01.08. THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS.
Chapter 8 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS
"A land of unwalled villages . . . them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates."
" Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls. . . . For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her."
I HAVE taken these two passages together because the language in the latter is evidently the echo of that in the former. In both, we have the description of a community dwelling in a fashion very unusual, and very risky in old times, namely, in the open country, without any walls, bars, or gates to their cities. But in the former passage these dwellers in the open are represented as becoming, by reason of their defenseless and fancied security, the prey of a cruel conqueror, who comes to " take them for a spoil ; " whereas in the latter text, people living in precisely the same fashion, without walls, bars, or bolts, are represented as being in absolute security - "because I, saith the Lord, will be a wall of fire round about them, and a glory in the midst of them." That is to say, there are two kinds of carelessness in the world, two kinds of security and supposed safety; the one foolish and fatal, the other devout and good. We may be dwelling like fools in unwalled cities, when all the land around us is laid waste by enemies; or we may be dwelling like wise men in unwalled cities, because there is a flaming barrier between us and evil, through which nothing that harms can ever come. And these two conditions, to the eye of sense, will look very much the same ; but, to an eye that sees deeper, will be as different as heaven is from hell. We have brought out, then, by the juxtaposition of these two passages, with their identities and differences, the vivid contrast between these two ways of life, and the tragic unlikeness of their respective ends.
I The first text presents an instance of a defenceless security which is blind presumption. In old times the first condition of dwelling safely was to find either a site which was inaccessible, or to surround the city with a wall which was impregnable.
All old cities are usually perched upon hilltops, or are surrounded by walls, which, in these " piping times of peace," are generally being turned into boulevards and gardens. Cities that trusted to anything except strong natural or artificial fortifications, sooner or later became the prey of the enemy. So the phrases of these texts, which are found in Ezekiel, and caught up by Zechariah, appear once or twice besides in Scripture, describing the condition of exceptional communities - in one case far away in the desert, and in another, hidden in an almost inaccessible corner between the spurs of the Lebanon, where the men of Dan, as it is said, dwelt quiet and secure, far from any men, and having no business with any.
Such defenselessness was unwise, augured rashness, and was likely to lead to disaster. Is the temper of security in which so many of us live less absurd or dangerous ? An extraordinary access of foolhardiness seems to dominate the lives of the mass of men, which leads them to neglect the plainest facts, and run risks that can only be called tremendous. Every life has possible and certain dangers, against which it is surely the part of common sense to provide. A wise man will look ahead, and make sure, before they come, that he has some protection against them. Death will come ; changes and losses will come. The strongest props will be taken away, the closest embrace unclasped ; hearts will be torn apart, and the one which bleeds to death be happier than its companion which feebly throbs and keenly aches alone. Strength will decay, disappointments will fret, and failures depress the powers. Sickness, solitude, pecuniary losses, abortive schemes, prodigal sons, and a thousand other ills, are either certain or possible. These are the heavy armed battalions of the foe; and besides them, there are swarms of more lightly accoutred skirmishers - like gnats from a bog - sure to harass, and making up in numbers what they want in weight.
And, for the most part, calamities come suddenly. Sometimes, indeed, there is the slow gathering of the livid thunderclouds, and an awful brooding pause before the crash. But generally evils come with little warning, however long they stay. How many lives we have all known shattered for all their remaining years by a bolt from the blue ! One sudden blow, the unheralded work of a moment, puts an apparent eternity between the moment before it and that after it. No day dawns on earth without rising on some, happy, careless, and secure, on whom it sets, desolate, ruined, crushed ; and no man knows when he wakes in the morning, but that he may be rising to meet the blackest day of his life ; unless, indeed, he may have already drunk the bitterest draught that Fortune can compound, and so have a kind of sad immunity, as having outlived the worst, and bought security by the loss of his dearest treasure. We are like the inhabitants of a winding glen, the curves of which hide the enemy till he bursts, with fire and sword, on the undefended huts. We know not what may be just ready to rush on us at the next turning.
Seeing, then, that so many evils must come, and so many may come, and that both the certain and the uncertain are likely to break on us without warning, how unaccountable and incredible, if it were not so universal, is the habit of living quite comfortably without any defence against these ! There is nothing stranger in all the strange vagaries and irrationalities of men, than their way of blinding themselves to unwelcome certainties and probabilities. Most men are impatient of serious reflection on the realities of their position, and the indisposition is fostered by the continual demands of the moment, and the necessity for prompt attention to them. We possess, and are foolish enough to exercise, that strange power of ignoring disagreeable things, however certain. It is difficult, too, to realize in thought a condition unlike the present, or to make vivid and operative on conduct the picture of one’s self when deprived of some familiar and long enjoyed good. "Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant," is the natural language of unreflecting levity. It is not only the " sluggard" who might profitably go to school to an anthill. The improvident man, who will not believe that winter is coming, while the land is yellow with autumn sheaves, may well " consider her ways," and, like her, " gather food in harvest" for the certainly dark and cold days that are at hand. Many of us are like the peasants who build their houses and plant their vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius, and live lightheartedly, ignoring the possible future, though in the day the thin column of ominous smoke whitens a thin strip of ominous blue sky, and in the night the dull red of the lava tinges the sides of the cone. Some day there must be, and any day there may be, an outburst, and grey ashes will cover the vines, and earthquake crack the walls of the houses, and ruin and haply death fall upon the careless tenants. They run all risks, and manage somehow to banish thoughts of the risks which they run. So do thousands of us in regard to far graver perils, far more certain to assail us and more disastrous in their destructiveness. Whole battalions of them threaten us all. We may make " conditions of peace " with them, if by prudent foresight and appropriate precautions we "send an embasage " while they are at a distance ; for evils foreseen and prepared for are robbed of much of their power to hurt, in losing their power to surprise. We may even make them our friends if we take them aright, which we are much more likely to do if we have anticipated their coming and rehearsed them beforehand. Come they will, and if they find us unprepared, their blow will be stunning and may be fatal. Nor is it only the usual refusal to contemplate these lowering certainties and possibilities beforehand which leaves us defenceless. Another phase of favorite folly is the conceit of our power to cope with the enemy when he comes. " Unwalled villages" are tokens of an overweening confidence in the strong arms of the villagers, which will be rudely shattered some day. How can a man front his probable and certain future, and keep his sanity, if he have not God for his Defence ? One is tempted to say that he can only do it because he has not sense enough to go mad. If we had clearly before us the reality, in its true color, form, magnitude, pressure, and duration, who of us could venture to say, " Alone I can meet it and endure " ? But, partly because we ignore the unwelcome, partly because our power of forecast is mercifully limited, lest future bitterness should poison present sweetness, partly because that too feeble realization of impending disaster enables us to cheat ourselves into believing that we can cope with it when it falls, we go on, comfortably enough, in our " unwalled villages," without bars or bolts, and seldom think of the sudden foe who may burst into the quiet seclusion of the unguarded valley. Like the people of Dan, to whom one of our texts refers, we may dwell " quiet and secure," in the proper meaning of that word - without care - though, alas ! to be without care is not to be without peril, and to be "secure" is a very different thing from being "safe." The original reads in our first text, ’’ them that are at rest, that dwell securely," or confidently, and thereby expresses not the reality of the villagers’ condition, but the foolhardy illusions of their imaginations, which were so soon to be shattered by the invader bursting in " to take the spoil and to take the prey."
So, sooner or later, comes the crash, as the context of our first text tells us. The destroyer is attracted by the defenselessness of the self confident villagers, and they fall an easy prey. The less the preparation and defence, the more bitter the defeat and destruction. Surely, then, it is madness to carry on full sail till a typhoon strikes the ship. It is no time then to be hauling down sails and battening down hatches. If we do not prepare for the storm, and prefer not to look at the sinking barometer, we shall probably founder while we are trying to do what could have been easily done before. When the enemy is blowing his trumpets for the assault just outside the village, it is too late to begin drawing plans of fortifications, or hurrying with spades and barrows to fling up earthworks. It is no doubt well not to be "over exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils," but not to look certain ones in the face, nor have any notion beforehand of what we propose to do when they come, as come they will, is simple insanity, and would be recognized as such, if the bulk of men did not keep each other in countenance in committing it. This is no world for unwalled villages. Flesh is too sensitive and swords too sharp to allow of wisely dwelling in such. The "quiet" of the men who do so will be terribly disturbed. Their defence less security is blind presumption.
II Our second text brings out, in strong contrast to the former, a security which is externally like it, but really opposed to it, namely, the security of quiet faith. The two states of mind are apparently identical, just as the ideal Jerusalem of Zechariah’s vision looked exactly like these other unwalled towns. The prophecy was not fulfilled in the real, rebuilt Jerusalem ; but the prophet’s eye saw the ideal city, extending beyond the rocky peninsula, to which the real one was confined, and stretching far on every side, like some of the great cities which the exiles had learned to know, containing wide pastures and much cattle, and looking like an assemblage of villages, each among its fields and groves. But the ideal Jerusalem is to have no walls as Babylon had, and to be safer without than Babylon was with these. One thing made the difference between the unwalled Jerusalem, in which dwelling is safe, and the unwalled villages which seemed like it, and dwelling in which is ruinous. The reason why Jerusalem has no walls is, "For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and I will be the glory in the midst of her." A fiery bulwark around, a flaming glory within, belong to her, and make other walls ludicrous superfluities. The presence of Jehovah is at once defence and illumination. That flaming fire is everywhere at once, around and within. At one and the same time it burns threateningly between the city and her foes, and shines lambently, a light in every dwelling; "and the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God did lighten it." Therefore it is safe to have no other walls.
Take the truth conveyed in this grand vision, laying aside metaphor, and it is this : The very same temper which without God is insanity, with God is simple duty, high privilege, and the supremest wisdom. " Take no thought for the morrow." He that has not God to take thought for him, and puts that exhortation in practice, will wreck his life. " I would have you without carefulness." A man that has no " carefulness " for himself, and yet has not cast all his anxiety upon God, who takes an interest in him and undertakes for him, will soon have cause to repent his recklessness. " Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant." The drunkard says that in the original use of the phrase. The saint says it too. The former is wrong and foolish for saying it ; the other says it, and is as sure that it is so as that there is a God in heaven. So the very same temper of careless security, which in a godless man wrecks and ruins both heart and life, in a Christian man is highest joy and clearest wisdom. For the all important difference between the two is that round one of them there is, and round the other there is not, the strong defence of an Almighty protection ; and in the heart of the man that thus has cast himself upon God, and not in the other, there burns, beneficent and illuminating, the unflickering flame of a Divine glory.
" A wall of fire round about us." Yes ! but if it is to be outside us, to defend, it must first be within us, to enlighten and make us glad. And if thus guarded by, and thus filled with, the Divine light, which is at once purity and gladness and knowledge, we cast all our care upon Him, it is not folly to say, " I need no bulwarks, no towers along the steep. The Lord is my Defence, because the Holy One of Israel is my King." Of course we are not to suppose that such words as those of my second text forbid the use of common sense, diligence, and effort in providing for the inevitable future, in so far as these can help to provide for it. Zechariah prophesied that the Jerusalem which he saw should have no walls. But Zechariah was one of the men who helped to build the walls of the real Jerusalem, whose restoration was largely owing to him. In like manner, we are not forbidden, by the requirements of Christian resignation and faith in God, to forsake any precautions which common prudence - which, in fact, is His voice - suggests to us to take. But we are forbidden to fancy that these are our defenses and security. Use them, and yet look beyond them to Him who alone can give the blessing.
Now, all that I have been saying may be gathered into two words. How foolish it is to front life and what it may bring, and death and what it must bring, without God for our Defence ! And how yet more foolish, if that be possible, it is for those who have God for their Defence to be troubled and careful about many things, or anything ! " We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks." Let us keep behind them, and trust in no arm of flesh, but in the unseen defence of the ever present God ; and let us seek first to have Him for a glory in the midst of us, and then surely He will be a wall of fire round about us.