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Now what was the real greatness of her faith? And

how did it make even Jesus of Nazareth marvel? Well, first, it overcame the prejudices of her race. She was a heathen woman, trained in a heathen home. She had bowed down to idols from a child. She had been taught from infancy to scorn the Jews. If she had asked her aged mother by the fireside for advice, she would have been told that to go to Jesus was to disgrace the family. If she had gone to the priests and asked for their permission, they would have banned her by all the powers of heaven. But she broke through everything to get to Jesus-all that was customary, all that was dear. And Jesus knew what barriers had gone down, when she lay at his feet and cried, Lord, help me. Have I no barriers to break to get to Christ? And are they keeping me back this Sabbath day? We are not born and bred in a heathen land. God has been good to us and set us down where the church-bells ring, and the Bible is on the table. But sometimes a friendship, and sometimes what the others will say, and sometimes the jeering of a brother or sister, have kept us from coming right out for our Captain; and this poor heathen woman is going to shame us when we all stand face to face with Christ.

AND, again, her faith mastered the natural shrinking of

her heart. It steeled her for this terrible ordeal. When a woman loves her daughter as this mother did, she is never fond of attracting public notice. She will watch all night by her sick daughter's bed; she will make her cottage a very heaven of service; but to cry out in public, and have the gaze of the strange crowd upon her, is very alien to a true mother's heart. I dare say in her after-days she often wondered how she had ever done it. We cannot explain these high enthusiasms. But if we cannot explain them, Jesus can; and in the enthusiasm of this woman He saw faith. It was faith that had

prompted her to leave her cottage. It was faith that had nerved her heart before the company. Had she not ventured everything on Christ, she would have been sitting weeping by her daughter yet.

AND then her faith was great because it so stoutly refused

to be denied.

No silence and no rebuff could drive her off. She was simply determined that she should have an answer. And so closely are faith and love bound up together, that the cry of her little daughter in her ear, and the picture of her daughter in her heart, kindled her faith into a flame again when it was almost quenched. Did Christ keep silence? She still cried, Lord, help me! Did He discourage her? She was still at his feet. Did He speak about the children and the little dogs? She has caught the words up, and made a plea from them. And it is in that magnificent persistency, as humble and reverent as it is persevering, that the true greatness of her faith is found. We have a beautiful hymn beginning, 'O love, that will not let me go.' We want another beginning, 'O faith, that will not let Him go.' When we have that faith-and this woman had it-our hearts and homes shall be as blessed as hers.

S

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY

Morning

THE DEATH OF SAMSON

Passage to be read: Judg. xvi. 21-31.

AMSON was a child of the tribe of Dan, and in the

book of Genesis we have a forecast of the history

of Dan that was strangely fulfilled in Samson's life and death. When Jacob was dying he called his sons to his bedside, and when Dan came in, and knelt before his father, these were the words he heard: 'Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels so that his rider shall fall backward' (Gen. xlix. 16-17). Was not that prophecy of Dan made good in Samson? Was not Samson the typical spirit of that tribe? He was a judge. He stung the Philistines like any serpent. And what better picture could we have of that last scene at Gaza than the adder biting the horse's heel, and the horse rearing, and the rider crushed? I dare say Samson never dreamed how he was acting out old Jacob's prophecy. We seldom feel, amid the dust of it, that we are walking on a predestined way.

NOW the story of Samson is like a summer morning that opens with sunshine and the song of birds. There is the rioting life of a June day about him when we meet him first, striding to Timnath. These unshorn locks are his badge of consecration. He has been set

And if we would

apart by heaven to be a Nazarite. learn what a Nazarite was like, let us read the sixth of Numbers and we shall see. But all the glory of a summer morning may change into a dreary afternoon, and all the promise of a splendid youth may end in darkness and the prison-house. So has it been with many a strong young fellow. So was it with this Hercules of Dan. God dowered him with prodigious strength, for God had set him a prodigious task; but the secret of his strength was in his hair, as if to warn him how lightly it might be lost. And Samson forgot that. He forgot the precarious tenure of his prowess. He did what you and I have often done, he was so strong and happy he neglected God. He rollicked and he jested and he sinned-this man who had been heralded by angel-ministries, and who was summoned to be the champion of the Lord; until at last he woke, and all his strength was gone, and all his opportunity was squandered.

THEN

HEN followed, swiftly and easily, his capture, and on the heels of his capture came his death-the grandest commentary on these verses in all the world's literature is the Samson Agonistes of John Milton. Trapped by the Philistines, Samson was led to Gaza. It was at Gaza that Samson had showed his strength. It was the gates of Gaza he had swung upon his shoulder, and carried, bar and all, up to the top of Hebron. And now he enters these same gates again, how changed! a helpless prisoner: and do you not see how the streets are crowded, and women are peering out of every window (and one of them felt her heart throb when she saw him), and the boys are taunting him, and in their snatches of doggerel verse are shouting the story of that famous midnight? Worse still, Samson was blind. They had bored his eyes out with a red-hot iron. It was through his eyes that his sin had entered (xvi. 1), and his eyes are the first to suffer for his sin. So blinded, and fettered

with brass, he is led to the prison-house. And there in the damp dungeon, this child of freedom and of the open sky-his very name meant Sunny—is set to the grinding work of women (Exod. xi. 5) and slaves.

THEN

HEN comes the end. One of the chief gods of the Philistines was Dagon, a god whose images had the head and the hands of a man, and as some have thought, the tail of a fish (1 Sam. v. 4, margin). It was into his house at Ashdod that the ark was carried (1 Sam. v.). It was into his temple that the head of Saul was brought (1 Chron. x. 10). Now on a great feast-day, when Dagon's house in Gaza is filled with the flower of the Philistines, and the common people are crowded on the roof, and all are heated with the banqueting and wine, the cry rises, 'Call for Samson that he may make us sport!' Did the sound of the call reach Samson through his grated windows? Did the hoarse murmur of six thousand tongues crying his name stir something of the old spirit in his heart? They thought they were summoning their fool, these thousands. They did not know they were summoning their fate. For Samson came, and leaned upon the pillars of the temple, and cried to God for one last hour of might. And how the pillars trembled and broke, and as with a burst of thunder the house fell, crushing the multitude to death and Samson in their midst, let the Word of God tell in its own tongue. Then his kinsmen came down, and found the dead body of their hero, and carried it home and buried it in a quiet spot between Zorah and Eshtaol,-the very spot where in the sunny morning the Spirit of God had fallen upon the lad (xiii. 25). What text shall we write on that sequestered grave? 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me' (Jer. ix. 23-4).

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