Kitabı oku: «Kingless Folk, and other Addresses on Bible Animals», sayfa 3

The Redbreast

"The household bird with the red stomacher" – a bird that should be in the Bible, but isn't. We must give it a page here.

 
Look! there on a sprig of holly,
Like a bunch of berries red,
He sits, wee bumptious Robin,
Cocking his little head.
 
 
Let us ask the little fellow,
Why he comes so late to sing,
For the autumn leaves are falling
In a whirling fairy ring.
 
 
Where did you go in summer
With that little purple vest?
Not away to the woods and hedges
To conceal a tiny nest?
 
 
Oh, you did! you sought the bracken,
Where the flowers are wet with dew,
And we never heard you singing,
You had something else to do.
 
 
You were feeding five wee Robins,
And they kept you on the wing;
But now that they've grown to Redbreasts,
You can well afford to sing.
 
 
So you can, you little wise-head,
There is truth in what you say;
And may every lad apply it,
That after work comes play.
 

The Bee

"And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do." – Deut. i. 44.

Israel had determined at all hazards to storm the strongholds of the Amorites. But as those who disobey God can never stand before their enemies, the Israelites were no match for those hardy mountaineers of Seir. Like infuriated bees rushing out from their nest, the Amorite hordes swept out from their mountain fastnesses, and utterly overwhelmed the hosts of Israel. They "chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah."

This is the only sense in which the bee is referred to in Holy Scripture. The ant may be introduced as an emblem of industry and instinct; but the bee is always regarded as one of the scourges of mankind. It recalls an incident in the African travels of Mungo Park. "Some of his people having met with a populous hive, imprudently attempted to plunder it of its honey. The swarm rushed out in fury and attacked the company so vigorously that man and beast fled in all directions. The horses were never recovered, and several of the asses were so severely stung that they died the next day." The bee was clearly a savage and dangerous annoyance. They "chased you, as bees do."

But turning to the bee itself, let us note the three principal materials it uses in its hive.

I. – WAX

Nothing can be done in the furnishing of the hive until a sufficient quantity of wax has been provided. And this, like the gossamer threads of the spider, is drawn from the insect's own body. The process of secretion, as it is called, may last for some twenty-four hours; and when it is completed the wax projects from between the segments of its body in the form of thin plates. The material is then taken up into the mouth and undergoes a process of mastication, until at last it issues from the mandibles in the form of a small white ribbon.

This is the material with which they build up their hexagonal or six-sided cells; and marvellous is the skill they show in the ingenious arrangement. Like Plato, they might fitly inscribe over their portal, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here," for the bee is entitled to a first place in the ranks of the geometricians. It is even asserted on the authority of the Rev. J. G. Wood that the angles of the bee-cell are so mathematically correct that by their measurement an error in a book of logarithms was detected; and Mr Darwin himself admits that "the comb of the hive-bee is absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax."

The form of the cell has three distinct advantages. It combines the greatest strength, the largest storage, and the least expenditure of material and labour; and "the little busy bee," as if acquainted with these strict mathematical principles, has followed them so accurately that it easily steps into the first rank as a born mathematician.

But how is this fact to be accounted for? What is the explanation of these inimitable architectural powers? "Without thought or even the organ of thought, the bee can produce work which embodies thought." But to whom does this thought belong? Can there be thought without a thinker? Can there be the marks of intelligence without an original and creative mind? No! at the building up of a bee-cell, just as at the framing of a world, the thoughtful soul is face to face with Him whose mind is stamped on every part of creation – with Him who is the great and faithful Creator, whose tender mercies are over all His works.

II. – HONEY

After the construction of the cells comes the gathering of the honey. Honey, as every boy knows, is the thick, sweet fluid which bees gather from the cups of flowers. Or in the language of myth and fable, it is the veritable nectar of the gods. The mouth of the bee is framed for the purpose. It is so constructed that it forms a sort of proboscis or tongue by means of which the insects suck up the nectarine juice. It serves both as a mouth and a pump through which the liquid passes into the first stomach, and thus is carried to the hive.

The abundance of honey is frequently mentioned in Holy Scripture. Palestine itself is described as "a land that floweth with milk and honey." And we remember that on one occasion Jonathan, the Son of Saul, was faint and weary, and when he saw honey dripping on the ground from the abundance and weight of the comb, he took it up on the end of his staff, and ate sufficient to restore his strength (1 Sam. xiv. 27). John the Baptist also was evidently in no danger of starving from lack of food, when the wild bees afforded him a plentiful supply of the very material which was needed to correct the deficiencies of the dried locusts which he used instead of bread. His food was locusts and wild honey.

There is only one connection in which we find honey prohibited. It was to have no place in the Jewish meat offering (Lev. ii. 11). Everything liable to fermentationwas excluded from the altar; and "the same principle covers the prohibition of honey" (Smith's "Religion of the Semites"). "The effect of honey is similar to that of leaven, since it easily changes to acid" (Oehler). Honey then was forbidden on the same principle as an animal with any kind of blemish was forbidden. There must be no defect in the sacrificial lamb, and there must be no fermentation in the meat offering. The offering brought by man must be clean – a spotless sacrifice (and God's Lamb is such), an honest heart, and an earnest, unfeigned prayer. Only the pure in heart shall see God.

III. – POLLEN

Honey is not the only substance that bees carry home to the hive. They also collect in considerable quantities the fecundating dust or pollen of flowers. If the long tongue is specially adapted for sucking up the one, the hind legs, supplied with a brush of hair, are equally fitted for collecting and conveying the other. When the bee visits the flower in question it dives deep down among the dust-like powder, and comes out again, all covered from head to foot, like a miller well dusted with his meal. But applying the brush of hair which it carries for the purpose, it speedily brushes the pollen all down in the form of a tiny ball, and carries it home on its hind legs to be used in the economy of the hive.

But what is it for? To make bee-breadfor the young bees. The hexagonal cells are not all used for the storage of honey. A very large proportion of the comb is set apart for the hatching of the young ones. And these infant bees are voracious eaters. Like other little children, they have to be carefully nursed and attended to, and the sagacious nurses have quite enough to do in providing them with the right kind of food. Ordinary honey is too strong for their infantile digestion, and therefore the honey is mixed with the pollen to render it a fit nourishment for these fastidious babies.

This is the only object the bees have in collecting the pollen; but it is not the only end they serve in the plan of the great Creator. Unknown to themselves they are doing a great work in the propagating of flowers. The fertilising dust of one flower must be conveyed to the corresponding organs of another; and the bee like a village postman, is brought in to convey the necessary love-tokens. Apart from this service rendered by the bee, the wild flowers that deck the fields and highways would soon be conspicuous by their absence.

We cannot, then, go back to the point from which we started, and say that the bee can only be regarded as a savage and dangerous annoyance. It fills a very important place in the economy of nature. As the maker of wax it is the prince of mathematicians; as the gatherer of honeyit is the bringer of many choice blessings; and as the collector and distributer of pollen it is at once a sagacious nurse, and one who dispenses a harvest, "sowing the To-be." Well may we sit at its hive and learn wisdom.

The Swallow

"As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come." – Prov. xxvi. 2.

The swallow is the bird of the summer. Like the coming of the cuckoo itself, the arrival of the swallow is anxiously waited for as the harbinger of warmer days. And thus we have the beautiful fancy connected with the little flower Celandine. The name means "a swallow," and was applied to the tiny plant because it was supposed to open its petals when the swallows appeared in spring, and to close them and die when they disappeared in autumn. Whether the flowers hasten to welcome the little bird or not, there are many human hearts that leap up with joy at the sight of the airy wanderer, and hail it as the bird of freedom – the herald and pledge of the summer.

I. – IT IS THE BIRD OF FREEDOM

This is the meaning of its Hebrew name, and surely no more fitting title could be applied to so unfettered and freedom-loving a bird. Tennyson, in his great poem, "In Memoriam," speaks of

 
"Short swallow-flights of song that dip
Their wings … and skim away."
 

Who does not love to see it darting through the sunshine, skimming along the surface of a stream, or wheeling away in airy circles on its swift, untired wings! It is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever – happy as the summer light, free and untamable as the breeze.

And we set this down as the first law of bird-life – that every songster of the field and wood should be free. This is its birthright and blessing, and no one has the right to rob it of its liberty. The green fields and the blue sky have been given to it as its heritage, and the barbarous custom of binding its wandering wing and shutting it up in a cage should be censured and condemned by all healthy minds. The swallow, indeed, cannot be thus tamed and domesticated. She who claims the whole earth as her fatherland refuses to be imprisoned in a cage. She will die rather than yield. And all young hearts cannot learn the lesson too soon that the feathered tribes of the woodland ought to be left to their God-given liberty.

II. – IT IS THE BIRD OF OBEDIENCE

Another lesson taught by the swallow is that liberty is not license. Freedom to wander from land to land does not mean freedom from all control. Our text speaks of the law of its migration. Like the stork, the crane, or the turtle dove, the swallow knows the time of its coming.

In France it is spoken of as "the Jew," because of its wandering habits; and in the science of heraldry it was used as a crest by the crusader pilgrims to symbolise the fact that they too were strangers in a strange land. But to the swallow no land is strange. The whole earth is its fatherland. And while it does wander to and fro over land and sea, it always observes its appointed seasons. All its wandering is guided by a purpose. Its freedom is regulated by unfailing instinct. It may speed its flight to far distant climes, but it comes back to the same nest. This is the law of its migration; and in obedience to it, the swallows appear in April and disappear in October with all the regularity of the seasons or the ebb and flow of the tide. The cause is there, and the effect follows. The bird of freedom is a slave to its own higher destiny.

And so ought we. Freedom to wander is not so great a boon as obedience to a higher, diviner law. Like the needle trembling to the pole, or the swallow returning to the same old nest, our hearts ought to hark back to the sacredness of home and to the God and faith of our fathers. "There is an instinct in the new-born babes of Christ, like the instinct that leads birds to build their nests" (Rutherford). And this instinct, like the law of migration, makes us the children of obedience. There is no license in the liberty of Christ. We are only free to serve.

III. – IT IS THE BIRD THAT BUILDSITS NEST IN GOD'S TEMPLE

"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars" (Ps. lxxxiv. 3).

Swallows sometimes build their nests in the most extraordinary places – on a picture frame, on a lamp-bracket, on a door-knocker, in a table-drawer, and between the handles of a pair of shears hung on the wall. James Gilmour, in his missionary travels through Mongolia, found that they actually entered his tent and built their nests within reach of his hand. And so fully do the little birds confide in man's protection, that they will even take up their abode in his places of worship. The heathen temples, the Mohammedan mosques, and the Christian churches are all inhabited by the swallow, and here, in the eighty-fourth Psalm, it is spoken of as having sought and found a home in the courts of the Jewish temple.

The Psalmist, detained at home, envied the little birds that built their nests under the eaves of the priests' houses, and thought of the very sparrows that were allowed to pick up the crumbs in the temple courts. It reminds us of Samuel Rutherford when a prisoner in Aberdeen. He often looked back to his country church and manse near the shore of the Solway Firth, and sighed, "I am for the present thinking the sparrows and swallows that build their nests at Anwoth blessed birds." These men, as Spurgeon would say, "needed no clatter of bells" to bring them to church; they carried a bell in their own bosoms; holy appetite is a better call to worship than a full chime.

And the lesson is for the young people no less than for their parents. For the Psalmist adds that the nest of the swallow was for "her young." The swallow reared her young brood in the temple courts. And this is the duty and privilege of all Christian parents. The house of God may be a nest for their little ones. How beautiful to see parents and children coming Sabbath by Sabbath to the same family pew! In after-years will not these little ones find their way back to the same old nest? Yes, "train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it." Or if, perchance, they are called upon to suffer, and are not able, like the Psalmist, to come to God's house, the spirit will still be willing though the flesh be weak, and they will sit and sing like another great sufferer —

 
"A little bird I am,
Shut from the fields of air,
And in my cage I sit and sing
To Him who placed me there,
Well pleased a prisoner to be,
Because, O God, it pleaseth thee.
 
 
"Nought else have I to do,
I sing the whole day long,
And He whom most I love to please,
Doth listen to my song.
He caught and bound my wandering wing,
But still He bends to hear me sing."