Shew kindness unto the sons of Barzillai.
Gratitude for kindnesses repaid
An old English story tells of Frescobald, an Italian merchant who showed great kindness to Thomas Cromwell when he was in sore distress far from home. The stranger was welcomed to the merchant’s dwelling, and sent back safely to England. Years passed, and reverses came to Frescobald. He lost wealth and friends, and wandered as a beggar to this country. One day he saw a great crowd moving along the streets of London. The Lord Chancellor was going in state to open the courts. To Frescobald’s delight, the central figure of the procession was his old friend Thomas Cromwell The Italian merchant soon reaped the fruit of his generous kindness in other days. Cromwell’s hospitality and munificence quickly made him forget all his care and sorrow. (J. Telford, B. A.)
Sympathy with monarch appreciated
Sympathy for those who are stronger, wealthier, healthier, more influential, and higher in authority than ourselves, is not so easily rendered. It does not often occur to us to extend the sympathetic hand or word to those whom we look upon as in any way our superiors, and yet none need our sympathy more than such as these. The minister is expected to feel for and with his parishioners, but the truth is that the minister needs sympathetic encouragement from them quite as much. So, too, of the physician and his patient. One of Tennyson’s biographers quotes the Queen as saying of the Laureate, “When I took leave of him I thanked him for his kindness, and said I needed it, for I had gone through much, and he said, ‘You are so alone on that terrible height; it is terrible.’“ The sovereign appreciated kindness, consideration, and sympathy from her subjects, and the poet had a full realisation of what it meant to be so high up as to be practically alone in the world. We easily give our pity, our sympathy, and even our helping hand, to those who seem to us in sore stress, but we are not so thoughtful about what consolation and strength we might give to those who need it because their very elevation isolates them, and cuts them off from those human relations to which we all look for sympathetic aid. (Great Thoughts.)
Barzillai
Barzillai’s truly Highland courtesy, also, is abundantly conspicuous in the too-short glimpse we get of the lord of Rogelim. For, how he anticipated all David’s possible wants! How he put himself into all David’s distressed place! How he did to David as David would have done to him! How he came down from his high seat, with all his years on his head, in order with his own hand to conduct the king over Jordan! And, then, with what sweetness and music of manner and of speech he excused himself out of all the royal rewards and honours and promotions David had designed and decreed to put upon him!
The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing, pays itself. Your Highness’ part
Is to receive our duties; and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants,
Which do but what they should, by doing everything
Safe towards your love and honour.
The rest is labour which is not used for you.
The humility, also, of that Old Testament hero is already our New Testament humility in its depth and sweetness and beauty. In my spare hours this winter I have been delighting myself with Plutarch’s Lives in Thomas North’s Bible English. But how often as I read one noble name after another have I exclaimed, Oh, if some of those great men of old had only been among the Greeks who came to Philip, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus! Had they only seen Jesus, or even heard or read Paul! Then what ornaments would they have been in all New Testament nobleness and courtesy and humility. (Alex. Whyte, D. D.)