Downfall of Athaliah
[Delivered in Paris, Jan., 12th, a y the daughter oi King Jor am, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the kings sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bed-chamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six y ears, 11 Kings, xi., 2, 3.
A WORD TO GRANDMOTHERS. RANDMOTHERS are mbre lenient with their children’s children than they were with their own. At 40 years of age, if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used, but at 70, the grandmother,
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looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is apologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother takes out her pocket handkerchief and wipes her spetacles and puts them on, and looks down into the face of her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says:
I don’t think he meant to do it; let him off this time; I’ll be responsible for his behavior in the future,” My mother, with the second generation around her — a boisterous crew — said one day: I suppose they ought to be disciplined, but I can’t do it. Grandmothers are not fit to bring up grandchildren.” But here, in my text, we have a grandmother of a different hue,
I have within a few days been at Jerusalem, where the occurrence of the text took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient temple and climbing the towers of the king’s palace. Here in the text it is old Athaliah the queenly murderess. She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren. The executioner’s knives are sharpened. The palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and struggle, and death-groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill!
A WIFE STEALS A CHILD.
But while tht ivory floors of the palace run with carnage, and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman, a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name, stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had somehow as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs, her heart in her throat lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction. Get her out of the way as quick as you can, for she carries a precious burden, even a young king. With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is secreted in that church apartment. Meanwhile old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction and thinks that all the royal family are dead.
But the six years expire, and it is now time for young Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push back into disgrace and death old Athaliah. The arrangements are all made for political revolution. The military come and take possession of the temple, swear loyalty to the boy Joash, and stand around for his defense. See the sharpened swords and burnished shields! Everything is ready. Now Joash, half affrighted at the armed tramp of his defenders, scared at the Vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full regalia. The scroll of authority is put in his hands, the the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the people clapped, and waved, and huzzaed, and trumpeted. “What is that?^^ said Athaliah. What is that sound over in the temple?’’ And she flies to see, and on her way they meet her and say: ‘Why, haven’t you heard? You thought you had slain all the royal family, but Joash has come to light.” Then the queenly murderess, frantic with rage, grabbed her mantle and tore it to tatters, and cried until she foamed at the mouth:. ^*You have no liht to crown my grandson. You have talmage’s sermons.
no right to take the government from my shoulders. Treason! Treason!’’ While she stood there crying that, the military started for her arrest, and she took a short cut through a back door of the temple and ran through the royal stables; but the battle-axes of the military fell on her in the barn-yard, and for many a day when the horses were being unloosed from the chariot after drawing out young Joash the fiery steeds would snort and rear passing the place, as they smelt the place of the carnage.
RIGHTEOUSNESS CANNOT BE EXTERMINATED.
The first thought I hand you from this subject is that the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility. When a woman is good, she is apt to be very good, and when she is bad she is apt to be very bad, and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort. She would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for embalmers and undertakers. She would clear the land of all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put an end to everything that could in anywise interfere with her imperial criminality. She folds her hands and says: The work is done; it is completely done.’’ Is it? In the swaddling clothes of that church apartment are wrapped the cause of God, in the cause of good government. That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the Christian reformer; it is Joash, the friend of God; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you cannot kill him. Eternal defences are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’s wife, Johosheba, will snatch him up from the |)nlace ntirserv. and will run up and down with! ‘; r- ‘? the !m.mi:;<. of i.hv Lord, and there
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she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and obliteration.
PERSECUTIONS ARE FUTILE.
Well, my friends, just as poor a botch does the world always make of extinguishing righteousness. Superstition rises up and says: I will just put an end to pure religion,” Domitian slew 40,000 Christians. Diocletian slew 844,000 Christians. And the scythe of persecution has been swung through all ages, and the flames hissed, and the guillotine chopped, and the bastile groaned; but did the foes of Christianity exterminate it? Did they exterminate Alban, the first sacrifice; or Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the Christian nobleman; or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; or Anne Askew, or Sanders, or Cranmer? Great work of extermination they made of it. Just at the time when they thought they had slain all the royal family of Jesus some Joash would spring up and out and take the throne of power and wield a very scepter of Christian dominion.
INFIDELITY FAILS TO ANNIHILATE.
Infidelity says: I’ll just exterminate the bible,’’ and the scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob to trample on, and they were piled up in the public squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities decreed the bible out of existence. Thomas Paine said:
In my *Age of Reason ‘I have annihilated the scriptures. Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, but I am the foe of bibles and of churches.” Oh, how many assaults upon that word! All the hostilities that have ever been created on earth are not to be compared
DOWNFALL OF ATHALliiL^^ with the hostilities against that one book. Said one man in his infidel desperation to his wife: You must not be reading that bible/* and he snatched it away from her. And though in that bible was a lock of hair of the dead child — the only child that God had ever given them — he pitched the book with its contents into the fire; and stirred it with the tongs and spat on it, and cursed it. and said: Susan, never have any more of that damnable stuff here! ‘*
How many individual and organized attempts have been made to exterminate that bible! Have they done it? Have they exterminated the British and Foreign Bible society? Have they exterminated the thousands of Christian institutions, whose only object is to multiply copies of the scriptures and throw them broadcast around the world? They have exterminated until instead of one or two copies of the bible in our homes we have eight or ten, and we pile them up in the comers for our Sabbath-school rooms and send great boxes of them everywhere.
If they get on as well as they are now going on in the work of extermination I do not know but that our children may live to see the millennium! Yea, if there should come a time of persecution in which all the known bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these lamps of light that blaze in our pulpits and in our families extinguished. In the very day that infidelity and sin should be holding a jubilee over the universal extinction there would be in some closet of a backwoods church a secreted copy of the bible, and this Joash of eternal literature would come out and come up and take the throne, and the [Athaliah of infidelity and persecution would fly out the back door of the palace and drop her miserable’carcass under the hoofs of the horses of talmage’s sermons.
the king’s stable. You can not exterminate Christian* ity! You cannot kill Joash!
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SAYING.
The second thought I hand you from my subject is, that there are oportunities in which we may save royal life. You know that profane history is replete with stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes who have been put out of the way. Here is the story of a young king saved. How Jehosheba. the clergyman’s wife, must have trembled as she rushed into the imperial nursery and snatched up Joash. How she hushed him, lest by his cry he hinder the escape. Fly with him! Jehosheba, you hold in your arms the cause of God and good government. Fail, and he is slain. Succeed, and you turn the tide of the world’s history in the right direction. It seems as if between that young king and his assassins there is nothing but the frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our time in praising the bravery of expedition when God asks the same thing of you and me? All around us are the imperiled children of a great king.
They are born of almighty parentage and will come to a throne or a crown if permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous temptations are out for the assassination. Valens, the emperor, was told that there was somebody in his realm who would usurp the throne and that the name of the man who should be the usurper would begin with the letters T. H. E. O. D., and the edictwent forth from the emperor’s throne: *’Kill everybody whose name begins with T. H. E. O. D.’^ And hundreds and thousands were slain, hoping by that massacre to put an end to that one usurper. But sin is more terrific in its (“lenunciation. If matters not how you spell your talmage’s sermons.
name, you come under its knife, under its sword, under its doom, unless there be some omnipotent relief brought to the rescue. But, blessed be God, there is such a thing as delivering a royal soul. Who will snatch away Joash?
PERSONS IN YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS!
This afternoon, in your Sabbath-school class, there will be a prince of God — some one who may yet reign as king forever before the throne; there will be some one in your class who has a corrupt physical inheritance; there will be some one in your class who has a father and mother who do not know how to pray; there will be some one in your class who is destined to command in church or state — some Cromwell to dissolve a parliament, some Beethoven to touch the world’s harp-strings, some John Howard to pour fresh air into the lazaretto, some Florence Nightengale to bandage the battle wounds, some Miss Dix to soothe the crazed brain, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the besotted, some David Brainard to change the Indian’s war-whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to marshall threefourths of Christendom, some John Knox to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idolatry and strike for the kingdom of heaven.
There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls waiting for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each one of those children sin and holiness counted- Athaliali on one side and Jehosheba on the other. But I hear people say; ‘’What’s the use of bothering children with religious instruction? Let them grow up and choose for themselves.” Suppose some one had said to Jehosheba: ‘’Don’t interfere with that young Joash
DOWNFALL OF ATHALlAH.
Let him grow up and decide whether he likes the palace or not, whether he wants to be king or not. Don’t disturb his volition,” Jehosheba knew right well that unless that day the young king was rescued he would not be rescued at all.
I tell you, my friends, the reason we don’t reclaim all our children from worldliness is because w begin too late. Parents wait until their children lie before they teach them the value of truth. They wait until their children swear before they teach them the importance of righteous conversation. They wait until their children are all wrapped up in this world before they tell them of a better world. Too late, with your prayers. Too late with your discipline. Too late with your benediction. You put all care upon your children between 12 and 18. Why do you not put the chief care between 4 and 9? It is too late to repair a vessel when it has got out of the dry-dock! It is too late to save Joash after the executioners have broken in. May God arm us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death to coronation.
HOW PHOCUS DUG HIS GRAVE AND DIED.!
Can you imagine any sublimer work than this soul-saving? That was what flushed Paul’s cheek with enthusiasm; that was what led Munson to risk his life amid Bornesian cannibals; that was what sent Dr. Abeel to preach under the consuming skies of China; that was what gave courage to Phocus in the third century. When the military officers came to put him to death for Christ’s sak£ he put them to bed that they might rest while he himself went out and in his own garden dug his grave and then came back and said: “I am ready.” But they were shocked at the idea of taking the life of their host. He said: ‘’It is the will of God that I should die,” and he stood on the margin of his own grave and they beheaded him. You say it is a mania, a foolhardiness, a fanaticism. Rather would I call it a glorious self-abnegation, the thrill of eternal satisfaction, the plucking of Joash from death and raising him to coronation.
THE CHURCH IS A GOOD HIDING PLACE. The third thought I hand to you from my text is that the church of God is a good hiding-place. When Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picks up Joash what shall she do with him? Shall she take him to some room in the palace? No; for the official desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner of that building. Shall she take him to the residence of some wealthy citizen? No; that citizen would not dare to harbor the fugitive. But she has to take him somewhere. She hears the cry of the mob in the streets; she hears the shriek of the dying nobility; so she rushes with Joash into the room of the temple, into the house of God, and then she puts him down. She knows that Athaliah and her wicked assassins will not bother the temple a great deal; they are not apt to go very much to church, and so she sets down Joash in the temple. There he vfill be hearing the songs of the worshipers year after year; there he will breathe the odor of the golden censers; in that sacred spot he will tarry, secreted until the six years have passed and he come to enthronement.
Would to God we were as wise as Jehosheba, and knew that the church of God is the best hiding-place. Perhaps our parents took us there in early days; they snatched us away from the world and hide us behind the baptismal fonts and amid the bibles and the psalm books. O glorious inclosure! We have been breathing talmage’s sermons.
the breath of the golden censers all the time, and we have seen the lamb on the altar, and we have handled the phials which are the prayers of all saints, and we have dwelt under the wings of the cherubim. Glorious inclosure! When my father and my mother died, and the property was settled up, there was hardly anything left; but they endowed us with a property worth more than any earthly posseSvSion, because they hid us in the temple. And when days of temptation have come upon my soul I have gone there for shelter; and when assaulted of sorrows I have gone there for comfort, and there I mean to live. I want, like Joash, to stay there until coronation. I mean to be buried out of the house of God.
Oh, men of the world outside there, betrayed, caricatured, and cheated of the world, why do you not come in through the broad, w4de-open door of Christian communion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba to-day, and steal you away from your perils and hide you in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that the church of God is a hiding-place. There are many people who put the church at so low a mark that they begrudge it everything, even the few dollars they give toward it. They make no sacrifices. They dole a little out of their surplusage. They pay their butcher’s bill, and they pay their doctor’s bill, and they pay their landlord, and they pay everybody but the lord, and they come in at the last to pay the Lord in his church, and frown as they say: ‘’There, Lord, it is if you will have it, take it — now take it, take it; send me a receipt in full, and don’t bother me soon again!”
I tell you there is not more than one man out of a thousand who appreciates what the church is. Where are the souls that put aside one-tenth for Christian institutions — one-tenth of their incomes? Where are those who, having put aside that one-tenth, draw upon it cheerfully? Why, it is to pull, and drag, and hold on, and grab, and clutch; and giving is an affliction to most people when it ought to be an exhilaration and a rapture. Oh, that God would remodel our souls on this subject and that we might appreciate the house of God as a great refuge. If your children are to come up to lives of virtue and happiness they will come up under the shade of the church. If the church does not get them the world will.
SAVE YOUR CHILDREN. Ah, when you pass away — and it will not be long before you do — when you pass away it will be a satisfaction to see your children in Christian society. You want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. You want them mingling in Christian associations-You would like to have them die in the sacred precints. When you are on your dying bed, and your little ones come up to take your last word, and you look into their bewildered faces, you will want to leave them under the church’s benediction. I don’t care how hard you are, that is so. I said to a man of the world: ‘’Your son and daughter are going to join our church next Sunday. Have you any objections?” ‘’Bless you,” he said, “objections? I wish all my children belonged to the church. I don’t attend to those matters myself — I am very wicked — but I am very glad they are going, and I shall be there to see them. I am very glad, sir; I am very glad. I want them there.” And so, though you may have been wanderers from God, and though you may have sometimes caricatured the church of Jesus, it is your great desire that your sons and daughters should be standing all their lives within this sacred inclosure.
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More than that, you yourself will want the church for a hiding place when the mortgage is foreclosed; when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the par. lor, and the sitting-room, and the dining-hall, and the nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. Ah, some of you have been run upon by misfortune and trial; why do you not come into the shelter? I said to a widowed mother after she had buried her only son — months after I said to her: “How do you get along nowadays?’’ *’0h,” she replied, ‘’I get along tolerable well except when the sun shines,” I said: ‘’What do you mean by that?” She said: ‘’I can’t bear to see the sun shine; my heart is so dark that all the brightness of the natural world seems a mockery to me.” Oh, darkened soul, oh, broken-hearted man, broken-hearted woman, why do you not come into the shelter? I swing the door wide open. I swing it from wall to wall. Come in! Come in! You want a placewhere yonrtroubles shall be interpreted, where your burdens shall be imstrapped, where your tears shall be wiped away.
Church of God, be a hiding place to all these people. Give them a seat where they can rest their weary souls. Flash some light from your chandeliers upon their darkless. With some soothing hymn hush their griefs. Oh, church of God, gate of heaven, let me go through it! All other institutions are going to fail; but the church of God — its foundation is the ‘’Rock of Ages,” its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by the universal proprietor, its dividend is heaven, its president is God!
‘’Sure as thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given
The brghtest glories earth ean yield,
And brighter bliss of heaven.”
God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the eldevSt, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glorious hiding place where Joash found it — in the temple!