:

' DEBORAH

" Curse ye, Meroz, said the angel of the Lord,
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof.
Because they came not to the help of the Lord,
To the help of the Lord against the mighty."

Meroz has vanished long ago, but the curse
remains. The little town is immortalized by its
failure, and is to be remembered through all hu-
man history because at a great crisis it sat idle
and indifferent and let others win the day. ;

Do we not know men and women who are
doing that thing to-day? They have found a
pleasant niche, where " they can view the windy
world through glass," and they fit snugly into it;
and the louder the summons to help, the closer
they cling to their little sheltered nest. When
there is a call for noble service, they have no
time. When there is a rally of Christian forces,
they are conspicuously absent. When there is
wanted a man for important office, they cannot
serve.

Such men '' make the great refusal." All of
us are immortal. Shall it be the immortality
of Deborah or of Meroz ?

William H. P. Faunce.

RUTH, THE GLEANER

HE story of Ruth is one of those ex-
quisite idyls of love and domestic life
which bring remote ages close to our
hearts, while all the splendid incidents of sol-
emn history leave antiquity at a distance meas-
ured by the centuries that have rolled between.
It has a distinction among these stories. It is
the classic instance of a friendship between two
women. What David and Jonathan, Damon
and Pythias, are for men, that for the other
sex are Ruth and Naomi. And — strange con-
tradiction to modern flippancy— it is the pas-
sionate love of a girl for her mother-in-law.

Whoever, then, would be interested in Ruth
must learn to take an interest in the elder
friend Naomi. Nor is this difficult. Through
the dimness of centuries we can still discern
one of those personalities which sway towards

themselves all who approach. At a time when

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

personal names meant something she bore the
name ** Winsome.'* A generation ahead of the
beautiful Ruth, Naomi had her reign of beauty ;
when in the story she comes to her native city
a broken-hearted widow, there is a stir of ex-
citement, as at the return of one who had been
a charmer of all hearts. Sadness, quietness,
strength, these make the notes of her life
melody; but she has had the rare gift of making
quiet strength attractive.

The tale of Naomi is soon told. Driven by
famine from the land of Judah, she had come
with her husband and two boys to settle in the
highlands of Moab. Her husband died, and
left her with two sons on the verge of manhood.
All the high hopes of an Israelite motljer for a
posterity in which the Messiah might be one
must have faded for Naomi when she saw her
sons seeking wives among a strange people.
Thus into the life of Naomi there came the
Moabitess Ruth; she and Orpah wedded the
two sons of Elimelech. But the daughters of
Moab were entering the charmed circle of the
winsome Israelite; not only did they become

RUTH, THE GLEANER

model wives to the sons, but they united in an
overpowering love for the mother. Then the
final blow came: the two sons died childless.
The emigrant, with no links to bind her to the
land of her sojourning, would return to her
home to die.

Her daughters-in-law escort Naomi on the
way, unable to face the thought of parting. Ar-
rived at the pass from which the long road is
visible descending to the Jordan valley, Naomi
turns to dismiss the young women, with her
solemn blessing and tender acknowledgments
of their faithfulness to the dead and to herself.
With sobs the girls protest that they will go
with her to the land of her own people. Naomi
is deeply touched; she had not realized how
strong an attachment had been ripening in
their quiet home life. Pathos and humor min-
gle in the words with which she insists upon
parting from her daughters-in-law :

" Turn again, my daughters : why will ye go with me ?
have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your
husbands ? Turn again, my daughters, go your way ;
for I am too old to have an husband. If I should say,
I have hope ; if I should even have an husband to-

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

night, and should also bear sons ; would ye therefore
tarry till they were grown? would ye therefore stay
from having husbands ? nay, my daughters ; for it
grieveth me much for your sakes, for the hand of the
Lord is gone forth against me."

Orpah, with fresh embraces and tears, can bring
herself to return to her mother's house and to
her gods : Ruth suddenly finds bom within her
a love that knows no home but the heart of
Naomi. The quietest of women bursts into
poetry, and her words are still sung among us as
our song of life-devotion :

"Entreat me not to leave thee.
And to return from following after thee:
For whither thou goest, I will go ;
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
Thy people shall be my people^
And thy God my God :
Where thou diest, will I die^
And there will I be buried:
The Lord do so to me,
And more also.
If aught but death part thee and me/'

It is the birth-strain of a new life : mother-in-law
and daughter-in-law have ceased to be, and it is
a pair of world-famous friends who descend arm

in arm on the road to Bethlehem.

RUTH. THE GLEANER

They enter the city together ; to the one it is
filled with memories of youth and hopes now
blasted, to the other with the novelty and
strangeness of a foreign people and a speech but
half understood. The arrival makes a sensation
in the rural community ; youthful grace side by
side with faded charms recalling the famous
beauty of ten years since make a theme for a
town's talk, and the name of Naomi passes from
lip to lip. To herself the very sound brings ir-
ritation :

" Call me not Naomi [ TVinsome], call me Mara [BiUer] :
for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I
went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home
again empty : why call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord
hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflict-
ed me r

So Naomi and Ruth, clinging only to each other,
plunge into poverty and solitary life.

But there is a difference between suffering
age and suffering youth. Youth is elastic, and
must be responsive to the life that is around ; in
time Ruth begins to take an interest in the
ways of her new world, and to feel a stir of ex-

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

citement at its great events. The story moves
forward as the circling year brings the season
of harvest Primitive life in the most diverse
countries has much in common ; if nowhere else,
we have learned from Lorna Doone what har-
vest-time can be like in an agricultural com-
munity: how the homesteads combine, reap
each farm in succession, with solemn ceremony
and noisy mirth, gleaning women following the
reapers with gay laughter, while hours of rest
bring the common meal and good-fellowship.
So Moabite Ruth brings herself at last to join,
with tremor and diffidence, the Israelite glean-
ers. None disturb her, and no rural badinage is
directed at her; she moves shyly by herself
along the fields, as solitary as in her own poor
house. In due time the great man whose land
is being harvested comes down to greet the
reapers ; he notices the solitary gleaner, and is
told who she is. Boaz at once steps up and
speaks to the shrinking stranger, bidding her on
no account to quit his fields, but remain among
his maidens and refresh herself at his feasts.
When Ruth expresses her astonishment at the

RUTH, THE GLEANER

condescension, Boaz lets her know how he has
heard of her loving care for her mother-in-lavy
and her preference of Israel to Moab :

" The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be
given thee of the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose
wings thou art come to take refuge."

Ruth's heart is full, for she has heard a word
of kindness in the solitude of a strange land.
And the kindness continues. At the mid-day
meal she finds herself called to the head of the
board; Boaz does her the honors of the table,
and the two dip into the vinegar together; all
the rest follow^ the lead of Boaz, and dainties
are pressed upon Ruth from all sides. Her only
trouble is the thought that she is enjoying her-
self apart from her friend ; and — most pardon-
able of thefts — she secretes some of the dainties
to bring to the elder woman in her chill poverty
at home. Through the afternoon she is making
a fortune in barley gleanings, for at a word from
Boaz the reapers contrive accidents by which she
profits. Then she hurries home to Naomi, who
eats the parched corn, and listens sympathetical-
ly as her younger friend describes her day of

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

triumph. But for Naomi herself there is a sur-
prise, as the story ends with the name of Boaz ;
she recognizes a kinsman of her husband, and
begins to see gleams of what might be for Ruth.
The story passes into a phase of life widely
sundered from modem customs and sentiment ;
a phase of life touched in the narrative with the
utmost delicacy. A deep principle pervading
the constitution of Israel was care for the preser-
vation of families. Hence the curious " levirate
law " : where a husband had died without issue,
the nearest brother-in-law (fet^/r) might be called
upon by the widow to perform for her all the
duties of a husband, and raise up seed for the
deceased. Here, however, there is no brother-
in-law available; both the sons of Elimelech
were dead. But round the strict letter of the
law had grown up the more elastic "custom of
goel " : the nearest of kin had a general duty to
act as "redeemer" {goel) for the unfortunate,
avenging their death or relieving their distress.
If there was no law to help Ruth, might not
something be made out of the custom of kin-
ship ? Naomi ponders while Ruth is gleaning

RUTH, THE GLEANER

through the days of barley harvest, and by the
end of the season she has her bold plan. No
false delicacy is allowed by Ruth to interfere;
it is not for the Moabite stranger to question
the customs of Israel; moreover, innocence is
most triumphant when it can maintain its purity
in equivocal circumstances. When the time
comes Ruth is ready to play her part.

The joyous festivities of harvest-home have
run their course, and at the end each reveller,
wherever he finds himself, lies down to sleep in
the genial night air. Ruth, closely veiled, steals
through the darkness to the place where Boaz
is reposing, his head on a heap of barley. She
softly lays herself at his feet. Boaz awakens,
startled ; the sweet voice which had thrilled him
with its foreign accents all through the days of
gleaning is heard :

'' I am Ruth, thine handmaid : spread therefore thy
skirt over thine handmaid ; for thou art a near kinsman,"^

It is the last word which is to convey Naomi's

hint to Boaz ; his heart catches it in a moment.

But his first thought is for the innocent young
G 97

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

woman before him. He speaks tender words;
then addresses himself to the task of getting
Ruth away before the least breath of scandal
can touch her. As she is leaving, another kind
thought occurs to him ; he has marked the pious
frauds of the afiFectionate girl at the harvesting*
meals, and now shakes into her lap six measures
of barley, that she may not go empty to her
mother-in-law. Ruth arrives at the cottage while
there is still not light enough for recognition;
when she tells her tale Naomi knows that her
scheme is successful : " The man will not rest,
until he have finished the thing this day,"

The scene changes to morning and the city
gate — the place of exchange and law business in
primitive life. Here Boaz is to play his part
It is easy to see how Boaz from the first has
been smitten with the charms of the gleaner —
the eternal attractions of youth arrayed in their
piquancy of foreign ways and speech. But Boaz
is a grand seigneur, Ruth a daughter of a race
excluded from the congregation of the Lord;
Boaz is advanced in years, Ruth just fit to
mingle with bis handmaidens. Dalliance ba-

RUTH, THE GLEANER

tween the two might have beqn overlooked, but
honorable marriage the public opinion of the age
would never entertain, Boaz must scheme in
order to get himself compelled to do the thing
which is nearest his heart. He has seized Nao-
mi's idea, but even the custom of kinship needs
stretching, for he knows that there is a kins,
man nearer to Elimelech's family than himself.
The great landholder has come down to the
gate in the early morning ; as soon as this near-
est to kin of Elimelech appears, Boaz salutes and
detains him. Bystanders see that there is busi-
ness between two of the city nobles, and linger
to look on. Ten chief men of the city are in
succession saluted and detained, to act as asses-
sors in an affair of importance. Then Boaz
opens the hazardous proceedings:

" And* he said unto the near kinsman, Naomi, that is
come again out of the country of Moab, selleth the
parcel of land which was our brother Elimelech's : and
I thought to disclose it unto thee, saying. Buy it before
them that sit here, and before the elders of my people.
If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it : but if thou wilt not
redeem it, then tell me, that I may know : for there is
none to redeem it beside thee ; and I am after theci"; :•,

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

To the dismay of Boaz, the next of kin at once
answers that he will redeem the land. Boaz is
driven to his master-stroke :

<< Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of
the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the
Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of
the dead upon his inheritance/'

This is audacity indeed Boaz is purposely con-
fusing the strict "levirate law" with the vague
custom of kinship, trusting to the hurry of the
moment to hide the weakness of his plea. But
he knows his man : the next of kin had no ob-
jection to buying a mere " parcel of land " and
getting public credit for a generous action, but it
is a different thing when it is a question of mar-
riage and the disturbance of his family plans.
He declines to redeem, '' lest he should mar his
own inheritance." He is clearly nervous lest the
other might retreat from a rash offer if time were
given to think of it ; thus he draws his shoe from
his foot— accepted symbol for closing a bargain
— and bids Boaz redeem the land. Boaz with
concealed delight lets himself be held to his
: ' ;ofifer, and calls upon the assessors to witness that

100

RUTH, THE GLEANER

he takes the land and the hand of Ruth. They
rise from their seats and overwhelm him with
congratulations and good wishes for married life
and offspring.

So an idyllic conclusion is reached. Ruth is
lifted out of obscurity into a great marriage and
a happy family life, and it has all come about
through the tender boldness of Naomi. When
all her natural hopes had perished, Naomi lives
over again in the life of her younger friend.
Feminine sentiment of the city is all with Boaz
and his foreign bride ; and the story ends, as an
idyl of women may well end, in baby worship.
When the first-born is seen the women present
catch it up, and spontaneously fall into proces-
sion — ^just as when Sigurd was bom in the land
of the Helper; they carry the child to Grand-
mamma Winsome with loud rejoicings:

"For thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee,
Which is better to thee than seven sons,
Hath borne him."

We hardly need to be told that Naomi took the
child and laid it in her bosom and became nurse

lOI

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

to it The family she thought she had seen
perish has been restored to the genealogies of
Israel; for baby Obed lives to become the
father of Jesse, and Jesse is father to the great
King David* And in the genealogical tables of
St Matthew, the Moabitess who left her people
for love of Naomi is duly named as an ances-
tress of the Messiah himself.

Prof, R, G. MouLTON.

HANNAH

HE story of Hannah is a harp-note of
the immortal triumph of patience. She
furnishes a beautiful proof that out of
the most untoward circumstances, even those of
a home full of jars, there may come characters
of such fine type as are sure to bless the
world. The outline touches of her life, sombre
and mournful at first, but radiant with faith
and hope at the last, form the fitting introduc-
tion to the narrative of the career of her great
son Samuel in his combined character of judge
and prophet of Israel.

^ Hannah was one of the two wives of a . He-
brew named Elkanah. He belonged to the tribe
of Levi, and to one of the most honorable fami-
lies of that priestly portion of Jacob's progeny
— the Kohathites. They lived at the close of
the period of the judges, and had their home in
a village called Ramah, or Ramathaim-Zophitn.

los

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

This place was situated in the highlands of cen-
tral Palestine known as Mount Ephraim — the
name given to the series of mountain ridges
which occupy the southern part of the territory
assigned to the tribe of Ephraim after the con-
quest of the land under Joshua, but which also
extend southward into the confines of "little
Benjamin.*'

The name Hannah in Hebrew has the beauti-
ful and attractive meaning " gracious " or " gra-
ciousness," and by a slight change becomes the
smoother Ann, Anne, or Anna. This last name
touches the classic world with keen interest. It
is the name given by Virgil to the twin-souled
sister of the lovelorn Queen Dido. Anna is
thus introduced at the beginning of the fourth
book of the Mneid :

" And now Aurora from the heavens had rent the mist
apart.
Sick-souled her sister [Anna] she bespeaks, the
sharer of her heart."

The Hebrew times of Hannah were dark with
confusion^ depression, and gloom. The govern-
ment, if such it could be called, was adminis-

io6

HANNAH

tered by EH, who united in himself the offices
of judge and high-priest, but who, on account of
the growing infirmities of age, was assisted by
his two degenerate and profligate sons, Hophni
and Phinehas.

Hannah's experience in the mountain home
of the family at Ramah was one of great sorrow
and bitterness. Upon her seemed to rest the
burden of an opprobrium deemed wellnigh un-
bearable by all Hebrew women — she was bar-
ren. This grief was made the more bitter when
her husband took Peninnah as a second wife.
Her agony grew intense as the years passed : for

" Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no chil-
dren.'*

That which alone was sufficient to bow her
spirit was made the harder to bear by becoming
the target of the jealousy of Peninnah, who now
made her rivars life at home a constant fret
through her frequent tantalizing of Hannah for
being childless. An additional degree of poig-
nancy was given to this domestic affliction by

the heartlessness of Peninnah on the occasion of

107

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

the yearly religious feasts at Shiloh, about four-
teen miles distant, whither the family annually
went to o£Fer sacrifices and gifts. On these visits
to the sacred tabernacle Elkanah was accustomed
to gladden the members of his household with
special favors, and partly because of his special
affection for Hannah, and in part because of her
sorrow, he would give to her a double or extra
portion. This well-deserved and well-intended
kindness stirred to special vehemence the anger
of Peninnah, who, in the midst of the sacred en-
vironments of Shiloh, and at the very time of
the chief religious functions of the whole year,
would break out upon Hannah with her cruel
chidings and reproaches. Thus was Hannah
year after year robbed of the refuge from pain
and of the comfort for her afflicted soul, such
as should have been afforded her within the
walls of her home and at the shrine of devotion
in the sanctuary.

On one of these occasions the iron of her
adversary's scorn had pierced her beyond en-
durance. While still smarting from the fresh
thrust of jealousy, which destroyed the relish for

io8

HANNAH

food, and after an ineffectual though tender ef-
fort on the part of Elkanah to comfort her, Han-
nah seeks relief in prayer to Jehovah at the taber-
nacle* Her self-control and considerate thought-
fulness for others appear in the fact that, while
she had no heart for the festivities in which the
whole family and probably groups of other fami-
lies were engaged, she did not absent herself
from them, but waited until her going to the
tabernacle would interfere with no social function
due to the other members of the company. The
burden of her prayer is the concentrated desire
of her whole life — a desire that gathered new in-
tensity with the seeming denial of its fulfilment
for many years. She

"prayed unto the Lord and wept sore/*

and this was her vow :

^' O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the af-
Miction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not
forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine hand-
maid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord
all the days of his life, and there shall be no razor come
upon his head."

Eli, the high-priest, whose dimness of percep-

109

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

tion made him purblind to the glaring sins of
his sons, was a dull observer of this scene, for he
marked the external conduct of Hannah during
her prolonged prayer, and, seeing her lips move,
but hearing no vocal prayer, he suspected her
to be under the influence of wine, and charged
her with this unseemly violation of the sacred
place. But his sluggish mind is opened to the real
fact upon her spirited, yet calm and courteous,
defence of herself from the wrongful imputation :

" No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit : I
have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have
poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thine
handmaid for a daughter of Belial : for out of the
abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken

hitherto."

Whereupon Eli spoke to her a word of peace;
but the spirit of peace had already come to her
heart, for it is recorded that she

" went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no
more sad."

Her faith had prevailed, and

" she bare a son and called his name Samuel,"

which means " heard of God."

HANNAH

Hannah's fidelity to her vow to God does not
permit her to enjoy the sweet and tender minis-
tries of motherhood to the little boy beyond the
period when it would be necessary that the "child
be weaned." Into these few years, probably
three or four, what a richness and intensity of
maternal affection and vigilance must have been
compressed! With what chary self-care did
Hannah drive sleep from her eyes, lest unneces-
sary slumber should even for an hour rob her of
the vision of the boy who was so long in coming
to her embrace, and whom she would so soon
with trembling gladness yield up to the life and
service at the tabernacle of Shiloh. But her
obedience was a part of her faith, and

"when she had weaned him, she took him up with her
. . . and brought him unto the house of the Lord in
Shiloh."

And to Eli she said :

" For this child I prayed ; and the Lord hath given me
my petition which I asked of him. Therefore also I
have lent him to the Lord ; as long as he liveth he
shall be lent to the Lord."

She who had been sublime in faith at the

III

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

darkest time of her adversity is still sublime in
faith at this culmination of her prosperity. He
who had granted her prayer at the depth of her
soul's bitterness would safely keep and gracious-
ly lead the child of promise.

Hannah's thanksgiving psalm

That which to the merely natural view would
have seemed the hour of fainting or collapse, at
the realization that the hour of final separation
from the child had come, became to the lofty
soul of the mother the hour of her spiritual tri-
umph. Her song has been the admiration of
succeeding generations, and forms " one of the
golden linl^s which connect the song of Sarah
on the birth of Isaac with the Magnificat of the
Blessed Virgin." Thi$ psalm of spiritual victory
is worthy of a setting which conveys the poetic
effect of the Hebrew in its characteristic paral-
lelism — that peculiar balancing of clauses over
against one another to which Professor Ewald
has given the name of "thought-rhythm." A
rendering that preserves the simplicity and force

112

HANNAH

of the original is that given by the scholarly
Terry :

''Joyful is my heart in Jehovah,
Exalted my horn in Jehovah ;
Opened wide is my mouth over mine enemieSi
For I have rejoiced in thy salvation.
None is holy as Jehovah, for there is none besides

thee,
And no rock is as our God.
Continue not to speak arrogance, arrogance ;
Impudence has gone forth from your mouth ;
For a God of knowledge is Jehovah,
And with him actions are weighed.
Bow-heroes are dismayed,
And tottering ones are girded with powen
Full ones with bread are hired,
And hungry ones cease (from labor) ;
While the barren has borne seven.
And she of many children pines away.
Jehpvah kills and makes alive,
Brings down to Sheol and brings iip.
Jehovah makes poor and makes rich;
He humbles, also he exalts.
He lifts from the dust the poor.
From the dunghill he exalts the needy,
To cause them to sit with nobles,
And a throne of glory gives them as a possessioa
For to Jehovah are the pillars of the earth.
And he sets upon them the world.
The feet of the pious ones he will guard,
And the wicked in darkness shall be dumb ;
For not by strength shall a man become mighty.

H 113

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Jehovah ! — they shall be dismayed who contend

against him.
Above him in the heavens he shall thunder.
Jehovah shall judge the ends of the earth.
And shall give strength to his king.
And exalt the born of his anointed."

Beginning with the outburst of her heart's ex-
alted happiness, Hannah ascribes the fulness of
her joy to Jehovah as its source. From the
narrow basis of her own deliverance as an indi-
vidual instance of the mercy and might of Je-
hovah she rises to a broad vision of the univer-
sal providence and guardianship of the Lord in
behalf of all those who put their trust in him.
Human power and worldly position and wealth
are not the measure of true success; but oneness
of will with God, and a faith that " lends its real-
izing light," raise the mind and heart above
the confines of a selfish life, and make their
possessor a partner with the innumerable saints
of God, and a sharer both in the sacrifices and
in the triumphs of Him who brought salvation
to the world.

Her love was not obliterated or even ob-
scured. It was rather absorbed or taken up

114

HANNAH

into the regnant passion of her soul in its
complete surrender to the divine purpose. The
life-long devotement of Samuel to the Lord in
his special separation as a Nazarite opened a
large vista for Hannah's future, and though she
returned to the home at Ramah and rejoiced in
the gift of children born afterwards, her chief and
highest interest remained centred in the career
of her first-born.

" But Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a
child, girded with a linen ephod. M(Jreover his mother
made him a little coat, and brought it to him from
year to year, when she came up with her husband to
offer the yearly sacrifice."

The excellences of the great men of all times
have usually been foreshadowed, if not exempli-
fied, in the characters of their mothers. Joche-
bed was the guardian of her infant boy from
the edict of Pharaoh, and the boy became the
guardian of Jethro's flocks, and then the shep-
herd, guide, and law-giver of the nation in its great
exodus and wilderness march. Elizabeth,' who,
with her husband, Zacharias,

" was righteous before God, walking in all the com-
mandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless/'

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

was the chosen one of God to whom was given
the honor of motherhood to him who was " more
than a prophet" — the harbinger of the gospel
itself. The genius and intellectual sweep of
Goethe were foretokened in the many-sided brill-
iancy of Frau Rath. Hannah's faith found its
largest fulfilment not in the birth and infancy of
her first-born son, but in the purity and strength
of the prophet-judge and his illustrious career as
the restorer of the nation. The answer to Han-
nah's intense and continued prayer was not
merely in the gift of the child, but also and more
especially in the prayerfulness of Samuel, and
his potent spiritual rule over the fortunes of the
revived and unified Israel, and in his personal
influence, which was projected through all the
succeeding alternations of adversity and pros-
perity of that wonderful people.

The position of Hannah among the women of
the Bible assumes greater importance and honor
as there comes into view the similarity of her
song of thanksgiving to that which breaks forth
from the heart of the virgin mother of Jesus.
The resemblance is so striking in several parts

Ii6

HANNAH

of these psalms of triumph as to leave no doubt
that the Magnificat, though loftier in its mould,
milder in its tone, and wider in its vision, was
in no small degree modelled upon the song of
Hannah. Hannah's sweet words had floated
along the aisles of all the intervening ages, and
caught the ear of the mother of Jesus. The pict-
ure of the humble home in the Galilean town
of Nazareth, in which Mary had her birth and
early training, would doubtless include among
its choicest treasures the manuscript vellum
copies of portions of the Old Testament writ-
ings. Mary was without doubt familiar, too,
with the public reading of Moses and the proph-
ets in the Sabbath service at the synagogue —
the same one made famous by the subsequent
visit of Jesus and his announcement of the evan-
gel of Isaiah as fulfilled in himself. With great
certainty it may be assumed that Mary herself
was particularly interested in those portions of
the Scripture attributed to the worthy women of
her own race, and that the songs of Miriam, of
Deborah, and of Hannah were loved and com-
mitted to memory. How fitting that the

117

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

of Nazareth, instructed in the oracles of divine
truth, of which her people were the guardians,
should interweave with the sublime melodies of
her unique exaltation some of the more forceful
and beautiful strains from the psalm of the
mother of the seer of Ramah !

The general resemblance between these two
leading Hebrew poems is readily seen, and the
points where they blend are of especial interest.
A parallel arrangement will perhaps best show the

POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN

MARY'S SONG

AND

HANNAH'S SONG

" My soul doth magnify the Lord ** My heart rejoiceth in the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in Mine horn is exalted in the
God my Saviour. Lord ;

** He hath showed strength with

his arm ;
He hath scattered the proud in

the imagination of their

hearts.
He hath put down the mighty

from their seats,
And exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with

good things ;
And the rich he hath sent

empty away."

•*The bows of the mighty men

are broken
And they that stumbled are

girded with strength.
The Lord killeth and maketh

alive ;
He bringeth <4pwn to the grave

and bringeth up.
They that were full have hired

out themselves for bread ;
And they that were hungry

ceased."

John F. Hurst,

r
- t

JEZEBEL

EZEBEL was the Clytemnestra, the Lady
Macbeth, of Hebrew history. Though
by no means an attractive personage, she
is invested by her extraordinary force of char-
acter and her appalling fate with a tragic gran-
deur which belongs to no other woman of the
Bible.

The first noteworthy thing connected with
her is the fact that she was not of the stock
of Israel, but of another and a very remarka-
ble race. She was the daughter of Ethbaal,
King and High-Priest of the Zidonians. That
is to say, she was a Phoenician. Now the Phoe-
nicians were the great commercial and mari-
time people of the ancient world. They were
akin to the Canaanites, and indeed to the He-
brews, whose language was almost identical
with their own, but they represent an earlier
migration from the Arabian cradle of the Se-

121

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

mitic race, and they finally settled on the nar-
row strip of fertile sea-coast north of the head-
land of Carmel, and between the mountain range
of Lebanon and the Mediterranean. Here, with
no opportunity of expansion towards the east
or north, the way of the sea lay open to them,
and they made the most of it. They improved
the few poor harbors which the bleak coast
afforded, and Tyre and Sidon especially be-
came populous, rich, and splendid seaports.
They constructed merchant - vessels equipped
with two or three banks of oars and capable
of carrying large cargoes, and they became the
most skilful sailors of that age. It was with
their help that Solomon built up his extensive
commerce with India by way of the Red Sea,
and all the carrying trade of the Mediterranean
was for a long time in their hands. It was
thus by their agency that the arts, the letters,
and the religions of the East, as well as the
products of its industry, were first introduced
into Europe. Their influence on the Greeks
especially, the first of European peoples to re-
spond to the touch of Oriental civilization, was

122

f %

JEZEBEL

varied, deep, and lasting. Greek mythology is
full of Semitic legends, which, together with
bales of costly merchandise, were borne west-
ward in Phoenician ships. And if they did not
invent the alphabet which we are still using,
but obtained it from Egyptian sources, it is
still one of many precious things which we owe
to this enterprising race.

They were not, however, contented to be mer*
chants and seamen only. Colonization followed
commerce. They settled at various points on
the islands of the Mediterranean and along both
its shores^ as far westward even as the Strait
of Gibraltar. Abe^ut 800 B.C. some fugitives
from Tyre founded Carthage, which was long
the rival and enemy of Rome, in whose history
the Punic — i. e., Phoenician — wars form so mem*
orable a chapter, and the Phoenician language
continued to be spoken in that part of north-
ern Africa for nearly sixteen centuries. They
established themselves in the south of Spain,
where Tarshish became an important emporium,
though its exact site has long been forgotten.

And thence their adventurous navies made their

123

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

way to the Canary and Scilly Islands and the
shores of Britain, while "an admiral of Tyre
circumnavigated Africa in 600 b.c., or two
thousand years before Vasco da Gama." *

All this happened long after the time of
Jezebel, who lived in the ninth century b.c,
but it shows from what an energetic stock she
sprang — the same which afterwards produced the
greatest soldier of antiquity, Hannibal, whose
temper was not more daring and unforgiving
than hers. It was a rash and impious act for
Ahab to set her beside him on his throne, and
the evil consequences of it soon appeared. It
brought about a state of things very different
from the friendly commercial relations which
had existed between the Israelites and the Phoe-
nicians in the da3rs of David and Solomon. And
yet, if Dean Stanley is right in his suggestion
that the forty-fifth Psalm, with its references to
the "daughter of Tyre" and the " ivory palaces,"
and the absence of any allusion to Jerusalem,
was really composed as an epithalamium for the
marriage of Ahab and Jezebel, the alliance which

♦ G. A. Smith.

124

JEZEBEL

was to have such far-reaching and tragical re-
sults was at first greeted with rejoicing. But it
was the union of a weak as well as wicked man
with a woman of indomitable will, tojtvhom fear
and pity and conscientious scruples were alike
unknown. Like Clytemnestra and Lady Mac-
beth, the woman was the evil genius of the man,
and a frightful series of crimes and massacres
ensued, involving not only the kingdom of Israel,
but, through the marriage of Athaliah, Jezebel's
daughter, with a prince of the house of Judah,
the southern kingdom as well, in an inconceiva-
ble succession of horrors.

There are three acts in Jezebel's dramatic
career. The first begins with her attempt to
supplant the worship of Jehovah by that of Baal,
and ends with the flight of Elijah. The story
is powerfully told in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth chapters of I. Kings. It was natural
enough that she should carry her religion with
her into her new home. Regarding Jehovah as
only a local divinity, " the god of the land," why,
she reasoned, should not Baal and Ashtaroth
also have their shrines and their worshippers?

I2S

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Yielding to her strong will or half converted
to the wide-spread idolatry in which she had
grown up, Ahab erected in his new capital at
Samaria a magnificent temple to the sun-god,
at which no less than four hundred and fifty
priests officiated. In addition to this, at the
royal residence which he had himself constructed
in the beautiful plain of Jezreel, with its palace oi
ivory and its elaborate gardens, a sanctuary was
built by Jezebel herself to Ashtaroth (or Astarte),
whose four hundred priests were fed at her own
table. At both places the cruel and licentious
rites of these divinities were celebrated. But
Jezebel was not satisfied with this. She un-
dertook to exterminate the worship of Jehovah.
She inaugurated the first great persecution in
the history of the Church of God. And she
appears to have almost succeeded in her at-
tempt Only a hundred prophets seem to have
escaped her fury, and at one time not more
than seven thousand persons were left in all the
kingdom who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
This crisis brought upon the scene " the very

chief of the prophets." Elijah, coming no one

126

JEZEBEL

knew whence, suddenly stood before Ahab. He
arrested the king's attention by foretelling the
three years of drought that followed. At the
end of that period he unexpectedly appeared
again. To the king's angry challenge, " Art
thou he that troubleth Israel?" he replied, in
a tone not less defiant, " I have not troubled
Israel, but thou and thy father's house !" He
summoned the eight hundred and fifty prophets
of Astarte and Baal to a supreme test of power,
a stupendous battle of the gods, on the top of
Mount Carmel, overlooking the great Phoenician
plain. In language of unparalleled audacity he
taunted them with the impotence of their boasted
deities, and> when the strange contest ended in
the triumphant vindication of Jehovah, he in-
cited the people to seize and massacre them
all on the banks of the Kishon, not more than
twenty miles from the gates of Tyre. The ter-
ror which he thus inspired is shown by the re-
markable fact that the Phoenicians made no at-
tempt to avenge the sacrilegious insult. Ahab
was completely cowed. But there was one per-
son with whom Elijah had yet to reckon. It

127

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

was Jezebel. The king told her "all that Eli-
jah had done, and withal how he had slain all
the prophets with the sword." Not for an in-
stant did she cower before the victorious prophet
or before his God. She swore the terrible oath,
"So let the gods do to me and more also, if
I make not thy life as the life of one of them
by to-morrow about this time!" The fury of
this undaunted woman was more than even
Elijah could face. He had defied the king;
he had stood out alone against the vast multi-
tude of the priests and worshippers of Baal.
But when he heard the words of Jezebel, "he
arose and went for his life" — across the king-
dom of Judah, across the Arabian desert, to
the remote solitudes of Mount Sinai. In the
first act of the tragedy, the haughty queen re-
mains in undisputed possession of the stage.

The second act comprises the familiar story
of Naboth's vineyard, in itself a literary master-
piece so often alluded to by modern writers
that no person can be called well read who
does not know it by heart. Ahab was a splen-
dor-loving monarch, and he lavished his wealth

128

JEZEBEL

and taste on the city and palace which he
built in the plain of Jezreel, the ^most famous
battle-ground of history, and the broad pas-
sageway through which the great currents of
travel and traffic between Asia and Europe
flowed for centuries. Adjoining the royal palace
was a vineyard which he desired to purchase,
that he might transform it into a flower-garden.
Like the Prussian miller of modern times who
dared to oppose his legal rights to the imperious
will of Frederick the Great, its owner, Naboth,
refused to sell it. In petulant anger at his ob-
stinacy, the king, like a sulky child, went to bed
and refused to eat. 1 1 does not appear, however,
that he thought of accomplishing by criminal
means what he could not honestly secure. His
queen was at > once bolder, more determined,
and more utterly unscrupulous. Instantly her
design was formed. In contemptuous impatience
she exclaimed, " Dost thou now govern the king-
dom of Israel ? Arise, and eat bread, and let thine
heart be merry : / will give thee the vineyard
of Naboth the Jezreelite." How precisely these

tremendous words anticipate Lady Macbeth's,
I 129

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

** Infirm of purpose! Give me the dagger T and
her sharp aside at the banquet-table, "* Art thou
a man ?" Nor is Jezebel troubled by any such
womanly weakness as that which prompted the
Scottish heroine's, "Had he not resembled my
father as he slept, I had done 't," nor does
conscience waken in her sleep and paint the
ineffaceable drop of blood on her " little hand."
Coldly and without faltering she carried out
her purpose. She wrote letters in Ahab's name,
and sealed them with his seal, and sent them
to the elders and nobles of the city. In these
letters she directed them to proclaim a fast,
and, setting Naboth on high among the people,
to accuse him of blasphemy against God and
against the king. They were to have ready
two false witnesses, to support the unjust charge,
and when he should have been convicted on
their testimony they were to carry him out and
stone him to death. The foul plot was prompt-
ly executed and reported to the queen, who
quietly announced it to Ahab in the words,
"Arise, take possession of the vineyard; for

Naboth is not alive, but dead." According to

130

JEZEBEL

one version of the narrative the king's misera^
ble soul was pierced by remorse when he learned
what had been done. At all events, he quailed
again when the terrible prophet once more
"found" him and pronounced the doom which
was to fall upon him and upon his house. It
was a sentence of such awful import, forebod-
ing the utter extinction of his race and the
exposure of their unburied bodies to the dogs
and to the vultures, that the guilty and craven

s king, who had " sold himself to work evil," was

frightened by it into a genuine repentance. But
Jezebel, his wife, who had "stirred him up to
work wickedness in the sight of the Lord," was
as incapable of remorse as of fear. She gave no
sign of repentance, but went proudly on to meet
her doom.

Many years passed before the denouement of
the tragedy. Ahab was killed in battle. Atha^
liah had carried the fatal influence of her

' mother into the southern kingdom. Jehu had

been anointed as the avenger of Jehovah and
had begun his bloody work. The king of Is-
rael, Jezebel's son, and the king of Judah. her

t.
» • • •

4 k •

WOMEN bF THE BIBLE

grandson, met him under the walls of Jezreel,
In the ill-omened garden which had once been
the property of Naboth. The former Jehu slew
with his own hand, the latter was overtaken in
his flight and killed. The last hour of the
aged queen had come, but her proud spirit
was not yet subdued. Great-grandmother though
she was, she stopped in that terrible moment to
arrange her hair and paint her eyebrows,

"Pour r6parer des ans Tirreparable outrage,"

as Racine says in his " Athalie." Then, placing
herself at the latticed window of the watch-tower,
she awaited the coming of Jehu. As he entered
the gate, she shouted down to him the bitterest,
most insulting taunt she could think of. As the
Revised Version reads (11. Kings, ix. 31), she
called him by the detested name of the usurper
and assassin who, after reigning only for a week,
had fled into the palace and burned it over his
own head. " Hail," she cried, " thou Zimri, thy
master's murderer I" She must have known well
that resistance was impossible, and that she was
only maddening her victorious enemy, but she

132

JEZEBEL

resolved to die as defiantly as she had lived. The
impetuous conqueror cried to the servants who
were standing near her to throw her from the
window. They obeyed, and as she fell, in front
of his chariot, the walls were sprinkled with her
blood and the horses trod her underfoot. Not
long afterwards, when he had feasted in the
palace where she had reigned for so many years,
he remembered that she was, after all, a king's
daughter and the mother of kings, and he sent
his servants out to take her up and bury her.
There was nothing left. Elijah's prophecy ut-
tered to Ahab years before had been fulfilled,
" The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jez-
reel."

A type of womanhood which is anything but
lovely and which is fortunately rare, she never-
theless compels a certain admiration for her pro-
digious force of intellect and will. And it is
only fair to remember that it is not the purpose
of the Bible to analyze or even to portray her
character, but simply to record the events in
which she bore so prominent a part. If there
are no touches of light on her dark face, as we

133

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

see it in the sacred narrative, it does not follow
that she was wholly destitute of those more
feminine qualities which are so marvellously
combined in Shakespeare's great heroine with
an equally savage and relentless resolution.
However this may be, she is certainly one of
the great tragic figures of literature and of his-
tory. And her story brings out the pride, the
determination, and the ferocity which are latent
in woman's nature all the more vividly, because
in this ancient daughter of Tyre they are neither
mitigated by any sensibility nor restrained by
any principle. Edward B. Coe.

ESTHER

HE study of Esther is not so simple
as it seems to be at first sight. No

true conception of her can be reached
without at least a glance at the circumstances
of her life and the conditions of her time. It
is wise to say at the beginning that one gets
a better perspective of both from the history
of Herodotus and the drama of ^schylus than
from the apocryphal book of Esther or the
drama of Racine. To think of her merely as
a pretty Jewish maiden who caught the eye
and captivated the thing he called his heart
of a licentious Oriental monarch is as insuf-
ficient on the one hand as on the other it is
exaggerated to canonize her as a saint and char-
acterize her as a martyr.

The time, then, of this strange story is about
five centuries before Christ. The King Ahas-
uerus we may, I think, with much certainty say

137

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

is Xerxes, whose character, as Herodotus sketch-
es it, fits perfectly with the description in the
canonical book of Esther, of the times and the
man. We see him sitting on his throne, sur-
rounded with all Oriental splendor and luxu-
riousness, in the inner court of his palace at
Susa, inflamed with anger because Vashti would
not obey his bidding to display her charms to
the Persian courtiers who surrounded him. It
is the same man who sat on his silver-footed
throne on the Athenian mountain, in boastful

confidence of power, watching what, mercifully
for the world, turned out to be the utter rout
of his vast armies at Salamis. And we recall,
in the outburst of his passion at Shushan, what
the Greek historian tells us of, the insane wrath
which ordered three hundred stripes to be in-
flicted on the Hellespont, and the Phoenician
mechanics to be beheaded because the ships
which they had built had been shattered by the
insolent waves of the sea.

The setting of the story is of wealth, licen-
tiousness, barbaric magnificence, the degradation
of womanhood, the uncontrolled exercise of un-

138

ESTHER

limited power " to kill and to make alive," and
the strange and inconsistent position of a large
number of Jews, who, careless of the edict of
Cyrus and indifferent to the splendid example
of Ezra and Nehemiah and their ancestors, pre-
ferred to stay behind in Persia, in the lavish in-
dulgence of the court, rather than to quit the
land of their captivity and humiliation and re-
turn to Jerusalem, " choosing rather to enjoy
the pleasure of sin for a season than to suffer af-
fliction with the people of God." The move-
ment of the story is intensely dramatic. The
scenery, if we may so call it, is splendid with
every element of decoration and display, and the
plot has in it a series of intricate and involved
complications worthy of the highest dramatic
talent, if we were to read it as an imaginary in-
vention ; and still more wonderful and full of
meaning as we see in it the guiding and overrul-
ing providence of God.

Tadassah, which is the Hebrew name for
Esther, meaning, the one, myrtle, and the other
a star, is described as without father or mother,
fair and beautiful, taken by Mordecai for his own

139

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

daughter when she was left an orphan. The
vacant place of the queen, lost by the very de-
cent disobedience of Vashti, is at once coveted
by Mordecai for his great-niece. Her beauty
and sweetness of nature won her the favor of the
keeper of the women first, and then of the king.
She seems to have held her influence over the
king for about five years. At the end of that time,
when the king sought another favorite, and dur-
ing the second gathering together of the virgins
for her selection, Mordecai discovers the con-
spiracy of two of the king's chamberlains to
assassinate him, and, through Esther, informs
Xerxes, who has the conspirators hanged. There
is a touch of loyalty here that is very attractive.
Discarded from her place as chief favorite, she
nurses no revenge and feels no jealousy, but
saves the life of the man who had cast her aside ;
and from this fact the whole plot ravels itself to
the climax of the story. Haman's dislike of
Mordecai, because he would not do reverence to
the grand-vizier of the king, hurries its culmina-
tion. The lot is cast to find the auspicious month
for the carrying out of Haman's wicked passion.

140

ESTHER

He secures the consent of the king to kill all
the Jews in the kingdom, in order to avenge
himself on Mordecai for the affront of his indif-
ference. And Esther hears the appeal to her to
come to the rescue of her people. It is an ap-
peal to her national pride rather than to her re-
ligion. It is urged with the cunning of a world-
ly-minded courtier, rather than with the earnest-
ness of a religious devotee. It is addressed to
her sense of personal danger, because if all the
Jews were to be killed, although her nationality
has been carefully concealed, she would not be al*
lowed to escape. And it is pressed home by the
touching appeal to the possible providential pur-
pose of her elevation to the queenship : " If thou
altogether boldest thy peace at this time, then
shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to
the Jews from another place ; but thou and thy
father's house shall be destroyed : and who know-
eth whether thou art come to the kingdom for
such a time as this ?"

With much natural fear of the result, asking
that all the Jews should fast for her (there is
a curious absence of the religious element here,

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

as elsewhere, both in the queen and in her
uncle, no allusion being made to prayer), Esther
takes time for thought ; and then with a desper-
ate resolve, with a courage based apparently on
the long habit of obedience to Mordecai, and
partly on fear for her own life, she decides to
take the risk of going, unasked, into the pres-
ence of the king, who had long since wearied of
her charms. Her words have a certain flavor in
them of fine courage, whatever may have been
behind or underneath it — '' If I perish, I perish,"
It is at least a clear instance of obedience and
love of country, and it succeeds. And the suc-
cess turns, very dramatically, upon the fact of
her fealty to the king. She has been admitted
to his presence; she postpones the preferment
of her request, perhaps from hesitation, perhaps
to win a more signal victory over the enemy
of her people. And then comes the uneasy
sleep of the king, who sought diversion in hear-
ing read the books of the records of the king-
dom, which contain the story of the way in
which the discarded queen had saved the life

of the despot. Then the strange events follow

143

ESTHER

in startling succession : the expected triumph of
Haman ; his humiliation in being compelled to
escort his hated enemy, as the king's favorite,
through the streets; the revelation by Esther
of his accursed plot ; the sudden change of feel-
ing, so characteristic of the fickle and capricious
nature of Xerxes, until Haman hangs upon
Mordecai's gallows.

The old fathers found in this a foreshadow-
ing of the scene on Calvary. The Septuagint
here makes the king say just what the Jews
cried out against the Lord — " Let him be cruci-
fied !" And (so they figured it) as Satan de-
vised the cross on which Jesus triumphed over
him, so Haman hangs upon the cross that he
had raised for Mordecai. Then, with the quick
impulse of changeful and arbitrary tyranny, the
decree of destruction is changed, and the Jews
are permitted and ordered to commit the same
cruelty upon the Persians which was to have
been meted out to them. To this day the an-
nual Feast of Purim, which commemorates their
deliverance, is, I believe, observed by the Jews
with shouts and hand-clappings at the read-

143-

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

ing of the story of what was wrought out for
their ancestors by the influence of Esther the
Queen.

As we look fairly at this picturesque character,
stripped of the glamour of romantic sentiment
or of the gloss of national pride, it is true that
the sheen is somewhat brushed off the myrtU
leaves, and the brightness of the star is some-
what dimmed/when we realize that the elevation
of this woman to a share of the imperial crown
was purchased at the cost of the degradation of
the best Hebrew standards of womanhood and
the disregard of the religion of her fathers ; and
also that her conduct has in it, even in its final
act of daring, nothing of the splendid courage of
religious or patriotic enthusiasm, but only the
timid docility of a subservient child.) But it is
only fair to mitigate and moderate this judgment
by recalling the corrupt atmosphere in which
she lived, the almost (swaddling-bands of unrea-
soning submission in which she had been trained^
and the looseness of polygamy and concubinage
which so hideously dethroned women from their

side-by-side equality with men and destroyed the

144

ESTHER

dignity of the divine relation between the sexes.J)
Her fidelity to the king, like Vashti's refusal to
submit to the tyranny of his sensual pride, makes
both the women witnesses to a higher thought
of the estate of womanhood than prevailed in
that day. And Esther lives in our memories as
one who kept her troth ; who forgave supreme
injury and injustice ; whose charm survived the
passing passions of a capricious lover; who duti-
fully obeyed the man who stood to her in the
stead of a parent ; who loved and clung to, al-
though she concealed, her despised but honora-
ble descent; who dared to risk death for her
people, and so escaped dying with them ; who
won for her nation a great deliverance, and
whom Almighty God used as an instrument of
His providence for the working out of a glorious
purpose. And while the history is marred with
traces of lust and self-seeking and revenge, they
only witness to the truth of the story, to the hon-
esty of Holy Scripture, and to the marvellous
way in which God makes the " wrath of men to
praise Him." No one can rise from the study
of these times and of this woman without a

K 145

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

deep sense of thankfulness for the higher
morality and the holier womanhood wrought
out by the precepts and Ae life of the Vir-
gin-born« William Croswell Doane.

MARY MAGDALEN

THE DRAMA OF WRECKAGE AND RECOVERY ALSO

HE essence of ten thousand tragedies,
from the time of Queen Helen and
Aspasia to Lady Macbeth and Hester
Prynne, is in the story of this Magdalen, who
stood at Jesus's feet, weeping, and wiping the
tears away with her hair, and kissing his feet and
anointing him with ointment In the hour when
enthusiasm for Jesus Christ rose like a rising tide,
he went to dine at the bountiful table of a very
rich man. Soon the multitudes about the house
broke through all restraints, and, crowding their
way within, stood about the couch where Christ
reclined. With the crowd was swept in a woman
who bought and sold the sweet sanctities of
love. With what silken snares she had first
been caught, with what flattery or appeal to am-
bition she had been led into the scorching way,

149

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

we know not. We only know that often in the
twilight hours she had lingered upon the out-
skirts of audiences that listened to this new
teacher, and that it was given her to behold the
Christ's face, his eye of mercy, his gentleness
towards each sweet child and prodigal boy. Be-
holding him, the tides of grief and shame rose
fast within her. As the vision of this stranger's
purity disclosed itself, she passed into the shad-
ow and realized the abyss and gulf that sepa-
rated her from him. In that hour memory be-
came a magician. She recalled the early days
when she walked over the hills, herself as pure
and sweet as the snowdrop and the anemone
that blossomed beneath her feet. She recalled
her venerable father, her fair, sweet mother, and
chiefly that dreadful hour when she was like a
bird with wings caught in the thicket. She re-
called also the gradual wasting away of resist-
ance and sensibility, and the days when she
waked to find the gates of the morning were
iron and brass.

Mellowed by these memories, touched by his

words, made tender in his presence, some secret

150

MARY MAGDALEN

spring in her gave way, disclosing an inner realm
that was still sweet and pure. Weeping, her
hot tears fell down upon Christ's feet and soiled
them. Then grief and shame rose in her like a
flood. In a wild outburst of sorrow she stooped
down and kissed away the black tears, wiped his
feet with her hair, sweetened the spots with her
ointment. Then verily there was a flaming
resurrection I Conscience, long like a babe half
smothered in the cradle, came forth to its
regency. Spreading their wings, hope and as-
piration lifted her heart into a nobler realm.
As sometimes a sleeper, disturbed in his rest by
the sharp thunder-storm, and dreaming mon-
strous dreams, awakens only to find the storm
with its lurid lightnings is dying away upon the
hills, over which comes the morning full of radi-
ance and all sweet song, so in the weeping girl
the dreadful past died like a hateful storm out
of her life and was forever buried. Even while
she wept, her heart rose like a bird singing be-
cause the sun stands upon the horizon. Be*
holding her tears, men wondered, but Christ
pitied and sent her away redeemed into purity

151

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

and sweetness of life. Oh, what a drama was
this I In all literature there is nothing compara-
ble to it for delicacy and rare beauty. As once
young King David left his sinful past behind
and went up to take a place beside Dante and
Shakespeare, so the weeping girl went up also
and stood in the niche history made ready for
her ; for David and Magdalen have a place be-
side the " immortals " who are the leaders of the
ages.

Ignorance and shallowness may sneer that
God thinks lightly of foul sins because King
David's psalm, red with blood and black with
guilt, is bound up in the Bible, and that the
story of the Magdalen is given a place in the
history of the Christ. But the sneer will be
both superficial and unjust. Perhaps the wealth
of thorns and thistles, not less than wealth of
wheat, can proclaim the native richness of the
field. Perhaps the supremely magnificent way
in which Satan plays the devil in " Paradise
Lost" proves that he was a fallen angel. Let
us confess that oftentimes heroic men and he-
roic deeds are sparks struck out of sin's fierce

152

MARY MAGDALEN

flame/ The names of the great are the names
of those who have struggled unto blood, resist-
ing passions within and temptations without.
The great epics and dramas and epoch-making
men are perhaps less than a score in number,
and sometimes these heroes have gone towards
righteousness in a reaction from iniquity. In
jurisprudence we mention Moses; now Moses
was a murderer. In song David walks with
Dante; now David compassed Uriah's death.
In literature Paul's ode to love is quite un-
equalled by any ode of Shakespeare or Milton ;
now Saul was indictable for Stephen's death.
In the dramas we mention " Hamlet " and
"Leah" and "Macbeth"; but all these pages
are stained with grievous sins. The " Iliad," too,
the " Inferno," and the " Paradise Lost," with
" Faust," are epics of passion and temptation
and the final victory of righteousness. When
scholars can square the circle, make a stick with
one end, turn dirt to gold, then they will know
why evil was permitted. Until then earth's
purest spirits will love the psalm of David's
bloodguiltiness ; until then the page that tells

153 -

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

the story of this weeping Magdalen will be worn
by the reader and wet by the tears of innumer-
able prodigals who hunger for righteousness.
Earth's lilies grow white out of black soil.

For some reason, when the great artists have
depicted the glorious scenes in the life of Christ
they turn with pathetic affection and tender
solicitude to the face of the Magdalen. This
weeping girl has a large place in all the gal-
leries. It is not that she was a great sinner.
Christ spake tenderly to Magdalen, but gave
words of flame to the Pharisees and scribes.
What is a great sin.*^ Plainly not rude out-
breaking crime nor tumultuous transgressions.
Donatello pushed no second stranger over the
battlements. Jean Valjean robbed no second
bishop of his silver candlesticks. David set no
second Uriah in the forefront of battle. After
his long torture and his full confession, Dimmis-
dale of the Scarlet Letter died with a great sweet
light on his face. Society is not devastated by
dramatic crime. The earthquake that made the
beautiful city of Lisbon a heap of ruins did less
to impoverish Portugal than the laziness of men

1 54

MARY MAGDALEN

during a single summer. The selfishness and
the meanness of some men counted blameless
will aggregate a greater weight of iniquity than
the swift blow of another hand murderous for
one moment The foul thought, the passionate
impulse, can scald the soul. Grown gray and
wise, the poet prayed, Deliver me from secret
sins. Experience had taught him that secret
faults are like the fungus in the wine-cask, whose
presence is, indeed, unsuspected, but which
drinks up all the precious liquor to feed its
filthiness, and leaves the cask filled only with
the foul growth. Looking this sweet girl in the
face, let all Pharisees confess that man's home
and happiness are wrecked by minute faults and
hidden vices.

Perhaps for sinning David, repentant Peter,
and the weeping Magdalen the great events of
life will be the recollection of vanquished sins.
Perhaps temptations and passions conquered will
hang on the walls of our memory like the shields
of vanquished enemies. Perhaps the weeping
Magdalen, to whom Christ said, " Neither do I
condemn thee. Go, and sin no more," is the

155

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

evangel of hope to a lost race. But for Christ's
pity for the weeping girl what man could stand
and look his Maker in the face ? Here is David,
bleeding and worn by passion. Here is Paul,
with hands stained by human blood. Here is
Peter, who was traitor to his master. Here is
young Absalom, who has broken his father's
heart. And here is this sweet girl, creeping
into the room where Christ sits at meat, and
making a mantle of her sunny hair, herself once
whiter than the immaculate flowers and sweeter
than the lilies midst which she played, and who
was enmeshed by the silken threads which bad
men know how to spin, who weeps for the
mother long since gone, and for her revered
father. Once the wakening comes, how bitter
her cry ! Is the dew forever burned from the
grass? Is the path that leads back to the lost
Eden forever barred ? Does the angel with the
flaming sword keep the gates into the lost Par-
adise, though poor Magdalen weeps and pleads
and prays ? Will not Christ's tears cleanse the
stain from the young girl's garments? Oh,

sweetest word that ever fell from mortal lips!

156

MARY MAGDALEN

Strike now your harp, Apollo ! Sing ! Cecilia,
sing ! But know that no note ever struck, no
word ever sounded, is half so sweet to mortal
ears as this word of Christ, " Ye may be born
again." Ye may weep as once ye wept at moth-
er's knee, and pray the sweet old prayers, and
hear again the rustle of an angel's wing, and be-
hold the divine footprints lying fresh upon the
dewy grass, and cool thy fevered lips at child-
hood's well. For to the Magdalen the Christ
hath said: "The bruised reed I will not break.
Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no
more." Newell Dwight Hillis.

MARY AND MARTHA

HERE is a tradition connected with
Leonardo da Vinci's great painting of
" The Last Supper '* in the refectory
of the convent of Santa Maria della Grazia at
Milan, which I have often thought might wisely
be recalled for the guidance of critics and com-
mentators upon the New Testament story of
Mary and Martha. It is, in substance, that after
he had finished the picture, Leonardo was wont
sometimes to stand by, unrecognized by visitors,
and listen to their comments. My readers will
remember the picture. The long table spread
with its fair cloth ; the Master in the centre, fac-
ing the spectator, and surrounded by the Twelve.
It is a marvel of naturalness, profound spiritual
insight, and majesty of delineation. But day
after day, as he stood and listened, the artist was
keenly mortified to find that, of those who came

h l6j

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

to see it, many saw only the table-cloth — ^its real-
istic folds, its microscopic delineation of fabric,
its marvellous textile accuracy, all of which, but
no more, they noted and praised with eager ad-
miration.

He endured it as long as he could ; and then
at length, in a fine burst of passion, he seized
his brush, dashed it into a mass of crude color
upon his palette, and swiftly painted the whole
table-cloth out. If those who came to see his
picture could not see that which was its Central
Figure — if they had so poor a perception of rela-
tive values in art as to be taken up, to the exclu-
sion of all else, with a mere detail, then the de-
tail must disappear — and it did,

I do not vouch for the legend, but it ought to

be true if it is not. And in no connection could

it be more pertinent than in connection with

that beautiful and most significant incident in

the study of which, as in the case of Da Vinci's

picture, the central figure has been so largely

lost. I have heard, as I presume my readers

have, much preaching about Mary and Martha.

I have sat and groaned — ^who, I wonder, has

162

MARY

^JVD MARTHA

k I- V

MARY AND MARTHA

not ?— under those dreary homilies which have
" rubbed it in *' (forgive the vulgarism, but no
other phrase describes the stupid process) to the
hard-worked mother or housewife or serving-
girl that, instead of drudging at tasks from which
she can no more escape than she can from the
torments of a blue-bottle fly, she should be sit-
ting in the meeting-house, of a week-day even-
ing, lifting up her tired voice in its dismal psal-
mody ; and I have often wondered what Jesus
would say if He should stoop down and listen to
such sermons !

And only a little less, I think, have many of
us suffered when listening to other sermons,
which, after holding Martha up to fine scorn as
a worldly-minded and jealous creature, have ex-
alted Mary for an indifference to the duties of
hospitality, concerning which, for aught that we
know, she may at various times have been quite
as zealous as Martha, For, all the while, the
figure central to the whole, central in Light, in
Power, in Discernment, and in Sweetness, gets
but scanty consideration. Let us turn for a few

moments and look at that

163

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

If I were asked what was the chief value of
the story of Mary and Martha, I should say
that it lay in its exquisite and largely inciden-
tal revelations of the humanity of Jesus, There
have been two tendencies in theology, in the
history of which, some day, some one large
enough for the task will show us a most signifi-
cant illustration, in religious thought and belief,
as everywhere else, of the law of action and re-
action. The first tendency or movement was to
emphasize the divinity of Christ, until in the
Latin, and, to a degree, in other communions not
Western but Eastern, He had been removed so
far off from contact with the human heart that
the cultus of the Virgin was imported to furnish
to humanity that which was undoubtedly the orig-
inal purpose of the Incarnation itself. Then in
time there came the movement to bring back
Jesus, so to speak, into human contact with men,
which has issued in a reaction to the opposite
extreme. But all the while there He is, that
wonderful Personality in the pages of the gospel,
so divine at one moment, so human at another,

that only when the mind grasps and holds fast

164

MARY AND MARTHA

to the two ideas has it even intellectually appre-
hended Him.

And so in the story of Mary and Martha.
One day Jesus says, " Foxes have holes, and
the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of
Man hath not where to lay His head," and the
next day we read, " Then Jesus came to Beth-
any, where Lazarus was ; and Martha made him
a supper." Can you not see it all ? The lonely
heart turning to that simple home of the brother
whom He had brought back to life again, and
the sisters who loved Him only a little less than
he who owed Him so much, and who ministered
to His weariness and exhaustion? The rest there,
the loving converse, the hovering, brooding,
swift-handed care of gentle womanhood — oh,
when we are tired, and life is hard and dry and
human fellowship chafing or disappointing, who
of us does not dream, even if he cannot have it, of
such a refuge, and be glad for the picture, in His
divine ministry, of Him to whom, in the human-
ity common with our own, it meant so much !

As to the rest, I must own that I have never

been able to put my heart into any interpreta^

165

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

tion of the two women to whom was given the
great joy and honor of ministering to Jesus in
their own home which undertook to strike the
balance of their virtues or their frailnesses. I
love Mary in the fine spiritual quality of her de-
votion that forgets homelier tasks; but I cannot
but remember that if somebody else had not
recollected and discharged them, the dear and
august Guest might have suffered hunger in the
house of His friends.

A kinsman of mine was once entertained
by a gifted woman, who was so much absorbed
in his interesting conversation that she for-
got to inspect the " spare room " in which
he slept, and in which he passed the night
in exasperating collisions with a silver soup-
tureen which long before had been concealed
from the burglars in his bed ; and I confess I
agreed with a cynical female critic who observed,
on hearing the story, that clever and devout
women might sometimes most wisely " pray and
talk less and keep house more." The picture of
a bustling, overzealous hospitality is sordid and
unpicturesque enough, doubtless; but the ab-

i66

MARY AND MARTHA

sorption in higher things that leaves all mean
tasks and hard work to another is not alto-
gether engaging either. Martha undoubtedly
deserved the rebuke she got But surely no
one will withhold from her that tender sym-
pathy that we ought to give every day of our
lives to hard-worked and overburdened women
all about us. By all means let us honor Mary
for her truer vision of the Highest. Ah yes,
if only the rest of us had it I If only, in this
age which makes so much more of what it
eats and what it wears than our sturdy fathers
made, we could all learn the eternal truth of
those words of Jesus, " The life is more than
meat, and the body than raiment," how much
more glorious a thing that life would be ! Blessed
be God for Mary, who gives us, against the gray
relief of her sister's lower type of service, that
fair and beautiful and saintly picture ! May God
help us all to climb up into her atmosphere !
But blessed be His name that when He was
here in the flesh He drew the two together close
to Him, taught and admonished them both^ we

may be sure ; loved and was patient with them

167

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

both ; and in going in and out among them,
eating, drinking, conversing, resting, toiling,
taught us forever how close He is to all hu-
man lives, and how inexhaustibly wise and ten-
der to all human frailties !

Henry C Potter.

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

»HE world is governed more by ideals
than by ideas ; it is influenced more by
living, concrete models than by abstract
principles of virtue.

The model held up to Christian women is not
the Amazon, glorying in her martial deeds and
prowess ; it is not the Spartan woman who made
female perfection consist in the development of
physical strength at the expense of feminine de-
corum and modesty; it is not the goddess of
impure love, like Venus, whose votaries regard
beauty of form and personal charms as the high-
est type of female excellence ; nor is it the god-
dess of imperial will like Juno. No ; the model
held up to woman from the very dawn of Chris-
tianity is the peerless Mother of our Blessed
Redeemer.

She is the pattern of virtue alike to maiden,

171

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

wife, and mother. She exhibits the virginal
modesty becoming the maid, the conjugal fidelity
and loyalty of the spouse, and the untiring de-
votedness of the mother.

The Christian woman is everywhere con-
fronted by her great model. Mary's portrait
gazes down upon her from the wall. Her name
is repeated in the pages of the book before her.
Her eulogy is pronounced from the pulpit.
Altars and temples are dedicated in her honor.
Festivals are celebrated in her praise. In a
word, the Virgin Mother is indelibly stamped
on the intellect, the heart, the memory, and the
imagination of the Christian daughter.

The influence of Mary, therefore, in the moral
elevation of woman can hardly be overestimated.
She is the perfect combination of all that is great
and good and noble in Pagan womanhood, with
no alloy of degradation.

Hers is exquisite beauty, but a beauty more of

the soul than of the body; it delights without

intoxicating. The contemplation of her excites

no inward rebellion, as too often happens with

Grecian models. She is the mother of fair

17a

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

love devoid of sickly sentimentality or sensu-
ality.

In her we find force of will without pride or
imperiousness. We find in her moral strength
and heroism without the sacrifice of female grace
and honor — a heroism of silent suffering rather
than of noisy action. What Spartan mother
ever displayed such fortitude as Mary exhibited
at the foot of the cross?

It seems to me that some writers are disposed
to lay undue stress on the admirable and tender
qualities of Mary and of holy Christian women
without dwelling sufficiently on the strong and
robust points of their character. The Holy
Scripture in one place pronounces a lengthened
eulogy on women. What does the Holy Ghost
especially admire in her? Not her sweet and
amiable temper or her gentle disposition, though
of course she possessed these qualities, for no
woman is perfect without them. No; He ad-
mires her valor, courage, fortitude, and the
sturdy virtue of self-reliance. He does not say,
"Who shall find a gentle woman?" but rather,
"Who shall find a valiant woman? As things

173

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

brought from afar and from the uttermost coasts
is the price of hen" * It is only heroic virtues
practised in a heroic degree that the Church
canonizes.

And what was the well-spring of the Virgin
Mother's virtues? Her intimate association
with Our Divine Lord.

The sincere adorers and lovers of Our Lord
Jesus Christ look with reverence on every ob-
ject with which He was associated, and they
conceive an affection for every person that was
near and dear to Him on earth. And the closer
the intimacy of those persons with Our Sav-
iour the holier do they appear in our estima-
tion ; just as those planets partake most of the
sun's light and heat which revolve the nearest
around it.

There is something hallowed to the eye of
the Christian in the very clay of Judea, because
it was pressed by the footprints of Our Blessed
Redeemer. With what reverent steps we would
enter the cave of Bethlehem, because there was
born the Saviour of the world. With what re-

* Prov. xxxi,
174

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

ligious demeanor we would tread the streets of
Nazareth when we remembered that there were
spent the days of His boyhood. What profound
religious awe would fill our hearts on ascending
Mount Calvary, where He paid by His blood
the ransom of our souls. But if the lifeless soil
claims so much reverence, how much more ven-
eration would be enkindled in our hearts for
the living persons who were the friends and as-
sociates of Our Saviour on earth .^ For we
know that He exercised a certain salutary and
magnetic influence on those whom He ap-
proached — ^"'AU the multitude sought to touch
Him, for virtue went out from Him and healed
all," * as happened to the woman who had been
troubled with an issue of blood, t

We would seem, indeed, to draw near to Jesus
if we had the happiness of only conversing with
the Samaritan woman, or of eating at the table of
Zaccheus, or of being entertained by Nicodemus.
But if we were admitted into the inner circle of
His friends, of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, for
instance, the Baptist, or the Apostles, we would

* Luke vi. 19. f Matt. ix. 20. '

175

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

be conscious that in their company we were
drawing still nearer to Jesus, and imbibing some-
what of that spirit which they must have largely
received from their familiar relations with Him.
Now, if the land of Judea is looked upon as
hallowed ground because Jesus dwelt there,
if the Apostles were considered as models of
holiness because they were the chosen compan-
ions and pupils of Our Lord in His latter
years, how peerless must have been the sanctity
of Mary, who gave Him birth, whose breast
was His pillow, who nursed and clothed Him
in infancy, who guided His early steps, who ac-
companied Him in His exile to Egypt and back,
who abode with Him from infancy to boyhood,
from boyhood to manhood ; who during all that
time listened to the words of wisdom which fell
from His lips, who was the first to embrace Him
at His birth, and the last to receive His dying
breath on Calvary. This sentiment is so natural
to us that we find it bursting forth spontaneous-
ly from the lips of the woman of the Gospel,
who, hearing the words of Jesus full of wisdom

and sanctity, lifted up her voice and " said to

176

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Him : Blessed is the womb that bore Thee and
the paps that gave Thee suck."

It is in accordance with the economy of Di-
vine Providence that, whenever God designs
any person for some important work, He be-
stows on that person graces and dispositions
necessary for faithfully discharging it

When Moses was called by Heaven to be the
leader of the Hebrew people, he hesitated to
assume the formidable office on the plea "of
impediment and slowness of tongue." But Je-
hovah reassured him by promising to qualify
him for the sublime functions assigned to him :
" I will be in thy mouth, and I will teach thee
what thou shalt speak." *

The Prophet Jeremiah was sanctified from
his very birth, because he was destined to be
the herald of God's law to the children of Israel:
"Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy
mother, I knew thee, and before thou camest
forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee." t

"Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost "J

* Ex. iv. 12. f Jer. i. 5.

I Luke i. 41.

M 177

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

that she might be worthy to be the hostess of
Our Lord during the three months that Mary
dwelt under her roof.

John the Baptist was " filled with the Holy
Ghost even from his niother's womb."* " He
was a burning and a shining light," t because he
was chosen to prepare the way of the Lord.

The Apostles received the plenitude of grace;
they were endowed with the gift of tongues and
other privileges I before they commenced the
work of the ministry. Hence St Paul says : " Our
sufficiency is from God, who made us fit minis-
ters of the New Testament" §

Now of all who have participated in the min-
istry of the Redemption, there is none who filled
any position so exalted, so sacred, as is the
incommunicable office of Mother of Jesus ; and
there is no one consequently that needed so high
a degree of holiness as she did.

For, if God thus sanctified His Prophets and
Apostles, as being destined to be bearers of the
word of life, how much more sanctified must

♦ Luke i. 15. f John v. 35.

J Acts ii, § II. Cor. iii. 6.

J78

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Mary have been, who was to bear the Lord and
" Author of Life." * If John was so holy, be-
cause he was chosen as the pioneer to prepare
the way of the Lord, how much more holy was
she who ushered Him into the world. If holi-
ness became John's mother, surely a greater
holiness became the mother of John's Master.
If God said to His priests of old, "Be ye
clean, you that carry the vessels of the Lord ;" t
nay, if the vessels themselves used in the di-
vine service and churches are set apart by
special consecration, we cannot conceive Mary
to have been ever profaned by sin, who was
the chosen vessel of election, even the Mother
of God.

As the glory of Mary's holiness proceeds
from Christ, so does it return to Him. All the
glory of the Mother is for the sake of the Son.
" Honor is he worthy of, whom the king hath
a mind to honor." J The King of kings hath
honored Mary : His Divine Son did not disdain
to be subject to her, therefore should we honor

* Acts iii. 15. f Isa. lii. 11.

I Esth. vi. II.

179

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

her, especially as the honor we pay to her re-
dounds to God, the source of all glory. The
Royal Prophet, than whom no man paid higher
praise to God, esteemed the friends of God
worthy of all honor : " To me. Thy friends, O
God, are made exceedingly honorable."* Now
the dearest friends of God are they who most
faithfully keep His precepts: "You are My
friends if you do the things that I command
you." t Who fulfilled the divine precepts better
than Mary, who kept all the words of her Son,
pondering them in her heart ? " If any man
minister to me," says Our Saviour, " him will My
Father honor." ^ Who ministered more con-
stantly to Jesus than Mary, who discharged tow-
ards Him all the offices of a tender mother ?

Heroes and statesmen may receive the high-
est military and civic honors which a nation
can bestow without being suspected of invad-
ing the domain of the glory which is due to
God. Now, is not heroic sanctity more worthy
of admiration than civil service and military

♦ Ps. cxxxviii. t J^^^ *v. 14.

{ John xii. 26.
180

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

exploits, inasmuch as religion ranks higher than
patriotism and valor ?

When a nation wishes to celebrate the mem-
ory of its distinguished men, its admiration is
not confined to words, but vents itself in a thou-
sand different shapes. See in how many ways
we honor the memory of Washington. Monu-
ments on which his good deeds are recorded
are erected to his name. The grounds where
his remains repose on the banks of the Potomac
are kept in order by a volunteer band of devoted
ladies, who adorn the place with flowers. And
this cherished spot is annually visited by thou-
sands of pilgrims from the most remote sections
of the country. These visitors will eagerly
snatch a flower or a leaf from a shrub growing
near Washington's tomb, or will strive even to
clip off a little shred from one of his garments,
which are still preserved in the old mansion,

I and these they will bear home with them as

precious relics.

As the citizens of the United States mani-
fest in divers ways their admiration for Wash-

{ ington, so do the citizens of the republic of the

I i8i

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

Church love to exhibit in corresponding forms
their veneration for the Mother of Jesus.

As no one was ever suspected of loving his
country and her institutions less because of his
revering Washington, so no one can reasonably
suppose that our homage to God is diminished
by fostering reverence for Mary ; for, as our ob-
ject in eulogizing Washington is not so much to
honor the man as to vindicate those principles
of which he was the champion and exponent,
and to express our gratitude to God for the
blessings bestowed on our country through him,
even so our motive in commemorating Mary's
name is not merely to praise her, but still more
to keep us in perpetual remembrance of Our
Lord's incarnation, and to show our thankful-
ness to Him for the blessings wrought through
that great mystery in which she was so promi-
nent a figure. And experience sufficiently de-
monstrates that the better we understand the part
which Mary has taken in the work of redemp-
tion, the more enlightened becomes our knowl-
edge of Our Redeemer Himself, and that the

greater our love for her the deeper and broader

182

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

is our devotion to Him ; while experience also
testifies that Our Saviour's attributes become
more confused and warped in the minds of a
people in proportion as they ignore Mary's rela-
tions to Him,

The defender of a beleaguered citadel concen-
trates his forces on the outer fortifications and
towers, knowing well that the capture of these
outworks would endanger the citadel itself, and
that their safety involves its security.

Jesus Christ is the citadel of our faith, the
stronghold of our soul's affections. Mary is
called the "Tower of David" and the Gate of
Sion, which the Lord loveth more than all the
tabernacles of Jacob,* and which He entered at
His incarnation. So intimately is this living
Gate of Sion connected with Jesus, the temple of
our ^ faith, that no one has ever assailed the
former without invading the latter. The Nes-
torian would have Mary to be only an ordi-
nary mother, because he would have Christ to be
a mere man.

Hence, if we rush to the defence of the gate

* Ps. Ixxxvi.

183

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

of Sion, it is because we are more zealous for
the city of God. If we stand as sentinels around
the tower of David, it is because we are more
earnest in protecting Jerusalem from invasion.
If we forbid profane hands to touch the ark of
the covenant, it is because we are anxious to
guard from profanation the Lord of the ark. If
we are so solicitous about Mary's honor, it is
because " the love of Christ " presseth us. If
we will not perntit a single wreath to be snatched
from her fair brow, it is because we are unwilling
that a single feature of Christ's sacred humanity
should be obscured, and because we wish that
He should ever shine forth in all the splendor of
his glory, and clothed in all the panoply of His
perfections.

After Our Lord Jesus Christ, no one has ever
exercised so salutary an influence as the Blessed
Virgin on society, on the family, and on the in-
dividual.

The Mother of Jesus exercises throughout the

Christian commonwealth that hallowing influ-

ence which a good mother wields over the

Christian family.

184

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

What temple or chapel, how rude soever it
may be, is not adorned with a painting or a
statue of the Madonna? What house is not
embellished with an image of Mary? What
Catholic child is a stranger to her familiar
face?

The priest and the layman, the scholar and
the illiterate, the prince and the peasant, the
mother and the maid, acknowledge her benign
sway.

And if Christianity is so fruitful in compari-
son with paganism in conjugal fidelity, in female
purity, and in the respect paid to womanhood,
these blessings are in no small measure due to
the force of Mary's all-pervading example and
influence. Ever since the Son of God chose
a woman to be His mother, man looks up to
woman with a homage akin to veneration.

The poet Longfellow pays the following trib-
ute to Mary*s sanctifying influence :

"This is indeed the blessed Mary's land,

Virgin and Mother of our dear Redeemer!
All hearts arc touched and softened at her name ;
Alike the bandit with the bloody hand,

185

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

The priest, the prince, the scholar, and the peasant.

The man of deeds, the visionary dreamer.
Pay homage to her as one ever present

• •••••

"And if our faith had given us nothing more
Than this example of all womanhood,
So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good,
So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure.
This were enough to prove it higher and truer
Than all the creeds the world had known before." *

St Ambrose gives the fallowing beautiful
picture of Mary's life before her espousals:
" Let the life," he says, " of the Blessed Mary
be ever present to you, in which, as in a mirror,
the beauty of chastity and the form of virtue
shine forth. She was a virgin not only in body,
but in mind, who never sullied the pure affec*
tion of the heart by unworthy feelings. She
was humble of heart, serious in her conversap
tion, fonder of reading than of speaking. She
placed her confidence rather in the prayer of
the poor man than in the riches of this world.
She was ever intent on her occupations, and
accustomed to make God, rather than man, the
witness of her thoughts. She injured no one,

♦Longfellow's "Golden Legend."

i86

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

wished well to all, reverenced age, yielded not
to envy, avoided all boasting, followed the die-
tates of reason, and loved virtue. When did
she sadden her parents even by a look ? There
was nothing forward in her looks, bold in her
words, or unbecoming in her actions. Her car-
riage was not abrupt, her gait not indolent, her
voice not petulant, so that her very appearance
was the picture of her mind and the figure of
piety."

Her life as a spouse and as a mother was a
counterpart of her earlier years. The gospel
relates one little circumstance which amply suf-
fices to demonstrate Mary's supereminent holi-
ness of life, and to exhibit her as a beautiful pat-
tern to those who are called to rule a household.
The evangelist tells us that Jesus " was subject
to them " * — that is, to Mary and Joseph. He
obeyed all her commands, fulfilled her behests,
complied with her smallest injunctions — in a
word. He discharged towards her all the filial
observances which a dutiful son exercises tow-
ards a prudent mother. These relations con.

* Luke ii. 51.
187

WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

tinued from His childhood to His public life,
nor did they cease even then.

Now Jesus being the Son of God, " the bright-
ness of His glory and the figure of His sub-
stance,"* could not sin. He was incapable of
fulfilling an unrighteous precept. The obvious
conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that
Mary never sinned by commanding, as Jesus
could not sin by obeying ; that all her precepts
and counsels were stamped with the seal of
divine approbation, and that the Son never ful-
filled any injunction of His earthly mother which
was not ratified by His Eternal Father in heaven.

Such is the beautiful portrait which the
Church holds up to the contemplation of her
children, that, studying it, they may admire the
original, admiring they may love, loving they
m&y imitate, and thus, by the constant daily
contemplation of the highest, most perfect ideal
of womanhood, become more near to God by
being made " conformable to the image of His
Son,"t of whom Mary is the most perfect
mirror. Cardinal Gibbons.

♦ Hcb. i. 3.

f Rom. viii. 29.

188

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