RHODA

'A damsel ... named Rhoda.'--ACTS xii 13.

'Rhoda' means 'a rose,' and _this_ rose has kept its bloom for eighteen

hundred years, and is still sweet and fragrant! What a lottery undying

fame is! Men will give their lives to earn it; and this servant-girl

got it by one little act, and never knew that she had it, and I suppose

she does not know to-day that, everywhere throughout the whole world

where the Gospel is preached, 'this that she hath done is spoken of as

a memorial to her.' Is the love of fame worthy of being called 'the

last infirmity of noble minds'? Or is it the delusion of ignoble ones?

Why need we care whether anybody ever hears of us after we are dead and

buried, so long as God knows about us? The 'damsel named Rhoda' was

little the better for the immortality which she had unconsciously won.

Now there is a very singular resemblance between the details of this

incident and those of another case, when Peter was recognised in dim

light by his voice, and the Evangelist Luke, who is the author of the

Acts of the Apostles, seems to have had the resemblance between the two

scenes--that in the high priest's palace and that outside Mary's

door--in his mind, because he uses in this narrative a word which

occurs, in the whole of the New Testament, only here and in his account

of what took place on that earlier occasion. In both instances a

maid-servant recognises Peter by his voice, and in both 'she constantly

affirms' that it was so. I do not think that there is anything to be

built upon the resemblance, but at all events I think that the use of

the same unusual word in the two cases, and nowhere else, seems to

suggest that Luke felt how strangely events sometimes double

themselves; and how the Apostle who is here all but a martyr is

re-enacting, with differences, something like the former scene, when he

was altogether a traitor. But, be that as it may, there are some

lessons which we may gather from this vivid picture of Rhoda and her

behaviour on the one side of the door, while Peter stood hammering, in

the morning twilight, on the other.

I. We may notice in the relations of Rhoda to the assembled believers a

striking illustration of the new bond of union supplied by the Gospel.

Rhoda was a slave. The word rendered in our version 'damsel' means a

female slave. Her name, which is a Gentile name, and her servile

condition, make it probable that she was not a Jewess. If one might

venture to indulge in a guess, it is not at all unlikely that her

mistress, Mary, John Mark's mother, Barnabas' sister, a well-to-do

woman of Jerusalem, who had a house large enough to take in the members

of the Church in great numbers, and to keep up a considerable

establishment, had brought this slave-girl from the island of Cyprus.

At all events, she was a slave. In the time of our Lord, and long

after, these relations of slavery brought an element of suspicion,

fear, and jealous espionage into almost every Roman household, because

every master knew that he passed his days and nights among men and

women who wanted nothing better than to wreak their vengeance upon him.

A man's foes were eminently those of his own household. And now here

this child-slave, a Gentile, has been touched by the same mighty love

as her mistress; and Mary and Rhoda were kneeling together in the

prayer-meeting when Peter began to hammer at the door. Neither woman

thought now of the unnatural, unwholesome relation which had formerly

bound them. In God's good time, and by the slow process of leavening

society with Christian ideas, that diabolical institution perished in

Christian lands. Violent reformation of immoralities is always a

blunder. 'Raw haste' is 'half-sister to delay.' Settlers in forest

lands have found that it is endless work to grub up the trees, or even

to fell them. 'Root and branch' reform seldom answers. The true way is

to girdle the tree by taking off a ring of bark round the trunk, and

letting nature do the rest. Dead trees are easily dealt with; living

ones blunt many axes and tire many arms, and are alive after all. Thus

the Gospel waged no direct war with slavery, but laid down principles

which, once they are wrought into Christian consciousness, made its

continuance impossible. But, pending that consummation, the immediate

action of Christianity was to ameliorate the condition of the slave.

The whole aspect of the ugly thing was changed as soon as master and

slave together became the slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel

has the same sort of work to do to-day, and there are institutions in

full flourishing existence in this and every other civilised community

as entirely antagonistic to the spirit and principles of Christianity

as Roman slavery was. I, for my part, believe that the one uniting bond

and healing medicine for society is found in Jesus Christ; and that in

Him, and that the principles deducible from His revelation by word and

work, applied to all social evils, are their cure, and their only cure.

That slight, girlish figure standing at the door of Mary, her slave and

yet her sister in Christ, may be taken as pointing symbolically the way

by which the social and civic evils of this day are to be healed, and

the war of classes to cease.

II. Note how we get here a very striking picture of the sacredness and

greatness of small common duties.

Bhoda came out from the prayer-meeting to open the gate. It was her

business, as we say, 'to answer the door,' and so she left off praying

to go and do it. So doing, she was the means of delivering the Apostle

from the danger which still dogged him. It was of little use to be

praying on one side of the shut door when on the other he was standing

in the street, and the day was beginning to dawn; Herod's men would be

after him as soon as daylight disclosed his escape. The one thing

needful for him was to be taken in and sheltered. So the praying group

and the girl who stops praying when she hears the knock, to which it

was her business to attend, were working in the same direction. It is

not necessary to insist that no heights or delights of devotion and

secret communion are sufficient excuses for neglecting or delaying the

doing of the smallest and most menial task which is our task. If your

business is to keep the door, you will not be leaving, but abiding in,

the secret place of the Most High, if you get up from your knees in the

middle of your prayer, and go down to open it. The smallest, commonest

acts of daily life are truer worship than is rapt and solitary

communion or united prayer, if the latter can only be secured by the

neglect of the former. Better to be in the lower parts of the house

attending to the humble duties of the slave than to be in the upper

chamber, uniting with the saints in supplication and leaving tasks

unperformed.

Let us remember how we may find here an illustration of another great

truth, that the smallest things, done in the course of the quiet

discharge of recognised duty, and being, therefore, truly worship of

God, have in them a certain quality of immortality, and may be

eternally commemorated. It was not only the lofty and unique expression

of devotion, which another woman gave when she broke the alabaster box

to anoint the feet of the Saviour which were to be pierced with nails

to-morrow, that has been held worthy of undying remembrance. The name

and act of a poor slave girl have been commemorated by that Spirit who

preserves nothing in vain, in order that we should learn that things

which we vulgarly call great, and those which we insolently call small,

are regarded by Him, not according to their apparent magnitude, but

according to their motive and reference to Him. He says, 'I will never

forget any of their works'; and this little deed of Rhoda's, like the

rose petals that careful housekeepers in the country keep upon the

sideboard in china bowls to diffuse a fragance through the room, is

given us to keep in memory for ever, a witness of the sanctity of

common life when filled with acts of obedience to Him.

III. The same figure of the 'damsel named Rhoda' may give us a warning

as to the possibility of forgetting very plain duties under the

pressure of very legitimate excitement.

'She opened not the door for gladness,' but ran in and told them. And

if, whilst she was running in with her message, Herod's quaternions of

soldiers had come down the street, there would have been 'no small

stir' in the church as to 'what had become of Peter.' He would have

gone back to his prison sure enough. Her _first_ duty was to open the

door; her _second_ one was to go and tell the brethren, 'we have got

him safe inside'; but in the rush of joyous emotions she naively forgot

what her first business was, 'lost her head,' as we say, and so went

off to tell that he was outside, instead of letting him in. Now joy and

sorrow are equally apt to make us forget plain and pressing duties, and

we may learn from this little incident the old-fashioned, but always

necessary advice, to keep feeling well under control, to use it as

impulse, not as guide, and never to let emotion, which should be down

in the engine-room, come on deck and take the helm. It is dangerous to

obey feeling, unless its decrees are countersigned by calm common sense

illuminated by Scripture. Sorrow is apt to obscure duty by its

darkness, and joy to do so by its dazzle. It is hard to see the road at

midnight, or at midday when the sun is in our eyes. Both need to be

controlled. Duty remains the same, whether my heart is beating like a

sledge-hammer, or whether 'my bosom's lord sits lightly on its throne.'

Whether I am sad or glad, the door that God has given me to watch has

to be opened and shut by me. And whether I am a door-keeper in the

house of the Lord, like Rhoda in Mary's, or have an office that people

think larger and more important, the imperativeness of my duties is

equally independent of my momentary emotions and circumstances.

Remember, then, that duty remains while feeling fluctuates, and that,

sorrowful or joyful, we have still the same Lord to serve and the same

crown to win.

IV. Lastly, we have here an instance of a very modest but positive and

fully-warranted trust in one's own experience in spite of opposition.

I need not speak about that extraordinary discussion which the brethren

got up in the upper room. They had been praying, as has often been

remarked, for Peter's deliverance, and now that he is delivered they

will not believe it. I am afraid that there is often a dash of unbelief

in immediate answers to our prayers mingling with the prayers. And

although the petitions in this case were intense and fervent, as the

original tells us, and had been kept up all night long, and although

their earnestness and worthiness are guaranteed by the fact that they

were answered, yet when the veritable Peter, in flesh and blood, stood

before the door, the suppliants first said to the poor girl, 'Thou art

mad,' and then, 'It is his angel! It cannot be he.' Nobody seems to

have thought of going to the door to see whether it was he or not, but

they went on arguing with Rhoda as to whether she was right or wrong.

The unbelief that alloys even golden faith is taught us in this

incident.

Rhoda 'constantly affirmed that it was so,' like the other porteress

that had picked out Peter's voice amongst the men huddled round the

fire in the high priest's chamber.

The lesson is--trust your own experience, whatever people may have to

say against it. If you have found that Jesus Christ can help you, and

has loved you, and that your sins have been forgiven, because you have

trusted in Him, do not let anybody laugh or talk you out of that

conviction. If you cannot argue, do like Rhoda, 'constantly affirm that

it is so.' That is the right answer, especially if you can say to the

antagonistic party, 'Have you been down to the door, then, to see?' And

if they have to say 'No!' then the right answer is, 'You go and look as

I did, and you will come back with the same belief which I have.'

So at last they open the door and there he stands. Peter's hammer,

hammer, hammer at the gate is wonderfully given in the story. It goes

on as a kind of running accompaniment through the talk between Rhoda

and the friends. It might have put a stop to the conversation, one

would have thought. But Another stands at the door knocking, still more

persistently, still more patiently. 'Behold! I stand at the door and

knock. If any man open the door I will come in.'