Christian Age Judges 7:1-8 Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod… A man is known only when he is tried. And yet it would be a mistake to suppose that this test is administered to us in some great matter, or on some grand occasion. The two most suggestive words to us in the parable of the good Samaritan are these, "By chance there came down a certain priest." The Saviour does not mean by using this expression to give countenance to the idea that anything really occurs by chance, but rather to fix our minds on the ordinary and incidental nature of the occurrence. It happened that there came a priest. He was going on his journey. He had, most likely, a definite object before him. He was not thinking, probably, of his own character. Least of all was he dreaming that he was at the moment being tested. He only made it evident that he could not be troubled to do anything for the half-dead traveller, and so he unconsciously revealed his true character. But so it is always. We let out our truest selves when we do not know that we are doing it. When Gideon led his army to the brook and bade them drink, the men thought only of slaking their thirst. Some, more luxurious in their nature, went down upon their hands and feet and put their lips to the stream to take in a full supply. Others, more dashing and impetuous in their disposition, could not take so much trouble, but lifted the water by their hands, lapping it up thus with them, as a dog lappeth it with his tongue. Not one of them, perhaps, was conscious of doing anything special. Yet, through that tiny drink, each one revealed the sort of man he was; and Gideon, by Divine direction, selected the latter to be the deliverers of Israel. Now it is by the casual engagements of every day that God is testing us yet. By the little opportunities that are furnished to us, so to say, by chance, He is causing us to unveil our inmost selves. For the test is all the more searching because we are unconscious of its application. We prepare for great occasions, thus putting such an unnatural strain upon ourselves that we are not really ourselves. It is only in the abandon of unconsciousness that we make manifest genuinely what we are. We all know how true that is in the art of portrait-taking. The best likeness of a man is taken when he is unaware of it; but if you set him down before a camera and tell him to look pleasant, the result will be a prim, precise expression, meant to be the best, but, just because of that, exceedingly unnatural. But it is quite similar with character. To know what a man is you must take him when he is not aware that you are judging him. God gauges us in little things. He watches us not so much when a great occasion is making its demand upon us, and we are trying to do our best, as when some ordinary opportunity is at our hand. Thus regarded, life even in its minutest and apparently most trivial aspects becomes a very solemn thing. We are being weighed in God's balance every day. Men think with dread of the Day of Judgment, and we do not desire to take a single element from its importance. There will be such a day, and it will be more awful than we think of. But in the light of the principles which we have now tried to enforce, every day is, in its measure, also a Day of Judgment. God is testing us every hour, and according as we stand His scrutiny He sends us forward with His Gideons to emancipate the enslaved, or dismisses us ignominiously from His service. (Christian Age.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. |
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