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On account of their unfaithfulness the children of Israel were oppressed by Jabin for twenty years; then the oppressed people cried unto God, and Deborah and Barak were called to lead them to freedom. In this great song Deborah brings out the characteristics of the several tribes at the national crisis. She sets forth how some of them promptly entered upon the struggle for liberty; how others were miserably indifferent and unpatriotic; and in the text a vivid stroke or two shows that whilst Reuben was deeply interested and agitated by what was transpiring, he refrained from taking any part in the actual fight. "By the watercourses of Reuben there were great searchings of heart," and that was all. "Great were the debates," "great were the resolves"; but they never proceeded to action.

I. The text is a rebuke to the THEORIST. The Reubenites were the thinkers of their age. They were not indifferent to public questions; they recognised the problems of their day, and mentally wrestled with them; but they drew the line at action. All action seemed so unsatisfactory that they could not persuade themselves to reduce their splendid patriotic theories to experiment. So to-day there is a tribe of idealists. They are full of thought, rich in ideas, masterly in systems; but they find it impossible to pass from reflection to effort. Thought is large, action is insignificant; thought is swift, action is tardy; thought is triumphant, action is full of interruption, shortcoming, and failure; and so the theorist abides in his arm-chair watching pictures in the fire. To follow the facts and movements of the world as a supreme game of chess delights the philosophic mind, but to interest ourselves in any commonplace practical endeavour to aid the needy is voted a belittling vulgarism. Amiel says, "Reverie is the Sunday of the mind"; and the whole life of some men is a Sunday, they know no working-days. They deplore personal defects, yet they do not bravely take themselves to task and struggle into a better life; they ponder social evils, but nothing comes of the intellectual agitation; they have their ideas and aspirations concerning the heathen world, yet they take no part in missionary enterprise. Their whole life is spent in observation, reasoning, and soliloquy. This will not do. Deborah scorns the idle theorists, and their position is always ignoble. We account men meritorious as they master the difficult conditions of human life; society has no prizes for mere dreamers. He who gives a cup of cold water to a thirsty soul is infinitely better than the idealist whose sparkling fountains and flowing rivers are mere mirages of the brain. We must have thought, theory, programme; we must have the dreamer, the philosopher, the debater, only the pondering of the mind must be succeeded by the labour of the hands. When Cavour died, Elizabeth B. Browning wrote: "That noble soul who meditated and made Italy has gone to the diviner country." "Meditated and made." It is all there. We must meditate and make. Not that we can by any means realise all our dream, but we must strive thereunto. Some hit of reality must testify to the genuineness of our great thought and purpose.

II. The text is a rebuke to the CRITICAL. The Reubenites were the critics of the age. "Great were the debates." They read the minutes of the last meeting; they submitted a resolution as to what might be done; then they ably discussed the whole situation; the ornaments of debate shone out; an amendment was proposed that nothing be done, the vote was taken, the amendment was declared to be carried by a large majority, and the assembly retired to lunch. And one can easily imagine the course of the debate. Some would object to a movement led by a woman; others would question the qualifications of Barak; many would think that it was not the psychological moment; and those with a flavour of military genius would doubt the plan of campaign. The critical tribe is with us still. We have a host of people who are interested in the great struggle of light and darkness, but whose interest ends with information, discussion, and opinion. We have such critics outside the Church. They are prepared, at five minutes' notice, to discuss any religious, moral, social, or political question; yet they make no practical effort whatever to grapple with the evils they dissect. Especially do these critics love to scourge the Church. How well they can describe the evil! How clearly they can see what ought to be done! How rough they are upon the blunders of philanthropists and evangelists! But all ends there; they spend no time, or gold, or blood in any form of practical amelioration. How false is the position of the critic, and how ignoble the whole spirit of barren criticism! How contemptible the carpet knight lecturing the scarred heroes of the battlefield! How ridiculous the musical amateur exposing the faults of Handel and Mozart! How despicable the scribbler of a day making merry over the shortcoming of literary masterpieces! "Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds?" is the derisive question of Deborah. The Reubenites thought themselves superior persons, but the singer suggests a cutting contrary. A love of ease partly explained their conduct. They liked the shepherd's lute better than the war-trumpet with its toils and sufferings. The love of gain also explained the absence of the Reubenites from battle. And they were cowards. There was not a spear in Israel, and Jabin had thousands of chariots of iron. Deborah pours scorn on the windy orators. The day is coming, too, when God will pour scorn upon the phrase-makers. He will laugh at the laughers, criticise the critics, scorn the scorners. Let us act. "God's words are things," says Luther; and unless we strive to make our words things they become falsities, vanities, mockeries. One of the great heroes of to-day is the hero of the paper-knife, the critic who flourishes his wooden weapon as if it were some famous blade of victory. The poorest plough that will scratch the ground, the most ramshackle basket that will carry a little seed, the rustiest hook that will serve for a sickle, is better than the paper-knife. A drop of blood is more than a vat of ink or a world of talk. The poorest methods of service, the homeliest instruments of practical endeavour, count for far more in the sight of God than a magazine of polished and attenuated shafts which neither smite nor bite. Let us not waste life in opinion, discussion, or criticism, but deny ourselves in daily efforts seeking some real good. Our Master did not redeem us by words, but by tears and blood; and the best thing for us is with fewest words to take up our cross and follow Him.

III. The text is a rebuke to the SENTIMENTALIST. There were "great searchings of heart." The Reubenites were men of fine feeling, of intense emotion; only the emotion evaporated when the resolution was duly entered upon the minutes. A large circle of these sentimentalists survive. They pride themselves on the depth and tenderness of their feeling, yet their feeling never compels action and sacrifice. They feel for the poor, the ignorant, the suffering, the fallen, and most for themselves. In prayers, sermons, hymns, and sacraments the fountains of the deep are broken up without leaving any fertilising stream. It is really a fearful thing that sentiment should be so constantly wasted that the very word itself comes at last to be regarded as expressing something unreal. Sympathy is the richest element in the human heart, and it is an awful loss to society that so much of it should be vainly lavished on unsubstantial scenes and images, on airy nothings. We talk of the loss of force in Niagara, but there is a far more terrible loss of precious energy in the unavailing stream of feeling which passes away in imaginative moods. If we could harness the Niagara of human sympathy, and set it to work in educating the ignorant, in helping the helpless, in nursing the sick, in reclaiming the fallen, what gracious revolutions would be worked in a day! Feeling is worth nothing if it bear no tangible fruit. Our Master wept, but He also bled.

(W. L. Watkinson.)

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KJV: Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.

WEB: 'Awake, awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, utter a song! Arise, Barak, and lead away your captives, you son of Abinoam.'