CHAPTER XV.

THE HEN AND HER CHICKENS.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"—Matt. xxiii. 37.

DOMESTIC fowls are mentioned only twice in the New Testament. As there are no clocks or watches in the East, the crowing of the cock is now, as it always has been, the signal of the dawn. The cock-crowing in Palestine to-day is so frequent and piercing as to spoil the sleep of many a pilgrim. You remember the cock crowing when Peter denied Christ. The hen is mentioned only in our text. Hawks, kites, and birds of prey are very common in Palestine. I wondered why these birds were so tame. Fancy replied that they felt quite at home in a land which has been given for a prey to the spoilers from the days of the Romans to the days of the Turks, and where so many of the natives regard you with the eye of a hawk. It seemed fitting that the birds of prey should look down upon that land as belonging to them. The abundance of birds of prey has always made it very difficult to rear chickens in Palestine. There oftener than elsewhere has the hen to gather her chickens under her wings.

The hen is not a favourite with the poets. They prefer the eagle, the bird of empire, strong in beak and claw and wing; or the dove, emblem of gentleness and peace; or the robin-redbreast, with his direct appeal to our human sympathies. For some reason

the hen has not drawn around her any pleasing associations: she suggests ridicule rather than reverence. But just because she is so homely and common, she suits the uses of Christ when He brings great truths under our senses. When He points to the hen and her chickens every undignified idea retires, and your imagination at once clothes her with the sacred ideas of motherhood and self-sacrifice. You feel at once the charm and simplicity of this image, for Christ presents it to us without any cunning embroidery. It simplifies and beautifies great truths, and an infant can scarcely miss its meaning.

This object illustrates—

I. The Willing Saviour. II. The Unwilling Sinner. III. The Willing Sinner.

I. The Willing Saviour.

Christ declares Himself as willing to save the people in Jerusalem as the mother-hen is to shelter her chickens. How mysterious is the mother-love of the hen for her brood. Every power in her has gone into love for them; and this love gives her a strange energy, which has in it something like the Divine. I have

often seen a big dog, or a bullock, or a horse wandering

in among the little chickens.

Had the hen been alone

terror, but the mother

Love supplies her with

she would have fled at once in instinct is mighty within her. rage and arms and courage; her body swells to an unwonted size; she dashes at the intruders with such suddenness and fury that they are put to flight. This instinct in the mother-bird is never lessened nor chilled while the chickens need her help. It always absorbs her whole nature, and it is always active. I have never heard of a hen unwilling to save her chickens. the shelter she gives is wonderfully warm and tender, for she covers them with her feathers and draws them close to her throbbing heart. And all that is but a poor picture of the love of Christ. This image emphasises Christ's great care and tenderness, and the homeliness of it should touch our hearts. Even Mahomet says that "God's love of man is more tender than that of

And

This symbol of the

the mother-bird for her young." Saviour shows that He is our Shelterer, and that He places His life between us and danger, and treats all comers with the most condescending tenderness. One day when Charles Wesley was sitting at an open window, a little bird pursued by a hawk dashed into his bosom. Mr. Wesley saved it from death, and then took up his pen and wrote the sweet hymn

"Jesus, Lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly."

Christ's words prove His love. They are words of

melting, overpowering mercy-"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem." His words are cast in that poetic form which becomes great feeling. There is in them something like the swelling of the wave at tide-time, billow pressing upon billow. Jerusalem is the metropolis, or mother-city, and the citizens are her children. His tears also prove His love (Luke xix. 41). The agonies of Calvary drew no tear from Him, but He wept over Jerusalem. The Redeemer's tears for lost souls are wonderful proofs of His compassion. His acts also

add to the proofs of His saving mercy. We must here count up, so far as we can, all His acts from the cradle to the cross, and from the cross to His throne in Heaven. And He loved even the Jerusalem sinners, and was willing to save them. By their behaviour they had made themselves heirs to all the innocent blood shed since Abel's day; and they were about to crucify Him. But His very murderers were the first to be made welcome to the healing virtue of the blood they had shed. This object-lesson overwhelms us with proofs of Christ's willingness to save, and of His power too. Who can this be who feels quite sure that the wings of His love and power are wide enough to shelter not only the two millions of people then in Jerusalem, but the spirits of all the ages? Could any mere creature in his sane mind ever have spoken in that way? Are not these the words of One who knows that He is God? We know Christ to be man by His tears, and to be God by the way in which He speaks. Here is the gospel of the Gospel and the glory of the Bible.

Face to face with the willing Saviour stands—

II. The Unwilling Sinner.

Was lament ever sadder than Christ's, "How often would I . . . and ye would not! What an awful and! Passing strange that even love Divine, after it has done all, can only weep. Christ's love sometimes calls out man's proud and rebellious resistance. I say nothing about deep, dark questions, to the bottom of which we cannot reach. It is idle to ask here whether God's will is stronger than man's, or whether man could come to Christ without God's help. These Jerusalemites did not want to come to Christ; they would not if they could, and so the blame was all their own. Men are not kept from Christ by a natural inability in which they could not if they would, but by a moral inability in which they would not if they could. No one is forced into the shelter. No doubt they had a general willingness to be saved from ruin and hell, but they were not willing to be saved from sin then and there, and in Christ's own way. And yet many of them were, so far as one could see, very decent and respectable people. There were then in Jerusalem, we are told, about two millions of people; but among them all there were not so many as two obstacles between them and Christ-there was only one, and that one was, "Ye would not!" Some of them were awfully wicked people, but not one of them was shut out by his sins. Christ saves the very worst, if only they are willing to let Him save them.