Kingless Folk, and other Addresses on Bible Animals

The Swallow

"As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come." – Prov. xxvi. 2.

The swallow is the bird of the summer. Like the coming of the cuckoo itself, the arrival of the swallow is anxiously waited for as the harbinger of warmer days. And thus we have the beautiful fancy connected with the little flower Celandine. The name means "a swallow," and was applied to the tiny plant because it was supposed to open its petals when the swallows appeared in spring, and to close them and die when they disappeared in autumn. Whether the flowers hasten to welcome the little bird or not, there are many human hearts that leap up with joy at the sight of the airy wanderer, and hail it as the bird of freedom – the herald and pledge of the summer.

I. – IT IS THE BIRD OF FREEDOM

This is the meaning of its Hebrew name, and surely no more fitting title could be applied to so unfettered and freedom-loving a bird. Tennyson, in his great poem, "In Memoriam," speaks of

"Short swallow-flights of song that dipTheir wings … and skim away."

Who does not love to see it darting through the sunshine, skimming along the surface of a stream, or wheeling away in airy circles on its swift, untired wings! It is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever – happy as the summer light, free and untamable as the breeze.

And we set this down as the first law of bird-life – that every songster of the field and wood should be free. This is its birthright and blessing, and no one has the right to rob it of its liberty. The green fields and the blue sky have been given to it as its heritage, and the barbarous custom of binding its wandering wing and shutting it up in a cage should be censured and condemned by all healthy minds. The swallow, indeed, cannot be thus tamed and domesticated. She who claims the whole earth as her fatherland refuses to be imprisoned in a cage. She will die rather than yield. And all young hearts cannot learn the lesson too soon that the feathered tribes of the woodland ought to be left to their God-given liberty.

II. – IT IS THE BIRD OF OBEDIENCE

Another lesson taught by the swallow is that liberty is not license. Freedom to wander from land to land does not mean freedom from all control. Our text speaks of the law of its migration. Like the stork, the crane, or the turtle dove, the swallow knows the time of its coming.

In France it is spoken of as "the Jew," because of its wandering habits; and in the science of heraldry it was used as a crest by the crusader pilgrims to symbolise the fact that they too were strangers in a strange land. But to the swallow no land is strange. The whole earth is its fatherland. And while it does wander to and fro over land and sea, it always observes its appointed seasons. All its wandering is guided by a purpose. Its freedom is regulated by unfailing instinct. It may speed its flight to far distant climes, but it comes back to the same nest. This is the law of its migration; and in obedience to it, the swallows appear in April and disappear in October with all the regularity of the seasons or the ebb and flow of the tide. The cause is there, and the effect follows. The bird of freedom is a slave to its own higher destiny.

And so ought we. Freedom to wander is not so great a boon as obedience to a higher, diviner law. Like the needle trembling to the pole, or the swallow returning to the same old nest, our hearts ought to hark back to the sacredness of home and to the God and faith of our fathers. "There is an instinct in the new-born babes of Christ, like the instinct that leads birds to build their nests" (Rutherford). And this instinct, like the law of migration, makes us the children of obedience. There is no license in the liberty of Christ. We are only free to serve.

III. – IT IS THE BIRD THAT BUILDSITS NEST IN GOD'S TEMPLE

"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars" (Ps. lxxxiv. 3).

Swallows sometimes build their nests in the most extraordinary places – on a picture frame, on a lamp-bracket, on a door-knocker, in a table-drawer, and between the handles of a pair of shears hung on the wall. James Gilmour, in his missionary travels through Mongolia, found that they actually entered his tent and built their nests within reach of his hand. And so fully do the little birds confide in man's protection, that they will even take up their abode in his places of worship. The heathen temples, the Mohammedan mosques, and the Christian churches are all inhabited by the swallow, and here, in the eighty-fourth Psalm, it is spoken of as having sought and found a home in the courts of the Jewish temple.

The Psalmist, detained at home, envied the little birds that built their nests under the eaves of the priests' houses, and thought of the very sparrows that were allowed to pick up the crumbs in the temple courts. It reminds us of Samuel Rutherford when a prisoner in Aberdeen. He often looked back to his country church and manse near the shore of the Solway Firth, and sighed, "I am for the present thinking the sparrows and swallows that build their nests at Anwoth blessed birds." These men, as Spurgeon would say, "needed no clatter of bells" to bring them to church; they carried a bell in their own bosoms; holy appetite is a better call to worship than a full chime.

And the lesson is for the young people no less than for their parents. For the Psalmist adds that the nest of the swallow was for "her young." The swallow reared her young brood in the temple courts. And this is the duty and privilege of all Christian parents. The house of God may be a nest for their little ones. How beautiful to see parents and children coming Sabbath by Sabbath to the same family pew! In after-years will not these little ones find their way back to the same old nest? Yes, "train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it." Or if, perchance, they are called upon to suffer, and are not able, like the Psalmist, to come to God's house, the spirit will still be willing though the flesh be weak, and they will sit and sing like another great sufferer —

"A little bird I am,Shut from the fields of air,And in my cage I sit and singTo Him who placed me there,Well pleased a prisoner to be,Because, O God, it pleaseth thee."Nought else have I to do,I sing the whole day long,And He whom most I love to please,Doth listen to my song.He caught and bound my wandering wing,But still He bends to hear me sing."

The Spider

"The hypocrite's hope shall perish, … whose trust shall be a spider's web." – Job viii. 13, 14.

What is hypocrisy? It is a bird of evil omen that builds its nest on the tree of religion. It is a kind of homage that vice pays to virtue. Were there no virtue there would be no need to simulate it. Every act of hypocrisy is a tacit acknowledgment of its greatness. O Virtue! how great thou art, when even the bad and the vile are constrained to do thee homage! No one becomes a hypocrite when he pretends to be different from what he is, but when he pretends to be better than he is. In spite of himself he is paying a high tribute to thy greatness and goodness!

The attempt to conceal the evil heart, however, shall not always be successful. "The day is coming when hypocrites will be stripped of their fig-leaves" (Matthew Henry). Their trust shall be as frail as a spider's web. Could any language be more expressive? In Eastern lands the flimsiness of the spider's web is proverbial. "He shall lean upon his house (on that light gossamer), but it shall not stand: he shall hold fast thereby, but it shall not endure." The material is so frail, that the least violence destroys it; and the hypocrite's hope is so flimsy, that it shall not stand in the judgment. "They weave the spider's web, but their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works" (Isa. lix. 6).

But turning to the spider itself, we may learn various lessons.

I. – ITS SKILL AS A WEAVER

Like Hogarth's good apprentice, it has made admirable use of its trade. Its web, however frail, is really a marvellous production. It is distinguished by beauty of design, fineness of texture, nicety and sensitiveness of touch, reminding us of Pope's couplet —

"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,Feels at each thread and lives along the line."

And when we add to this that the whole fabric is spun out of its own body – a part of its very life – it is not difficult to see that the spider's work must be of the finest order, and well worthy of the study and imitation of every young apprentice.

Every lad in going forward to the work of his life should set up a high ideal. In all that he does he ought to aim at perfection. Like the spider's web, his work, whatever it is, should be a bit of himself – steeped in his own thought and shaped by his own effort. He may only be a weaver, but he must aspire to be a good one – one who plans as well as labours, and reads as well as plans. For in the race of life, muscle is no match for mind, and skill will always outstrip slovenliness – just as the great Goliath must go down before the alert son of Jesse, and the pigmies of the African forest can easily outmatch and out-manoeuvre the lion. Let every young life go and examine the perfection of the spider's web, and seek to do likewise.

II. – ITS PROWESS AS A HUNTER

Popular prejudice has always been against the spider; and it must be admitted that there is a good deal to sanction the poet's unfavourable verdict when he says regarding it —

"Cunning and fierce, mixture abhorr'd."

Its cunning and craft have passed into a proverb; and all the children know that its apparent treachery, in decoying the little fly into its parlour, has been suitably expressed in verse. Its fierceness also is quite equal to its cunning, and when the thought of its hairy-looking appearance is added to the fact of the poison-fangs which it buries in the bodies of its victims, there would seem to be enough to warrant the general dislike with which the spider has at all times been regarded.

On the other hand, we must not forget these two things – (1) That the spider is only fulfilling the instinct which an all-wise God has implanted in it; and (2) that it is of great service to man in diminishing the swarms of insects by which he is molested. Thomas Edward, the Banffshire naturalist, calculated that a single pair of swallows would destroy 282,000 insects in one year while rearing their two broods, and sometimes they rear three. And if this be the service rendered by a single pair of birds, what may not be accomplished by those innumerable spiders that weave their gummy webs on every bush and hedge-row, and spend the entire day, and sometimes the whole night, in trapping and ridding the atmosphere of those annoying pests. Bereft of these wily hunters, we should be like the Egyptians in the time of Moses – plagued and eaten up of flies: so that in spite of prejudice and general dislike the spider is occupying a real sphere of usefulness in the world. And so may we. We can afford at times to pause and study the hunter's skill, and do something to imitate its prowess.

III. – ITS FAME AS A TEACHER

It teaches us how to spin and how to weave, how to hunt and how to snare. And as one has expressed it, it has solved many a problem in mathematics before Euclid was born. Look at the spider's web, and see whether "any hand of man, with all the fine appliances of art, and twenty years' apprenticeship to boot, could weave us such another." Nay, if we think of the water-spider, which bottles up air, and takes it under water to breathe with, it is not too much to say, that if people had but "watched water-spiders as Robert Bruce watched the cottage spider, diving-bells would have been discovered hundreds of years ago, and people might have learnt how to go to the bottom of the sea and save the treasures of wrecks."

The name of King Robert the Bruce suggests one special lesson. If all history be true, the spider will always be known in Scotland as the teacher of perseverance—

"If at first you don't succeed,Try, try, try again."

Once, twice, thrice, nay, six times over the tiny creature, like a swinging pendulum, had swung towards the opposite rafter in that little cottage, but always without success; and the eyes of the defeated and almost hopeless hero of Scotland watched its repeated struggles. But however often it had failed, it was in no wise beaten nor discouraged; but gathered up all its energies for another and more strenuous effort. "England, Scotland, Spiderland expects every one to do his duty," and with one supreme push it swung out and won at last. "Bravo!" exclaimed the Bruce, as he recalled how he himself had been defeated six times, and might read in the triumph of the spider the promise and pledge of his own. Little did the cottage spider think how a mighty courage had been rekindled by its tiny struggles, and how a brilliant page in history would be opened by the memory of its splendid success. Yet so it was. Great results have sometimes sprung from small causes, and the champion of Scottish liberties arose from his pallet bed to deliver and consolidate his kingdom.

And little do children in any age think how great an influence they might wield, if only in devotion to what is right they would follow and obey Christ's gospel. Many a tiny seed has grown into a great tree. And Jesus Himself has said, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise" (Matt. xxi. 16).

The Fly

"Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour." – Eccles. x. 1.

Both of these terms, "apothecary" and "ointment," need to be explained. In Hebrew they have no reference to anything medical, whether it be to the person of a chemist or the contents of a chemist's shop. The ointment means the various perfumes in use among the Jews – both in the anointing of the living and in the embalming of the dead; and the apothecary meant the perfumer who prepared and sold these perfumes, whether as cosmetics for the toilet or as spices for the tomb.

If, therefore, the perfumes were carelessly stored or insecurely protected, the flies managed to gain admittance, and the priceless treasure became corrupted by the odour of their dead bodies. For "the fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets." And the lesson drawn by the preacher is sufficiently telling, "So doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom." The man himself is the ointment, his reputation is the perfume, the little folly is the dead fly, and his disgrace is the stinking savour. Ah! little foxes spoil the vines, and sometimes little follies lead to great sins. "It is very cold," said the camel in an Eastern fable, "and I would be so thankful to you, Mister Tailor, if you would only let me put my nose inside your door." And the good man consented. But soon the camel had thrust in his head as well as his nose, then his neck and his forefeet, and last of all his whole body, which completely filled up the tailor's little shop. It was no use now pleading that there was no room for both. The camel coolly replied that in that case the tailor could go outside. It was the beginning of the evil that wrought the mischief. It was allowing the nose that did it. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," just as a tiny spark will kindle a great fire, or little snowflakes become a dreaded avalanche. Let every young heart shun the least appearance of evil. Dead flies corrupt the costly spikenard.

But the fly itself will repay attention from two points of view.

I. – ITS STRUCTURE

Were we in search of design in nature, or an illustration of the wonders of the microscope, no better example could be suggested to us than the form and structure of a fly. Its tiny body is even more wonderful than the body of a man. Take, for instance, its marvellous power of walking. It can walk anywhere or anyhow, setting every principle of gravitation at defiance by promenading head downwards along the ceiling, or skipping up and down the glittering window-pane, pursuing objects that to us are quite invisible. How is the feat accomplished? What peculiarity has its little foot that the daring acrobat can keep itself suspended in that dizzy and foolhardy position? The microscope gives us the answer. The foot consists of two pads covered with innumerable short hairs, and these hairs are hollow, having trumpet-shaped mouths filled with gum. This gum becomes so hard when exposed to the air, that it will not dissolve in water, so that at every step the fly glues itself to the ceiling, and there it would remain unless it knew how to lift its feet. It lifts them in a slanting direction while the gum is still moist, just as you would remove a moist postage stamp by taking hold of one corner and gently drawing it back. And think of the creature's eye. It can observe everything in four-fifths of the circle round it, so that to compete with a fly we would require two more pair of eyes, one at the side and another at the back of our head. But in no sense can we compete with these aerial nomads. They have three sets of brain instead of one. They have wings, which we have not. They have six legs instead of two; and their proboscis or trunk is as far beyond that of an elephant "as a railway engine is beyond a wheelbarrow."

As seen under a powerful microscope, the structure of a common fly is a perfect marvel of design, and it may well excite our curiosity and call forth our admiration. It points us to the greatness and wisdom of Him whose works are as perfect in the tiniest insect as in the brightest star, whose power is as manifest in the humblest sea-shell as in the huge leviathan that makes the ocean its playground —

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body Nature is, and God the soul."II. – ITS USEFULNESS

Instead of usefulness, one might almost be tempted to say that the first law of their nature is to torment people; but the service they render to the world at large must not be lightly esteemed.

1. The very torment of which they are so capable may be turned into a visitation of judgment. When Isaiah refers to the scattering of the Ten Tribes, he exclaims, "The Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria" (Isa. vii. 18). And the children will remember that the ten plagues which fell upon Egypt included "swarms of flies" in all the houses of the Egyptians. These little insects were used as the scourges of mankind to wreak the vengeance of a broken law on the heads of the transgressors. And especially is this the case with the law of cleanliness. The one sin that the fly will not tolerate is the sin of laziness and dirt. Wheresoever the filth is, there will the flies be gathered together. Those who despise this first law of their being will not offend with impunity; and if no other scourge be available, that little torment – the common fly – will be commissioned to undertake the duty.

2. But the sword they wield is double-edged. It not only flays the law-breakers, it also slays the infection and the fever which have followed in their train. They are the scavengers of the atmosphere. They do for the air what the pariah dogs of the East do for the earth – they gather up and remove everything that offends, everything that occasions or breeds disease. Let no one say that the swarms of flies bring the cholera and the fever. They are the camp-followers who tread on the heels of those dreaded foes, and they feed upon and do their best to remove the foulsome odours. We need not grudge the spider his savoury morsel, but it will be a dark hour for the earth if he should gain the mastery. If he should prove too much for the fly, we shall be left to the miasmas and pestilences from which the presence of the fly relieves us.

3. Even in its death the fly renders a most substantial service. It forms the food of innumerable song-birds, which, apart from the fly, would never be found in our land at all. How dull and lifeless would the months of the summer be without the swallow, the willow-warbler, and the fly-catcher. And yet these feed almost entirely on flies. "And if the trout had not discovered what a savoury morsel the fly is that dances on the stream, what a very dull, stupid amusement would fishing be! Many a schoolboy would lose the greatest treat of a summer holiday if there were no flies, and no trout that appreciated them."

The niche filled by the fly is therefore a very important one. It neither lives a useless life nor dies a useless death. Its sphere of usefulness is as striking and suggestive as the wondrous delicacy of its form and structure, and they both point us to the Great Creator whose greatness and goodness are manifested through all His works —

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish, or a sparrow fall."

And if the boy be the father of the man, we may justly emphasise another lesson – that the law of kindness ought to rule in the least as well as in the greatest – that he who begins by torturing a fly may end with something far more solemn —a human heart.

The Pearl-Oyster

"Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." – Matt. vii. 6.

The disciples of Jesus are here told not to talk too freely of their spiritual enjoyments before men of debased tastes. Religion is brought into contempt, and its professors insulted, when it is forced upon those who cannot value it and will not have it. "Throw a pearl to a swine," says Matthew Henry, "and he will resent it, as if you threw a stone at him; reproofs will be called reproaches." Such men cannot appreciate the jewels of Christianity, and like swine, which prefer peas to pearls, they will trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.

On the other hand, this caution is not to be carried too far. We are not to set down all our neighbours as dogs and swine, and then excuse ourselves from trying to do them good on this poor plea. The Saviour's golden rule shows us a more excellent way: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." We are to deal with each other as God deals with us. He does not judge us uncharitably; but still less does He give that which is holy to the dogs. He gives to each what is suitable to each. He sends His rain on the just and on the unjust; but He keeps His lovefor those who worship and love His Son (John xiv. 21). And that is His example to you and me. We must seek His Spirit to guide us in all things, that being made wise with His wisdom, we may ourselves possess the pearl of great price and not cast our pearls before swine.

I. – BUT WHAT IS A PEARL?

It is a well-known gem found in several shell-fish, such as the common mussel and the oyster. How it came to be there was long a puzzle to man. In ancient times they imagined it was formed from the dew of heaven. The sparkling dewdrops and the shining pearls were so like each other that they adopted the beautiful fancy that the pearl was begotten from the dew. To explain the shining lustre of the gem this other detail was added, that just at the moment when the conception was taking place there was a vivid flash of lightning, and the pearl caught something of the fiery gleam. All these fancies are read together by one ancient writer, when he says regarding the pearl of great price, "This Pearl is Jesus, whom the virgin conceived from the divine lightning."

But all this, of course, is pure fancy. A pearl is not formed from the dew, and still less is its lustre derived from the lightning. Science would describe it as the result of an accident. It is "an accidental concretion of shelly matter deposited within the shell of certain mollusca." If you open an oyster-shell you find the inside of it all covered over with a bright smooth covering of shelly matter. This is laid on in innumerable layers, the one above the other, and the thinner and more transparent the layers, the more perfect is the lustre. Now, if any hard substance like a grain of sand gets inside the shell, this shelly matter begins to gather round it, coat after coat, which harden as they gather, until the pearl is fully formed. It is said the Chinese take advantage of this fact to get the little creatures to make imitation pearls. They insert round pellets between the valves of the mussel, and in a short time the creature deposits a coating of this pearly substance upon them, and they can scarcely be detected from true pearls.