The Star of Bethlehem. Old Testament shadows of New Testament truths by Lyman Abbott

Author:Lyman Abbott [Abbott, Lyman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-10-26T22:00:00+00:00

The Gleaner.

IX. THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ.

No book has done more to ennoble woman than the Bible. Other writings have contributed to ameliorate her condition. The Bible has elevated her character.

It found her a menial, fulfilling the tasks, obedient to the beck, of her sovereign lord. It has made her a queen, rightfully sharing his throne, and wielding with him a God-given scepter over the whole animate creation. It offers her, indeed, no fulsome flattery. It weaves no chaplet of pretty but poisonous praise for her brow. It makes no effort to conceal her faults. The woman of the Bible is no pure, heaven-descended angel, but a child of sin and sorrow, needing with us all the atoning blood of the Lamb for her ransom and redemption. The first sinner was a woman. Her hand unbolted the door through which sin and Satan entered to desolate the world. Among the last enemies whom Christ shall conquer is the mysterious scarlet woman," the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." But woman, if she is first in the work of death, is the first also in the work of redemption. The Son of God, whose lips never could speak to any earthly being the name of father, called Mary mother. She who unlocked the gates of hell has opened also, for a sin-cursed earth, the gates of heaven, and given through her Son free entrance to every child of Adam. And when the last enemy, which is Death, shall be destroyed, and the ransomed of the Lord shall come from every nation, kindred, and tribe to meet him, woman shall still be pre-eminently honored, and the most sacred of all earthly ties will be reflected in its heavenly prototype, for the Church, when at last it is presented faultless before God's throne of grace," without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," shall be known throughout eternity as the bride, and heaven itself shall rejoice, with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in " the marriage of the Lamb."

Among the various types of woman's character which the Bible affords us—and nearly every type of womanly excellence is to be found within its pages, the singer, the preacher, the warrior, the ruler, and, highest and most excellent of all, the faithful wife and mother—two possess peculiar pre-eminence, because they have christened with their names the books which narrate the story of their lives. One of these books—an idyll, a poem in prose—is the story of a peasant-girl who became mother of kings.

It is full of a quiet, rural charm which has invested the very name of Ruth with a peculiar tenderness. The other carries us among courts and court intrigues, in times of direst peril, and narrates plots and counter-plots as marvelous and exciting as imagination ever conceived. It is the story of a nation saved by the brave fidelity of a single faithful woman, who, by her queenly courage, has made the name of Esther truly regal through all time.

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