Studies of Character from the Old Testament

A VISIT to Italy is the aim of every artist. Ordinary travellers crowd its palaces, churches, and galleries, to gratify a common curiosity, or enjoy the pleasures their treasures yield to every cultivated mind. Artists seek that beautiful land for a higher purpose. To them it is what our schools and universities are to the student of languages or of science; and they regard a visit to Italy as such an important, if not essential, part of their education, that I have known a sculptor, on emerging from the straitened circumstances through which he had risen to fame, leave home, wife, and children to go there, and enjoy in mature years the benefits which the poverty of his youth denied him. By a long, careful, and ardent study of their works, the artist hopes, and not without good reason, to catch the spirit of the great masters. Thus he seeks to refine his taste; to form a high standard of excellence; and to acquire an eye and hand whereby to approach if not equal, to equal if not surpass, the triumphs of ancient art. The children of this world, as our Lord says, are wise in their generation. With a care to excel, which, in obeying the apostolic injunction, “covet the best gifts,” the children of light would do well to imitate, see how the sculptor surrounds himself, even in his studio, with copies of the most famous statues! He fills his mind with images of the sublime and beautiful; and provides objects for his eye, wheresoever it turns, adapted to kindle his ambition and improve his taste.

Man is so constituted that, even unconsciously, without either intending or attempting it, he imitates what he is familiar with. We speak, for instance, with the peculiar accent of our native district, and — a matter of much more consequence — learn almost certainly to copy in our lives the manners and morals of our ordinary associates. According to vulgar belief, the chameleon becomes red, blue, or green, with the ground it lies on; and, probably with the view of protecting them from their enemies, fishes certainly do take the color of the water they live in, whether it be clear or muddy. Man is endowed with a property akin to this. To that, so pregnant with good or evil, as much as to the pleasure people feel in associating with those of tastes similar to their own, we owe the well-known saying, ‘“‘ Tell me your company, and I will tell you your character.” Hence the wisdom of David’s practice, “‘I am the companion of all them that fear thee.” Hence also, on the other hand, it happens, to quote a scripture adage, that ““Evil communications corrupt good manners.”

This property, though many, especially of the young, owe their ruin to it, is not, necessarily, like the poisoned garment bestowed on Hercules, a fatal gift. It was given by our Maker for good purposes. It may be turned, though nothing can supply the place of Divine grace and a change of heart, to the holiest ends.: For as the artist who repairs to Rome, or Florence, to fill his eye with the works of the great masters, imbibes somewhat of their genius, and learns thereby to excel in sculpture, architecture, or painting, the Christian will derive a similar advantage from :.tudying those excellent models of piety and virtue which are found in the biographies of the Bible. Here is a gallery of admirable paintings. Here the student of holy and heavenly arts finds it as profitable as pleasant to pass hours of devout meditation. ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” But no part of it more so than the lives of the grand saints of old. While I was musing, says one of them, the fire burned; and it is not in the nature of things for a Christian man to sit down to his Bible, and turn to the history of its saints, and hold communion with them, without imbibing somewhat of their spirit. As he muses on their virtues and piety, he will feel in holy desires the fires that glowed in their bosoms kindling and burning in his own.

No doubt God’s people possess a perfect model in Jesus Christ. He is at once a Propitiation for our sins, and a Pattern for our lives. His is indeed the only life that presents such a faultless model — a complete illustration of the principles on which our lives should be framed. He was what no other man ever was — holy, harmless, and undefiled; separate from sinners; a lamb without spot or blemish; perfectly fulfilling all the duties man owes to God, and also to his neighbor.

For example, He made it his meat and drink to do his Father’s will; and also to bear it — the mighty load which by its immeasurable and unimaginable pressure forced the blood from his pores, till, crimsoning the flowers, it fell in great drops to the ground, forcing from his lips no complaint nor expression of impatience: groans, indeed, but with the groans that rent his bosom and astonished the dull ear of night, no other cry than this: “Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not my will but thine be done, O Father!” His perfect obedience sprang from perfect love. He loved the Lord his God with all his heart, and all his mind, and all his strength, and all his spirit — doing what we shall never do till, seeing Him, we become like Him as He is. Again, He offered an equally perfect illustration of the second table of the law — of the love we owe to man, as of that man owes to God. In regard to this, the purest, kindest, tenderest, holiest, most generous of men, have never equailed nor approached Him. The pity which moved Abraham to plead‘with such bold urgency for guilty Sodom; the affection of Ruth when, throwing her arms around Naomi’s neck, she clung to her like a beautiful tendril around a hoar and aged tree, with tears, and kisses, and embraces, saying: “Entreat me not to leave thee ... for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried;” the matchless friendship by

ABRAHAM THE FRIEND OF GOD. Il

whose grave David stood with streaming eyes, moving the roughest of his soldiers with this plaintive cry, ‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women;” the heart which broke at the fall of Absalom, and as if that bad man had been the kindest, truest, most dutiful of sons, broke out inta this terrible and touching cry: ‘‘O my son Absalom, my son, ny son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” are grand and touching. Yet to the compassion that wept over the guilty city, saying: ‘‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but thou wouldest not — now is thy house left unto thee desolate;” to the friendship which groaned at the grave of Lazarus; to the kindness which restored her only son to a widowed mother at the gate of Nain; to the mercy that shielded a poor trembling outcast, prostrate and penitent, in Simon’s house; above all, to the forgiveness that prayed for murderers, and the love that bled on Calvary, — these are as the shallow waters of a rocky pool to - the great ocean which has filled it with the spray’ of one of its breaking waves.

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