The Scriptures are rich, characteristically rich, uniquely rich, in the matter of doxologies and of benedictions; if only these two forms of worship, the exercise of the soul towards God and man respectively, were to be collected, what a lovely little book would be made by the process of selection! what mountain tops of dogma would be reached, what Pisgah sights of Christian experience would be rolled out before our eyes and before our feet-that is to say, before our faith-so that we might acknowledge the grace and possess the land, the good land which the Lord our God giveth us! All that has ever been said of the Divine Nature would be in the book, for the doxologies and the benedictions use the same theological language. If one says “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” the other responds with “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with thy spirit,” so that the benediction is itself a creed, and a creed which is a life, and a life which is love. No stronger statements, no deeper insight into the full meaning of salvation, can ever be obtained than those which fall upon our ears when the Lord or His messengers are set to bless the people. And this is not only true of the New Testament, it occurs and prevails throughout the Old; if the degree varies, the benediction is the same in kind: the same grace and the same glory from the same Lord, who is rich unto all that call upon Him in truth, especially when they call upon Him for others.
One of the most deeply significant passages of the Old Testament (Num_6:24-26) states the form of the priestly blessing to be given by “Aaron and his sons” to Israel:-
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
1. The benediction will be found located in the midst of matter of all degrees of spiritual value; so that, if we were reading continuously, we should stumble upon it unexpectedly, and pass away from it, when we had read it, much as we would pass from an oasis into a desert. For it is preceded, in the Biblical narration, by the rules for the manufacture and the administration of “cursing water,” of which the spiritual value is not very evident. In the same connexion we have the law by which the Nazirite separates himself from wine and strong drink; and while perhaps, we shall have to admit that the Nazirite went into the region of ethical extravagance in refusing to touch even the seeds of the grape, we can hardly say that Nazirite vows are out of date or that they have lost their spiritual value. So the benediction is preceded by matter that cannot be uniformly classified when we are estimating spiritual truth or utility. But, doubt as we may about the setting of the benediction and the relative value in morals or in history of that in the midst of which it is found, we can have no doubt about the benediction itself. That, at all events, is pure gold.
2. The benediction falls into three parts, corresponding to the three verses into which, in our English Version, it has been divided. Each, too, of the three parts is symmetrical, consisting of a Divine attitude and its consequent result. Thus, in the first verse, we have the Lord blessing His people in the most general sense of the word, followed by His keeping them, or by the sense of security which His blessing ought to impart. In the second, we have the Lord making His face to shine, with the consequent assurance of the Divine grace and favour resting on those who sun themselves in His light. And in the third, we have the Lord lifting up His countenance, as a token of the Divine approval, and so imparting a sense of inward and abiding peace in the hearts of all true worshippers.
(1) The benediction is not a mere general expression of kindly good wishes, not a mere utterance of prayerful goodwill, such as might be spoken to a company of pagans or of unbelievers. The direction appended makes this plain, “They shall put my name upon the children of Israel.” The Lord's name is not a vain word. It is a strong refuge into which the righteous run and are saved. The Lord, present in His Church, blesses His people there. “The Lord bless thee.” More particularly it is added, “The Lord keep thee.” The Lord is the Keeper of Israel. His people are His vineyard, of which He says, “I the Lord do keep it; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Jehovah Shomer-the Lord the Keeper-is the title under which the Lord is praised in the 121st Psalm, a favourite psalm with old and young, which may be looked upon as being the Church's response to her Lord's words of blessing. The benefit intended is a very comprehensive one. If we were asked to specify the particulars embraced in it, we could make use of the specification given more than once in the Psalms, and say that the Lord, having delivered the souls of His people from death, keeps their eyes from tears, and their feet from falling.
It would be difficult in the splendid record of nineteenth-century missions to find a more courageous and self-denying action than the consent of Mrs. Chalmers to remain alone amid a horde of cannibals for the sake of Christ's work among them, and for the benefit of her Rarotongan fellow-workers. When her husband left her there was no possibility of receiving any tidings of him until he himself brought back the tale of his wanderings. She knew him well enough to realize that places of danger attracted rather than repelled him, and that the worse the reputation possessed by any tribe or place the more likely he was to visit it. They had only a few weeks before passed through experiences which might well have unnerved the strongest. Chalmers came to know afterwards, from one of the chiefs, that again and again the murder of the whole missionary party had been determined, and that those appointed to do the deed had come once and again to the low fence which surrounded the rough mission home. They had only to step over it and rush in upon and murder the unarmed man and his wife. Had they done this they would have been hailed as heroes by local Suau opinion. But the same chief told Chalmers that at the low fence they were restrained by some mysterious thing which held them back. What was it? To the devout mind there can be no doubt. It was the restraining Hand of that God and Father in whom both His servants so firmly trusted, at whose call they had come to Suau, and for whose sake they were willing to lay down their lives.1 [Note: R. Lovett, James Chalmers, 167.]
(2) From the benediction we learn next that God makes His face to shine upon us, and it is easy to infer that He does this either directly or by reflection. Nor will it be easy to decide in which of these two ways the illumination may come, whether from the immediate life and light of God or from the dwelling of God in some neighbour soul. For it is constantly happening in each of the two ways. To use the similitudes of the Holy Grail, we have first the case of Percival's sister, who sees the vision, after long prayer and fasting and patience, in her own cell, upon whose white walls the Heavenly Vision descends, and the sweet Grail is seen-
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive.
That is the first form of the vision, according to which “God has a few of us” (and one is tempted to ask, “Why not many?”) “whom He whispers in the ear.” Or to get back to Biblical language, “In all ages Wisdom enters into holy souls, and makes them friends of God and prophets.” That is direct vision and immediate audition-the seeing for oneself of which Job talked.
But then, still on the line of the Holy Grail and its lessons, there are those who see through the eyes of the one that has seen, such as Percival and Galahad when the message comes to them that “the holy thing is here again among us, brother.”
She sent the deathless passion in her eyes
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief.
That is the indirect vision; it leads on to direct vision later, but it begins, as Galahad confesses, with what “thy sister taught me first to see.” This is a Scriptural method; it is in the Old Testament, in the form, “O taste and see how gracious the Lord is,” and in the New Testament in form, “That which our eyes have looked upon declare we unto you.”
I have a conviction that it often pleases God to humble us by the means which He chooses to illuminate us. It is related of Jacob Behmen, the great German mystic, that the immediate cause of the revelation which changed his whole life was the reflection of a sunbeam upon him from a bit of glass or tin that was lying in the road. From that bit of tin he became illuminated and illuminating. William Law sat at his feet, and so, they say, did Hegel and ever so many more noble souls. All that, shall we say, from one little bit of tin? Well, that will serve for allegory. Suppose the bit of tin to be a human soul, the humblest of souls, humbler for its very vision, less because it has become more; how often does the Lord send us to school to such, that they may tell us the secrets of the Kingdom, and instruct us how we may more effectively lose ourselves and find Him! It pleases Him to perfect praise in a choir of babes and so to still the enemy and the avenger; He sets the old to learn of the young, the rich of the poor, the scribe of the illiterate. It makes for solidarity, too, when maid-servants prophesy, and when old men and young men are able to exchange their dreams.1 [Note: J. Rendel Harris, Aaron's Breastplate, 191.]
(3) Of the varied gifts and graces which we ask God to grant us, or to aid us to obtain, none figures more frequently in Scripture than peace. Now, in the more external sense of the word, the reason for this frequent prayer is painfully obvious. That God in this sense may grant peace to our land, and to all those who dwell within it, must be our fervent prayer. And yet, even in the external sense, there may be some limitation. For we do not desire the peace of mere repression, the peace of death. In other words, we distinguish, even here, between a right peace and a wrong peace, like the prophets of old who denounced those who cried Peace, when there was no peace.
But there is also peace and strife in the lives of individuals. The excellences of contentment have been often sung. We are to be satisfied with our lot; we are not to repine; we must not desire the impossible, and so on. Nothing is more familiar than all this, and nothing more commonplace. Yet, at the same time, we are only a little less familiar with the very opposite, or apparently the very opposite, teaching. We have often heard of a noble discontent. If there were too much satisfaction and content, would civilization, as we know it, have come into being? Why should a man be contented with his lot if he can improve it? Should we rest content with evil, with imperfection? And may not different people take different views of imperfection?
We want, to some extent, at every period of manhood and womanhood, to strive and attain together; we want both struggle and rest. If peace is the end, it must not be merely an end deferred till the close of existence or enjoyed beyond the grave. So too, on the other hand, we feel that movement, progress and development, though not necessarily strife and struggle, can hardly be dissociated from any human or desired existence, whether in this life or in another. When we think of God Himself, we can conceive Him as enjoying, or as being, either perfect and continuous rest or perfect and continuous activity. That rest upon the Sabbath day which is ascribed to Him may be regarded as a figure of His permanent condition; and, on the other hand, His joyous activity, as elsewhere depicted in human terms, may be also regarded as a figure for what He continually is.
I think this higher peace, which at once reconciles and strengthens, which calms us and clears our vision, which gives a certain stability and fixity to our souls, which, while preventing our falling into sloth or conceit, frees us from restlessness and from the bondage of unsatisfied desire, which gives us the consciousness of attainment, the consciousness of permanence even amid the transitoriness of ourselves and of outward things-I believe that this higher peace can only fitly be described as the Peace of God.1 [Note: C. G. Montefiore, Truth in Religion, 157.]
“Do not answer this,” wrote a Minister to Miss Nightingale, “for I am sure you must have more on your hands now than a Secretary of State.” But what struck those about her was her perfect calm. “No one is so well fitted as she to do such work,” wrote Lady Canning to Lady Stuart de Rothesay; “she has such nerve and skill, and is so wise and quiet. Even now she is in no bustle and hurry, though so much is on her hands, and such numbers of people volunteer services.” She was quiet because, like Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, in the heat of excitement, she “kept the law in calmness made, and saw what she foresaw.” Like the character drawn by another master-hand, “in the tumult she was tranquil,” because she had pondered when at rest.2 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 160.]
