The Door of Cyrus
“That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stixred up the spirit of Oyrus.” — Ezra i, 1.
BY the minds of the religious people of that age Cyrus would not have been reckoned a religious man. He was not regarded as a worshipper of the same God whom Moses worshipped. In the popular estimation of Israel he was one of the heathen. We should have called him in our day a non-churchgoer, a man who had not attached himself to the Christian communion. Yet this non-churchgoer, this alien from the table of communion, this man outside the pale of God’s visible temple, is made the subject of one of the divinest inspirations that ever flashed through a human soul, “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus.” Through that inspiration
he published a decree which permitted the children of Israel to return to their own land. I wonder that with their narrow views the children of Israel did not refuse from such a source the gift of their own liberation. I have known a congregation to reject a very large charitable subscription on the ground that it came from a dealer in the wine trade. The Israelites received a greater boon than that, and from a still more unlikely source. They had been offered a charter of freedom by a foreign king with a foreign religion. Should we not expect that they would have declined to be indebted for their nationality to any faith outside their nation. They did not so decline, and that is to their honour. It looks as if their foreign environment had, for the time being, broadened them. At all events, their experience should broaden wus. It should teach us that neither God nor His worship nor His inspiration is confined to temples made with hands, that there are more doors to things Divine than man has dreamed of in his philosophy, and that the channels of religious communion are wider and deeper than we know.
My brother, there are many who enter the kingdom by the door of Cyrus — -the door that has no number. It is good to enter by the doors that are numbered — by the sanctuary, by the communion, by the baptismal font, by the study of the Word. But let us not say that these are exhaustive! If I see a man in the temple who has not entered by any known door or any visible window, I feel that there must be a secret passage; I will call it the aperture of Cyrus. Whence have come the myriad voices thou hearest of unbaptized infants in the paradise of God? By the aperture of Cyrus. Whence have come the myriad great souls thou seest in the lands of the heathen? By the aperture of Cyrus. Whence have come the many amiable lives that have not found a resting-place for faith? By the aperture of Cyrus. Whence have come those sacrificial spirits that have not yet ascended the visible steps of God’s altar? By the aperture of Cyrus. Whence have come the weariness of the worldling, the pallidness of the pleasure-seeker, the disgust of the debauchee, the self-loathing of the licentious, the satiety of the besotted, the thirst of those without thought of God? By the aperture of Cyrus. The voice of the Lord often cries in the wilderness; let its accents be sacred to thee! Call not the goodness of Cyrus a mere gift of nature; recognise it as God’s grace! Though Israel acknowledge him not, deem him not an alien from thy Father!
Consecrate his secret passage! Accept his private door! Canonise his unseen porch into the temple! Though his table is prepared in the wilderness, give him the name of communicant! Though his dove descends in the desert, send him thy message of peace! Though his songs of Bethlehem are only heard by night, admit him to the choir invisible! Breathe for him thy brotherhood! Claim for him thy comradeship! Hold out to him the social hand! Greet him with thy graciousness! Feast him with thy fellowship!. Meet him with thy music! Wave to him thy welcome! Brave for him the blame of converse with the alien! Reject not the syren’s strain though it come through the door of Cyrus!