CHAPTER 22
see not only lions, but wolves, foxes, hogs, goats, monkeys, snakes, and all the rest of the human menagerie. I hardly need ask the reader if he has seen men and women who have impressed him in appearance and ways with the animals just mentioned.
Neither jeans nor broadcloth can hide the hog at the table who evidently is not eating to live, but living to eat. A wolf looking at a lamb is a familiar spectacle in society. The human monkey who lives to be laughed at is in every neighborhood. And who has not seen the eyes of the fox fastened on you in office, parlor, or church; and felt the crawly approach of the snake, the touch of whose hand and soft, slippery style of speech created a sickening sensation similar to that when a serpent is discovered to be near.
These horrible likenesses instantly disappear under the regenerating and sanctifying power of God; and in this fact we obtain the second proof of what has been stated, that a spirit, human or angelic, which departs from God becomes animalized.
David’s affliction was in being compelled to dwell while among men whom he could best describe as lions. He may have been thinking only of the ferocity of the beast; but it is doubtful. The full photograph reveals a catlike approach, treacherous waiting, the sudden spring, terrible roar, crushing blow, grinding teeth, tearing claws, and all the vast strength and cruel nature of the great brute of the forest.
With such men as Saul and Doeg to deal with, and such characters as Joab, Abishai, Ahithophel, and Shimei about him, the noble, magnanimous, spiritual David felt the repugnance and suffering analogous to one condemned to dwell with wild animals in the wilderness.
Christ knew what it was to be among lions when He looked into the pitiless faces of the high priest and elders, as He stood arrested and bound before them. He also saw as well as felt them in the dreadful treatment He received from the hands of a brutal soldiery, by whom He was tormented for hours through the night.
Paul was among lions when he stood before the Sanhedrin, or confronted the Jewish populace as, enraged over his religious experience, they cast dust in the air and howled for his death.
A Christian has lived a very obscure and solitary life who does not in time get to know the awful depths in the expression, “dwelling among lions.”
All of us have been among the lions. Some only for a little while; but others, through God’s providence, have to abide with them a long time.
All will agree that for a child of God to be compelled to stay several hours in a room filled with drinking, gambling, cursing men, would be like being cast among lions. But the meaning goes deeper still. The verse has profounder and more painful applications.
It is to live year after year in a godless community, where Christ is forgotten, the Sabbath desecrated, the Bible and religion laughed at, while the devil is the unquestioned monarch and ruler of the place. The actual sight of lions rolling over each other, now gamboling and playing, and now fighting each other with fearful roars and gaping wounds, would not be a more dreadful spectacle to behold than what many of God’s children are compelled to witness from day to day and year to year, in towns and cities that seem utterly given up to every kind of folly and sin.
Dwelling among lions is to be a member of a cold, dead, formal, worldly congregation, where a conversion never takes place, where genuine revivals are laughed at and denounced, where the class-meeting is abandoned, and the church given over to lectures, Chautauquan circles, church suppers, ice-cream festivals, grab-bag performances, and every conceivable kind of amusement.
Dwelling among lions is to be a member of a Conference Synod, Presbytery, or Council, where no one believes that God can and does sanctify the soul instantly in answer to consecration, prayer, and faith.
The roar and rending that takes place over such a testimony and Church report will show that all the lions are not dead yet.
It is to stand up in some Preachers’ Meeting and claim the experience of entire sanctification, and gently urge the blessing upon others. The sight of a half-dozen persons springing, so to speak, at the testifier’s throat in loud and angry denial, will throw considerable light on David’s words, “My soul hath dwelt among lions.”
It is to sit in a car, stage-coach, or at a hotel table where escape is impossible, and be compelled to listen for minutes or hours to the profanity or obscenity of young traveling agents.
It is to be a member of an irreligious household, and feel as lonely and even lonelier than Robinson Crusoe on his island, or a hermit in the desert.
It is to be united for life to a man or woman whose unspiritual, carnal, or worldly life makes a gap and chasm between the husband and wife, like that between a man and an animal. There are mutual, instinctive shrinkings from each other, as a man would draw back from an animal, or an animal would depart from a man. But the laws of God and the State are such that the ghastly companionship can not be broken.
Again, the experience is seen in being thrown with very disagreeable religious people. They claim the nature of the sheep; but keep up the old-time roar, the slash of the claw, the bite of the tooth, and the heavy blow of the paw. It seems impossible for them to let a person come into or leave their presence without inflicting a gaping wound. “The sermon was wrong,” “the exegesis was faulty,” “the manner was not pleasing,” “the voice was too loud,” “the dress was objectionable,” and so on, endlessly.
They are self-commissioned to set everybody right but themselves. They have slaps, scratches, bites for all their brethren and sisters, which they call heavenly rebukes and revelations. They are Divinely appointed to go around and tell everybody how to dress and who to marry, and how to do generally. They have received a revelation from God that it is wrong for a man to wear a mustache, while women must wear Mother
Hubbard-looking dresses, and let their hair hang down their backs like the mane of a Shetland pony. They have, moreover, just received some new light, with some new notions, and everybody must come right over into their way of thinking, or take the consequences of going at once into backsliding, and finally into hell.
Again, the lions are seen in the shape of argumentative and disputatious, religious people. They look in the midst of their pulpit, platform, and pen deliverances, not to say attacks, as if they were after mashing and killing a man, instead of saving him. Everybody is wrong, and they are right. They have just received the last edition of the Bible from heaven. The world is getting worse all the time; Saturday is the true Sunday; Turkey and the
whole Mohammedan empire was to go down in 1898; and whosoever will not believe and receive these things ought to be kicked out of the
community and sent to hell in a body. This is just the way it looks and sounds.
Still again, the lions are beheld in the form of untidy religious people. The apology made for them is that they are eccentric. The plain truth in English is, that in body and apparel they are unclean. We expect nothing better of lions, for they have neither soap nor towels, and have to wear one suit for a lifetime. But there is no excuse for human beings, with springs and rivers flowing around them in great numbers and overflowing abundance, while soap can be had for a cent a bar.
It is a great mistake to quote the wild life and rough manners of John the Baptist, and the unkempt condition of Elijah as God’s idea of a man’s life and appearance. These two men were great, not because of these things, but in spite of them. The Baptist is not heaven’s conception of the perfect man, with his shaggy mantle, food of locusts, almost clotheless body, and generally ascetic life.
Jesus Christ is the ideal man! With his tunic, sandals, and the garment woven without a seam, He was well clothed. And He came eating and drinking. He was the sound, wholesome, morally symmetrical man, who is worshipped around the world today, and is drawing all men unto Himself.
The children were not afraid of Him, but nestled in His arms; the women sat at his feet; the sick and, troubled flocked to Him, and as the Pharisees themselves said, “Behold the whole world is gone after Him.”