Henry Law
Leviticus 12:7. This is the law for her that hath born a male or female.
This chapter brings us to new fields of thought. The curtains of domestic life fall back. A mother and her new-born babe appear. Where is the mind which can turn heedlessly away? Where is the heart which will not pause and melt? In this event, being begins which can never end. Such is the fact, and it speaks solemnly.
The cradled infant is but a tiny stream. It scarcely seems to trickle. But it must flow onward until its waters form an ocean without bottom – without shore. A tender blade just sprouts, but roots must deepen and boughs spread, through the expanse of an interminable age. Each birth is a deathless increase to the world of spirits. A new eternity gains life. These magnitudes are yoked to every mother’s babe. What scales can weigh the value of each child? What can correspond to its price? Pile suns on suns; bring all the treasures which all nature holds; ransack all mines of choicest ore, and their wealth, though large, is finite. But here is a new infinity. Offspring will continue far beyond all time and outlive all the glory of all worlds.
Thus solemn is the scene. Next God’s voice sounds beside the Jewish cradle. Solemnity becomes more solemn. What are its tones? Is its call to gratitude and joy alone? Is its purpose to kindle praise for peril now past, and a dear addition to family delights? Not so. It writes pollution on child-bearing. It sentences the mother as unclean. It bars her from taking part in social life and pious rites. It bows her head in shame. It dooms her, as though some leprous spot was seen, to solitude (Lev 12:2-5).
Reader, reflect. What is the moral of this rule? Is it our wisdom to inquire? True, ceremonial stains have long since ceased. True, legal offerings no more can cleanse. The gospel rays scatter all twilight mists. But principles have undying root. The cause which then existed still survives. Mothers in every age are virtually addressed.
But why is shame the twin of every offspring born? Behold the infant, and receive reply. What is its nature, character and taste? Let not fond feeling shrink from weighing it in scales of truth. Is it a little innocent – conceived in purity and shaped in holy mould? Are its materials clean?
It is indeed a wondrous fabric. But what is the quarry which supplies its parts? The tender frame contains the germ of countless passions – multitudinous desires and thoughts – as many as the ocean’s sands. Are these the germs of godly life? Do they give promise of ripe fruit for God? If so, the birth
1A chapter taken, with editing, from Law’s The Gospel in Leviticus.
is holy, and bearing mothers should not bear the brand of shame. But facts show not this smiling face. The babe is the sinful product of a sinful race. Corruption’s seal is fixed upon its brow.
Reader, trace back the cause. Return in thought to Eden’s terrible offence. When our first parents fell into sin’s mire, what a tremendous change changed their entire being! Innocence in man for ever died. Iniquity, as conqueror, claimed the captive land. The fountain-head received deep poison. No drop could henceforth issue free from taint. The root of human life is rotten to the core. All sprouts have evil taste. Nature was spoiled of God’s fair image. What nature no more has, it can no more bestow. Its properties are guilt, and guilt alone can be imparted by it. From Adam’s fatal passage into Satan’s realms, each child is Satan’s slave. Each birth now propagates corruption. Hence she who bare is warned to bend, as bulrush in the vale. She must sit solitary as unclean.
There is a strong need to show the case without deception’s mask. Nature is prone to partial love. She sees her own with an admiring eye. She pictures infants as fair purity’s abode. But it is never gain – it rather is great loss – to trample upon truth. No flowers of profit can be plucked from error’s barren branch. The wise man finds his happy seat at Scripture’s feet. His only guidance is: “Thus saith the Lord”.
Let then no mother, while she clasps her babe, deck it in robes of visionary innocence. Her love makes it no lovely object in God’s sight. Affection’s estimate is not the estimate of heaven. A soul is indeed born to immortality. But let its birth state be distinctly seen. It brings no soul life with it. Nature gives various senses – but no sense of God. The heart has neither eye to see, nor ear to hear, nor foot to seek the upward path of life. Each feeling has a bias to transgression’s ways.
Leave but the child to its inbred desire, and evil, only evil, will be sought. When choice can choose, it will take Satan’s yoke. When hands can handle, they will grasp his tools. When lip can speak, his language will be learned. When feet can run, they will rush headlong towards hell. So wisdom teaches. So experience finds.
Will then the mother say, Alas that such a life has birth from me? Faith speaks not thus. It knows that there is a remedy for all this ill. It looks to Christ, and fears recede before hope’s dawn. Apart from Christ, the babe must enter on a voyage of woe and pass through troublous billows to the whirlpool of despair. Apart from Christ, its course must be one flow of misery, its end one gulf of ruin. But if Christ looks on it with love – if He receives it to His arms of grace – then neither can thought think or words proclaim, how blessed is a birth on earth!
Think what Christ grants. There is a merit in His precious blood which wipes out all sin’s stains. There is a refuge in His wounded side which screens from wrath and curse. There is a beauty in His glorious righteousness which is a fit mantle for the courts of heaven.
He can send forth the Spirit’s power to breathe new life into the dead-born soul. He can remove the blindness from the eye; the deafness from the ear; the listlessness from the heart. He can convert the stone into the tender soil in which all fruits of godliness shall spring. He can burst Satan’s iron yoke. He can keep the soul pure from all temptation’s snares. He can make earth an upward flight to heaven. He can present the spirit blameless before God. Through His transforming might, that child of wrath may brightly shine a jewel in redemption’s crown. Through His all-saving work, it may sing sweetly in the realms of light.
There is such hope in Christ. He is the treasury of full, rich, blessed, glorious grace. The second Adam more than repairs the damage of the first. He snatches from the lowest depths. He raises to the highest heights. He can exalt to all that heaven contains.
Prayer is the Christian mother’s stronghold. It is a golden key to unlock God’s treasury. Faith’s importunities prevail. Mighty desires, which cannot sit down mute, spring from above and will not fail. The Spirit pleads within such a wrestling heart, and all His pleadings reflect the mind of God. The offspring of much prayer is loved in heaven ere it is loved on earth. Scripture writes not in vain, how interceding parents ever gained their suit. They cry. Christ hears and smiles and answers – and His answers are these: Satan despoiled and saving grace bestowed. When nursing is accompanied with strong petition, the child is nestled in salvation’s arms.
Faith next draws comfort from baptism. Christ gives a special ordinance to which the new-born may come. It is a token of His early care. It is a seal of His adopting grace. Herein we read a tender Saviour’s tender heart. Is it His will that infant offspring should be as outcasts in vile nature’s waste? Provision of the sacrament slays such doubt.
We see His arms outstretched; we hear His urgent call, “Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not”. This rite abounds in hope. It is no mocking form. It is ordained as means of grace. Cast out the thought that infancy excludes the Spirit’s breath. If wilful sin be no impervious bar, much less the fault of an inherited disease. Jeremiah’s young heart began to beat with sanctified pulse. The Baptist’s second birth was scarcely later than the first. The God who blessed them is always the same. Mercy has trodden this early path and may tread it again.
Christian mother, proceed to educate your child for Christ. So soon as
thoughts begin to flow, they must have a channel. Why should that course be nature and not grace? What though the tender mind be weak to argue out a proof? The truths of Jesus are not arguments but facts. The precious truths of life’s high tree may fall down into childhood’s lap.
The tender Shepherd, seeking a lost lamb and dying on the cross to buy it, though held in a robber’s hand – washing it in streams flowing from His own side and feeding it in green pastures and bearing it in His strong arms and loving it with constant love and raising it to a bright home – are thoughts which weakest minds can grasp. These, when once grasped in saving power, can never be completely lost.
Let the first lesson be the love of God, the grace of Christ, the Spirit’s present help. Let the young eye be early turned to Calvary’s dying scene. Let memory’s page take its first lines from Jesus’ life. Let thought’s soft tendrils be entwined around truth’s stem. Then, through rich mercy, there is solid hope that the child born on earth is born an heir of heaven. Corruption’s seed will not prevail. Satan’s chains will fall. The unclean will be cleansed. The birth of children thus adds citizens to heaven.
The infant in the Jewish lap reminds of other truth. If it is a son, the days of the maternal shame are less. If it is a daughter, the unclean period is double (Lev 12:2,4,5). We may not pass this difference unmarked. The cause seems hidden from a casual glance. But thought, which dives into the ocean of God’s mind, is here soon carried back to Eden’s guilt and the first act of sin. It was the woman who first listened to the serpent’s wile. Her mind first went astray. Her will first lusted. Her hand first touched. Rebellion in the man was inexcusable offence, but the woman’s transgression beckoned to the snare.
There is no difference in the sin. The guilt of each is infinite dye. But there is a difference in the order of events, and a recording rite keeps this in memory’s view. The stamp of lengthened degradation was fixed on each female birth. Sin’s entrance was thus marked. Hence the foul misery is more abhorred. Hence the one remedy is more loved.
When the appointed days of shame are past, the excluding barrier is solemnly removed. Especial rites are ordered. Two victims are now slain. The one, as a burnt sacrifice, blazes on the altar. The other is an offering for sin (Lev 12:6). The gospel here speaks loudly. Defilement cannot cease without blood shed. A dying Saviour must atone before sin vanishes and the sinner is brought back to God.
Reader, you are unclean. There is no act, no word, no thought of any day, which is not dark before God’s eye. But Jesus is near, and able to make pure. Wash and be clean. Wash and be reconciled. Wash and be welcomed to
receiving arms. Wash and look upward to a Father’s smile. Wash and look onward to a Saviour’s throne.