A Bible Picture

HERE is a Bible picture of the gospel story, which no one can fail to under­stand. May he who reads run, and flee to Jesus for life and healing; nay, if he cannot flee, may he look—" Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."
On Israel's way to Canaan, Israel-like, the people murmured against God. "And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died” (Num. 21:6). But Israel felt their sin: “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee," said they to Moses. In answer to the prayer of Moses, the Lord said to him, " Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live " (ver. 8). And who of us is not bitten? Nay, who has not spoken against the Lord, and is not under the sentence due to sin-death? There is not one reader of this page who has not sinned, not one who is exempt from the consequences of sin, and the judgment of God against him is death.
Look upon our picture. Moses points us to the serpent of brass which he has set upon a pole. “Look and live, look and live," he seems to be crying, and his open hand invites all to life so freely offered.
“Look and live," those upon the mound, bearing the stricken man close up to the ser­pent of brass seem to be saying. They point to it, and they plead not to God for mercy, for mercy is brought to them by God, but to the sin-stricken sufferer to look and live. And behind them comes a mother with her child in her arms, and she is saying to her dying child, “Look and live."
Look to Jesus, look and live. For "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoso­ever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life " (John 3:14, 15).
See, arranged at the foot of the mound, a group of people. Some stretch their willing hands towards the brazen serpent; but observe more carefully, there are three fiery serpents near them. But in vain do they seek to strike those who look. This is good and true. The old serpent, the devil, shall never, no never, wound to death anyone who looks to Jesus. Some in this group are more sorely smitten than others, some are young, some old, but whoever we are, whatever we are, Jesus will save everyone who looks to Him smitten and dying for sinners, bearing their judgment upon the cross. Come, old, come, young, look and live, look and live!
“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto Me. This He said signifying what death He should die " (John 12:32, 33).
Oh, we know well what He signified, what He meant, when He spoke of being lifted up. The cross, the nails, the shame, the sin-bearing, were all before His gracious heart. And His cross, His wounds, draw us to Himself. Look and live! Look and live!
Observe the group at the right hand side of the picture. One fights the serpent and looks not at the serpent of brass ; one weeps, and prays, and hides her face with her hands, and looks not at the serpent of brass ; but one lifts both hands and both eyes thereto, and already life has entered her whole being ; she seems to be crying aloud, " Hallelujah! Praise the Lord."
Ah! how many are now fighting their sins, and fighting in vain. It is of no use. You will never win the day—you will perish. And how many are praying, and lamenting, and breaking their hearts over sin's bitter memories. You will never be saved by prayers or tears: you will perish thus. Look and live, and the serpent shall fall of from you. You shall be more than conquerors through Jesus, who loved us.
The left hand side of the picture is dark and sad. Fear has filled those two. See the two serpents hastening towards them! Their backs are towards the serpent of brass. They are in the darkness of their own shadows. They will perish. There is no hope for one in Israel, save in the serpent of brass. Death and dismay are their portion who turn their back to the divine remedy. Alas, how many are there in our day and to our knowledge who, though they hear the words “Look and live," turn their backs upon the cross of Christ, and thus give themselves over to the power of sin and the serpent.
A little more and the serpent will triumph, as is the case with those two, who, in the pic­ture, lie dead with the serpent upon them!
The figure in the foreground is full of praise. The old man and his child have looked. "And it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived."
“Any man”! Gracious breadth of mercy. “Any man"—words of individual cheer addressed to us by Jesus Himself. “If any man enter in, he shall be saved." (John 10:9.) “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." (John 7:37.)
Look and live-look and live.
Sketches of the Early Days of Christianity
SUCH of our readers as have followed us in these brief sketches are fully prepared to allow that the Church offered no compro­mise to the world, that the world could but hate the Church, and hence the only result to­wards the Church could be persecution. The Jew, with all his religious zeal, most violently opposed the Christian faith: to the Jew it was a blasphemy against Moses. The Gentile, in whose hands was the government of the world, despised the Christians, and allowed the faith neither position nor tolerance.
In the records of the early life of the Church we are accustomed to consider a specific number of great persecutions as befalling it; but, while this is so, we do well to remember that almost the whole of the early life of the Church was one of persecution. Immediately after Pentecost, the apostles Peter and John were cast into prison and beaten, and very shortly after that great day, an organized effort was made by the Jews to crush Christianity out of the earth, and, almost in every place where the faith was brought, its messengers were met with antagonism.
Many of the epistles bear internal evidence of the persecutions and afflictions of the churches.
The Hebrews, though not resisting unto blood (ch. 12:4) had, nevertheless “endured a great fight of afflictions " (10:32-34) ; the strangers, to whom the apostle Peter wrote, had to suffer a "fiery trial " (1 Peter 4:12); the churches among the Gentiles were sorely wounded ; the Thessalonians, who turned to God from idols, received the word "in much affliction" (1 Thess. 1:6), and bore their "persecutions and tribulations" with exemplary patience and faith (2 Thess. 1:4) ; and in Pergamos Christ's " faithful martyr " ( Rev. 2:13) was slain. To the Corinthians the apostle Paul speaks of the horrors of the amphitheatre, where the well-known cry was heard, " The Christians to the lions " (2 Cor. 1:10) ; to the Philippians he wrote from the prison cell, and in imminent peril of his life (Phil. 1:13-26) ; and by the account of his years of imprison­ments and sufferings he appealed to the some­what worldly Corinthians to think a little less of their attainments than they were wont (2 Cor. 13). The story of the triumphs told in the Acts, abounds with incidents of persecution in either its most bitter or in its less severe forms.
However, it was not until Christianity had spread over a very large area of the world, and very many were of the faith, that the Gentile power made organized efforts to do what the Jews had attempted—to extirpate the followers of Christ from off the earth. But persecution does not destroy true Christianity, it aids its growth. It is a great work of weed­ing in the Church, and tends to strengthen those plants which our heavenly Father has planted.
So early as the year A.D. 64 a great perse­cution broke out in Rome against the Church, but due to the unexampled cruelty of the Emperor rather than to popular feeling against Christians.
Nero, whose name is a by-word for all that is base and horrible in man, was Emperor of great Rome at the time of which we speak. Never should it be forgotten that no uncivilized hordes of debased savages gloating in human suffering and misery is before us, but an exalted and mighty nation that prided itself upon its honor. Some of its philosophers, whose words we quoted in our last chapter, were then in their prime; arms, arts, and luxury, were in their glory ; and the senate and the laws held their authority; indeed, leaving out the name of God, all that makes a nation great was then in Rome in full energy.
Yet the head of that nation was a model of iniquity, and the nation not only accepted his evil deeds, but the senate, philosophers, and people partook of them; indeed, in the persecution of the Christians, Rome was as vile as its Emperor.
In the year 64 Rome was ravaged by a huge fire, which laid by far the greater part of the imperial city in ashes. From some cause or other Nero, whose cruelties were familiar to the people, was popularly supposed to have had a hand in this destruction. A victim was needed to appease not only the gods, but the feeling of the people, and the Christians in Rome were fixed upon. The burning of the city was attributed to them, or, at least, they not being of the religion of the gods, nor being partakers in the sins of Rome, were selected as the objects for popular fury to expend itself upon, and also for an expiation to appease the popular deities.
In a short time the prisons began to be filled with Christians, who, though not convicted of the crime under the charge for which they were imprisoned, could be condemned to death for being haters of the human race. So says Tacitus.
Then followed the death of the victims, and the more cruel their death was, the greater was their guilt supposed to be.
Rome, familiar with murders and gladiatorial shows, began to witness scenes of death more horrible than had previously been seen, every kind of ingenuity being called forth to torture the Christian devoted to destruction. Some were crucified in mockery of their once cruci­fied Lord; others, half slain on the cross, were next thrown to the wild beast; some were sewn up in skins of wild animals and then cast to devouring dogs; others robed in scarlet were supposed to be undergoing the torments of the dead, and, after being tormented with name­less insults, were slain. Maidens were tied naked to posts to be torn and devoured by lions, and others were lashed to the horns of wild cattle to be so destroyed. Upon these horrors the Emperor, his Court, and Roman matrons gazed, and, day after day, he sat lolling upon his purple cushions, untired with his hellish pleasure.
But the victims were numerous. Their con­stancy was unchanged. They were more than conquerors. What was to be done? Some new torture was required. Then the thought of a fresh doom entered Nero's imperial mind. He had a lovely garden, rich in trees and fountains, and adorned with statues to the gods of Rome.
Here on one night would he invite all Rome to a spectacle never before witnessed. His garden should be illuminated, the illuminations should emit sounds, and the delighted eyes of the people should behold such a scene as had never been beheld, even in the amphitheatre.
All along the broad paths of the gardens at intervals he had great stakes driven into the ground. The Christians were brought from the prisons, robed in garments saturated with pitch, and were bound to the stakes, and lest the living torch should fall into the fire at its feet, a smaller stake was designed having an iron point, so fixed, that the victim's chin should fall upon it when the suffering body failed. As the dark of the evening fell, hundreds and hundreds of these torches adorned his gardens, and Rome poured in to see the sight. Nero drove round about the walks in his chariot garbed as a charioteer, applauded and adulated by the people, joking with the commonest as they looked into the faces of the martyrs and watched their agonies. To this sight parents took their children, and told them that these were the criminals who hated the whole of the human race.
We have enlarged a little on these terrible details, and with this object. Cruelty, such as this, is of the devil, and whether the per­secutor be Pagan Rome or Popish Rome there is no difference. Certainly Popish Rome has copied, if it has not outdone, Pagan Rome in cruelty.
It was about this time that the Church lost by martyrdom the apostles Paul and Peter. The spokesmen of the Word of God to them were no more, John alone, and banished, remained, but the Church grew and flourished, though in Rome its chief home was the catacombs.
Other persecutions, besides this in Rome, at this time fell upon the Church of God, which had made conquests for Christ over a very wide area of the earth. But the persecutions by no means stayed the work of God. How could they do so? His hand is stronger than that of the devil. For one martyr slain for Christ many other confessors were raised up by Him to continue His work.