"And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the
reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field
belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of
Elimelech."--RUTH ii: 3.
The time that Ruth and Naomi arrive at Bethlehem is harvest-time. It
was the custom when a sheaf fell from a load in the harvest-field for
the reapers to refuse to gather it up: that was to be left for the
poor who might happen to come along that way. If there were handfuls
of grain scattered across the field after the main harvest had been
reaped, instead of raking it, as farmers do now, it was, by the custom
of the land, left in its place, so that the poor, coming along that
way, might glean it and get their bread. But, you say, "What is the
use of all these harvest-fields to Ruth and Naomi? Naomi is too old
and feeble to go out and toil in the sun; and can you expect that
Ruth, the young and the beautiful, should tan her cheeks and blister
her hands in the harvest-field?"
Boaz owns a large farm, and he goes out to see the reapers gather in
the grain. Coming there, right behind the swarthy, sun-browned
reapers, he beholds a beautiful woman gleaning--a woman more fit to
bend to a harp or sit upon a throne than to stoop among the sheaves.
Ah, that was an eventful day!
It was love at first sight. Boaz forms an attachment for the womanly
gleaner--an attachment full of undying interest to the Church of God
in all ages; while Ruth, with an ephah, or nearly a bushel of barley,
goes home to Naomi to tell her the successes and adventures of the
day. That Ruth, who left her native land of Moab in darkness, and
traveled through an undying affection for her mother-in-law, is in the
harvest-field of Boaz, is affianced to one of the best families in
Judah, and becomes in after-time the ancestress of Jesus Christ, the
Lord of glory! Out of so dark a night did there ever dawn so bright a
morning?
I. I learn, in the first place, from this subject how trouble develops
character. It was bereavement, poverty, and exile that developed,
illustrated, and announced to all ages the sublimity of Ruth's
character. That is a very unfortunate man who has no trouble. It was
sorrow that made John Bunyan the better dreamer, and Doctor Young the
better poet, and O'Connell the better orator, and Bishop Hall the
better preacher, and Havelock the better soldier, and Kitto the better
encyclopædist, and Ruth the better daughter-in-law.
I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor, who was a very
brilliant man, "Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems
to have so little heart and tenderness in his sermons?" "Well," he
replied, "the reason is, our pastor has never had any trouble. When
misfortune comes upon him, his style will be different." After awhile
the Lord took a child out of that pastor's house; and though the
preacher was just as brilliant as he was before, oh, the warmth, the
tenderness of his discourses! The fact is, that trouble is a great
educator. You see sometimes a musician sit down at an instrument, and
his execution is cold and formal and unfeeling. The reason is that all
his life he has been prospered. But let misfortune or bereavement come
to that man, and he sits down at the instrument, and you discover the
pathos in the first sweep of the keys.
Misfortune and trials are great educators. A young doctor comes into a
sick-room where there is a dying child. Perhaps he is very rough in
his prescription, and very rough in his manner, and rough in the
feeling of the pulse, and rough in his answer to the mother's anxious
question; but years roll on, and there has been one dead in his own
house; and now he comes into the sick-room, and with tearful eye he
looks at the dying child, and he says, "Oh, how this reminds me of my
Charlie!" Trouble, the great educator. Sorrow--I see its touch in the
grandest painting; I hear its tremor in the sweetest song; I feel its
power in the mightiest argument.
Grecian mythology said that the fountain of Hippocrene was struck out
by the foot of the winged horse Pegasus. I have often noticed in life
that the brightest and most beautiful fountains of Christian comfort
and spiritual life have been struck out by the iron-shod hoof of
disaster and calamity. I see Daniel's courage best by the flash of
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. I see Paul's prowess best when I find him on
the foundering ship under the glare of the lightning in the breakers
of Melita. God crowns His children amid the howling of wild beasts and
the chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and the crackling fires of
martyrdom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius to develop
Polycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the pope's bull and the cardinal's
curse and the world's anathema to develop Martin Luther. It took all
the hostilities against the Scotch Covenanters and the fury of Lord
Claverhouse to develop James Renwick, and Andrew Melville, and Hugh
McKail, the glorious martyrs of Scotch history. It took the stormy
sea, and the December blast, and the desolate New England coast, and
the war-whoop of savages, to show forth the prowess of the Pilgrim
Fathers--
"When amid the storms they sung,
And the stars heard, and the sea,
And the sounding aisles of the dim wood
Rang to the anthems of the free."
It took all our past national distresses, and it takes all our present
national sorrows, to lift up our nation on that high career where it
will march along after the foreign aristocracies that have mocked and
the tyrannies that have jeered, shall be swept down under the
omnipotent wrath of God, who hates despotism, and who, by the strength
of His own red right arm, will make all men free. And so it is
individually, and in the family, and in the Church, and in the world,
that through darkness and storm and trouble men, women, churches,
nations, are developed.
II. Again, I see in my text the beauty of unfaltering friendship. I
suppose there were plenty of friends for Naomi while she was in
prosperity; but of all her acquaintances, how many were willing to
trudge off with her toward Judah, when she had to make that lonely
journey? One--the heroine of my text. One--absolutely one. I suppose
when Naomi's husband was living, and they had plenty of money, and all
things went well, they had a great many callers; but I suppose that
after her husband died, and her property went, and she got old and
poor, she was not troubled very much with callers. All the birds that
sung in the bower while the sun shone have gone to their nests, now
the night has fallen.
Oh, these beautiful sun-flowers that spread out their color in the
morning hour! but they are always asleep when the sun is going down!
Job had plenty of friends when he was the richest man in Uz; but when
his property went and the trials came, then there were none so much
that pestered as Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite.
Life often seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pulls
down all the other men into his own lap. Let suspicions arise about a
man's character, and he becomes like a bank in a panic, and all the
imputations rush on him and break down in a day that character which
in due time would have had strength to defend itself. There are
reputations that have been half a century in building, which go down
under some moral exposure, as a vast temple is consumed by the touch
of a sulphurous match. A hog can uproot a century plant.
In this world, so full of heartlessness and hypocrisy, how thrilling
it is to find some friend as faithful in days of adversity as in days
of prosperity! David had such a friend in Hushai; the Jews had such a
friend in Mordecai, who never forgot their cause; Paul had such a
friend in Onesiphorus, who visited him in jail; Christ had such in
the Marys, who adhered to Him on the cross; Naomi had such a one in
Ruth, who cried out: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or 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."
III. Again, I learn from this subject that paths which open in
hardship and darkness often come out in places of joy. When Ruth
started from Moab toward Jerusalem, to go along with her
mother-in-law, I suppose the people said: "Oh, what a foolish creature
to go away from her father's house, to go off with a poor old woman
toward the land of Judah! They won't live to get across the desert.
They will be drowned in the sea, or the jackals of the wilderness will
destroy them." It was a very dark morning when Ruth started off with
Naomi; but behold her in my text in the harvest-field of Boaz, to be
affianced to one of the lords of the land, and become one of the
grandmothers of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. And so it often is
that a path which often starts very darkly ends very brightly.
When you started out for heaven, oh, how dark was the hour of
conviction--how Sinai thundered, and devils tormented, and the
darkness thickened! All the sins of your life pounced upon you, and it
was the darkest hour you ever saw when you first found out your sins.
After awhile you went into the harvest-field of God's mercy; you
began to glean in the fields of divine promise, and you had more
sheaves than you could carry, as the voice of God addressed you,
saying: "Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, and
whose sins are covered." A very dark starting in conviction, a very
bright ending in the pardon and the hope and the triumph of the
Gospel!
So, very often in our worldly business or in our spiritual career, we
start off on a very dark path. We must go. The flesh may shrink back,
but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying, "You must
go;" and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross,
and we have to traverse the desert and we are pounded and flailed of
misrepresentation and abuse, and we have to urge our way through ten
thousand obstacles that have been slain by our own right arm. We have
to ford the river, we have to climb the mountain, we have to storm the
castle; but, blessed be God, the day of rest and reward will come. On
the tip-top of the captured battlements we will shout the victory; if
not in this world, then in that world where there is no gall to drink,
no burdens to carry, no battles to fight. How do I know it? Know it! I
know it because God says so: "They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat,
for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to
living fountains of water, and God shall wipe all tears from their
eyes."
It was very hard for Noah to endure the scoffing of the people in his
day, while he was trying to build the ark, and was every morning
quizzed about his old boat that would never be of any practical use;
but when the deluge came, and the tops of the mountains disappeared
like the backs of sea-monsters, and the elements, lashed up in fury,
clapped their hands over a drowned world, then Noah in the ark
rejoiced in his own safety and in the safety of his family, and looked
out on the wreck of a ruined earth.
Christ, hounded of persecutors, denied a pillow, worse maltreated than
the thieves on either side of the cross, human hate smacking its lips
in satisfaction after it had been draining His last drop of blood, the
sheeted dead bursting from the sepulchers at His crucifixion. Tell me,
O Gethsemane and Golgotha! were there ever darker times than those?
Like the booming of the midnight sea against the rock, the surges of
Christ's anguish beat against the gates of eternity, to be echoed back
by all the thrones of heaven and all the dungeons of hell. But the day
of reward comes for Christ; all the pomp and dominion of this world
are to be hung on His throne, uncrowned heads are to bow before Him on
whose head are many crowns, and all the celestial worship is to come
up at His feet, like the humming of the forest, like the rushing of
the waters, like the thundering of the seas, while all heaven, rising
on their thrones, beat time with their scepters: "Hallelujah, for the
Lord God omnipotent reigneth! Hallelujah, the kingdoms of this world
have become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ!"
"That song of love, now low and far,
Ere long shall swell from star to star;
That light, the breaking day which tips
The golden-spired Apocalypse."
IV. Again, I learn from my subject that events which seem to be most
insignificant may be momentous. Can you imagine anything more
unimportant than the coming of a poor woman from Moab to Judah? Can
you imagine anything more trivial than the fact that this Ruth just
happened to alight--as they say--just happened to alight on that field
of Boaz? Yet all ages, all generations, have an interest in the fact
that she was to become an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all
nations and kingdoms must look at that one little incident with a
thrill of unspeakable and eternal satisfaction. So it is in your
history and in mine: events that you thought of no importance at all
have been of very great moment. That casual conversation, that
accidental meeting--you did not think of it again for a long while;
but how it changed all the phase of your life!
It seemed to be of no importance that Jubal invented rude instruments
of music, calling them harp and organ; but they were the introduction
of all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of a
stringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away from
it, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only the
long-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. It seemed to
be a matter of very little importance that Tubal Cain learned the uses
of copper and iron; but that rude foundry of ancient days has its echo
in the rattle of Birmingham machinery, and the roar and bang of
factories on the Merrimac.
It seemed to be a matter of no importance that Luther found a Bible in
a monastery; but as he opened that Bible, and the brass-bound lids
fell back, they jarred everything, from the Vatican to the furthest
convent in Germany, and the rustling of the wormed leaves was the
sound of the wings of the angel of the Reformation. It seemed to be a
matter of no importance that a woman, whose name has been forgotten,
dropped a tract in the way of a very bad man by the name of Richard
Baxter. He picked up the tract and read it, and it was the means of
his salvation.
In after-days that man wrote a book called "The Call to the
Unconverted," that was the means of bringing a multitude to God, among
others Philip Doddridge. Philip Doddridge wrote a book called "The
Rise and Progress of Religion," which has brought thousands and tens
of thousands into the kingdom of God, and among others the great
Wilberforce. Wilberforce wrote a book called "A Practical View of
Christianity," which was the means of bringing a great multitude to
Christ, among others Legh Richmond. Legh Richmond wrote a tract called
"The Dairyman's Daughter," which has been the means of the salvation
of unconverted multitudes. And that tide of influence started from the
fact that one Christian woman dropped a Christian tract in the way of
Richard Baxter--the tide of influence rolling on through Richard
Baxter, through Philip Doddridge, through the great Wilberforce,
through Legh Richmond, on, on, on, forever, forever. So the
insignificant events of this world seem, after all, to be most
momentous. The fact that you came up that street or this street seemed
to be of no importance to you, and the fact that you went inside of
some church may seem to be a matter of very great insignificance to
you, but you will find it the turning-point in your history.
V. Again, I see in my subject an illustration of the beauty of female
industry.
Behold Ruth toiling in the harvest-field under the hot sun, or at noon
taking plain bread with the reapers, or eating the parched corn which
Boaz handed to her. The customs of society, of course, have changed,
and without the hardships and exposure to which Ruth was subjected,
every intelligent woman will find something to do.
I know there is a sickly sentimentality on this subject. In some
families there are persons of no practical service to the household or
community; and though there are so many woes all around about them in
the world, they spend their time languishing over a new pattern, or
bursting into tears at midnight over the story of some lover who shot
himself! They would not deign to look at Ruth carrying back the barley
on her way home to her mother-in-law, Naomi. All this fastidiousness
may seem to do very well while they are under the shelter of their
father's house; but when the sharp winter of misfortune comes, what of
these butterflies? Persons under indulgent parentage may get upon
themselves habits of indolence; but when they come out into practical
life their soul will recoil with disgust and chagrin. They will feel
in their hearts what the poet so severely satirized when he said:
"Folks are so awkward, things so impolite,
They're elegantly pained from morning until night."
Through that gate of indolence how many men and women have marched,
useless on earth, to a destroyed eternity! Spinola said to Sir Horace
Vere: "Of what did your brother die?" "Of having nothing to do," was
the answer. "Ah!" said Spinola, "that's enough to kill any general of
us." Oh! can it be possible in this world, where there is so much
suffering to be alleviated, so much darkness to be enlightened, and so
many burdens to be carried, that there is any person who cannot find
anything to do?
Madame de Staël did a world of work in her time; and one day, while
she was seated amid instruments of music, all of which she had
mastered, and amid manuscript books which she had written, some one
said to her: "How do you find time to attend to all these things?"
"Oh," she replied, "these are not the things I am proud of. My chief
boast is in the fact that I have seventeen trades, by any one of which
I could make a livelihood if necessary." And if in secular spheres
there is so much to be done, in spiritual work how vast the field! How
many dying all around about us without one word of comfort! We want
more Abigails, more Hannahs, more Rebeccas, more Marys, more Deborahs
consecrated--body, mind, soul--to the Lord who bought them.