^ Bishop A. F. W. Ingram. ^ Prebendary Eyton.
JUDGES V. 23 181
3. Notice the phrase that is used: "the help of the Lord." Does God require help ? Does the Lord require the help of feeble and fallible men ? No. What does He need ? Does He need our prayers ? Does He need our services of praise ? No. He needs nothing from any of His creatures, but He condescends to use our co-operation ; and this rule is universal ; it pervades the physical as well as the moral and intellectual kingdom. The earth does not yield its fruits or precious gems, or the mighty forces which lie hidden in its bosom, until man co-operates with the will of God to bring forth and organize the forces of Nature for his own use and purposes. So is it also in the moral and intellectual life. Man's faculties, intellectual and moral, are not developed, nor are the ills that afflict his bodily frame cured, without man's agency or without the human will co-operating with the will of God. So it is also in the case of politics, so it is in the action of nations. God does not need man's aid, yet He claims it.
The men of Meroz were not simply asked to help in f reeing^ --i^ Israel from the yoke of Jabin, they were called to the help of the 1 Lord, to take their stand among the strong and brave and true n Cti> men who were fighting the Lord's battle. And that is true to-day I of the Church of Jesus Christ — even when you have made as^ many admissions as those who are disposed to cavil at this claim] demand shall be made. The Church of Jesus Christ stands for - God's cause and purpose of grace in the world, and with its^ victory is bound up the highest well-being of mankind ; in a word, ] the salvation of men. To deride the call of the Church is to despise the cause of God. " He that heareth you," said Jesus to ' the Seventy before He sent them forth as His heralds, " hearetb me ; and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me ; and he that rejecteth 1 me rejecteth him that sent me."
^ " Oh, mother, I have just been in the garden helping God." " And what have you been doing to help God ? " " Well, you see, I found a rose that was not quite blossomed, and I blossomed it."
II.
Some Eeasons foe the Sin of Mekoz.
We do not know what was the reason why the inhabitants of Meroz committed that sin of omission which has made
i82 THE SIN OF MEROZ
their town a byword for ever. If they held a strategic point on the line of retreat and allowed the enemy to escape, they may have been cowardly or merely indolent. We cannot tell. But we can give reasons why men do not in our own day come to the help of the Lord.
1. One reason given is that (rocl (^qan not really rieed help. — The language of the text is poetical, figurative ; it is not to be taken literally. God will do wh3,t He sees best, whether we help Him or not ; He can conquer Si9e];a»-at_lhe ptaper time, without theai^LollVIero^. Doubtless He can. But the question is, whether He wills to do so or not; whether, if He wills us to be His agents, we can wisely disobey Him by pleading that we have too much reverence or too much faith to obey. This kind of argument, it must be plain, leaves great room for self-delusion. Men will not argue thus who know by experience that they are likely to be, at least sometimes, swayed by selfish motives of indolence, or timidity, or self-aggrandizement. The faith in the self-propagating power of Christianity which is so strong that it will not support the cause of Christian missions; the robust faith in the indestructible vitality of the Church which, when occasion permits, would illustrate her life by depriving her of the agencies and resources that ordinarily support it ; the faith, in short, in God's power of upholding His own cause in the world which carefully abstains from contributing anything to serve it, so fearful is it of offering a slight to the Divine Omnipotence ; this faith, which would seem to be too vigorous to be in any sense practical, would not yet have been developed in the days of Deborah. It^is hardly probable • tljat Merpz^ declined its part in the -great struggle from an excess-of trust in the strength of Israel's cause and Israel's God; men had not then discovered that to obey God's will was to incur some risk of dishonouring His attributes.
And evermore we sought the fight, but still Some pale enchantment clouded all our will, So that we faltered; even when the foe Lay, at our sudden onset, crushed and low, As a flame dies, so passed our wrath away — And fatal to us was the battle-day.^
' Margaret Sackville.
JUDGES V. 23 183
^ When Christ will give gifts to St. Peter and the rest, He does not do what He easily could have done, make the fish leap into the boat without their labour and their nets ; but He bids them go out into the deep and cast tuoir nets — that is, exercise the accustomed handicraft which they had learned, and in which they were skilled. He teaches thus that He will not give without our work, and yet shows that it is not from our work, but from God's providing and blessing, that we obtain anything.^