The Pulpit Commentary — Ruth — Section 24

enys the same writer, who is depicting the drift:-" The meadow-land whereon he plnyed in the innocent delights of childhood, has now become a mar~hy waste of sand. The garden where he gathered flowers, an offering of love and devotion to his parents, is now eown with aea-salt. The church where be offered up hi~ childish praye;s, and wondered nt the high. myet~riee of which his teachers spoke, stands tottermg upon the edge of a crumbling chff that the next storm may bring down in ruin." And this is rightly called "an experience of spiritual misery." Pathetic indeed, is this. The picture is most touching and saddening! Who can feel it more than thoee who suffer the eclipse of faith? We, who worship here, trust in the living God, who as we believe revealed himself to our fathers by the prophets and who in these last days has spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath mad~ heir of all things, anhath given us this testimony, in that he bath raised him from the dead.- W. M. S. Ver. 8.-11 As you have dealt with the dead and me." This beautiful analogy which has its root idea in love and home, is very suggestive. ' I. THE LORD KNOWS DEST WHAT OTHERS HAVE BEEN TO us. "As you have dealt with the dead and me.'' You have been good and true to them, Naomi says, with a voice that trembles with remembrances of the old days gone for ever. It is a touching little sentence. The dead. So silent now. Never to come back for us to touch imperfectness into riper good; never to charm away with pleasant thoughts the dull hours; never to fill with deeper meanings of love the half-empty words ; never to make more Divine the common service of life ; never to put the best in- terpretation upon conduct ; never to lift the leaden crown of care from the anxious brow; never to help to transfigure the mean and lowly with heavenly hopes and aspirations. Gone ! What a world of vacancy, and silence, and subtle mystery ! Is it strange we should wish well to those who were kind to the dead? And Naomi links her own being with them still. "The dead and me." And with true hearts they never can be disassociated. Anniversaries of remembrance make our separ- ations no more distant. They soften them. They give place for comforting re- membrances; but the dead are near as ever. "The dead and me! " 'Who shall separate? None. Christ died, yea, rather is risen again, and he will raise us up together to the heavenly places. What a blessing so to live, so to fill our place as sons and daughters, so to sweeten, sublime, and sanctify life that others may make our conduct a plea with that God who has known our heart and life, and say, "The Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and me." II. THE LORD HAS GIVEN us GUARANTEES OF HIS KINDNESS. we are not left to meditirte on rain and fruitful seasons only. Not the green of spring, nor the south wind of summer, nor the gold of autumn alone proclaim his goodness. So long as the story of the cross has Divine meaning for us, so long as we believe it, not alone as the spirit of a good man's life, but as the revelation of God manifest in the flesh, so long can we exclaim, " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." Nor can we exclude conscience from our argument ; that, too, is a guarantee that the Almighty cares for us, that he will not let us sin and suffer with- out the very voice Divine awakening, alarming, and arresting us. None but a good Being would have put conscience there, and made it universal, and filled it with such sweet benedictions for the soul. We are surrounded by evidences of the Eternal pity. God who spared not his own Son, will with him also freely give us all things- for man is still his child, and he has a desire to the work of his hands. When we pray, therefore, "The Lord deal kindly with thee," we only ask him to be like himself, we only put him in remembrance of his promise to hear when we call upon him. Some would think God kind, indeed, if he were less severe on sin ; to them all law iij baneful, and the sorest evils are only evidences of an imperfect brain, or an untrained mind, or an ungovernable power of impulse. How, then, should the law of God be other than dislikable-nay, detestable to them; but he who prep~.red the light, prepared also the throne of his judgment, and he will by no means clear the guilty-for the love of God would be but a weak sentiment if it were not har- monised with a law which means order, truth, righteousness, and justice in all domains of his eternal empire. We only predicate that love is the root of law, us it BUTH. C 18 THE BOOK OF RUTH. [en. 1. 6--14.