Verses 1-54
The Second Adam The Mighty Dead
This chapter should be taken as one lesson from beginning to end, and having read it through the reader will certainly be filled with wonder at the list of strange and even marvellous names. The first question that will arise must naturally be, What do we know of these people? The answer is that we know next to nothing about them, and yet there is the fact that they actually lived, exerted an influence, concluded their mission, and then passed away. It is always of importance vividly to realise the fact that there are other people in the world beside ourselves. This may seem to be commonplace, but in reality it is full of deep suggestion. How difficult it is, for example, for an Englishman to believe that there are other countries besides England! As a geographical matter he would not doubt it for a moment, for the Englishman keeps his atlas and looks at it from time to time for various purposes. But this is not the question. It is not enough to admit that the geography includes within its limits a great number of nations; we must so realise the nationalities in their variety and in their unity as to feel more and more that the human race is one, and is under the same beneficent providence. The last idea that will be driven out of the mind of an Englishman is that he is the superior person of the world. He looks upon all other languages as but signs of ignorance on the part of those who speak them. He smiles at the civilisation of other countries with which he is unfamiliar. He rudely comments upon the habits of people who do not belong to his own empire. Who can understand the smile of ignorance? Who can utterly exhaust all the meaning of the contempt which is even civilly suppressed? In order to overcome all this there must be much more intercourse between nationalities, and greatly enlarged sphere of education, much deeper study of history and national polity than we have yet entered upon. However great may be the name of an Englishman, the word Man is greater than any epithet which can be attached to it, whether the epithet refer to nationality, to personal attraction, or to social position. Jesus Christ came into the world to teach us the value of the word Man: he himself was the Son of man a title the full meaning of which we have not yet realised, but when we do realise it there will be great advances made in positive democracy, and more attention will be paid to the consolidated wisdom of the ages than to the arbitrary authority of single persons or officers.
The next effect of a perusal of this chapter will probably be something of the nature of wonder that we should have become connected with the extraordinary personalities given in this great list. What have we to do with Enosh, Jered, Meshech, or Gomer? Now, this is the miracle of Christ, that we should come to be related to all these names, not perhaps in any explicable way, which can be stated and defended in words, but mysteriously, yet vitally, as receiving atmospheric impressions, or inheriting intellectual estates, or entering upon the possession of new territories of thought. Jesus Christ came to claim the whole world in its unity, to be indeed the second Adam, carrying forward all the meaning of the first to its highest expressions. He was not one of a multitude, but the Head of the new race. It is suggestive that the very name Adam is applied to him by the Apostle Paul. He is called "the second Adam" which is the Lord from heaven. Other nations have had more or less imperfect visions of ancient history and of the unity of the race, but in the Bible alone do we find an authoritative declaration made concerning the antiquity and unity of man and the ultimate destiny of the human race. The Chaldeans had a tradition of ten antediluvian patriarchs or kings. They made the duration of this first period of human history four hundred and thirty-two thousand years. All other chronicles have been bewildered by their polytheism, whereas in the Hebrew history we have all the sublime unity which would seem to be necessitated by the monotheism of the writers. They who believed in one God were likely to believe in one humanity. Monotheism accounts for the two commandments which relate first to God, and then to man. There is no theological diversity, multitudinousness, and consequent confusion: the Hebrews knew but one God, one fountain and origin of things, and they were consistent with their philosophy and their theology in tracing the human race back as it is traced in the Book of Genesis. It cannot but be an intellectual blessing, to take the very lowest ground, that we should accustom ourselves to think of all nationalities as one. Out of this practice will come an enquiry as to the varieties of habit which are discoverable in all human history how to account for such variety, how to account for the difference in colour, stature, language, and usage of all people? Ethnology has some answer to give, but the only complete answer which covers the entire area of the question is to be found in the Bible. Not only is it an intellectual blessing to realise the unity of the human race, it has the effect of an inspired prophecy upon our whole thinking and outlook. How are these varieties to be brought into conscious reconciliation and brotherhood? That they can never bring themselves to such an issue has been abundantly proved by the abortive efforts which have covered the space of innumerable centuries. The Christian's hope is in Christ. The Son of man makes all men one. To touch him is to enter into the mystery and joy of universal brotherhood. To know the Son is to be made free; if the Son shall make us free we shall be free indeed. All gropings, endeavours, attempts, and efforts in the direction of bringing the world into conscious unity, are but so many prophecies, all but inspired, that there must be One somewhere, who holds the answer to this mystery, and who can bring to consummation this sacred and beneficent miracle.
Another effect arising from a thoughtful perusal of this chapter will be an awful familiarity with what may be called the death-roll of the human race. What a crowded cemetery is this! Kings, princes, leaders, mighty men, fair women, hunters living upon the mountain, citizens dwelling in the plain, statesmen, legislators, all have come and gone; all have been laid in the common dust. When one man dies a solemn feeling is produced by his decease: but let another die, and a whole family be added to the number of those who have departed, then a whole township, then an entire county, then a complete nation; and let this process of addition go on from century to century, and at last we come to expect death, to be familiar with it, and to care nothing about it, except at the point where it happens to affect us personally. Who could bear to look at once upon all the deaths which are occurring during any one hour of the world's history? We do but see our own dead. The father only knows of one dead child, and that child is his own. He hears of the death of others, he reads the death-list day by day as an item of general intelligence, but no man realises the dreadful extent of the ravages of death during any one hour of the world's career. The literature of our tombstones would fill a great library. Who could calculate the acreage of paper that would be needed to have copied upon it all the writing that is to be found in the cemeteries of the world? Yet, notwithstanding this continual removal of men, there is a continual influx of successors, so that the earth abideth for ever, even as to its human phases and relationships. Men go down in the nighttime and are not missed in the morning. The greatest names in history pass away into partial oblivion, and new energies come to occupy the attention of the world. Blessed be God, no man can put away from him the thought of his own personal death. A right acceptance of that fact should lead to religious consideration and religious preparation. Death is not something that occurred long ago, or something that will transpire in distant ages: death will come as a guest to every house, and as a guest, if we may so say it, to every heart; and every man must make his own acquaintance with the last grim enemy. We cannot tell how we may die, but, thanks be to God, it is in our power to say in some measure at least how we may live. Christ has ennobled us by the thought that we may so live in him and for him as actually to abolish death, in so far as it is either a penalty or a degradation. Living in the Lord Jesus Christ, serving him diligently, acknowledging only his mastery over all our thoughts, feelings, and actions, we may come to long for death, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; and in that sublime ecstacy we shall know nothing of the bitterness of death, but shall recognise in the last messenger one who is sent to introduce us into the presence of the King.
What havoc is made in this chapter of the grandeur of titular dignity; what brilliant names are here; and yet they have become the names of the dead. The dukes of Edom, duke Timnah, duke Aliah, duke Jetheth, duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Pinon, duke Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar, duke Magdiel, duke Iram, what are they now? where are their robes? where the pomp and circumstance that made them figures in their time? And as for the kings of Edom, and Bela, and Jobab, and Husham, and Hadad, and Samlah, and Shaul, and Baalhanan, is there not one of them left to represent the dignity of the house of Edom? are they clean gone for ever? Can spaces that have been occupied by kings be emptied of all glory and renown, and throw themselves open to uses of the people? We know that such things do happen as a mere matter of fact, but we seldom allow them to come so near to us as to produce a deeply religious impression upon our thought and feeling. If all these mighty men have come and gone, let us not attempt to put away from ourselves the commonplace fact that we shall also go, and the place which knows us now shall know us no more for ever. The difference between the kings and the dukes of Edom and ourselves is, that they have a name on historical pages, whilst we have no names but in our own family Bible or on our own particular tombstone. But a fame is open to us: the fame of doing good is a renown which any man may enjoy, and though it may make but little figure as to historical importance, it will be recognised at the last by the words "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."
The writer of this chapter shows us how necessary it is to understand the whole, if we would really understand the part. He boldly puts down the name of Adam at the head of his list. But is not the writer going to furnish the history of the kings of Israel and of Judah; is he not in the last resort to occupy a still narrower ground? Why, then, does he begin at the very beginning? Simply because in order to understand any one man we must understand the whole man, or humanity. This gives importance to every individual. He is not self-contained and self-measureable, as if he had no relation to any who have gone before; every man may be said to be the sum-total of all the men that have preceded him upon the stage of history. If he is not so consciously, yet he is more or less so unconsciously. The man who is born today is born under infinite responsibilities: he has but few experiments to make, for all experiments have been made before he was born; it may come that the very last man who enters into this state of being may have nothing to do but to accept conclusions, for the little earth has been understood through and through, in every line and particle, so that nothing further remains to be discovered by science or argued by philosophy. Think of it the little world utterly exhausted; every atom of dust has been examined, every insect has been anatomised, every flower has been made to give up its secret, and there is nothing now to be done on what we call "the great globe itself" but to accept the conclusions which other men have discovered. Think of the exhaustibleness of time and space, as these terms are now known to us! Is there then no sphere that may be described by the word "infinity"? Is there no duration to which the term "eternity" alone is applicable? It is our joy to believe that this world is a mere letter in the great alphabet of stars and planets, and that all we know of time is less than a syllable in the infinite literature of the revelation which is yet to be made. "We are not ignorant of the past, nor are we ungrateful for it, but we shall best show our wisdom and our thankfulness by doing what we now can to make the future rich in thought and energetic in beneficence. The true use of the present is to brighten the darkness and lighten the burden of the future.
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