The Early Grave of a King
“Toe noanoDB m takut awat from th, btilto ooul hx shall mzn mo pkaob: thkt shall ubt in thkib bids, xaoh ohx walkma a ms uFBioHmns.” — isa. lvii i, 2.
THE early grave is not confined to any rank or station. Both the small and the great are there “(Job iii. 1 9). While “behold the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff,... the prophet and the prudent and the ancient;” — He ever and anon rings the solemn warning-bell within palace halls — “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth: he retumeth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Ps. cxlvi. 3, 4).
On these last words the verse which heads this chapter is a significant comment. Young King Josiah, who ascended the throne of Judah at the tender age of eight, is considered, by most reliable commentators, to be “the Righteous one “here specially referred to. In harmony with Isaiah’s prophetic instinct and anticipation, the youthful monarch proved himself to be the most godly of his royal race. No nobler panegyric surely could have been written than this —” Like unto him there was no king before him, that turned to the
Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with
Hall his might, •.. neither afler him arose there anylike him” (2 Kings xxiii. 25). At the age of sixteen he was brought, by means of the perusal of a copy of the Divine Law, under the fervid power of personal piety; and from that day onwards, during a memorable decade, he became priest and king in one. He commenced as an iconoclast, sweeping away from mountain and grove and valley every vestige and memorial of the idolatries sanctioned and encouraged by his apostate predecessors, and restored the purity of the Temple-worship, — “repairing the breaches of the House.” His acts of public devotion culminated in what may well be considered the eventful day of his reign, when, at the age of eighteen, he summoned his people to a great convocation in Jerusalem. In more than its former pomp and impressiveness, the old feast of the Passover was kept; — “all Israel,” as in former days, publicly renewing their covenant to their fathers’ God. The longing prayer of the hidden ’ seven thousand ’ seemed to have obtained a gracious answer — “Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?” (Ps. lxxxv. 6).
But, strange, mysterious dispensation! just when in the flower of his youth, and when his people were prospering in peace and piety under his benignant sceptre, he is brought wounded and bleeding from the battlefield at Hadadrimmon, whither he had gone to intercept the march of Pharaoh-nechoh, and he dies in his chariot ere he can reach his palace in Jerusalem.
It attests the depth and intensity of the national grief, that a funeral dirge, composed by Jeremiah, was, for many years after, sung on the spot where he received the fatal wound; and the best choristers of Israel tendered annually their services in rendering the mournful strains. We get but a snatch of these in the plaintive ejaculation of the prophet who wrote them — “Ah, my brother! •.. ah, lord! or, ah, his glory! “(Jer. xxii. 1 8). That it must, however, have been a scene and occasion of no common sorrow is farther evidenced when Zechariah uses it as a figure to describe the great future mourning and repentance of the Jews — “In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley f Megiddon” (Zech. xii. 11), “The righteous,” says Isaiah (as by imparted foresight he sees the sudden ecKpse of this bright star) — “The righteous (suddenly) perisheth,” and “merciful men “(or, as that word may be rendered — “the piouSy* “men of godliness and kindness” — those who are good fearing God and loving man) “are taken away.”
Josiah’s case is in some respects singular. From his public and exalted position, and the manifestation of singular virtues, the mystery we have already dwelt upon in ordinary examples, of early removal, seems intensified. For Jehovah to sufier this “beauty of Israel to fall in high places,” appears at first sight inconsistent alike with the Divine wisdom and power and love. It looks almost like the frnstration of God’s plans and purposes, a failure in His sovereign designs. In other respects the mystery is the same, whatever the rank or condition of life may be. It is the architect just completing his work, when that work comes with a crash to the ground. It is the sculptor putting the finishingstrokes of his chisel on the virgin marble, when the toil of months or years strews the floor of his studio. It is the gardener bringing forth from his conservatory the choicest long-husbanded plants, in their freshness and beauty, to bask in early summer sun, when a frost or hailstorm unexpectedly comes, and in one night they have perished! It is the gourd of Jonah — the figure that has so often occurred to us — encircling some earth-bower of happiness; blighted, not, as before noted, when the noonday heat is over, or when the sun is westering, and when the shade could be dispensed with; but “in the morning,” — when most needed; when, drenched with the night-dews, its growth was stimulated and its permanency seemed ensured. To apply to those in regal positions what we have already done to those in ordinary stations, we can understand the removal of the hoary-headed kings “who made Israel to sin,” — monarchg who had grown grey in iniquity. The land was well rid of such, for they lived only like the fabled upas-tree, to diffuse around them moral corruption and death. We can understand, too, the removal of the aged Israelitish patriarchs and rulers, veteran standard-bearers, who had fought their fight and finished their work, and gone to perpetuate lofty character and service in a better world: — the Abrahams and Samuels and Davids who had ‘^ served their generation according to the will of God,” and who, “well stricken in years,” “fell asleep, and were gathered to their fathers.” But the Josiahs of early and brilliant promise I — those who lived young lives of highest consecration, and diffused a hallowed influence in their age and sphere! Where is the wisdom, where is the love, in stripping the Temple of such pillars — “Beauty and Strength?” “111 can their fellows spare them!” Why is “the staff broken and the beautiful rod?” Above all (for such thoughts will, despite of better faith, force themselves on the crushed spirit, whether it be the roll of ancient Jewish kings and princes, or the every-day modern bereft British home) — why has God — the Great and the Good and the Loving — nurtured affections in the human bosom only prematurely to blight and destroy them? Why has He created tender ties only to be sundered? Why is the young athlete stricken down just when entering the race? Wherefore hath God apparently thus made His noblest work in vain?
The words of Isaiah give a twofold answer to these questions and mysteries. The one negative, the other j)ositive.
I. “The righteous is taken away from the evU to come” Utterly perplexing at the time, as we have now Been in the case of Josiah, was that sudden summons — “Thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem, and take off the crown” (Ezek. xxi. 26): just in the midst of his bright career, when he had inaugurated a new era of blessing among the thousands who owned his sway; a happy people rejoicing under the shadow of this young cedar of God. How strange, too, apparently, the recompense for all that pious zeal and youthful consecration, to be hurried away, in the twinkling of an eye, by the cruel shaft of an Egyptian bowman! Where was the Lord God of Elijah and of the faithful and leal-hearted among His Israel? “Is the Lord’s hand shortened, that it cannot save?”
Such might be the musing of the mourning, patriotic band who bore their young King bleeding from the fray; such may possibly have been his own musings, as his life’s-blood was ebbing, and when his eyes were dimming among the distant mountains of Samaria.
But ah! he and they were all in ignorance of the future. They had mercifully not revealed to them the impending invasion of the armies of Babylon, and the miseries which were to be entailed on his unhappy city and country! Well was it that God compassionately spared him these sorrows of siege and torture and captivity, plunder of holy treasure and firing the cities of his kingdom, by taking him away from the evil to come. Had his people, at the hour of his death, known of all that was about to befall their land, it would have moderated that loud wail of sorrow which rose from the valley of Megiddon. It is to this Jeremiah refers in the 2 2d chapter of his Prophecies, when he thinks of Josiah peacefully sleeping with his fathers, in contrast with the wretchedness and humiliation which tracked the footsteps of his exiled successor. He addresses the nation of mourners, and thus would assuage their bitter grief — “Weep ye not for the dead (your dead King Josiah), neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him (his unhappy son) that goeth away; for he shall return no more, nor see his native country” (ver. 10). God Himself, the Lord whom the young monarch served, does not disguise from him the reason of his early departure. For this is the special message sent to him direct from Jehovah by the mouth of Huldah the prophetess, as recorded in 2 Kings xxii. 1 8-20 — “To the King of Judah, which sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him.. •. Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, ... I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evU (’ the evil to come ‘) which I will bring upon this place.”
What was true of Joslah’s early death is, we believe, applicable to most cases. Often when we can see no love or kindness or wisdom in these early graves, it is because the morrow to us is mercifully veiled. God, who foresees all, graciously saves a heritage of sorrow or sin by an early removal. Better the brief loan, with all its hallowed, undarkened memories, than the prolonged life with its possible evils. Better the lamb early taken, than left, footsore and fleece-torn, to pino on blighted herbage and wander amid dry and deserted channels. Blessed, truly, in the beautiful, heavenly sense, are “the undefiled,” who have, by early death, escaped the corruptions that are in the world through lust; in the volume of whose heart the white leaves have their virgin purity unblotted and unstained; “taken” before impurity stirred the well of pure thought. More blessed and honoured, in one sense, are those — and many such there are — who, by dint of resolute self-discipline and high principle, have bravely fought the long fight, and come out of it unwounded, unscathed; who with unabashed face can make the appeal to the great Heart-searcher, of a good conscience and a blameless life; but safer, at least, are they who, away from the sudden gusts and hurricanes of temptation, have soared early upwards, and with unsoiled plumage, unruffled wings, have sank into the clefts of the Rock for ever. If they had been suffered to remain longer on earth, who can tell but some baneftil in- fluences might have blighted fair promise and belied fond hopes? But ere the storm-cloud could descend, the Great Giver, in mercy, gave the summons —
“Waft her, angels I to the skies,
Far above yon azure plain,
Glorions there like you to rise,
There like you for ever reign!”
THE EARLY GRAVE OF A KING. mi
Oh, what would thousand thousands give, who are now drifting as miserable wrecks on life’s sea — health, innocence, purity gone — what would such give to be as they are, inheriting in all its grandeur that best beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God “? Yes, and in the case of bereaved parents, how many a bitter tear-drop would be dried, and broken heart solaced and comforted, if, remembering all the perils of this world of sin and suffering, and with the bright retrospect of lives suddenly cut short, they would listen to the utterance of Isaiah, like a sweet chime wafted from the Temple of Heaven, “The rightteous is taken away from the evil to come!”
But’ the words of the Prophet give also a positive explanation of the mystery of early death (ver. 2) — “He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.” Rather, as it has been rendered, “each one walking straight before him;” or, as Bishop Lowth translates it, “he that walketh in the straight path.”
Josiah, the youthful, the good, the pious, when he died, “entered into peace.” It is a beautiful Old Testament evidence of the immediate blessedness of the departed righteous. His body rested in the tomb as in a * bed ’ or couch; his spirit — the spirit that walked so ’ uprightly ’ on earth, with no divergence from the path of duty and piety — continues, in a loftier state of existence, this elevated walk’ The work cut short in this lower world is not arrested; it is only transferred. In a higher and loftier sphere he still pursues active ministries of righteousness.
There is an evident contrast between these opening words of the chapter and the terrible refrain with which it closes — “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked;” none in life, none in death. But “the righteous,” thus taken away,” enter into peace.^
Another thought, too, is brought out in the original which we miss in our translation, and which suggests the same assurance of immediate bliss. It occurs in the words just quoted — “The righteous is taken avxiyr “Merciftd men are taken away;” this in the Hebrew is, “The righteous, the merciful, are gathered” — gathered to their fathers: the same expression regarding Josiah which God Himself put into the lips of Huldah — “I will gather thee to thy fathers:” — “Thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace.” It is not ’ taken away,’ as if some violent seizure, a wrench from friendship and happiness, and from all association with living souls. No! it is rather a joining of the great company, a being gathered to the gathering of the sainted dead. The early death of Josiah, and such as he, is the morning chime which summons to the upper sanctuary, to unite in the worship of the great congregation. It is the vessel entering the haven of
Seo Barnes and Alexander in loc.
eternal rest; but that hayen not in a silent, deserted shore, but a harbour crowded with the loving and the glorified; a world not of loneliness, but rather of fellowship and communion with the great and the good, and the true of all ages.
Beader, if the death of the young was annihilation; if the orb underwent eternal eclipse; if there were even a period of intermediate suspension of consciousness and active energy; — then such removal would be mysterious; the blank would be a blank indeed. But the sun has not been blotted out from the firmament; it has only disappeared amid these western clouds to illuminate some other section of God’s great world; lost to earth, it shines in Heaven. Ay, more; whatever path of uprightness the departed one followed below, he or she is following that path above. Heaven is but an expansion and development of the characteristic traits of earth — “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” We can stand beside the death-bed of the young believer, and as we are musing over that touching spectacle of baffled energy, paralysed activity, premature decay of physical and mental power, early removal alike from earth’s duties and earth’s joys; — while on the one hand we can take hold of the negative solace, that by so soon entering the haven he has been possibly spared many a “night and day on the deep,” — we can rise to nobler and better and brighter assurances. We can listen as to the whispering of angels hovering around his pillow — “JTe shall enter into peace;... he shall walk in his uprightness,”
One other thought on early death may be suggested by these words. The body rests in the ’ bed ’ of the grave, and the spirit has entered into peace in heaven; but while that spirit is there pursuing its onward path of bliss and glory, it has not, in the truest sense, bid farewell to its earthly sphere. If I revert to a thought already dwelt upon, it is because of its elevating comfort. The lips are silenced, the music of the voice is hushed, the blank of the absent is too painfully realised. But “the righteous “survive dissolution even in this world. In their deathless memories of goodness and worth, they continue to” walk.” The * uprightness ’ is not laid by with their funeral shroud, or merely carved in the epitaph on their gravestones. No! it lives. The sun has vanished, but the glow still reddens the mountain-tops and glorifies the evening clouds. Josiah died! It was in one sense the last of him, when he was borne away on that bloody bier from the valley of Megiddon; or, at all events, when, as in great pomp, they laid him in the tombs of the Kings in Jerusalem. It is said that ‘^ all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him.” But, in the noblest meaning of the words, he lived on for generations afterwards. We read in 2 Chron. xxxv. 26, “Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and his goodness (uprightness),... and his deeds, first and last, behold, they are written in the Book of the Elings of Israel and Judah.” They were written in a more enduring volume. They were written deep on his own nation’s heart. They are written in imperishable memorial in the chronicles of the great and good of all time. He shines, this day, as a clear fixed star in the olden firmament, and will thus shine on for ever!
“Early death!” That “early” is a term only relative to the body — that which rests in the bed of the grave. The young life which has shone gloriously for God, though now a fallen meteor, has left a track of radiance behind it, for which parent and brother and sister will for ever bless Him who gave the transient boon!
Ye who may, with sad heart, be often and again tempted to mourn those thus early removed; — who read that promise of long life apparently broken and stultified on the letters of an early tomb, and who think the Psalmist’s words most appropriate to trace on the marble, “He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days” (Ps. cii. 23); be comforted! God measures existence — we cannot too often repeat it — not by periods, or by decades, or jubilees; with Him character is life, not years; goodness is life, not years. “The righteous,” whether he has fallen at the very threshold of existence, or in the prime of youth, or in the glory of manhood, or survived to a green old age — “The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”
THE EARLY GRAVE OF A ROYAL PRINCE.^
Go silence your pibrochs; go sound the wild coronach; Wail out its dirges o’er mountain and vale: The Chief of our chieftains lies silent and shrouded, The Prince of the laud, and the pride of the Gael I
Ye dumh mountain-mourners, how fondly he loved you t In glory of sunshine or grandeur of gloom: Your carpets of heather, your jungles of bracken, The plumes of your rock-pines, the gold of your broom!
Come, Dee’s gentle waters, and lend your soft music. As plaintive ye flow through the forests of Mar; While louder responding, ye torrents of Muick, Your tribute-grief bring from the dark Lochnagar.
Gkirrawalt, pour out your thunder of tear-drops; The rainbow forbid to encircle your spray: More fitting by far are the wrack and the driftwood. Which chafe in each eddy and cauldron to-day I
Take up the moaning cry, cottage and clachan, Shepherd’s lone shieling on mountain or moor; For he whom we mourn had alike ever ready A word for the great and a smile for the poor.
He lived not in times when our bale-fires were lighted. When yelled forth the war-pipes o’er moorland and glade, The fiery cross carried from hamlet to hamlet. And shieling and homestead in ashes were laid.
These lines might perhaps more naturally find a place at the dosing portion of the volume. But the writer has thought they might be inserted, not inappropriately, as a sequel to the royal ‘early grave’ of the preceding chapter. A few stanzas have been selected from verses elsewhere entitled ‘* In Memoriam: The Psinoe Consobt. — Balmoral, 14th December, 186i.”
Not his were the lips that could sound the fierce slogan When claymore met broadsword in battle array, When chieftain and clansmen stood shoulder to shoulder, Impatient to join in the heat of the fray.
Far nobler his mission, far grander his triumphs, Their glories unreckoned by booty and slain; The battle with wrong and the conquest of baseness, The proudest of trophies — a life without stain.
“Too early! too early!” his knell to be tolling;
“Too early,” ere mid-day, his requiem said:
With his eye yet undimmed and his brow yet unfurrowed,
Too early for such seems the sleep of the dead.
“Too early I” — not age that is wintered and hoary. Not falling of “autumn-leaves, withered and sere;” But life has succumbed in its simimer of glory. Its choicest flowers “blooming when blighting was near.”
“Too early I too early!” — fit wail for the living; Great God of the mourner! with Thee do we plead For the heart that is broken with anguish imspoken. Alone in her greatness, — “a widow indeed 1”
For her are the diiges — for her the wild coronach — For her we may weep tUl our eyes become dim; But with our thoughts centred on the bliss he has entered. All tears may be dried that are falling for HIM!