A man's duty to his family, what is it? To exclude a needy dependant however pressing the claim may be? To admit one freely who has the recommendation of wealth? Such earthly calculation is no rule for a true man. The moral duty, the moral result are always to be the main elements of decision. No family ever gains by relief from an obligation conscience acknowledges. No family loses by the fulfilment of duty, whatever the expense. In household debate the balance too often turns not on the character of Ruth but on her lack of gear. The same woman who is refused as a heathen when she is poor, is discovered to be a most desirable relation if she brings fuel for the fire of welcome. Let our decisions be quite clear of this mean hypocrisy. Would we insist on being dutiful to a rich relation? Then the duty remains to him and his if they fall into poverty, for a moral claim cannot be altered by the state of the purse.
And what of the duty to Christ, His church, His poor? Would to God some people were afraid to leave their children wealthy, were afraid of having God inquire for His portion. A shadow rests on the inheritance that has been guarded in selfish pride against the just claims of man, in defiance of the law of Christ. Yet let one be sure that his liberality is not mixed with a carnal hope. What do we think of when we declare that God's recompense to those who give freely comes in added store of earthly treasure, the tithe returned ten and twenty and a hundred fold? By what law of the material or spiritual world does this come about? Certainly we love a generous man, and the liberal shall stand by liberal things. But surely God's purpose is to make us comprehend that His grace does not take the form of a percentage on investments. When a man grows spiritually, when although he becomes poorer he yet advances to nobler manhood, to power and joy in Christ—this is the reward of Christian generosity and faithfulness. Let us be done with religious materialism, with expecting our God to repay us in the coin of this earth for our service in the heavenly kingdom.
The marriage of Ruth at which we now arrive appears at once as the happy termination of Naomi's solicitude for her, the partial reward of her own faithfulness and the solution so far as she was concerned of the problem of woman's destiny. The idea of the spiritual completion of life for woman as well as man, of the woman being able to attain a personal standing of her own with individual responsibility and freedom was not fully present to the Hebrew mind. If unmarried, Ruth would have remained, as Naomi well knew and had all along said, without a place in society, without an asylum or shelter. This old-world view of things burdens the whole history, and before passing on we must compare it with the state of modern thought on the question.
The incompleteness of the childless widow's life which is an element of this narrative, the incompleteness of the life of every unmarried woman which appears in the lament for Jephthah's daughter and elsewhere in the Bible as well as in other records of the ancient world had, we may say, a two-fold cause. On the one hand there was the obvious fact that marriage has a reason in physical constitution and the order of human society. On the other hand heathen practices and constant wars made it, as we have seen, impossible for women to establish themselves alone. A woman needed protection, or as the law of England has it, coverture. In very exceptional cases only could the opportunity be found, even among the people of Jehovah, for those personal efforts and acts which give a position in the world. But the distinction of Israel's custom and law as compared with those of many nations lay here, that woman was recognized as entitled to a place of her own side by side with man in the social scheme. The conception of her individuality as of individuality generally was limited. The idea of what is now called the social organism governed family life, and the very faith that was afterwards to become the strength of individuality was held as a national thing. The view of complete life had no clear extension into the future, even the salvation of the soul did not appear as a distinct provision for personal immortality. Under these limitations, however, the proper life of every woman and her place in the nation were acknowledged and provision was made for her as well as circumstances would allow. By the customs of marriage and by the laws of inheritance she was recognized and guarded.
Now it may appear that the problem of woman's place, so far from approaching solution in Christian times, has rather fallen into greater confusion; and many are the attacks made from one point of view and another upon the present condition of things. By the nature school of revolutionaries physical constitution is made a starting-point in argument and the reasoning sweeps before it every hindrance to the completion of life on that side for women as for men. Christian marriage is itself assailed by these as an obstacle in the path of evolution. They find women, thanks to Christianity, no longer unable to establish themselves in life; but against Christianity which has done this they raise the loud complaint that it bars the individual from full life and enjoyment. In the course of our discussion of the Book of Judges reference has been made once and again to this propaganda, and here its real nature comes to light. Its conception of human life is based on mere animalism; it throws into the crucible the gain of the centuries in spiritual discipline and energetic purity in order to make ample provision for the flesh and the fulfilling of the lusts thereof.
But the problem is not more confused; it is solved, as all other problems are by Christ. Penetrating and arrogant voices of the day will cease and His again be heard Whose terrible and gracious doctrine of personal responsibility in the supernatural order is already the heart of human thought and hope. There is turmoil, disorder, vile and foolish experimenting; but the remedy is forward not behind. Christ has opened the spiritual kingdom, has made it possible for every soul to enter. For each human being now, man and woman, life means spiritual overcoming, spiritual possession, and can mean nothing else. It is altogether out of date, an insult to the conscience and common sense of mankind, not to speak of its faith, to go back on the primitive world and the ages of a lower evolution and fasten down to sensuousness a race that has heard the liberating word, Repent, believe and live. The incompleteness of a human being lies in subjection to passion, in existing without moral energy, governed by the earthly and therefore without hope or reason of life. To the full stature of heavenly power the woman has her way open through the blood of the cross, and by a path of loneliness and privation, if need be, she may advance to the highest range of priestly service and blessing.
To the Jewish people and to the writer of the Book of Ruth as a Jew genealogy was of more account than to us, and a place in David's ancestry appears as the final honour of Ruth for her dutifulness, her humble faith in the God of Israel. Orpah is forgotten; she remained with her own people and died in obscurity. But faithful Ruth lives distinguished in history. She takes her place among the matrons of Bethlehem and the people of God. The story of her life, says one, stands at the portal of the life of David and at the gates of the gospel.
Yet suppose Ruth had not been married to Boaz or to any other good and wealthy man, would she have been less admirable and deserving? We attribute nothing to accident. In the providence of God Boaz was led to an admiration for Ruth and Naomi's plan succeeded. But it might have been otherwise. There is nothing, after all, so striking in her faith that we should expect her to be singled out for special honour; and she is not. The divine reward of goodness is the peace of God in the soul, the gladness of fellowship with Him, the opportunity of learning His will and dispensing His grace. It is interesting to note that Ruth's son Obed was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. But was Ruth not also the ancestress of the sons of Zeruiah, of Absalom, Adonijah and Rehoboam? Even though looking down the generations we see the Messiah born of her line, how can that glorify Ruth? or, if it does, how shall we explain the want of glory of many an estimable and godly woman who fighting a battle harder than Ruth's, with clearer faith in God, lived and died in some obscure village of Naphtali or dragged out a weary widowhood on the borders of the Syrian desert?
Yet there is a sense in which the history of Ruth stands at the gates of the gospel. It bears the lesson that Jehovah acknowledged all who did justly and loved mercy and walked humbly with Him. The foreign woman was justified by faith, and her faith had its reward when she was accepted as one of Jehovah's people and knew Him as her gracious Friend. Israel had in this book the warrant for missionary work among the pagan nations and a beautiful apologue of the reconciliation the faith of Jehovah was to effect among the severed families of mankind. The same faith is ours, but with deeper urgency, the same spirit of reconciliation reaching now to farther mightier issues. We have seen the Goël of the race and have heard His offer of redemption. We are commissioned to those who dwell in the remotest borders of the moral world under oppressions of heathenism and fear or wander in strange Moabs of confusion where deep calleth unto deep. We have to testify that with One and One only are the light, the joy, the completeness of man, because He alone among sages and helpers has the secret of our sin and weakness and the long miracle of the soul's redemption. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation: and lo, I am with you." The faith of the Hebrew is more than fulfilled. Out of Israel He comes our Menuchah, Who is "an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
INDEX
Achsah, 20.
Adoni-bezek, 12.
Adventurer, the, 211.
Agnosticism, 156.
Altars, local, 338.
Amalek, 78.
Amorites, 64.
Angel of Jehovah, 147.
Ascendency of races, 14.
Astarte, 52.
Baal, 52.
Baal-berith, the modern, 221.
Baal-peor, 51.
Balaam, 70.
Barak, the Lightning Chief, 99;
agreement with Deborah, 122.
Barbarism, the new, 140.
Bethlehem, 364.
Canaan, its population, 6;
central position, 6;
degeneracy of its people, 8;
god of, 52.
Character, national, 205;
of Arabs, 239;
decision of, 378.
Charity, careless, 399.
Christ, the Strengthener, 42, 43;
and the inquirer, 124;
and the church, 152, 177;
critics of, 154;
personal pledge to, 160, 383;
enemies of, 181;
priesthood of, 208;
kingship of, 228;
sacrifice of, 251, 332;
manliness of, 264;
the temple, 343;
His teaching as to wealth, 388.
Christianity secularized, 330.
Church, the opposition to, 79, 82;
leaders in, 123;
custody of truth by, 124;
world in, 133;
elation of, 139;
right spirit of, 152;
confusion in, 171;
national, 176;
attacks upon, 186;
perpetual duty of, 353.
Completeness of life, 416.
Compromise, 88, 402;
with heathens, 98.
Concentration, 175;
and breadth, 275.
Conscience, correlative of power, 303;
and life, 353, 354;
insanity of, 357.
Conversion, 27, 159;
imperfect, 41;
helped by circumstances, 158;
complete, 160;
Ruth's, 381.
Co-partnery, with the world, 220;
between Hebrew and Philistine, 284.
Creed, the old, 172.
Culture, 20, 88;
affecting religion, 228.
Cushan-rishathaim, 69.
Custom, old, why recorded, 408.
Danite migration, 340.
Date of Book of Ruth, 409.
Deborah, 91;
inspiration of, 96, 102, 108;
her wisdom, 100;
not unmerciful, 117;
her judgeship, 135.
Dependents, duty to, 414.
Dependence, ignoble, 297.
Divine judgment, 11;
of Meroz the prudent, 132.
Divine Vindicator, the, 394.
Doubt, religious, 26.
Earth-force in man, 149.
Ecclesiasticism, 167, 201.
Education, 273.
Ehud, 83.
Emigration, 366.
Entanglements, base, 301.
Equipment for life, 184.
Evil, despotic, 287.
Evolution, spiritual, 4, 85, 109.
Ezra, 38.
Faint yet pursuing, 191.
Faith, development of, 4;
conflicts of, 27;
link between generations, 49;
army of, 128;
recuperative power of, 141;
power through, 203;
ebb and flow of, 233;
saves, not doing, 300;
courage forced on, 347.
Fidelity depends on religion, 405.
Fittest, survival of, 9.
Fleece, Gideon's, 169.
Freedom, cradle of faith, 85, 86, 90;
right of the rude, 258.
Free-lance, 304.
Gibeah, crime of, 348
Gideon, 144;
his fleece, 169;
his three hundred, 173;
kingship refused by, 196;
his caution, 197;
desire for priesthood, 198;
his ephod-dealing, 202;
a storm of God, 204.
Gilead, its vigour, 235.
God with man, 146.
Goël, duty of, 398.
Gospel, at the gates of, 420.
Heathenism, rites of, 53.
Hebrews, language of, 31;
intermixture with Canaanites, 68;
national spirit of, 234.
Heroism, 149.
History, key to, 5, 295.
Hittites, 65.
Honey from the carcase, 289.
Humanity, priesthood of, 208.
Ideal, of life, 29;
for Israel, 48, 242.
Idolatry, 33;
unpardonable, 49.
Intolerance, moral, 354.
Israel, mission of, 13;
oppressed by Cushan-rishathaim, 72;
by Jabin, 92;
by Midianites, 137;
tribes of, 97, 132, 167;
its idea of Jehovah, 107, 118;
superiority of, 55, 69, 90.
Jael, 103, 134;
her tragic moment, 105.
Jealousy, tribal, 255.
Jebusites, 28.
Jephthah, the outlaw, 235;
chosen leader, 236;
his peaceful policy, 240;
his vow, 243;
his daughter, 247.
Jerusalem, 15.
Joash of Abiezer, 156.
Joshua, 45.
Jotham's parable, 214.
Judges, their vindication, 57.
Justice, passion for, 58;
human effort for, 104;
should be open, 412.
Kenites, 24.
Kingship, refused by Gideon, 196.
Kiriath-sepher, 18.
Leaders, uncalled, 163.
Leadership, incomplete, 161.
Levites, 338.
Life, the law of, 294, 299;
hindrances to, 296;
fear hindering, 297;
complete, 314.
Literature, 19;
Danites of, 345, 346.
Love, 380.
Luz, 28.
Marriage, 20;
a failure? 24;
rash experiments in, 284.
Marriages, mixed, 38.
Master-strokes in providence, 158.
Meroz, 132.
Micah, 335.
Midianites, 137, 195.
Missionary spirit, 137.
Moab, 77, 367.
Moderatism, 166.
Monotheism, 32.
Moral intolerance, 354.
Moses, 13, 19.
Motherhood, 268.
National church, 176.
Nature, God revealed in, 111-15;
and supernatural, 266.
Nature-cult, 42, 418.
Nazirite vow, 276.
Nomadism, religious, 25.
Opportunism, 166.
Organized vice, 179.
Orpah, 376.
Othniel, 22, 73.
Parentage, 271.
Past, the, returning, 71;
lessons of, 410.
Pastors, unspiritual, 344.
Patriotism, religious, 226.
Personal ends engrossing, 136.
Personality, 15;
in religion, 379.
Pessimism, 230.
Pharisaism, 39;
danger of, 356.
Philistines, 26, 62.
Philistinism, 310, 329.
Phœnicians, 63.
Polygamy, 21, 351.
Polytheism, its development, 54.
Prayer, 142, 143, 231.
Predestination, 269.
Priesthood, Gideon's desire for, 198;
true, 206;
Roman Catholic, 246.
Prophets, unrecognized, 162;
their preparation, 270.
Prosperity, misunderstood, 388.
Providence, imperfect instruments of, 58, 84.
Public office, 216.
Purity, 350.
Reconciliation, religion always for, 395.
Reformer, his character, 153.
Reformation, the true, 155.
Religion, emotional, 130;
and the state, 36, 75.
Remnant, the godly, 126, 131.
Repentance, imperfect, 40.
Responsibility, 300;
in advising, 370.
Retribution, 138.
Rich, obligations of, 390.
Rights and duties, 30, 256.
Ruth, her choice, 377;
conversion of 381;
goodness commending her, 392;
her danger, 401;
her marriage, 416.
Sacred places, 33.
Salvation, personal, 151.
Samson, his loneliness, 279;
boyhood of, 280;
character of, 281;
his marriage, 290;
his riddle, 291;
no reformer, 308.
Schism, 342, 345.
Science, dogmatism of, 112;
Danites of, 345.
Self-respect, 312.
Self-sacrifice, 249, 331, 333.
Self-suppression, 16, 251, 375.
Self-vindication, 358.
Separations in life, 383.
Shechem, 210.
Shibboleths, of reform, 262;
allowable, 263;
Christ used none, 264.
Sibboleths, of egotism, 260;
of bad habit, 260;
of literature, 261.
Sisera, 101.
Spiritual brotherhood, 151;
strength, 321, 324;
service, 369;
pauperism, 400.
Strength and character, 193.
Struggle, the law of existence, 10.
Success, sanctified, 80;
succeeding, 189.
Succoth and Penuel, 190.
Supernatural in human life, 267.
Temptation, 287;
process of, 317.
Theocracy, 3, 46;
Jotham's idea of, 214, 218.
Tribal religion, 328.
Truth and charity, 228.
Unscrupulous helpers, 133.
Veracity of the narrative, 359.
Vicarious suffering, 355.
Voluntary churches, 176.
Wars of conquest, 5.
Women, treatment of, 21;
their freedom, 22;
duties of, 125;
social bondage of, 372;
helpless, 373;
submission preached to, 375;
problems in their life, 416, 418.
Wrong never strong, 182.
Zephath, 25.