THE MAN AFTER THE FLESH.

Chapter 3:GOD'S CARE FOR HIS OWN HONOR. (1 Sam. 5:, 6:) (Continued from February, 1901.)

God’s judgment is not confined to the overthrow of Dagon; He will touch not merely the idolatry of the people, but their prosperity and lives as well. As He had previously in Egypt not only poured out His plagues upon the people, but upon their sources of livelihood, so He does here. His hand was laid heavily upon them and He smote them with emerods, a plague similar, probably, to the boils of Egypt and to what is now known as the Bubonic plague, repulsive and deadly in its effects. He had said:"Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment" (Ex. 12:12), making the infliction so sweeping that neither people nor gods could ever again be pointed to as having been immune. So He would do in the land of the Philistines, no less effectually, if on a smaller scale, stopping every possible opportunity for unbelief to lift its head again.

And do we not see mercy in all this? Had Dagon merely been overthrown, the unbelief of the people and their half pity for their god would have found some ready excuse which would have enabled them to patch up their pride and their wounded god at the same time and go on with the old idolatry; but if the judgment affects their property as well, and if the little mice, so contemptibly insignificant, can yet ravage their fields so as to rob them of the staff of life, they are forced to acknowledge here a hand whose weight they begin to feel and from under whose chastening they cannot escape. And when the blow comes still nearer and the stroke of God is felt upon their own bodies, with the dead all about them, surely they must be compelled to bow and own the rod.

So God's judgments are designed,-if there be the least vestige of submission to Him, the least desire to turn from wickedness to Himself,-to break down the pride and unbelief of the heart. This is the effect of all chastening upon those who are properly exercised thereby:'' What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?" God's people from the beginning have been acquainted with the rod, and how many have had occasion to bless God infinitely for the overthrow of idols which they had set up, the loss of property, of health, yea even of this life itself! May we not all say:"I know, Lord, that in faithfulness Thou hast afflicted," and add:"It is good for me that I have been afflicted. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word "?

So God was not merely vindicating His own honor, but had they only known it, was speaking in no uncertain way, in mercy, to the godless nation among whom He had permitted His glory to be brought. What an opportunity indeed for repentance ; we might almost say what a necessity for it. And yet, alas, it was unavailed of; showing how hopelessly and permanently alienated from any desire toward Himself were the Philistines, who, like the other nations cast out by Joshua, had filled up the measure of that iniquity which, in the days of Abraham, God in His patience had declared not yet full, and whom indeed it would be a mercy to sweep from the land.

And as we look at the world about us, under both the goodness and the severity of God, receiving His blessings, and experiencing the weight of His hand in providential dealings, do we not see how all this is calculated both to lead man to think of God and to repentance? Will it not be a weighty item in that awful account which the world must one day face? Particularly is this true in Christendom, where the light of revelation and the gospel of God's grace alike serve to illumine all that is darkest in His providence. Men will be without excuse. The very plea that they sometimes make, that for one who has had so much suffering in this life there must surely be a relief in the life to come, will but give added solemnity to the awful doom. If they had suffering in this life-trial, privation, bereavement, sickness, what effect did it have upon them? Did it bring them to see the vanity of earthly things, the uncertainty of life, the power of God, and above all their own sin before Him? Did it drive them to Christ, if they would not be wooed and drawn by the love of God? Oh, what an awful reckoning for the world! Woe to those indeed upon whom neither the love and mercy of God, nor the smiting of His hand have any effect!

At least, however, His own honor and His own goodness are vindicated. Men will not be able to say that God did not make His presence manifested. They Will not be able to say that the sun of prosperity shone so uninterruptedly that they were never forced to think of eternal things. God's cup indeed is "full of mixture," and the mercy and the judgment alike vindicate His ways and show that deep desire of His heart, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Such lessons, surely, we are warranted in gathering from this judgment upon the Philistines, though undoubtedly the main lesson was for His redeemed people. To bring upon them a deeper sense of their own unfaithfulness, and to show the power and holiness of God unchanged, were the primary objects.

What Israelite, as he looked back at the defeat at Ebenezer (chap. 4:i), with the ark carried off in triumph by the Philistines, and then at prostrate Dagon and the plagues upon the Philistines, could fail to learn the lesson so plainly taught? Must he not say, " 'Our God is holy'-He will not leave His honor to the unclean hands of wicked priests or an ungodly nation. But that which we could not care for, He still maintains"?

But how touching it is to think of the desires of our blessed God as manifested in all this judgment on the Philistines! He dwells amid the praises of His people. He cannot dwell in a strange land. His heart is toward them, though in faithfulness He may have had to turn from them; and all that went on in Philistia but showed that divine restlessness of love which could not be at peace until it reposed again in the bosom of His redeemed ones. What love we see here! Veiled it may be, but surely not to faith. He will go back to the land from whence He has been driven by the faithlessness of His people, and not by the power of their enemies. He will bestir Himself to return to them if indeed there is a heart to receive Him, but in that divine equipoise of all His attributes His love must not outrun His . holiness. Hence the object lesson before the eyes of all.

The nature of these plagues, no doubt, is typical here, as in the similar circumstances in Egypt. The emerods or tumors suggest the outward manifestation of a corruption which had long existed within, and which needed but the opportunity to display itself in all its hideous vileness. How solemnly true it is that to "receive the things done in the body" will be in a very real sense the essence of retribution! " Let him alone" is the most awful sentence that can be pronounced against any, and to allow the hell that is shut up in the heart of every unsaved man to express itself is an awful foretaste of that eternal, doom where the knowledge of one's self means the; knowledge of sin. True indeed it is that there will, be the infliction of wrath also, but will not this be felt in the reaping of what has been sown? "He that is filthy, let him be filthy still." Permanence of character-solemn and awful thought for those who are away from God! The world little realizes, or makes itself easily forget, that beneath the fair exterior of a life no worse than that of most, there is hidden the possibility for every form of sin. It is out of the heart that "proceed evil thoughts, murders, blasphemies," and all the rest. So God was merely letting the wickedness of the wicked be manifest.

So, too, with the mice, as we said, small and contemptible in themselves; who would have thought that those fields of golden grain, with their abundant store, could be devoured by these trifles? So, to-day, in the world, men despise the trifles as they call them, which one day will eat out all the gladness and peace of life. Socialism, anarchy, various forms of infidelity, disobedience to parents, restiveness under restraint, pride, self-sufficiency – these things are either looked at with toleration, or, if characterized aright, as being so exceptional that there is no danger from them. And yet the book of Revelation traces all these things to the heading up of iniquity. The lawless one is but the embodiment of that lawlessness which even now is working in the children of unbelief. The fearful plagues recorded in that last book of prophecy are but the full development of the little mice, as we might call them, which are even now gnawing out the vitals of society and present order. Once let the powers of evil be turned loose, let the restraining hand of Him who "letteth " be lifted, and He (the Spirit in the Church) be taken away – as will soon come to pass at the coming of the Lord – and the ravages of evil fittingly described as famine and pestilence will show what the world may expect when left to itself. Would to God it had a voice for it now in this the day of His patience!

These inflictions appall the men of Ashdod where the ark had first been brought, and like men in similar case, they try to get rid of the cause, not by repentance, but by putting, as it were, God far off from them. If the load grows too heavy for one shoulder, it will be transferred to the other and then to the arms. It does not become so intolerable that they are prostrated before the God of Israel as yet ; still less does it have the effect of bringing them to a sense of their true condition. They will get rid of the trouble by getting rid of the ark, and so it is sent on to Gath and from Gath to Ekron, and thus through all the cities of the Philistines.

The same story is repeated everywhere. Men cannot so easily get rid of their chastening, and to shift the burden of an uneasy conscience will not remove the certainty of judgment. This passage of the ark from one city to the other of the Philistines is again a witness of the mercy and of the holiness of God. He will, as it were, knock at the door of each place, even as He did in Sodom, ere judgment fell finally, to see if there would be any that feared Him. And as He passes from one place to the other, we may well believe that there was no response save that of terror, no turning to Himself.

But what a triumphant procession for this ark it was! Even as when Paul passed from one heathen city to another, where Jewish hatred and Gentile scorn vied with each other in heaping reproaches
upon him, he could say:"Thanks be to God who always leadeth us in triumph " (as the original has it) "in Christ." Whether it were the stones at Lystra, or the prison at Philippi, or the mockery at Corinth and Athens, faith could see the triumphant witness of the glory of God brought face to face with those people. Even as our Lord, when He sent His disciples through the various cities of Israel, foreseeing their rejection in many places and telling them that they were to shake off the very dust of their feet from those cities where they were not received, added:"Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." So here, the ark of God makes its majestic progress from city to city, and prostrate forms of men, and devastated garners bear witness to its progress. " The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth."
At last, desperation drives the lords of the Philistines to a conference in which they decide that what they thought was a victory over Jehovah was but a defeat for themselves; a victory too dearly bought to be longer endured, and they take the world's way (alas, the only way the world will take) of finding relief. They will get rid of God, even as the men of Decapolis besought our Lord to depart out of their coasts, though before their very eyes was the witness of His love and power in setting free the poor demoniac. Yes, the world will try to get rid of God. It may apparently succeed for a season, until the final day.

They decide to return the ark to the land of Israel:"Send away the ark of the God of Israel and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not and our people; for there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there."

(To be continued, if the Lord will.")