Zachariah

“ Zachariah, my dear, would you like to go?”
Zachariah did not reply. His thoughts were elsewhere. But at last the spirit moved in him:
“Miss Pauline, your Supreme Being won’t help you very far. There is no light save in God’s Holy Word. God hath concluded them all in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous. That is the explanation; that is the gospel. ”

“ For such as he are weak as well as strong; weak in the absence of the innumerable little sympathies and worldlinesses which make life delightful, and but too apt to despise and tread upon those gentle flowers which are as really here as the sun and the stars, and are nearer to us. Zachariah found in the Corsair exactly what answered to his own inmost self, down to its very depths. ”

“ Jean apparently was a little restless at the absence of approval on Zachariah’s part, and at last he said abruptly:
“What do you think of her?”
Zachariah hesitated, and Pauline came to the rescue. “Father, what a shame! Don’t put him in such an awkward position.”
“It was very wonderful,” stammered Zachariah, “but we are not used to that kind of thing.”
“Who are the ‘we’?” said Pauline. “Ah, of course you are Puritans. I am a—what do you call it?—a daughter, no, that isn’t it—a child of the devil. I won’t have that though. My father isn’t the devil. Even you wouldn’t say that, Mr. Coleman. ”

“ Caillaud put his hand on Zachariah’s shoulder.
“This will not do,” he said. “For my sake forbear. I can face what I have to go through next Monday if am not shaken. Come, Pauline, you too, my child, must leave me for a bit.”
Zachariah looked at Pauline, who rose and threw her shawl over her shoulders. Her lips were tightly shut, but she was herself. The warder opened the door. Zachariah took his friend’s hand, held it for a moment, and then threw his arms round his neck. There is a pathos in parting which the mere loss through absence does not explain. ”

“ You can do no good; you will lose your place here; it will cost you something; and when you get there you may have to stop there.”
Zachariah could not restrain himself.
“Good God!” he cried, “you hear that one of my best friends is about to be hung, and you sit there like a statue—not a single word of sympathy or horror—you care no more than a stone. Use of going! I tell you I will go if I starve, or have to rot in jail all my lifetime. Furthermore, I will go this instant.” ”

“ He finally brought school-children and slaughtered them, but the blood being still unpacified, he exclaimed, 'Zachariah! Zachariah! I have for thy sake killed the best among them; will it please thee if I kill them all?' As he said this the blood of the prophet stood still and quiescent. He then reasoned within himself thus, 'If the blood of one individual has brought about so great a punishment, how much greater will my punishment be for the slaughter of so many!' In short, he repented, fled from his house, and became a Jewish proselyte. ”

“ So we all think, and as we watch the vessels dropping below the horizon in the sunset cloud, we imagine them bound with a happy crew to islands of the blest, the truth being that the cloud is a storm, and the destined port is as commonplace and full of misery as the one they have left. Zachariah, however, did not suffer himself to dream. He went diligently and systematically to work; but this time all his efforts were fruitless. He called on every printing-office he could find, and there was not one which wanted a hand, or saw any prospect of wanting one. ”

“ The Major had preceded her, but Zachariah lingered for a moment with the other two.
“Come, my dear, make haste, we shall be so late.”
“Go on with the Major; I shall catch you in a moment; I walk faster than you. I must close the window a trifle, and take two or three of the coals off the fire.”
Caillaud and Pauline lingered too. The three were infinitely nearer to one another than they knew. Zachariah thought he was so far, and yet he was so close. The man rose up behind the Calvinist, and reached out arms to touch and embrace his friends. ”

“ Zachariah still went to Pike Street Chapel, but only in the morning to hear Mr. Bradshaw, who was now an old man, and could not preach twice. On that particular Sunday on which Zachariah, Pauline, Mr. Allen, and George heard him he took for his text the thirteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy: “Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest.” He put down his spectacles after he had read these words, for he never used a note, and said: “If your religion doesn’t help you, it is no religion for you ”

“ Zachariah came up again in his daughter, and the mother came up again in the son, and so there was a mysterious play of inheritance, transfer, transition, reappearance, somewhat of resurrection—a great tragic mystery of transformation and representation.
We speak about a man as if he were self-contained—just standing upon so much ground, without relation behind or before, on the right hand or on the left. But no man is thus insularly placed; no man is an absolute solitary. ”

“ Unfortunately in marriage it is so difficult to be sure of what the great thing is, and what the little thing is, the little thing becoming so frightfully big afterwards! Theologically, Mrs. Zachariah was as strict as her husband, and more so, as far as outward observance went, for her strictness was not tempered by those secular interests which to him were so dear. She read little or nothing—nothing, indeed, on week-days, and even the Morning Chronicle, which Zachariah occasionally borrowed, was folded up when he had done with it and put under the tea-caddy till it was returned. ”

“ One evening in November 1816, Zachariah was walking home to his lodgings. A special meeting of the club had been called for the following Sunday to consider a proposal made for a march of the unemployed upon London. Three persons passed him—two men and a woman—who turned round and looked at him and then went on. He did not recognise them, but he noticed that they stopped opposite a window, and as he came up they looked at him again. He could not be mistaken; they were the Major, Caillaud, and his daughter. ”

“ And when the First Day of the week came, he went to the church to receive the Holy Mysteries with the brethren. And God shewed to Abba Isidore, priest of Scete, what Abba Zachariah had done, and when Abba Zachariah came to Abba Isidore to receive the Offering he looked at him and marveled at him, and he said unto the monks, “Zachariah received the Offering on the last First Day of the week like every other man, and now he hath become an angel of God.” ”

“ It is one of those thoughts which ought not to be thought—a thought to be suppressed, for it leads to atheism, or even something worse than mere denial of a God. Thank Heaven that the present generation of the poor has been relieved at least of one argument in favour of the creed that the world is governed by the Devil! Thank Heaven that the modern hospital, with its sisters gently nurtured, devoted to their duty with that pious earnestness which is a true religion, has supplied some evidence of a Theocracy.
Zachariah looked round again. ”

“ Even if Calvinism had been carved on tables of stone and handed down from heaven by the Almighty Hand, it would not have lived if it had not have found to agree more or less with the facts, and it was because it was a deduction from what nobody can help seeing that it was so vital, the Epistle to the Romans serving as the inspired confirmation of an experience. Zachariah was a great reader of all kinds of books—a lover especially of Bunyan and Milton; as logical in his politics as in his religion ”

“ It is just as reasonable that God should send an angel to four men in the last days, and introduce his kingdom and preparatory work for the second advent of the Son of God, as it was for an angel to be sent to Zachariah in order that a messenger might be raised up to prepare the way for his first coming. The one is a little more reasonable than the other; for the latter-day coming is to far transcend in glory and power his first coming, when he appeared among the Jews. At his second coming the earth will tremble and roll to-and-fro like a drunken man ”

“ Then gather together all the staffs into the Sanctuary, and pray to God; and after this go forth and give unto each man his staff. And the man on whose staff the Lord God shall make a sign to appear is he who is worthy that Mary shall be given unto him to protect.” And Zachariah the priest went forth and told the assembly what the angel of God had said unto him. And straightway he sent criers out into every land of Israel and into the cites and villages, and they cried out, saying, “Let every man of the House of David, whether he be young or old, whose wife is dead, go to Jerusalem.” ”

“ Meanwhile Zachariah pursued his way north-westward unchallenged, and at last came to a roadside inn, which he thought looked safe. He walked in, and found half a dozen decent-looking men sitting round a fire and smoking. One of them was a parson, and another was one of the parish overseers. It was about half-past ten, and they were not merry, but a trifle boozy and stupid. Zachariah called for a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, and asked if he could have a bed. The man who served him didn’t know ”

“ The other five were dethroned and murdered by rebels, so that, as Witsius has truly said, with the murder of Zachariah not only was the declaration of Hosea (Hos 1:4) fulfilled, “I visit the blood-guiltiness of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu,” but also the parallel utterance, “and I destroy the kingdom of the house of Israel,” since the monarchy in Israel really ceased with Zachariah. ”

“ Reign of Zachariah of Israel. - 2Ki 15:8. “In the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, Zachariah the son of Jeroboam became king over Israel six months.” As Jeroboam died in the twenty-seventh year of Uzziah, according to our remarks on 2Ki 14:29, there is an interregnum of eleven years between his death and the ascent of the throne by his son, as almost all the chronologists since the time of Usher have assumed. It is true that this interregnum may be set aside by assuming that Jeroboam reigned fifty-one or fifty-three years instead of forty-one, without the synchronism being altered in consequence. ”

“ Zachariah, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost too, thus praises God concerning Jesus "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he hath visited and redeemed his people, and he hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the month of his holy prophets which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us, &c. that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies should serve him with holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives." ”

“ Many a time in the Hebrew Scriptures is this ideal prominent. For a psalmist again writes: "As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." And when the prophet Zachariah foretells the coming glory of Jerusalem, which should supersede the then present distress, he gives as one item of blessing: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets thereof." ”

“ It was one of Zachariah’s weak points, she considered, that he did not seem to care sufficiently for cleanliness, and when he came in he would sometimes put his black hand, before he had washed, on the white tea-cloth, or on the back of a chair, and leave behind him a patch of printer’s ink. It was bad enough to be obliged always to wipe the door-handles.
“I do my best; but as for dirt, you cannot be so badly off in the Albany as we are in Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell is very disagreeable, but we are obliged to live here.” ”

“ Bradshaw. He went out on the Sunday morning, and had persuaded his wife to accompany him. They entered the first place of worship they saw. It was a Methodist chapel, and the preacher was Arminian in the extreme. It was the first time Zachariah had ever been present at a Methodist service. The congregation sang with much fervour, and during the prayer, which was very long, they broke in upon it with ejaculations of their own, such as “Hear him, O Lord!”—“Lord have mercy on us!”
The preacher spoke a broad Lancashire dialect, and was very dramatic. He pictured God’s efforts to save a soul. ”

“ His son Zachariah, the last king of the Jehu Dynasty of Israel, came to the throne in 740 B.C. towards the close of the reign of Azariah, son of Amaziah, king of Judah. Six months afterwards he was assassinated by Shallum. This usurper held sway at Samaria for only a month. "For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead." ”

“ Death did not diminish the number of her disciples, for they took refuge in the hope of her resurrection. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” they truly affirmed; and even to this day there are people who are waiting for the fulfilment of Joanna’s prophecies and the appearance of the “second Shiloh.” Zachariah had been frequently twitted in joke by his profane companions in the printing-office upon his supposed belief in the delusion. ”