world, He put him in a pious home. He gave him a godly father and
mother. And the dominant influence in the life of Moses was his
mother. No woman ever did a greater work. But it was a work that she
accomplished not because of her high social standing. Nor was it
accomplished because of her great culture. It was accomplished because
of her great faith.
And while I am not in any sense a pessimist, I cannot but tremble in
some measure for the future because of the decay of home religion. And
this decay, while traceable in some measure to the madness for money
and pleasure among men, is traceable even more to this same madness
among women. The woman of to-day is in a state of transition. She has
not yet fully found herself. There has come to her a new sense of
freedom, and this freedom has not made her better. She has become in
considerable measure an imitator of man. And sad to say, she imitates
his vices instead of his virtues. She often patterns after what is
worst in him instead of what is best.
I am told that in the Woman's Club of this city the handsomest room in
the building is the smoking room. Now, a woman has a right to smoke.
Who says that she has not? A woman has a right to swear, and that
right she is exercising with growing frequency. I am not going to deny
her right to do that. But what I do say is this, that I have
absolutely no hope for the rearing of a right generation at the hands
of a flippant cigarette-smoking mother. The child of such a mother is,
in my candid opinion, half damned in its birth. Remember, the mother
of Moses was a pious mother. If she had not been I am persuaded that
the Moses who has been one of the supreme makers of history, might
never have been known.
Now, what was this woman's task? Hear it. I take these words as
embodying not the will of the princess, but the will of God, "Take this
child and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy wages." This
mother was not to govern the world. She was not to lecture in the
interest of suffrage. I have nothing to say against the woman who does
so. She was not to be the center of a social set. She was not to turn
her child over to some colored woman while she went gadding about to
every sort of club. She had just one supreme job. She had one highest
and holiest of all tasks. It was for that cause that she came into the
world. She was to train her child for God. And whoever we are and
whatever may be our abilities, we can have no higher task than this.
The training of a child to-day is the biggest big job under the stars.
He is the center of all our hopes and possibilities.
Did you ever read the story of the "Little Palace Beautiful"? In the
Little Palace Beautiful there are four rooms. The first is a room
called Fancy. In this room looking out toward the south sleeps a
little child, a beautiful baby. It is the Child-that-Never-Was. It
was longed for, hoped for, dreamed of, but it never came. In the west
room looking out toward the sunset, the room called Memory, is the
Child-that-Was. Here sleeps the little fellow that came and stayed
just long enough to gather up all our heart's love and then he went
away. In the room toward the north, the room of Experience, is the
Child-that-Is. He is the little fellow that now plays in your home in
your Sunday School class. And in the room looking out toward the
sunrise, the room called Hope, is the Child-that-Is-to-Be.
Now, we are interested in all four of these children, but our interest
in the four is to be expressed in our care for just one, and that is
the Child-that-Is. We think tenderly of the Child-that-Never-Was. We
think sadly of the Child-that-Was. But we bring the love that we might
have given and did give, to lavish it upon the Child-that-Is. We think
hopefully of the Child-that-Is-to-Be, but we realize that all his
possibilities are locked in the Child-that-Is. And so the world's
future salvation is in our cradles, in our homes and in our nurseries
to-day. To train our Children for God is the highest of all high tasks.
And notice that this woman was to receive wages for her work. What
were her wages? I suppose the princess sent down a little coin at the
end of each week, but do you think that is all the pay that this mother
got? I feel confident that she never counted this as pay at all. But
she received her reward, she received her wages. And they were wages
that were rich in worth beyond all our fondest dreams. First, there
was given unto her the fine privilege of loving. And Paul, who knew
what was priceless, Paul, who knew what was of supreme value, said that
love was the soul's finest treasure. And he meant not the privilege of
being loved, as fine as that is, but the higher privilege of loving.
And it has been given by the grace of God to the mothers of men to be
the world's greatest lovers.
"If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
"If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
"If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!"
To her was given, in the second place, the fine reward of
self-sacrifice. She had the privilege of giving. She had the
privilege of offering her life a willing sacrifice upon the altar of
her home. It is blessed to receive, but it is more blessed to give.
And the rewards of motherhood are the highest rewards because she is
the most godlike giver that this world knows.
Then, she was rewarded, in the third place, by the making of a great
life. She became the mother of a good man. Her faith became his
faith. "By faith Moses was hidden." That was by his mother's faith.
But in the next verse we read this, "By faith Moses, when he was come
to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." That
was by his own faith. Where did he get that rare jewel? He got it
from the training of his mother. He saw it in her life. It looked out
from her eyes. It spoke through her lips. He drank it in as he lay in
her arms.
"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which
dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and in thy mother Eunice, and I am
persuaded is in thee also." Oh, if you are here a man of faith, a
woman of faith, the chances are you secured that precious treasure at
the hands of a God-loving and a God-trusting mother.
So this despised slave woman, this mother has this to her credit, that
she mothered and trained one of the greatest men that ever set foot on
this earth. She took a little boy named Moses to her heart and trained
him for God. She had him for a little while. Then he went away to the
big University. But he stood true. She speaks to him as she holds him
close in the twilight. She says, "Laddie, do not forget how God has
watched over you. One day when death was suspended above your baby
head by a thread, one day when your life was frailer than a gossamer
thread, I took a queer little basket and lined it with pitch, and also
with faith and with prayer. And I put you afloat, and God preserved
you and sent you back into these arms. And I carried you and cared for
you. And now when you are grown you won't forget. You won't prove
disloyal to your mother and you won't forget your mother's God."
And Moses did not forget. And one day the little laddie who had once
been carried about in the arms of a slave mother, was a big
broad-shouldered man. And he had a big broad-shouldered faith, and he
trusted in a big broad-shouldered God. And in the strength of that
faith, and in the might of that God he lifted an enslaved people in his
arms and carried them clean across the wilderness. And he made
possible an Isaiah and a Jeremiah and a David. And he made possible
the birth of Jesus Christ. And he became the blesser and enricher of
all the nations of the earth. And this mother, whose name is not well
known in the annals of men, but whose name is known in Heaven to-day,
had the rich reward of knowing that she mothered a man who fathered a
nation and blessed a world.
Oh, it is a blessed reward, the reward of success in the high
enterprise of motherhood. I know of no joy that can come to a father's
or a mother's heart that is comparable to the joy that their own
children can give them. I have seen sweet-faced mothers look upon
their children when there was enough joy in those faces to have raised
the temperature of Heaven.
But while it is true that none can bring us so much joy, it is also
true that none can so utterly break our hearts. To see disease take
our children in hand and wreck their bodies is painful, but it is as
joy in comparison to seeing sin steal the moral rose from their cheek
and the sparkle of innocence and purity from their eyes. But the
deepest of all damning griefs is that grief that comes to us when we
realize that we failed, and that their ruin is due to sin and
unfaithfulness in ourselves.
Do you hear the wild outcry from that broken-hearted king named David?
There he stands upon the wall and looks away across the wistful plain.
A lone runner is coming. He knows he is a messenger from the
battlefield. "Good tidings," he shouts. But the king has no ear for
good tidings. His one question is this, "Is the young man Absalom
safe?" And the runner does not rightly answer his question. Then the
second messenger comes with the news of his son's death. And there is
no more pathetic cry in literature than that that breaks from the lips
of this pathetic king. "O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
He is sobbing over his lost boy. But there is an added pang to his
grief. It is the awful pang that comes from the torturing fear that he
himself is in large measure responsible for the loss of his boy. And
there is no more bitter agony than that.
Oh, men and women, let us who are fathers and mothers spare ourselves
David's terrible agony. Let us spare our children Absalom's tragic
ruin. Let us give ourselves the joys of this old time mother. While
our children are about us, may we hear the very voice of God speaking
to us on their behalf, saying: "Take this child and train it for me and
I will give thee thy wages." And wages we shall receive just as surely
as did this mother of Moses. We will be privileged to love, to give,
to bless. And God Himself can give no richer reward than that.
XV
A GOOD MAN'S HELL--MANASSEH
_Jeremiah 15:4_
"And I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth
because of Manasseh." The prophet of the Lord is here fixing the
responsibility for the downfall of Jerusalem. He says that the wreck
was due in an especial sense to one man. He makes it very plain that
it was one man's hands that had planted the infernal bomb that was
destined in later years to blast the foundation from under the nation.
"I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth
because of Manasseh."
Had a jury at that day been impanelled to try this man Manasseh I do
not know whether they would have found him guilty or not. Possibly
they would. It is also possible that they would not. Had they failed
to have done so it would have been because they did not know the facts;
they were not entirely familiar with all the evidence in the case. But
when God sought the man upon whose shoulders rested the chief
responsibility for the wreck of the nation, He fixed on this man. When
Manasseh stood on trial before Him, charged with the terrible crime of
blasting a kingdom, he was found guilty.
It was a startling verdict. It is all the more startling when we
realize that Manasseh in the last years of his life was a good man. It
was only his earlier years that were spent in sin. In his old age he
was a saint. In the last years of his reign he knew God and did all
that he could to undo the evils of an ill-spent yesterday. But in
spite of the saintliness of the eventide, in spite of his winter-time
goodness, the full influence of his life was not a blessing but a
curse. It did not make for upbuilding. It made for terrible downfall
and ruin.
Take a glance at his life's story. It is full of interest. Every
young heart in the world should make a study of the life of this man.
How it gives the lie to many of our false and easy conceptions of sin.
How urgent it presses home the truth that the only salvation that can
mean the most is the salvation that grips us from life's earliest
moment to its very last.
Manasseh came to the throne when he was only twelve years of age. He
had not been long in his position of influence and power till he turned
utterly away from the Lord and began to wallow in every form of sin.
There was no dirty idolatry that he did not practise. There was no
false belief to which he did not seem willing to give hospitality.
There was scarcely any form of evil of which he was not guilty.
And his career of godlessness was all the more inexcusable because of
the good opportunities that he had. He was the son of a great and good
father. His father was Hezekiah. And Hezekiah was one of the best
kings that Judah ever had. He was a man of spiritual power. He was a
man who served as saving salt to his kingdom throughout his entire
reign. When the Assyrians hung like a threatening storm cloud over his
weak little nation, it was the compelling might of his prayer that
stood as a wall between them and their enemy. So, Manasseh was the son
of a great saint.
And mark me, it is no small privilege to be the child of a godly father
or of a saintly mother. If God granted to you to open your baby eyes
to look into other eyes that were "homes of silent prayer," if He sent
you to grow up in a home where the family altar and the saintly life
made Christ real, then He has given you an opportunity unspeakably
great. And as great as is your opportunity, just so great is your
responsibility. How hard must be the sentence upon that boy or that
girl who breaks away from such saving and sanctifying influences to go
into the far country.
Not only was the guilt of Manasseh intensified by the fact that he had
a saintly father. It was intensified further by the fact that he was
repeatedly warned. Though he turned his back on God and though he gave
himself up to a perfect orgy of wrong doing, God did not forget him and
did not give him up. He sent to him messenger after messenger to bring
home his guilt and to invite him back to the pardon and peace of his
Father's presence. But seemingly the more he was warned the deeper he
plunged into sin.
And you who are in sin, you are even more guilty than he, because to
you God has sent warning after warning, rebuke after rebuke. God has
given you calls and invitations without number. He has called you
through your conscience. He has called you through your wretchedness
and restlessness and hunger of heart. He has called you through your
longing for usefulness. He has called you through your sorrow and your
pain and your losses. He has called you through ten thousand mercies.
Oh, believe me, our need to-night is not so much for more light as it
is for courage to live up to the light we have.
Not only was Manasseh guilty because he sinned in spite of the help of
a godly father and in spite of repeated warnings. His guilt was
deepened yet more because he knew that he did not sin alone. When he
went away from God he carried a kingdom with him. The reign of
Hezekiah had been a righteous reign. With the coming of Manasseh to
the throne there was a violent reaction, akin to that that followed
upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. You know
how that when Charles came to the throne the court life was changed
into a brothel. Charles lived in open and notorious adultery, and the
rottenness of the throne led to the rottenness of the kingdom. Such
was the case here. Manasseh not only fell but he drew a kingdom after
him.
It is profoundly true that no man ever sins alone. Your influence will
not be so wide as that of Manasseh, yet however obscure your life may
be this is true, that it will set in motion influences that will
literally outlast the world. I have control over my own action before
it is done, but after it is done I seek to control it in vain. If it
is a fiendish act it laughs its devilish and derisive laughter in my
face and says, "Control me if you can."
Now, there came a time when this great sinner began to pay the penalty
for his sin. Retribution slipped in by the guards at the door one day
and took the king rudely by the shoulder. It shook him and shook him
so roughly that his crown fell from his head and his sceptre dropped
from his hand. Then it dragged him from his throne and dressed him in
chains and sent him a captive into a foreign country.
Retribution, suffering for sin, does not always come as it came to this
king. It does not always come at once but come it does. That is as
sure as the fact of God. There are some shallow souls that fancy that
because sin does not pay off every Saturday night that it does not pay
at all. But to hold such views is to spit in the face of a most open
and palpable fact. Manasseh had a fancy that he was a much freer man
than his father had been, far more broad-minded, but he waked one day,
as every man wakes sooner or later, to discover that sin did not mean
freedom, that it only meant slavery.
Now, what effect did this degradation and shame and suffering have on
the king? Suffering has very opposite influences on different types of
character. Sometimes it hardens us, it makes us only the more bitter
and rebellious. But suffering did not have that effect on Manasseh.
It made him think, and it is a tremendously good day when God can get a
man to think. He thought, I dare say, of his saintly father. He
thought of his father's God. This story is another evidence of how all
but impossible it is for a child to break finally away from the saving
influence of a truly good father or truly good mother.
This experience not only made him think but it sent him to his knees in
an agony of prayer. He came to hate the sin that had been the ruin of
him. He asked God for forgiveness. And God did forgive him. Truly,
"though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." No
man ever goes so far away from God, no man ever lives in sin so long
but that if he will return to God, God will receive him and will give
him abundant pardon.
Not only did God save this man. He brought him again to his throne.
And he who had once been a captive in a strange land wore his crown
once more. And for the remaining years of his life he was a devout
follower of the Lord. He did his best to undo the evils of the earlier
years of his reign. He tore down the altars to false gods that he had
builded. He tried to bring his people back to the new and saving faith
that he had found. His conversion was genuine and lasting.
But what was the result? He did not succeed. He found that it was
easier to lead folks astray than it was to bring them back after he had
led them astray. He was a good man. He knew God. But this was his
hell, that he had to stand in utter helplessness and see his nation
totter to its ruin because of the sins that he had committed. He was
not even able to save his own home. His boy became a godless idolater,
as he himself had been during the best years of his life.
So we are brought face to face with this fact. Repentance will bring
us salvation whenever we repent, but there is one thing that repentance
cannot do. It cannot save us from the consequences of our sin. Go out
into the field of life and sow tares for half a century, if you dare.
Even then God will forgive you if you will come in repentance to Him,
but there is one thing that God will not do and cannot do. He cannot
change the tares that you have sown into wheat. I may be exceedingly
sorry for my wrong sowing, I will be, but the seed will grow none the
less.
Did it ever occur to you how many faces the Prodigal missed on his way
back home? Many a splendid young fellow that caroused with him as he
went into the far country did not enjoy the fatted calf with him when
he came back to the peace and plenty of his Father's house. Some of
them had gone into eternity and others had gone beyond his influence
forever more.
While I was in Huntington a few weeks ago, the pastor for whom I was
preaching told me of a young friend of his who carried his little baby
in to see a noted eye specialist. The child's eyes were very bad. The
physician examined them and shook his head. "Her eyes will never get
better," he said, "but will get worse. She will be blind before she is
grown." And the father's face went white and he said, "Doctor, you
know my youth wasn't what it ought to have been. Can that be the
cause?" And the doctor said, "You needn't to have told me. Certainly
it is the cause." And it was a broken-hearted man that left that
office that day. And it was a broken-hearted and praying and penitent
man that kissed his child to sleep that night. Oh, God will forgive
him, but there is one thing that that forgiveness will not include and
that is daylight for his little girl.
"I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth
because of Manasseh." And Manasseh is good and pure and blood-washed,
but the influences that he set in motion have gone beyond his reach
forever more. What a fearful fact is this! I am talking to young men
and women and you have your lives before you. You may give them to
sin, and you may be saved at the last moment. That is a possibility,
though it is a slight one. But such a salvation may mean the wrecking
of many another life. The only safe way is to repent before you waste
your life. Repent before you sin.
Do you remember Esau's pathetic story? He sold his birthright for one
mess of lentils. Nor was he at all displeased with his bargain. At
least that was true for a little while, but there came a time when he
was sorry. There came a time when his foolish bartering broke his
heart. And the story says that he found no place for repentance though
he sought it diligently and with tears.
That does not mean, of course, that God refused to forgive Esau. The
moment we turn in penitent surrender to our Lord He will save us and
give us an abundant pardon, however far we may have gone into sin. God
forgave him when he repented, but there was one thing that his
repentance could not do. It could not undo the past. It could not put
him again in the light of the morning of life. It could not place in
his hands the opportunities of yesterday. The good that he might have
done and the service that he might have rendered and the crowns that he
might have won had passed beyond the reach of his hand forever.
Repentance saved his soul but it did not save his life.
And what a startling chapter is the story of the sin of David. David
was a whole-hearted man. He never did anything by halves. When he
sinned he sinned with a horrible abandon. Few men have dirtier pages
in their life's history than that of David's sin against the house of
Uriah. But as his sin was whole-hearted so also was his repentance.
We can hear his heart-broken cry for pardon across the centuries: "Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. According unto
the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash
me from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin; for I acknowledge my
transgression and my sin is ever before me." It is the heart-broken
cry of the penitent who has not one good word to say for himself. And
God heard his prayer and washed him and made him whiter than snow.
But beyond that God with all His love and tenderness could not go. He
could not save David from the consequences of his sin. His bloody and
lustful deed became possessed of a power beyond his control. "Down!"
he cries to it in helpless horror. But it will not down. "Then where
are you going?" he asks, all a-tremble with dread. And the fiendish
deed answers, "I am going to steal the purity of your daughter Tamar.
I am going to make your son Ammon into a rapist. I am going to make
your handsome boy Absalom into a murderer."
When I was a boy there was a family living neighbors to us, all of whom
were outside the Church. But when the children were almost all grown
and the father was an old man he became a Christian. But instead of
being influential in bringing his children to Christ they seemed only
to be ashamed of him. He did not seem to have the slightest power to
influence a single one of them for good. I would not say that he was
not saved, I think he was, but I think his years spent in sin cost him
the salvation of his children.