Rachel the Placid

‘THERE is a peculiarity which I have ohserv,’;d in these early pictures; each seems to go farther back into the morning of individual life-The delineation of Sarah opens with the marriage cares. The picture of Rebekah has its foreground in a proposal of marriage. And now we are coming to a portrait which goes farther back still — behind the marriage cares, behind the day of proposal — back to the very dawn of the courtship, the first meeting of kindred hearts. The subject of this last portrait isfeachel, the daughter of Rebekah’s brother, Laban. She appears side by side with an elder sister, Leah; and the artistic appetite is whetted by their contrast. J What is the character of these two young women? The Bible does not say. The Bible never comments; it paints; it leaves the comment to you and me. I defy any one to tell whether the arloo RACHEL THE PLACID

tist is for Rachel or for Leah; he is strictly impartial. The impartiality is all the more remarkable because Rachel is outwardly the attractive one; she has all the beauty of her aunt Rebekah. Leah has a blemish in the eyes — which I suppose means a cast. Rachel prepossesses us physically; Leah does not. But the artist keeps silence. He will not help us out in our judgment by giving his own; he insists that we interpret for ourselves. I am but a humble interpreter and I may well be wrong; but I have looked long at the picture, and in the absence of any superior authority I shall calmly state the conclusion to which I have come.

Comparing these two sisters, I should say that Rachel is the more blameless, Leah the deeper, nature. I think Rachel’s life is more blameless precisely because her nature is not so deep. It is the deep sea which catches storms; the inland lake is free. Rachel is an inland lake; her nature has never been subject to waves. On a survey of her life I have ventured to call her “Rachel the Placid.” There is no other word which, to my mind, so well describes her. You will meet her type continually in the modern world. Do you not know women who seem to go through life easily — not because they have no outward waves, but because they have no inward waves? Rachel and Leah are continually before the modern eye. Leah regards the molehills as mountains; Rachel makes the mountains molehills. Leah takes things to heart; Rachel takes them into consideration. Leah sweeps the strings; Rachel plays quietly. Leah has peans for joy, and summer tempests for sorrow; Rachel is content to exhibit a smile or a shower. Hence Leah is tempted to extricate herself — often by crooked means; Rachel is satisfied to wait and let things take their will.

Let us follow the picture. When Rachel is keeping her father’s sheep at the well of Haran she sees advancing a young man. He is not unexpected. It is her cousin Jacob, the son of her Aunt Rebekah. He has come as a fugitive — flying from his brother’s vengeance. He salutes Rachel with a kiss of frank and fearless affection; it is as yet only a cousin’s love and therefore it is unreserved. But it is to be with him the beginning of a deep and long devotion which is to last beyond the life of its object and to colour the affection for her children. Let me pause here for a moment to note an interesting fact. The first courtship in the Bible is pictured as growing out of a cousinly relationship — in other words, as having its root in a previous friendship. Is this an accident of the Bible Gallery? I think not. I expect the primal flower to be typical of all flowers. Here is portrayed the primal flower of incipient sexual love; and it is portrayed as having had its beginning in a previous and calmer feeling — the interest called friendly. I am glad that the Old Gallery has thus painted the primitive rose, for I believe that psychologically the painting is true. I think that in all times the surest sexual love is that which has begun with a mutual friendship. It may be a less brilliant beginning than erotic excitement; but it will last longer and leave richer fruit. Love should be founded upon liking. Does this seem a paradox — to build the greater on the less? It is not really so, for liking has in it something which mere sexual love may not have. I believe “Liking” to have the same verbal root as “likening.” It implies mutual assimilation, congruity of nature, community of taste, appreciation of character, everything that is embraced in the phrase, “intellectual sympathy.” Even in a matter which is not sexual at all our Lord implies this: He asks Peter, “Simon, son of Jonas, hast thou a devotion to my character?” Simon answers — though the Enghsh would never reveal it, “Nay, Lord, I have an endearment to Thy person.^^ Poor Simon thought the latter was a bigger thing. But our Lord knew better; He continued to press the first question as the all-important question. He felt that all lasting love must be founded on esteem.

We pursue the narrative. Jacob breaks into the red heat of love. He is dazzled by Rachel’s beauty. It is not surprising it should have been so. He was a poet by nature. His poetic temperament began in youth and it continued to burn in old age. It was first manifested in a vision of descending angels; it was latest revealed in the song of a dying swan. Such a man was sure to be caught by female beauty. He makes an offer to Laban for the hand of his younger daughter. He promises to serve him for seven years without fee or reward on condition that at the end of this time he shall have Rachel for his wife; and the offer is accepted. One is surprised at first how the hot blood of the young man could propose so long a period. But we forget that it was Jacob’s interest to wait. He had no choice in this matter; the only question was whether he should wait in despair or wait in hope. He was an exile. True, there was only a few days* walk between him and the home of his fathers; but it is just here that lies the originality of the Bible narrative. The idea is the extreme opposite of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Longfellow’s “EvangeUne” aims to show how easy is permanent separation in a vast space like the American Continent. The Bible takes up the converse view, and aims to show how easy is a lengthened separation within the narrow spaces of the Patriarchal Land. The Bible seeks to reveal that spirit divides more than space divides. Here, almost within a stone-cast of each other, families are kept apart for long years by human passions — as ejffectually divided as if myriad miles of ocean stretched between. Betwixt Jacob and his land lay the valley of the shadow of death; a brother’s revenge barred the way to his native home. He had no chance of making rich anywhere but where he now stood; it was his interest to wait. And Rachel — what shall we say of her? That her nature stood her in good stead for such an emergency. She was placid — took things as they came. I think she was fond of her home — attached to her present surroundings. My reason for thinking so is that when she did leave she took her household gods with her. She wanted some rehc of the old house, some guarantee for the continuance of the old luck. I believe that the attitude of Rachel greatly helped the waiting of Jacob.

I shall clothe the immediate sequel in the parable of modern life — shall speak as if the events happened amongst ourselves. The seven years are past and the happy day is coming. There is wide interest in the district. From far and near the guests are gathering. There is to be a week of festivity in celebration of the nuptials.

There is much to excite sympathy and attract crowds. The prominence of the two families, the kindred interests of the two households, the common faith of the two altars, the prepossessing personality of the two contracting parties — all combine to invest the approaching ceremony with a special and absorbing fascination. But there are two dissentients to the general joy. The one is Laban the father. He is not pleased that the younger Rachel should have been preferred to the elder Leah; he is afraid that the plainer sister will be left upon his hands. And there is another dissentient; it is Leah herself. This young woman seems to have cherished for Jacob a secret and passionate love. Less calm than Rachel, less physically strong than Rachel, less occupied than Rachel in the practical work of the household, she seems to have brooded hotly in the silence of her own soul. Tennyson speaks of kisses, ‘’By hopeless fancy feigned from lips that are for others.” I think Leah must have experienced the bitterness of these. For seven years she makes no sign; she keeps her emotions locked up in her heart. But all the more heated must have been the fire within the breast because there was nothing to carry it outside, and all the more poignant must have been the pain because there was no external stimulus to divert from the burden.

And now the day has arrived; and Jacob moves on to the village church where the ceremony is to be performed. He finds a crowd assembled to witness the spectacle and, casting his eye towards the altar, he sees already there the prospective bride. After the manner of the East, she is covered with an extremely thick veil; her face is altogether hid, her figure almost. He goes forward to join her; he stands by her side. Then, in the presence of the multitude he takes the marriage vow — promises to be the protector and the guide and the support of this woman as long as she shall live. It is enough; the solemn act is completed. Then, by a rapid movement the bride raises her thick veil, and over the crowd there falls a clap of thunder. What is that face which emerges from the veil? It is not Rachel; it is Leah — Leah the plain-looking, Leah the unsought, Leah the undesired! She has been waitio8 RACHEL THE PLACID

ing under the cloud to get her sister’s birthright, to steal her sister’s blessing! She has been creeping stealthily and silently towards a dark goal — the same deed as that by which Jacob had supplanted his brother! Did he hear in that hour the reverberation of his own sin!

I have clothed the picture up to this point in a modern garb. But I have now come to a place where modern analogy fails me and where I can find no parallel. The strangest bit in this story is to my mind the sequel. It lies in the almost unimpassioned acquiescence of the parties. Such a marriage in point of human law was no marriage at all; in modern life it would have been snapped like a thread. Why is it not snapped here? We can in a measure explain Jacobus acquiescence; he receives a substantial concession. Laban tells him that the elder sister ought to be the first married, and that, if he waits till the end of the week he will receive Rachel also on the condition that after his marriage he will serve seven years more; I agree with those critics who thus interpret the narrative. Thus interpreted, the narrative indicates that Jacob did not lose much by the transaction. He got all that he wanted in addition to something he did not want; and as he was still compelled to live the Ufe of an exile the extended service was no privation. But Rachel! — it is her placidness that surprises us. She has not got what she wants. The second marriage is no restoration of her rights. She has got only the halj of Jacob; the other half ha been given to her rival sister. She has been ill-treated by her friends — deceived by Laban, circumvented by Leah, assigned a secondary place by Jacob. Why does she not protest! Why are we not greeted with Shakesperian floods of eloquence in which she reviles her father, denounces her sister, repudiates the supineness of her lover! Nothing is more certain than that the picture makes her do none of these things. Nowhere does she reveal her placidness more completely than in this hour of outraged and injured dignity. Why is this? Think you it is an artistic blunder? There is to my mind nothing in the whole picture which is so much the result of study as the suppression of resentment on the part of Rachel. If she is painted as a figure placid amid calamity, no RACHEL THE PLACID

it is not from a defect in dramatism but because in the circumstances of the case the attitude of resignation is the most fitting attitude. There are two reasons which have led me to the conclusion that the placidness of Rachel was appropriate.

The first is that the artist is describing a race and time wherein everything that happens is received as an act of Divine Will. We of the Western mind can have no idea what an influence this thought exercised on the sense of calamity. From a Western point of view this was, indeed, no marriage; but from a Western point of view a marriage is the carrying out of human law and human will. In the Hebrew East it was very different. Human law, as such, was unrecognized; human will was subordinate; the only admitted principle was the will of heaven. If Isaac blessed Jacob believing him to be Esau, if Jacob married Leah believing her to be Rachel the human belief on the matter went for nothing. The question was, not. What was in the mind of Isaac? or. What was in the mind of Jacob? but. What was in the mind of God? Rachel might have the satisfaction of knowing that, when Jacob said, “I take this woman to be my wife,” he meant her, and not Leah; and no doubt it was a satisfaction. But in the view of this Eastern maiden Jacob’s meaning could not aker the fact. The real choice was not Jacob’s but God’s; and for the first place God had chosen Leah. Rachel was in the mind of her lover; but her sister had been in the thought of the Almighty. That idea was too solemn to be resisted by Rachel. Her nature was reUgious — superstitiously religious. We seem to gather that she got this by heredity; her father Laban was diverted from one of his most avaricious projects by a dream of the night. Both from nature and from inheritance she had received a bias towards the sinking of her own will in the presence of the Divine pleasure. She sank it now. She had the first place in Jacob’s heart; but she accepted the second place officially. Of the two sisters she is comparatively the unmurmuring one. The spectator would imagine that Leah had been the wronged party; the jealousy is almost entirely on her side. Rachel wants to keep her rights, but no more. She ha?

no wish to absorb her sister’s place. She is content to divide the house between the two; and she is thus content because she believes this to have been the partition made by heaven.

But there is, I think, suggested by the picture a second reason why Rachel received the new arrangement with resignation if not with equanimity. There was something about this young woman’s religion which, in my view, would make her not wholly averse to polygamy. She was not altogether emancipated from the belief that in addition to the Almighty God of heaven there were certain subordinate deities allowed to carry out His will on earth. Specially in the region of the home she sought a sphere for these. Poor Rachel! the universe was too big for her and the biggest parts to her were the least interesting parts. She wanted one or two humbler deities than the great God at the top of the ladder. She felt that it was easier for the angels to ascend than to descend — easier to keep burning the stars of night than to keep burning her own household fires. She wanted the presence of some homely powers to protect her family altar, to preserve the peace of her hearth, to guide hei domestic plans,

to ward off sorrows from her kith and kin, to

store her barns with plenty and her board with

cheer. Whatever spaces might be filled by the

God of the sky, Rachel desired a vacant spot to

be left for the gods of the household.

But this was religious polygamy. The Bible

metaphor is, that God is bound to the soul by a

marriage tie. To have more gods than one was

to divide the marriage tie — even though one

might be held supreme. I believe that originally

all polygamy came from polytheism — many

wives from many gods. When transferred to

earth that manner of love which they felt for

heaven. Is it a wonder that Rachel should have

made the same transference! Why should she

resent her sister Leah getting at her own side

some small place in the affections of Jacob! Had

she not given to her household gods, spite of her

loyalty to the God of heaven, a little corner in the

espousals of her heart! She did not believe that

the God whom she worshipped would resent

such an arrangement; why should she resent it

on the part of Jacob! Of course we all understand that she was psychologically wrong — that she had not a sufficiently strong sense of the exactingness either of Divine, or human, love. We all understand that intellectually she has fallen immeasurably below the standard of either Sarah or Rebekah. But we are not considering her intellectual standard. We concede its weakness; we admit its inadequacy. We only assert that she held this article of religious faith and that she held it sincerely. And we ask whether, holding it sincerely, she could have been reasonably expected to have entertained any other than a mitigated view of the evil of polygamy. A careful consideration must ensure the answer No.

So Rachel accepted her ill fortune with a good grace — almost with a graciousness. She accepted what the God of heaven had sent, what her housef hold gods had bequeathed. She brought Leah within her own horizon. Henceforth they stand in one environment; but they stand divided still. They never meet in union. They do not fight, they hardly quarrel; but they are never united. Everything about them is separate — their life, their death, their fortune. It is not that the one has good fortune and the other bad; such a disparity often draws people together. The things which divide in the lot of life are, in my opinion, different kinds of prosperity, Rachel and Leah both had many of the fruits of life; but they were not fruits of the same kind. Their joys were different, and the difference of their joys kept them apart.

/” Speaking generally, I should say that Leah

had the keys of Jacob’s house, Rachel the keys of

j Jacob’s heart. Leah seems to have influenced

I his judgment; Rachel never ceased to hold his

love. Leah bore him six stalwart sons, Rachel

was the mother of only two; but the sons of

j Rachel were dearer to him than the sons of Leah.

‘Leah’s sons were outwardly prominent — Ruben

! was the firstborn, Judah was the founder of the

y greatest tribe in Israel, Levi was the ancestor of

one of the strongest religious parties in the world.

/But one of Rachel’s sons did something without

which none of these achievements would have

been possible — he saved his people from starva-

lsion in the infancy of their being. The sons of

Leah had long the advantage over the sons of ii6 RACHEL THE PLACID

Rachel; they immured Joseph in a dungeon. But the crowning victory remained with Rachel’s son, for Joseph conquered at last not merely his enemies but their enmities, and restored the household unity which polygamy had broken. Leah seems to have lived long — she saw her vigorous sons grow up to manhood and she utilized them for her help; Rachel died early at the birth of her second child and she left to her husband the heritage of two motherless boys. But Jacob received in that hour what he had never received before — an instinct of motherhood; the latest gift to his soul was the endowment with parental care. Finally, Leah and Rachel were separate li in death. Leah has the place of honour — she [. lies beside Rebekah and Sarah; Rachel drooped by the way in the midst of Jacob’s wanderings and received not the family sepulchre. Yet, in ’ the heart of Jacob the grave of Rachel remained; ever green, and he never ceased in fancy to deck i it with flowers. Leah sleeps in the cave of Mach-; pelah; Rachel reposes on the road to Bethlehem. ‘Here I shall leave the earhest Bible picture of the old, old story — the love before marriage. It is a singular picture — in simplicity, in freedom from extravagance. It has chosen love in its most commonplace attitude, its most prosaic attitude — love waiting. It had a hundred attitudes to select from; but it has chosen this. And in so doing it has touched a chord of universal sympathy. For, the typical trial of love is waiting. It has many other trials; it has to meet struggle, it has to bear sacrifice, it has to encounter rivalry. But its typical trial, its sorest trial, is the negative state called waiting — the simple folding of the hands in enforced rest. The preacher who has to wait years for his parish, the youth who has to seek his fortune in foreign lands, the maiden under a father’s prohibition, the girl kept at home by family cares, the victim of a dehcacy whose issue is uncertain and whose uncertainty counsels delay — these are they who typically feel that the course of true love never did run smooth. I am glad that the primitive picture has placed in the foreground this typical

trial.

Lord, I ha-ve read of Thee that Thou givest ii8 RACHEL THE PLACID

Thy beloved sleep. There are various ways in which Thou givest sleep. I think one of them is a placid nature. There are many souls among us whose spirit does not echo the full force of the outward waves. Thou hast set them in a cleft of the rock while Thou art passing by in the storm-cloud, and, though the cloud is for them, they are less hurt than the spectator. I have seen Rachel under a great storm — her hopes broken, her dreams disappointed, her flowers of life withered in the dust; and I have wept for Rachel sore. But the next day I have met her almost with a smile upon her face — not crushed, not annihilated, not even mutilated; and I have said, “Shallow-hearted creature!” Is this what I ought to have said! Ought I not rather to have thanked Thy mercy, O my God, that Thou canst temper the wind to the shorn lamb! Ought I not to have blessed Thee that within the heart itself Thou hast cleft a rock of shelter for many souls overtaken by the storm! I thank Thee now, I bless Thee now. I praise Thee for the inward rest of Rachel. It teaches me when I see a soul afflicted never to say, “She will die.” I may measure the amount of storm that can overpower a human spirit; but how can I tell that it has all fallen! Let me not forget Thy shelter in the rock, O God. Let me remember that Thou hast Divine anaesthetics for the soothing of pain! Let me bear in mind Thy sweet dullings of the consciousness I Let me mark how Thou veilcst the eye, and curtainest the ear! Let me learn how many ships of sorrow pass in the night — how the seas wake us not, how the winds shake us not, how the buffetings break us not! Then shall I wonder no more at the calm face of Rachel in the storm, then shall I say no more, “This is a heart that cannot feel;” for I shall find the reason in a deeper mystery — “Thou givest Thy beloved sleep.”