Deborah the Drastic

immediately succeeded Peter and Paul is a poor and barren sequel to a grand beginning; the age which directly followed Addison and Steele is a relapse from literary glory. Shakespeare has not bequeathed his genius to his lineal descendants; when he died on Mount Nebo they all came down to the plain. It would seem as if the storms of human feeling are like the storms of physical nature — they dissipate energy by the very intensity of their movement. Israel was a sharer in this fate. On leaving the desert her first steps had been triumphant. Jordan had been passed; Jericho had been stormed; Ai had been taken; the sun of prosperity had refused to go down on the hours of her conflict. It was a brilliant, glorious time — that nation’s morning! But the mid-day was disastrous! While Israel was conquering physically, she was herself conquered mentally by the very nations she was subduing! She became enamoured of her enemies — of their idolatry, of their sin. She refused to drive them out from her promised land; she tried to imitate them, to live as they lived. Her debasement was a mental debasement — a lowering of her moral standard. But when a man lowers his moral standard he loses his physical power. The objects to which our courage yields are nearly always thoughts — not things. The strength of Israel had been her sense of God. When she abandoned that, she could not stand two minutes against the nations. The desert had been a paradise because He was there; the promised land had been a wilderness because she sent Him away. The nations bore her down, robbed her, prostrated her, reduced all her sons to one common level — bankruptcy.

But men cannot remain at a common level. Bring down the members of a community to an equal abyss of low fortune, denude them each and all of their physical advantages, take away from every man that outward thing which makes him superior to another, and leave the whole company in the same degree of material destitution, what will happen? If you complete the process on Monday morning and come back on Saturday night, you will get a surprise.. The level you have made will have disappeared. The ground will have become again uneven. The equality of destitutiofi will be utterly broken. Of the men whom you left in a row, some will be there still, some will have fallen behind, some wiH have moved forward, and almost certainly a solitary figure will be seen standing in front of the whole band — one man who has already raised himself into the rank of king.

This was what happened with prostrate Israel. Her sons were all levelled in a common physical destitution. On the Monday morning there was no difference between lord and peasant; on Saturday night the inequalities were resumed, and there was a leader in front of the company — one whom they called their “judge,” eager to improve their morals and ready to break their chains. We have the names of fifteen such leaders — each a reformer of the land — each a preserver of the nation. Whence came they? Very short and very graphic is the account in the Bible narrative, “The Lord raised up judges.” What does this mean? Why is it said that the Lord raised them up? Clearly, to imply that it was not man that did it. I understand the meaning to be that these men were not raised by popular election or act of parliament or priestly ordination — that they owed their elevation to no human appointment and came to the front by no political favour. I take the picture to say that they came to the front spontaneously, by the sheer force of superior mental power. They came because superiority will not hide — not even in a quagmire. They came because wherevex talent is it must speak, because wherever virtue exists it is bound to be manifested. They sought not the suffrages of the crowd; but the crowd went out to thejriy attracted by a magnetism the could not understand.

As if to emphasize the fact that the power of these leaders had a mental rather than a physical source, one of them is a woman. Uniquo on the canvas of the Bible Gallery stands out the figure of Deborah! Alone of all that band of women she succeeds in reaching the prize which Miriam had failed to win! She is the only woman in the Bible who is placed at the height of political power by the common consent of her people. Other females have reigned besides Deborah — but not by the suffrages of the people. Jezebel reigned, Athaliah reigned; but their empire was regarded with hatred by the community. Even popular sovereigns like EHzabeth of England have in the first instance been indebted to their descent from the existing royal Une. But Deborah had no royal lineage. She was the wife of an obscure man. She was the head of a humble household unknown to the people of Israel. She was more handicapped than even Miriam had been. Miriam was unmarried; she was free from the cares of a menage and therefore might be supposed to be more qualified for poHtical cares. Deborah was encumbered with domestic duties; and the seekers of a ruler might well have passed her by. But they did not. They chose her without father or mother or descent. They chose her in an age when men might have been supposed to have selected physical giants — an age of iron, an age of cruelty. They chose her spite of her sex, spite of her quiet life, spite of the absence of any precedent for female rule. I have always felt that amid the many direct or indirect compliments to the feminine mind this picture of the Old Gallery is one of the greatest tributes ever paid to the intellect of women.

And yet, if this had been all, I should not have felt warranted in placing Deborah among my representative females — the very uniqueness of the position separates it from the common lot of womanhood. But the interest of Deborah for me, and that which gives her a place among representative females, is not her rule but what led to her rule. If I read this narrative rightly, Deborah was a helper before she was a queen — was made a queen because she had been a helper. We first meet her as a “prophetess” — an instructor of the people, one who spoke to the people the words of God. I should be disposed to call her the first parish visitor, the earUest of that band of female workers who have entered into personal contact with the souls in moral need. True, it was the parish that visited Deborah, not Deborah the parish; it was the men and women of Israel who went out to her. But they went out by her invitation. She waited certain hours of the day to receive them and give them her counsel. The place of her waiting is rigidly marked by the historian; it is “between Ramah and Bethel;” it is ‘’in Mount Ephraim;” it is ‘’under a palm tree.” The minuteness of the geographical marking shows the abiding impression which her influence had made. I think the growth of that influence would be gradual. Perhaps one stray individual in some special distress made trial of her as a forlorn hope and found a turning-point in his fortunes. He told another whom he met in Uke grief; that other also came, and revived. The tidings spread from soul to soul. Groups came — groups of the afflicted, of the doubting, of the oppressed, till, in the process of time, the name of Deborah became a talisman and attracted from far and near the sons and daughters of sorrow.

I have ventured to call Deborah a parish visitor. What was the nature of her visiting? It is my opinion that parochial visitors may be ranged in three classes — the soft, the solemn and the drastic. There are some who are all tenderness to those who have gone wrong; they plead with them in strong crying and tears. There are others who assume the note of warning; they remind the erring of that judgment-seat of Christ where one day they will have to answer for the deeds done in the body. And there is a third class different from either of these — a class who appeal not to a judgment after death but to a judgment here and now. I have called this third class the drastic. They want to impress upon the sinner that his reformation cannot be effected without a big sacrifice — that he will require to give up something, to part with something, to tear something from his heart which has hitherto been the joy of his nature. They want him to understand that he must make no compromise with his idol — that he must not be content with the mere limitation of its worship — that he must get rid of it wholly and entirely, break it with a rod of iron and dash it in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Among this last class of parish visitors I place Deborah. I have designated her “the Drastic.” She belongs to a type of the Christian as well as of the Jewish dispensation; and among Christians she is not a favourite type. My first impression of Deborah was a repellent one; I did not like her; she seemed wholly unfit to stand beside those women of GaUlee with whom I was familiar. There are some females who prepossess us at the very outset; we seem to have been waiting for them. There are others whom at introduction we recoil from; we receive in meeting them a momentary shock. The shock is all the greater provided we know that the woman has a great deal in her, that her disagreeableness does not come from obtuseness or inanity; her ability renders it the more conspicuous because the more deliberate. So is it with Deborah. We feel that she is a gifted woman — a woman endowed not only with commonsense, but with that which is supposed to be its opposite — the spirit of poetry. Yet is it just her poetry that gives us the strongest impression of her drasticness. There is attributed to her a great song. It has been preserved through the ages and we can judge it for ourselves. It is a marvellously powerful composition; but it is the power of the lightning. It is the least dreamy and the most drastic poem that ever was written. It is absolutely gleaming with sword-points — invective, denunciation, scorn, sarcasm, and a sentiment more lurid still to which I shall return in the sequel. I am here only concerned to show that the very gifts of Deborah were in the direction of the drastic.

But are you sure that such drastic women are not required in the parochial field? I am convinced that they are. I have learned by experience that there are cases of parish visiting which cannot be met by any one who has not the spirit of Deborah. Christ says there are sorrows which go out by prayer and that there are sorrows which can only be expelled by fasting — by the imposition of a fast. The gentle visitor will do for the one; only the drastic will suffice for the other.

You go into a house of poverty, and your first impulse is to commiserate. But a view of the situation hardens you. You see the cause of the poverty — intemperance. You feel that the vehicle in which your compassion must travel is not weeping but chiding; and you do chide. You urge the breaking of the idol, the smashing of the favourite sin, and you refuse all compromise. Or, you go into a home where there is distress of another kind — where the unoffending wife is maltreated by the husband. You set up the red flag immediately. You would deem it mockery to cry, “Come unto Him all ye that labour, and He will give you rest.” You feel that what is imperatively wanted here is in the meantime not rest, but action. You threaten to inform the authorities; you appeal not to Paul but to Caesar; you point the deUnquent, not to a coming judgment-seat in a future world, but to a present tribunal set up in his own land.

Now, this latter illustration brings me right into the sphere of Deborah. The family of the Israelites, wives and children alike, were being maltreated by a neighbour — a foreigner who had settled in the midst of them, and claimed the proprietorship of their house. The man was Sisera — captain of the troops of Jabin, king of Canaan. We learn from Deborah’s song the nature of his oppression. Life and property were not worth a day’s purchase. The Israelite was hunted like a hare, with the mere motive of malignity. It was not enough to have done no harm; it was sufficient crime for him to be seen. He dared not show himself in the cities; he could not hope to hide himself in the villages. His only chance was to shun the highways, to seek winding paths. Infirmity was no protection; weakness woke no pity; inoffensiveness brought no immunity. Maidens were not safe; children were not safe. Young girls who went down to draw water at the wells were assailed by a storm of arrows. Perhaps absolute malignity could not go further. It was brutality for the sake of being brutal, cruelty with the view of giving pain. I have rarely met in life with a specimen of this frame of mind. The victims were not armed enemies; Deborah says the warrior had laid down his arms. They were not the objects of revenge; the fault of Israel had been too much concession to the foe. They were not the inspirers of jealousy; they were too low in the scale for that. Nothing can account for the persecution but the supposition of an anti-tribal instinct which we often meet in the animal world and which survives awhile in the primitive life of man.

Such was the parish, the destitute parish, over which Deborah was ministering spirit. What happened to her under these circumstances? We do not need to conjecture; she has told us herself. She says that there rose up within her a sense of motherhood. She had no children of her own; if she had, we should have been told it, for maternity was a mark of honour among the Jews. Perhaps her enemies had used this privation to lessen her power among her countrymen. If so, the words of Deborah ring grandly back on them; she tells them that she has become “a mother in Israel.” It is as if she had said “You think I have been exempted from the cares of the nursery. You are in a great mistake. There is not a woman in the land has so big a 16o DEBORAH THE DRASTIC

nursery as I. The spirit of maternity has fallen upon me with tremendous power. Every son of Israel is my son, every daughter of Israel is my daughter. I have a parent’s heart for them — I bleed with them, I weep with them, I rend my soul for them.’* You will observe that in Deborah’s own consciousness the motherhood is the root of the drasticness. She rages much because she loves much. Her whip is constructed with the strings of her heart. She is made stern by her own softness — her own motherhood. The children have a malignant disease; it must be rooted out at all hazards. Nothing will root it out but a drastic operation. Sisera is a foreign germ preying upon the vitals of her family. Sisera must be expelled. Her love demands the lash; her sympathy cries for the sword; her every sense of endearment calls for a stroke of drasticness.

It is at this stage that Deborah asks the aid of a man. She does not want to go down to posterity as a fighting woman; the stroke must not be given by a female hand. The man she calls to raise a band against Sisera is Barak-ben-Abinoam — whose name was perhaps associated with some deed of prowess. He comes; and in the picture they stand side by side. The contrast is magnificent. The woman sits under her palm-tree in dauntless majesty; the man awaits her orders, trembling in every limb. The woman is hot with indignation; the man is pale with fear. The woman is strong in the hope of the Lord; the man is weak through the dread of Sisera. The woman cries, “Lead out your band and strike the oppressor down!” The man with palpitating heart answers, “I cannot go alone; you must come with me!” The woman says, “Will you allow a female to get the credit of your victory!” The man in abject terror responds, “Without you, I dare not go!” Then Deborah cries, “I will go; I had meant mine to be the woman’s sphere; but as the man is unfit for his own I shall add the battle-field to the nursery!”

And when they do go, the narrative of the sequel remains true to the keynote. The artist loyally preserves his gallantry to the woman — Deborah is supreme. Barak is nowhere. He is

nearly surprised by Sisera. He loses any little head he ever possessed. The Canaanite is sweeping along the banks of the Kishon. Barak is paralysed, panic-struck. Who saves the situation? It is Deborah. She breaks upon him like the sound of the last trumpet. She calls upon him to arise from his deadness. She points to the coming foe. She bids him arrest that coming. She assumes in the army the command she had assumed in the nursery. She shames Barak into obedience; and the Israelites move on. On the banks of the Kishon that day they fight for their mother Deborah — they fight, and they win. The ranks of the Canaanite are annihilated. Broken is the sword of Sisera, shattered is his shield. He dismounts from his chariot, and runs — runs for dear life. He is sweeping past a tent-door when a voice arrests him; it is that of Jael the wife of He be. She claims to be a friend; ‘’Come in,” she says, “and I will hide you.” She brings him into her house; she lays rich fare before him; she spreads for him a couch of rest. She says he may sleep in soundness, for she will stand at the door and watch and tell all passers-by he is not there. Then, relieved from anxiety, he lets exhausted nature have her way; he sinks in slumber. She hears his heavy breathing. Softly, she steals back to his room. She has a thought in her heart and she has something in her hand. The next moment, that hand is stained by the life-blood of the man she ‘had covenanted to save.

And I fain would wish the stain had ended there. I grieve to say that it trickles to the robe of Deborah. Deborah is so elated with the oppressor’s fall that she eulogizes his assassin. She calls Jael the blessed among women; she sings with rapture the praises of a dastardly deed. I will not join in the chorus; it will not be one of the songs of the New Jerusalem. But I should like to apply some ammonia to the stain in the robe of Deborah; I cannot take it out, but I may dim it. This woman is not so ferocious as her own song paints her. What is that at which she rejoices in the deed of Jael? Is it that an act of assassination has been perpetrated? No, it is that assassination itself has been put down. This man Sisera had been the representative of all assassins. It was he that had made the day as terrible as the night. It was he that had rendered it unsafe to travel on the highways. It was he that had directed the arrows to be showered at the hearts of innocent girls when they were drawing from the wells their supply of household water. It was he that had stealthily struck down manhood in its prime, and childhood in its dawn, and youth in its morning, and age in its feebleness. Doubtless, he died by the very weapon with which he had slain; but the joy of Deborah arose from the fact that the weapon itself had been buried in his grave.

When I think of Deborah there always recurs to my mind that expression of the seer of Patmos, “the wrath of the Lamb.” It is a very peculiar expression — so peculiar that I cannot believe such a poetic mind used it without an allegorical meaning. I think he meant that there is a wrath which can only be felt by an intensely soft nature — which could not exist in a hardened soul. At all events, that is true. There are ebullitions of wrath in this world which are only born of tenderness. The severity of a man’s judgment is often proportionate to the green places in his heart which a foot has violated. Why shout Miriam and her band over the extinction of multitudes in the waters of the Red Sea? Is it because they have lost the power of human sympathy? No, it is because the power of human sympathy has laid hold of them. It is because these Egyptians, had they lived, would have killed the little ones — would have torn the babe from the mother’s breast, would have stained with blood the ahar of the hearth, would have mutilated the strength of youth and outraged the purity of maidenhood. Even so felt Deborah. When in her great song of triumph she gloats over the fall of Sisera, her deepest thought is not of Sisera at all; it is of the children of her motherhood. She is thinking of the silent places that will now be gleeful, of the lonely places that will now be thronged. She is thinking how the highways will once more ring with laughter and the villages echo with cheer. She is thinking how the maidens may again gather at the well without dread of the archers. She is thinking how the wilderness will break forth into singing, how the desert will blossom as the rose, how the empty cities of yesterday will be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. That is why Deborah waves her flag over the grave of Sisera. That is why she blesses the hand that slew him. And that is why we condone in her a sentiment which we cannot approve. We feel that at its deepest root it is not revenge, not venom, not bloodthirstiness, not the callousness of human nature. We feel that it comes from the wncallous side of humanity — from the pity for the poor, from the succour of the sad, from the wish to help the weary. Therefore, though we shall not follow Deborah in the flight of her song, we will follow her in the flight of her heart, for her heart soars higher than her song. We will recognize her as the pioneer in the great mission-field of home service. We will regard her as the inaugurator of the vast practical work of female philanthropy; and we shall write in her memory this flaming epitaph, “The most drastic and the most devoted of parish visitors.” * * *

Lord, we still need Deborah, for the Canaanite is still in the land. I should not like to part with Deborah when the Canaanite is still in the land — when Sisera stalks abroad and vice lies in waiting for unwary souls. Many daughters there be whom Thou hast endowed with the spirit of meekness — and we bless Thee for these. But there are daughters whom Thou hast endowed with the spirit of indignation. Shall we not bless Thee for them also, O our Father? Shall we have no wreath for Deborah in the great band of female helpers? We have wreaths for those who pray; shall we have none for her who gives the alarm? We thank Thee that so often Thou hast startled us by Deborah’s cry. We have heard it at the dawn when the child told his first untruth. We have heard it at blush of morn when the boy robbed his first nest. We have heard it in the forenoon when the youth caught the fever of his first gaming-table. We have heard it at midday when to drown his commonplace cares the man drew an extra draught of the insidious cup. We have heard it in the afternoon, when the autumn life began to have gusts of temper that made things harder for those at his side. The alarms of Deborah are on every step of the stair. Keep her on the stair, O Lord! Disrobe her not of her drastic mission! Clothe her for the storm! Dress her for the rain! Wrap her for the snow! Attire her for the biting of the cold! Place her beside life’s danger-signals, that in stern accents she may transmit the message to us all! Let us build her a noble monument in humanity’s ambulance corps I

RUTH THE DECIDED