p. 244 | Hebrew Manhood

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 1, 1882

Hebrew Manhood.

In nothing is real manhood better seen than in right choice.

This quality embraces many others. It embraces faith such as Abraham's, that staggers not at the promise of God but stands calmly, as he did on Mount Moriah, and with clear eye looks down on the ages and comprehends the grand unfolding of Messiah's kingdom. Without such a broad, extensive view of human affairs, how could he have risen to the grandeur of his choice to slay his son,—even his only son Isaac, the child of promise, from whom the Messiah was to descend—rather than to doubt the truth or deny the authority, of what he knew to be the divine word?

This quality, of choosing great ultimate ends, those ends which determine character, embraces temperance and sobriety, even spirituality of life; it involves the subordination of all selfish, earthly and low appetites and passions to spiritual ends.

How could Daniel have risen to such heights of character in the choice he made, if he had not first "purposed in his heart, not to defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank;" and subsequently, to say to the bribing spirit of Belshazzar, "Let thy gifts be to thyself and thy rewards to another, yet I will read the writing unto the King and make known to him the interpretation?"

It costs something to make noble choices in life; for they run counter to all the lower and more animal tendencies of our nature. It takes courage and fortitude—real bravery—negatively and positively, to take such moral ground as our higher nature is capable of and as God calls us to occupy. It takes great fortitude and patience to submit to some things—more bravery than it does to fight them. See Job with calamities raining upon him—family swept away, flocks destroyed, friends arrayed against him and mocking him in an affectation of friendly interest, his body a nauseous, ulcerous mass; and yet from the spirit of the afflicted man there arises no curse against God. His lips are a barred and bolted gate against ungodly murmurs. I think he is the greatest hero in the ancient world. Your Cæsars, and Pompeys, and Hannibals, and Alexanders are a band of red-handed cravens beside this one pure, brave spirit who sings from out his living sepulcher, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." Then see those three young men in Babylon, who, upon the plain of Dura, before the flashing glory of Nebuchadnezzar's idol dare to stand alone under the fiery, jealous scrutiny

of a whole kingdom, and see their way leading directly to the open door of a gleaming sevenfold heated furnace, rather than deny the God of Israel.

Surely no man can surmount the summit of their moral choice, without courage sublime enough to bring wandering angels from the seventh heaven to behold the sight, and the Son of God, from the throne of the Eternal to share with them their furnace throne and make of the very crackling flames the gleaming robes of their coronation day.

Talk of manhood! What is this of which men become possessed when they are able to subordinate all the powers of the lower nature and all the fury of the elements, all the vengeance of heathen princes and all the jealous rage of Satanic opposers, and put it all under their feet, and thus posited calmly rise into the very companionship of the Son of God. The moral altitude of such men is grander than that of the angel whom John saw in the apocalypse, who "stood upon the sea and upon the earth and lifted his hand to heaven and swore by Him that liveth forever and ever, that there should be time no longer;" and yet the Old Testament—the book which some wise souls fancy they have outgrown,—abounds in its instances of men who have subordinated everything, even life itself, that they might rise to the grandeur of such a choice. There is Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and Joshua, and Gideon, and Barak, and Samuel, and David, and Elijah with his seven thousand companions who did not bow the knee to Baal, and multitudes of whom, in that ancient time, they were the mere representatives, "who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens;" these all "obtained a good report through faith."

They are simply our elder brethren in the same great fight, our companions before whom was put the same moral option, of gaining this world or the world to come.—Rev. H. C. Mabie, in Hebrew Student.