A HOME-LOVE LESSON FROM RUTH.
By Alexander McLaren
[From Alexander McLaren, D.D. in S. S. Times.] The love that knit these two together reaches its noblest expression in Ruth’s vow, which is included in the lesson. It was a love that hungered to be together: “Whither thou goest, I will go.” It was a love that craved identification with the beloved, and was prepared to win that at the cost of forsaking country and kindred: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” It was a love that drew her to accept Naomi’s God, and it was a love made tenderer and greater by the thought of death, as sunset brings the color into the sky: “Where thou diest, will I die.” It was a love that yearningly felt after a kind of union even in the darkness of the grave: “There will I be buried.” It was a love sure of its own constancy: “The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” No wonder that when Naomi “saw that she was steadfastly minded,” “she left speaking unto her.” That torrent of love swept away all opposition. I dare say that they said little more as they toiled along, two, weary women, on the hot road to Bethlehem. Ruth would be silent because she had poured her heart out, and Naomi because she was drinking in Ruth’s spoken love, and both because they were at rest, and had no need to talk. There is no need of love for so heroic a type, nor of protestations so vehement, in the ordinary family life of most of us. But how the prose of it would be lifted up, and the essential sweetness of it increased, if our family love was a little less tongue-tied! It is far more often too reticent than too voluble. Feeling may be talked away, but it may also be killed by never being allowed to come to words, and there are more households in America and England robbed of their greatest blessing, recognized family love, by reserve than by gush.