Ruth the Virtuous

Afart from the interest which belongs to a noble character and romantic fortunes, the story of Ruth is interesting for the light it throws on her country and the manners of her age. It appears that Canaan, the land of her adoption, had suffered one of those famines which are the scourge of tropical and semi-tropical climes. Indeed, the Book of Ruth opens with one; and it is on it, in God’s providence, the tale turns. No scourge in the hand of the Almighty, neither pestilence nor the sword, is more terrible than famine. Look at the prophet’s picture of a starving people — ‘“‘ Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick; they that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger, for they pine away stricken through for want of the fruits of the earth; the hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children; they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.” Or look at the spectacle which met Elijah’s eyes on his approach to Zarephath ! — a woman wasted to a skeleton; picking up, as she totters along with slow and feeble steps, a few sticks to prepare her own and her son’s last earthly meal. Or look at Orissa, in our Indian empire, where last year the sides of the roads and streets were covered with the dead and dying; and a million of our fellow-subjects perished of starvation through the failure of their crops. Our gratitude may find food in famines; and such scenes may well reconcile us to the chilling fogs, and cutting winds, and cold stormy winters of a land where an equable and moderate climate crowns the labors of the husbandman, and exempts its inhabitants from horrors amid which “children cry for bread, and their mothers have none to give them.”

Happily unfamiliar with the scourge that drove Naomi and her husband to the land of Moab — where the whole family were to find bread, and the two sons to find wives — this Book presents us with a very familiar scene; nor any more pleasant to look on. Here, when autumn has tinted the woods, and mornings are bright and bracing, and the dews hang, sparkling like liquid diamonds, on bush and tree, is a field crowded with joyous reapers, behind whom, as armed with peaceful steel they go down in lines on the golden corn, come straggling gleaners — God’s peculiar care — the poor, the. infirm, widowed women, orphans, and little children. Ere Poor-laws came to dry up, ard changes in agriculture to divert from their old channels, many a stream of charity, such were the scenes our own fields presented; and it was a spectacle creditable to humanity, and to those who gave the poor free scope to roam and glean among the stubble. But observe that yonder. where Ruth and others follow the reapers, they have not to ask permission. They have a right to glean; nor dare any churlish Nabal drive them from his field, as trespassers. This is one of many beautiful and touching instances of God’s pity for the poor. He who made the heavens and the earth made statutes in Israel for their special protection. By these they had a right at law to glean — to enter field or vineyard, and eat their full — to gather the crop that grew in the corners of the corn-fields — to claim the whole produce of the land in its every seventh year of rest. Reminded of such beneficent laws, may we not glean another lesson from the story of the gleaner ? — this, ramely, that though these arrangements, being Jewish, are not binding on us as Christians, yet, as Christians, we ought to cherish their spirit, and see God, in His care for the widow, the fatherless and the friendless, the stranger and the orphan, setting us an example that we should follow His steps. The simple as well as kindly manners of Ruth’s days, as they also are brought out in her history, lend it a peculiar interest. The claims of a common brotherhood, overlying all conventional distinctions, were acknowledged then as they are not now. With a piety foreign to the spirit of the French Revolution, there was much of what its leaders professed to aim at, and described by the Shibboleth of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. See in yonder field with what kind familiarity Boaz bears himself to his servants; more, indeed, like a father, or a friend, than a master. He accosts them with his blessing; and they bless him in return. Many of our small farmers have to undergo the toil, and are little raised above the rank of servants — and were, perhaps, happier if they were servants. But Boaz, unlike these, is a man of mark in the country — ‘‘a mighty man of wealth,” the Bible calls him. Yet, so far from treating those who serve him as the clods among his feet, he sits down to eat with them; and, too good and great a man to sacrifice the claims of humanity to a false pride and fancied dignity, he invites even the poor gleaner to draw near, and share in the common meal. Thousands nowa-days are brought to poverty by their improvidence, and not a few by their dissipated habits; but in these old and more virtuous times poverty was justly regarded as a misfortune rather thav a crime; and so, Ruth, at Boaz’s invitation, takes her place in the circle where “he sat beside the reapers.” There, instead of commanding his servants to help her, he himself supplies her wants — knowing how much more that would enhance the kindness. It is said ‘“‘he reached her parched corn;” and, supplied by no niggard hand, such as in some houses weighs out the servants’ food, ‘‘she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.”

There was a time, also, in our own country, when, with certain distinctive arrangements of place and food, master and servants sat at the same board; and by this primitive custom, as they elsewhere and at another table recognized each other as brethren in Christ, recognized each other as brethren in Adam — equally the children of Him who hath made of one blood all the families of the earth. This was a kindly old custom. I am not aware that it weakened the authority of masters, or fostered pride and pre-

Sumption in their servants; and it may admit of question whether the change of manners which has placed the two classes so far apart has been for the benefit of either — has to any extent compensated for the lack of those kindly feelings and that mutual interest which used to subsist between them, for

«The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed.”

In the old times of Ruth, before national cor- ° ruption came in with national wealth, the morals of the people seem to have been as pure as their habits were temperate, and their manners simple. Had it been otherwise, would Naomi have exposed her daughter-in-law to such an interview as she held with Boaz — alone on the threshing-floor, and under the cloud of night? No doubt a marriage between him and Ruth would have greatly promoted her interest as well as her daughter-in-law’s. There have been mothers so debased as to traffic with their daughters’ virtue; and others, hardly less criminal, who, for the sake of higher wages or the chance of an advantageous marriage, have exposed their principles and their persons to imminent danger of contamination. But, whatever the loose principles of some mothers, unless the age in which Naomi lived had been distinguished by purity of morals as well as by simplicity of manners, I cannot believe that this venerable and virtuous matron would have ventured on what had been a very perilous experiment. Admitting this, as in justice to Naomi we should, I am not prepared, though God overruled it for the good of all parties, to justify the step she took. And supposing it could be justified, if we knew ail that was peculjar to her time and circumstances, her conduct would form no precedent, no example for others to follow. Our rule is not the example of Naomi, or the success of her experiment, but this plain word of God — Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” We are never to forget that, in respect of all sins, our safety ordinarily lies in keeping out of the way of temptation — not in fighting the devil, but in fleeing from him — in avoiding the approach as well as “the appearance of evil’” — in carefully acting up to the spirit of the petition, ‘‘Lead us not into temptation!” We walk in slippery places. And such as do so have need to take care how they walk; ever praying, “Lord, hold up my goings, that my footsteps slip not!”

The part Ruth acted in the affair of her interview with Boaz presents a state of matters and of manners very different from ours. Indeed, were a woman now-a-days to use such a liberty, her conduct would be justly pronounced not improper only, but immodest — since modesty is the handmaid of virtue, very strange, at least, in a woman of unsullied reputation. Such was Ruth’s: “All the city of my people,” said Boaz, “doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.”

To form a proper estimate of her conduct in this transaction, we must not only take into account that she, a stranger to the habits of the people, acted under the advice of an aged and pious

matron, but that, according to the Mosaic law, as

appears from the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuter-Va onomy, she was entitled, if not required, to claim marriage at the hand of her dead husband’s nearest kinsman, as, ignorant that another was nearer, she believed Boaz to be. Nor can she be justly blamed for claiming a right which God sanctioned, if He did not positively enjoin. Why the overture made to Boaz was not made in other, and what would seem more prudent, circumstances, I cannot say. To us it appears a strange step she took in seeking him in a lonely place, and at the midnight hour. There may have been reasons for it of which we are ignorant. Perhaps it was the custom of the country. If so, it was one certainly not to be commended. However, let justice be done to Ruth. Her whole conduct, and that also of Boaz, in their perilous circumstances, is eminently pure and honorable; nor does her reply to his question, though it sound strange in our ears, form any exception to that remark. Waking at the dead of night, by the faint light of harvest-moon or stars, he sees the dim form of a woman stretched out at his feet. Starting up amazed, he cries, ““Who art thou?’ — a question: which, no doubt expecting, she answers, saying, “I am Ruth;” adding, ‘‘Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman.” Evz7 ¢o him who evil thinks. In this speech no immodesty stains the lips of Ruth, or casts the breath of suspicion on her character. Every country has customs, and modes of expression, peculiar to itself; and this which she employed was that followed by the Jewish women when in circumstances akin to hers, they claimed marriage of their nearest kinsman — the rights, in fact, of the living and the dead.

The marriage that resultea from this strange, short courtship presents another phase of the simple manners of these early days. While Roman Catholics, though advocating celibacy, exalt marriage into a sacrament, and others, who do not go that length, regard it as an ordinance where the hand of priest, or presbyter, is required to tie the knot, Boaz and Ruth went about forming this connexion after the simplest fashion; and in a way, I may remark, quite in harmony with the spirit of the marriage-law of Scotland. The morning succeeding their interview, he seats himself at the city-gate. The man who was a degree more nearly related to Ruth than he, approaches to pass out. His steps are suddenly arrested. ‘Ho! such-an-one,” cries Boaz; “turn aside, and sit down here!” When he had done so, with ten of the elders of the city as witnesses and judges in the cause, Boaz relates the matter in hand; and as this man had at law a prior claim to Ruth’s hand, he offers her in marriage to him. He declines to avail himself of his rights; and thus leaves the way clear for Boaz. He himself now claims her; and she consents. The elders with the people being taken to witness that they become man and wife with their free, mutual, honest consent, they are married. That constitutes the marriage. However proper may be our custom of accompanying marriage with religious services, there was on that occasion no such ceremony; nothing more than the blessing, not of any ecclesiastic, but of the elders and people, who say, “‘ The Lord

make the woman who is to come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel; and do thou worthily in Ephratah and be famous in Bethlehem!”

This blessing on their nuptials was answered in a way none present perhaps ever dreamt of — events hanging on the marriage that had been so lovingly yet simply entered on, which still direct the steps of travellers to its scene, and have made the city of Ruth and Boaz famous in the annals of time, and in the everlasting memories of eternity. It was here that David, Ruth’s great-grandson, tended his father’s sheep. The hills around heard the first feeble notes of the harp that banished the evil spirit from the breast of Saul, and has charmed the Church of God, through successive ages, with its inspired and sacred melodies. These hills saw the brave boy encounter both the lion and the bear; and, as he plucked the prey from their bloody jaws, win victories that were his confidence when, accepting the challenge of the giant, he said, “The Lord that delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” But Ruth was the ancestress, and Bethlehem the birthplace, of a greater than David. There, the Son of God drew his first breath; there, the Sun of Righteousness arose on a benighted world, with healing in his wings; there, the fountain of salvation, the waters of which if a man drink he shall never thirst more, sprung up sparkling into the light of day. It was in the city where Ruth was married, the Saviour of the world was born: it was among these hills the shepherds watched their

214 STUDIES OF CiARACTER.

flocks by night; it was over the very fields trodden by this gleaner’s feet, the glory of the Lord shone forth, and the midnight sky suddenly became filled with angels, and mortal ears heard those immortals sing, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”

But from the scenery and incidents of the story let us now turn to her who is its principal character. Honored above all others of her sex, she is the only woman that gives her name to a Scripture Book — a famous queen excepted, whose life, equally characterized by remarkable interpositions of providence, was even still more romantic. Though Ruth’s career was certainly less brilliant than Esther’s, her story is more instructive; more suggestive of useful lessons to the mass of readers. Esther moved in a palace; but Ruth playing her part on the common stage of life, teaches thousands how to act, who have no chance of rising to royal dignity, and to whom, unless in so far as they illustrate a presiding Providence, it is a matter of indifference by what steps a beautiful slave became the choice of a king and the partner of his throne. Besides, such beauty as adorned Esther and opened her way to fortune, is a gift bestowed on few; but all may aspire after, and, through the grace of God, attain to the virtues of Ruth — virtues which raise many a straw-thatched cottage in true dignity above lordly mansions, and throw a moral glory around the humble head which poverty can neither eclipse nor obscure. Not that, dazzled by her beauty, I am insensible to the noble qualities of Esther, or deem her to have been unworthy of her brilliant fortunes. Unlike many that, so soon as they rise in the world, forget the rock whence they were hewn, she, noble woman, perilled crown and life to save her people; saying, as with pale resolution on her jewelled brow she passed uninvited into the presence of the king, “If I perish, I perish!” Still I regard Ruth’s history — though less sensational and fascinating to the mere lovers of romance — as more instructive, in this, that her virtues formed the foundations of her fortune. These, not the beauty that fascinates but fades, won the regard of Boaz, and were the steps in God’s providence by which the gleaner of his fields rose to be the wife of his bosom, and the mistress of his house.

Nor won his regard only; for her virtues appear to have been the talk and admiration of all the town. Years before Naomi had returned to Bethlehem, a spectacle to wonder at, her neighbors had seen her leave it in affluence. With a husband at her side, and at her back two gallant sons, she was an object of envy to many who, having no means to fly the famine, remained at home to suffer. But they who had envied, lived to pity her. Years thereafter, a rumor that Naomi has returned runs through the streets of Bethlehem; and the people hasten to their doors to see an instance, as sad as eyes could look on, of the hollowness of all earthly things. Slowly, feebly, downcast and forlorn, her form bent under the weight of years, poverty hanging on her back, many sorrows written in her face, and the fountains of her great grief all opened anew by the painful recollections the seene awakens — Naomi goes up the street, leaning on the arm of another though younger widow. Old neighbors recognize her; yet hardly believe their own eyes — their only salutation one of astonishment, and grief, and pity: ‘Is this Naomi?” As might be expected, and would certainly happen in any small town or village, an event so remarkable became the topic of universal interest and conversation. Naomi’s fortunes, with the name, relationship, character, and conduct of the stranger, her companion, were eagerly inquired into, and discussed. And all who know anything of the gossip of such places, will regard it as creditable to the people of Bethlehem, and a very high testimony to the virtues of Ruth, that, poor and a stranger, a daughter of Moab and of heathen descent, she came out of this ordeal like gold untarnished by the fire. The king’s chaff ts better than other people’s corn, says a proverb: and “the destruction of the poor,” says the wise man, “is their poverty.” But though according to these adages it usually depreciates merits which wealth and rank enhance, poverty cannot obscure Ruth’s remarkable virtues. Borrowing lustre from its depth as stars from the darkness of night, these rose on the town to attract universal notice and admiration: “All the city of my people,” said Boaz, ‘doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.”

Observe, to begin with, one of her humblest virtues, Ruth’s zzdustry.

She accompanies Naomi to the land of Israel; but not to live on public charity, or to become the humble pensioner of affluent relatives. Reared in the lap of luxury, she has never learned to work; yet in a noble spirit of independence, she resolves to earn her bread with her own hands — and Naomi’s too. It is work, not charity, she asks. The bread of beggary, like that of infamy, she holds in scorn. Her ambition is to be able to hold up hands, once white and delicate, but now rough with honest labor, and say, as St. Paul did afterwards, ‘“‘ These have ministered to my necessities.” Brave woman, let the world learn from thee that spirit of industry and of independence which is a Christian virtue, having the sanction of Him who said, ‘‘ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” and not a virtue only, but the guardian of other virtues — preserving men from meanness and dishonesty, and women from that love of idleness which makes many a poor, fallen, wretched creature prefer the gains of infamy to the wages of honest labor.

We have called this a humble virtue, not because we hold it cheap, or do not regret that under the debasing influence of our poor-laws and the self-indulgent spirit of the age, it is dying out of the land. One of the saddest phases of the times is, that, for themselves or their parents, thousands now accept and even clamor for public charity who, less than a century ago, would have scorned to touch it — the old spirit of our country, that of the Trojan who took his aged father on his back, and bore him on his shoulders through the burning city. We call it a humble virtue, because, notwithstanding the degeneracy of the age, it still dwells in many a lowly home; stamping those with a true nobility who feel the bread taste sweet their own hands have earned, and, looking forward with a Christian’s hope to the rest of heaven, are content here to live to work and work to live. Cheered by Ruth’s example, and sustained in patience by the grace of God, let the sons of honest toil work on. There is “rest for the weary.” The sweat of death is the last that shall gather on their brows. Let them wait. ‘Blessed,’ as was said to Daniel, ‘is he that waiteth; therefore go thou thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”

Observe next her humzlity.

On losing their fortune some retain in a silly pride what but aggravates the loss; rankling like a thorn ina bleeding wound. An empty sack cannot stand erect; yet they inflict misery on themselves, and not seldom wrong on others, by the mean and even dishonest things they do to keep up appearances. Deeming some honest but humble work beneath their dignity, they buy what they cannot pay for, or borrow what they cannot return. Ashamed to work, they are not ashamed to live on the fruits of others’ industry, rather than their own. There is something inexpressibly mean in this; and worse than mean. It argues a spirit of rebellion against Him and His providence who setteth up one and putteth down another; the wickedness of Ajax’s heart, without the sublimity of his action, when, offended with the gods, he raised his broken sword and shook it against the heavens. How different from this unchristian and rebellious spirit the humility of Ruth? How beautiful it is! Willing to engage in any honest work, however humble, she bends like a reed to the blast; bows her gentle head meekly before the majesty of heaven; and, meeting her trials like a Christian heroine, drinks off the cup mingled and presented by her Father’s hand. Her blessed frame and spirit His who said, ‘‘Not my will, but thine be - done, O Father,” she wipes the tear from her eye, and suppressing each rising regret, goes forth to glean in fields till better work might offer, and better days should dawn. Nor when she went out to work, leaving the old saint at home to pray, were these far distant. The God and Husband of the widow had his eye on her, as he has on all who love and put their trust in Him; “for the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the expectation of the poor shall not perish forever.” Taking her by the hand, God leads her blindfold, as it were, to the field of Boaz; by-and-by, as she opens her sparkling and grateful eyes on an unexpected fortune, to find herself the wife of a mighty man of wealth, and mistress of the servants behind whom she had stooped to glean. Like some turtle dove that had left the neighboring wood, where it sat mourning for its mate, to drop with other feathered creatures on the stubble, ‘‘her hap,” the story says, ‘was to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz.” But as the old adage says, What haps God directs; and from the fortune to which her humility conducted Ruth, we may learn to humble ourselves in the sight both of God and man. ‘Be clothed with humility,” is a good advice both for this world and the next. To stoop is the way to rise — our Saviour, in these words, laying down the law both of God’s natural and gracious government: “‘ Whosoever exalteth himself shall be humbled, and whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Observe her affection to Naomi.

Who shall reign? is a question that has given birth to intestine wars in houses as well as kingdoms; nor has the point in dispute always been whether the house should resemble a beehive, where the sovereign is a queen, and not a king. Between those who stood in the same relationship as Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah, the love of power has bred unhappy quarrels; and through that ambition, through conflicting interests, through incongruity of disposition or other causes, many a house has been divided against itself — not Christ, but the devil of an ill-temper, having ‘‘set the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughterin-law against her mother-in-law.” And it speaks much for the wives of her sons, as well as for Naomi herself, that their home in the land of Moab was the abode of mutual and affectionate confidence. A prudent, kind, tender, pious matron, she had won not the respect only, nor the affection, but the warmest attachments of her daughters-in-law. One in heart, when death had desolated their home, and laid in the dust the support around which each had clung, like plants of woodbine that the rude storm, tearing from their stays, has thrown on the ground, they intertwined their arms, and clung in close embraces to each other.

How long the three widows mourned and wept, and mingled their griefs together, as they had once their joys, in the land of Moab, I know not; but the time came when its daughters must part from Moab, or from Naomi. She had fled to that godless land to escape the famine, and not ia wrath but love, God had pursued her with a heavie~ judgment — her case that of “a man who flees from a lion, and a bear meets him; or leans his hand on the wall, and a serpent bites him.” Those she sought to save by carnal policy snatched from her arms by the hand of death, she comes to see her error, and to bewail it; and happy all those who, when earthly homes are desolated and fondly cherished hopes lie buried in the dust, are brought to seek better hopes and a better home! It was so with Naomi. In her affliction her heart turns away from Moab, back to the people and country of her God. She resolves to retrace her steps. Nor will Orpah and Ruth allow her to go alone. They will leave their kindred and country; and paying a farewell visit to the graves of the dead, will share her fortunes. Each lending an arm, they will sustain her between them; and though unable to soothe her sorrows any more than their own, they will mingle their tears with hers. Naomi is not behind them in generosity. Burthened with a load of grief and years, her spirits sink with her strength under the fatigues of the way; or some dark cloud comes across her faith; any way her fortunes appearing as a sinking ship to remain in which is for her daughters-in-law to perish, she persuades them to return. Perhaps she did so to try them — just as Jesus bade the man who seemed ready to follow him to sell all he had; or it was to warn them, — as in addressing his disciples, He foreboded persecution, and set the worst before them.

Orpah’s courage fails. She loved Naomi, as many do Christ, but not better than herself — not with a passion that is stronger than death. She kisses, and weeps; and yet she parts — -reminding us, as she goes and casts many a lingering look behind, of him who left Jesus, though sorrowful; drawn off by his great possessions. Not so Ruth. This was the crisis of her fate — that hour and moment of life on which her destiny shall turn; and such there is in every one’s life — coming to the lost on some occasion when they reject the offer of a Saviour, and to God’s chosen people at that happy, hallowed hour when, no longer halting between two opinions, they close with the offers of mercy. Moved no doubt by the Spirit of God, Ruth was equal to the crisis and the occasion. She stays when her sister leaves

Naomi advises, urges, entreats her also to go; and calling in example to the aid of precept, points to the form of Orpah disappearing in the distance. It wrings Ruth’s heart to part with sister, mother, and country; but it would break it to part with Naomi. Shecannot doit. So, passionately throwing herself into Naomi’s arms, or kneeling at her feet, and looking up with hands clasped and eyes

brimful of tears, she breaks out into this touching,

overpowering burst of affection — “‘ Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after 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 Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me!” The ship may sink; but, nailing her colors to the mast, she will sink or swim with it. Death only shall part them: nor death — the last favor her lips shall ask, that they lay her in Naomi’s grave.

Nobly did Ruth redeem the pledges of this affecting scene. Not ashamed of Naomi’s poverty, lending her young arm to support her aged form, with her own hands earning her bread, cheering the lonely home, honoring the poor old saint as if she had been a queen, cherishing her as if she had been a lover, nursing her as if she were a helpless infant, living for her as if she was all the world to her, Ruth sets us an example of love and sympathy, of unselfish, devoted, generous ° affection, that, were it universal, with piety to God reigning in every house, would almost banish sorrow from the earth, and restore the days of Eden.

She does more. She teaches us, by what she was to Naomi, what we are to be to Christ; how we should cleave to Him — how we should love Him — with what devotion of heart and body, of soul, strength, mind, and spirit, we should serve Him, and gladly spend and be spent for Him — saying, as we take up our cross to follow the lover and redeemer of our souls, ‘‘Where thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God.” Noblest and purest and truest of women, born of a heathen race, but more Christian than most Christians, and thyself a pledge of the coming of the Gentiles, monument of Divine grace and fair pattern of the most attractive piety, mother of the great and good, and ancestress of an incarnate God; well may we say, in taking leave of thee — MANY DAUGHTERS HAVE DONE VIRTUOUSLY, BUT THOU EXCELLEST THEM ALL!