'I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen
to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto
the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon them all for good that
seek Him.... 23. So we fasted and besought our God for this.... 31.
The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of
the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way. 32. And we came to
Jerusalem.'--EZRA viii. 22, 23, 31, 32.
The memory of Ezra the scribe has scarcely had fairplay among
Bible-reading people. True, neither his character nor the incidents of
his life reach the height of interest or of grandeur belonging to the
earlier men and their times. He is no hero, or prophet; only a scribe;
and there is a certain narrowness as well as a prosaic turn about his
mind, and altogether one feels that he is a smaller man than the
Elijahs and Davids of the older days. But the homely garb of the
scribe covered a very brave devout heart, and the story of his life
deserves to be more familiar to us than it is.
This scrap from the account of his preparations for the march from
Babylon to Jerusalem gives us a glimpse of a high-toned faith, and a
noble strain of feeling. He and his company had a long weary journey
of four months before them. They had had little experience of arms and
warfare, or of hardships and desert marches, in their Babylonian
homes. Their caravan was made unwieldy and feeble by the presence of a
large proportion of women and children. They had much valuable
property with them. The stony desert, which stretches unbroken from
the Euphrates to the uplands on the east of Jordan, was infested then
as now by wild bands of marauders, who might easily swoop down on the
encumbered march of Ezra and his men, and make a clean sweep of all
which they had. And he knew that he had but to ask and have an escort
from the king that would ensure their safety till they saw Jerusalem.
Artaxerxes' surname, 'the long-handed,' may have described a physical
peculiarity, but it also expressed the reach of his power; his arm
could reach these wandering plunderers, and if Ezra and his troop were
visibly under his protection, they could march secure. So it was not a
small exercise of trust in a higher Hand that is told us here so
simply. It took some strength of principle to abstain from asking what
it would have been so natural to ask, so easy to get, so comfortable
to have. But, as he says, he remembered how confidently he has spoken
of God's defence, and he feels that he must be true to his professed
creed, even if it deprives him of the king's guards. He halts his
followers for three days at the last station before the desert, and
there, with fasting and prayer, they put themselves in God's hand; and
then the band, with their wives and little ones, and their
substance,--a heavily-loaded and feeble caravan,--fling themselves
into the dangers of the long, dreary, robber-haunted march. Did not
the scribe's robe cover as brave a heart as ever beat beneath a
breastplate?
That symbolic phrase, 'the hand of our God,' as expressive of the
divine protection, occurs with remarkable frequency in the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah, and though not peculiar to them, is yet strikingly
characteristic of them. It has a certain beauty and force of its own.
The hand is of course the seat of active power. It is on or over a man
like some great shield held aloft above him, below which there is safe
hiding. So that great Hand bends itself over us, and we are secure
beneath its hollow. As a child sometimes carries a tender-winged
butterfly in the globe of its two hands that the bloom on the wings
may not be ruffled by fluttering, so He carries our feeble, unarmoured
souls enclosed in the covert of His Almighty hand. 'Who hath measured
the waters in the hollow of His hand?' 'Who hath gathered the wind in
His fists?' In that curved palm where all the seas lie as a very
little thing, we are held; the grasp that keeps back the tempests from
their wild rush, keeps us, too, from being smitten by their blast. As
a father may lay his own large muscular hand on his child's tiny
fingers to help him, or as 'Elisha put his hands on the king's hands,'
that the contact might strengthen him to shoot the 'arrow of the
Lord's deliverance,' so the hand of our God is upon us to impart power
as well as protection; and our 'bow abides in strength,' when 'the
arms of our hands are made strong by the hands of the mighty God of
Jacob.' That was Ezra's faith, and that should be ours.
Note Ezra's sensitive shrinking from anything like inconsistency
between his creed and his practice. It was easy to talk about God's
protection when he was safe behind the walls of Babylon; but now the
pinch had come. There was a real danger before him and his unwarlike
followers. No doubt, too, there were plenty of people who would have
been delighted to catch him tripping; and he felt that his cheeks
would have tingled with shame if they had been able to say, 'Ah! that
is what all his fine professions come to, is it? He wants a convoy,
does he? We thought as much. It is always so with these people who
talk in that style. They are just like the rest of us when the pinch
comes.' So, with a high and keen sense of what was required by his
avowed principles, he will have no guards for the road. _There_
was a man whose religion was at any rate not a fair-weather religion.
It did not go off in fine speeches about trusting to the protection of
God, spoken from behind the skirts of the king, or from the middle of
a phalanx of his soldiers. He clearly meant what he said, and believed
every word of it as a prose fact, which was solid enough to build
conduct on.
I am afraid a great many of us would rather have tried to reconcile
our asking for a band of horsemen with our professed trust in God's
hand; and there would have been plenty of excuses very ready about
using means as well as exercising faith, and not being called upon to
abandon advantages, and not pushing a good principle to Quixotic
lengths, and so on, and so on. But whatever truth there is in such
considerations, at any rate we may well learn the lesson of this
story--to be true to our professed principles; to beware of making our
religion a matter of words; to live, when the time for putting them
into practice comes, by the maxims which we have been forward to
proclaim when there was no risk in applying them; and to try sometimes
to look at our lives with the eyes of people who do not share our
faith, that we may bring our actions up to the mark of what they
expect of us. If 'the Church' would oftener think of what 'the world'
looks for from it, it would seldomer have cause to be ashamed of the
terrible gap between its words and its deeds.
Especially in regard to this matter of trust in an unseen Hand, and
reliance on visible helps, we all need to be very rigid in our
self-inspection. Faith in the good hand of God upon us for good should
often lead to the abandonment, and always to the subordination, of
material aids. It is a question of detail, which each man must settle
for himself as each occasion arises, whether in any given case
abandonment or subordination is our duty. This is not the place to
enter on so large and difficult a question. But, at all events, let us
remember, and try to work into our own lives, that principle which the
easy-going Christianity of this day has honeycombed with so many
exceptions, that it scarcely has any whole surface left at all; that
the absolute surrender and forsaking of external helps and goods is
sometimes essential to the preservation and due expression of reliance
on God.
There is very little fear of any of us pushing that principle to
Quixotic lengths. The danger is all the other way. So it is worth
while to notice that we have here an instance of a man's being carried
by a certain lofty enthusiasm further than the mere law of duty would
take him. There would have been no harm in Ezra's asking an escort,
seeing that his whole enterprise was made possible by the king's
support. He would not have been 'leaning on an arm of flesh' by
availing himself of the royal troops, any more than when he used the
royal firman. But a true man often feels that he cannot do the things
which he might without sin do. 'All things are lawful for me, but all
things are not expedient,' said Paul. The same Apostle eagerly
contended that he had a perfect right to money support from the
Gentile Churches; and then, in the next breath, flamed up into, 'I
have used none of these things, for it were better for me to die, than
that any man should make my glorying void.' A sensitive spirit, or one
profoundly stirred by religious emotion, will, like the apostle whose
feet were moved by love, far outrun the slower soul, whose steps are
only impelled by the thought of duty. Better that the cup should run
over than that it should not be full. Where we delight to do His will,
there will often be more than a scrupulously regulated enough; and
where there is not sometimes that 'more,' there will never be enough.
'Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.'
What shall we say of people who profess that God is their portion, and
are as eager in the scramble for money as anybody? What kind of a
commentary will sharp-sighted, sharp-tongued observers have a right to
make on us, whose creed is so unlike theirs, while our lives are
identical? Do you believe, friends! that 'the hand of our God is upon
all them for good that seek Him'? Then, do you not think that racing
after the prizes of this world, with flushed cheeks and labouring
breath, or longing, with a gnawing hunger of heart, for any earthly
good, or lamenting over the removal of creatural defences and joys, as
if heaven were empty because some one's place here is, or as if God
were dead because dear ones die, may well be a shame to us, and a
taunt on the lips of our enemies? Let us learn again the lesson from
this old story,--that if our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it
demands and will produce, the abandonment sometimes and the
subordination always, of external helps and material good.
Notice, too, Ezra's preparation for receiving the divine help. There,
by the river Ahava, he halts his company like a prudent leader, to
repair omissions, and put the last touches to their organisation
before facing the wilderness. But he has another purpose also. 'I
proclaimed a fast there, to seek of God a right way for us.' There was
no foolhardiness in his courage; he was well aware of all the possible
dangers on the road; and whilst he is confident of the divine
protection, he knows that, in his own quiet, matter-of-fact words, it
is given 'to all them that _seek_ Him.' So his faith not only
impels him to the renunciation of the Babylonian guard, but to earnest
supplication for the defence in which he is so confident. He is sure
it will be given--so sure, that he will have no other shield; and yet
he fasts and prays that he and his company may receive it. He prays
because he is sure that he will receive it, and does receive it
because he prays and is sure.
So for us, the condition and preparation on and by which we are
sheltered by that great Hand, is the faith that asks, and the asking
of faith. We must forsake the earthly props, but we must also
believingly desire to be upheld by the heavenly arms. We make God
responsible for our safety when we abandon other defence, and commit
ourselves to Him. With eyes open to our dangers, and full
consciousness of our own unarmed and unwarlike weakness, let us
solemnly commend ourselves to Him, rolling all our burden on His
strong arms, knowing that He is able to keep that which we have
committed to Him. He will accept the trust, and set His guards about
us. As the song of the returning exiles, which may have been sung by
the river Ahava, has it: 'My help cometh from the Lord. The Lord is
thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.'
So our story ends with the triumphant vindication of this Quixotic
faith. A flash of joyful feeling breaks through the simple narrative,
as it tells how the words spoken before the king came true in the
experience of the weaponless pilgrims: 'The hand of our God _was_
upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such
as lay in wait by the way; and we came to Jerusalem.' It was no rash
venture that we made. He was all that we hoped and asked. Through all
the weary march He led us. From the wild, desert-born robbers, that
watched us from afar, ready to come down on us, from ambushes and
hidden perils, He kept us, because we had none other help, and all our
hope was in Him. The ventures of faith are ever rewarded. We cannot
set our expectations from God too high. What we dare scarcely hope now
we shall one day remember. When we come to tell the completed story of
our lives, we shall have to record the fulfilment of all God's
promises, and the accomplishment of all our prayers that were built on
these. Here let us cry, 'Be Thy hand upon us.' Here let us trust, Thy
hand will be upon us. Then we shall have to say, 'The hand of our God
was upon us,' and as we look from the watch-towers of the city, on the
desert that stretches to its very walls, and remember all the way by
which He led us, we shall rejoice over His vindication of our poor
faith, and praise Him that 'not one thing hath failed of all the
things which the Lord our God spake concerning us.'