THE EAGLE
"Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest,
O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed away from my
God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is
weary: there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint: and to him that
hath no might he increaseth strength. Even
the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: BUT
THEY THAT WAIT UPON THE LORD SHALL RENEW THEIR STRENGTH: THEY SHALL MOUNT UP
WITH WINGS AS EAGLES; THEY SHALL RUN, AND NOT BE WEARY; THEY SHALL WALK, AND
NOT FAINT," (Isaiah
40: 27-31, R.V.).
Nature
is full of spiritual parables, with none lovelier perhaps than the heaven-soaring
eagle - the Golden and Imperial Eagles are the two species most abundant in the
The eagle is built for flight, and supremely for
upward flight.
"An eagle," says Solomon, "flieth TOWARD HEAVEN" (Prov. 23: 5).
Its anatomy combines strength, lightness
and power: the cylindrical structure of the bones and feathers gives a
balloon-like effect, so that when the wings are spread in flight, the tendency
is upward instead of downward, and the body is buoyed up in air. It is so constructed as to overcome hostile
forces and currents in the heavenly places. Built for heaven, and far out-stripping every
other bird in ascending power, the eagle will continue soaring in tireless
flight where none can see it but God. "God, ... being rich in
mercy, raised us up with him [Christ] and made
us to sit with Him in the heavenly places" (Eph. 2: 4). Purer air; clearer vision; untroubled quiet
rare landscape; cloudless sunshine:- what a home! "I have watched
an eagle," says Mr. Seton
Gordon, the chief living authority on eagles, "commence to mount when just above the tree tops, and with never a
movement of the wings reach a height so great as to be invisible to the eye -
and for an eagle to be invisible it must be, at a conservative estimate, at
least eight thousand feet in the air." The [obedient] Christian is not only one who seeks the highest
ideals, but who has the power to reach
them put into his very bones:
far above every other terrestrial creature, he is so a sharer of the
Divine nature that he is capable of a
life which, in all but infinity of scope, is the life of God. Solomon said:- "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea,
four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air"
(Prov. 30: 18): how
much more wonderful, the way of a Christian in the heavenly places!
The eagle is a solitary bird.
Other birds go in flocks; the
eagle, never: if
two are seen together, they are mates. He
is lonely because he is lofty: he is
remote from other birds because no other bird can live where he lives, or
follow his tremendous lead. When the
Lord says, "Follow Me," men do not
rise in flocks, but here one, and there another; and the higher the
ascent, the lonelier the flight. The
further earth recedes, the less the world appeals. "I noticed a
small dark speck," says Mr.
Seton Gordon, "against the blue of the sky,
and thought it was an insect. Then I saw the black speck was approaching with
incredible speed, and realized that it was a Golden Eagle rushing down to the eyrie
from the high snow corries behind. He
was travelling like a thunderbolt. His
speed must have been at least two hundred miles an hour, and I am confident
this is no over-statement."
The eagle has one peculiarity of vision which belongs (we
believe) to no other creature.
It
is furnished with a double eyelid, the inner one transparent and always drawn
over the eye; so that while other birds see in the light of
the sun, the eagle SEES the sun. It lives so much in the land of light that
God has made it, alone among creatures, to be undazzled,
unblinded, by the fount of day. Satan's design is to keep an unsaved [and carnal] soul a
hooded, blinded eagle, - "in whom the god of this
age hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving,"
to rob them of "the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"¹ (2 Cor. 4: 4). What
makes us God's eagles is that we see Christ, the Sun of
Righteousness, as He is: it is the alchemy of the Beatific
Vision.
God is careful in the training of His eagles.
The
eyrie, or eagle's nest, is generally on the jagged edges of a precipice: the
nest of the Sea-Eagle is enormous, sometimes with a diameter of six or eight
feet. So Jehovah says:- "As an eagle that stirreth up her
nest" - pulling the straw away and thus irritating the nestlings with the sharp points, and exposing the
thorns, or even thrusting the eaglets out of the nest - "that fluttereth over her young, He
spread abroad His wings, He took them, He bare them on His pinions"
(Deut. 32: 11). Only by a broken nest, and the apparently
heartless precipitation over the precipice, together with the actual testing of
the Divine power to uphold, can God make strong and developed eagles; and
as the mother-eagle entices the nestlings outward and upward, or catches them
if they flutter dangerously, and spreads her pinions between them and any
possible enemy, so God does with His own. Between
the arrow and the eaglet is God. Earth is its greatest danger.
But there are times when we shall find a sad, tired,
drooping eagle:
the bird's power to soar is gone: it is the moulting season.
But what does the
eagle do? It basks quietly in the
sunshine; slowly the plumage returns; and then she "mounts up with wings as eagles," and the
extraordinary rapidity of flight and power of ascent comes back. "They shall put
forth" - says the Greek version of Isaiah
40: 31 - "fresh feathers as the moulting
eagle." "Who satisfieth thy mouth with good
things, so that thy youth" - thy spiritual
prime - "is renewed LIKE THE EAGLE"
(Psa. 103: 5).
The eagle is the only non-human creature on earth which
God has ever chosen for the proclamation of His truth to all mankind;*
just as the snake is the only non-human creature on earth that
Satan has used for the proclamation of his falsehood. John says, in Patmos:- "And I saw, and I
heard an eagle, flying in midheaven,
saying with a great voice, Woe, woe, woe, for them that dwell on the
earth" (Rev. 8: 1, 3). "Where the slain are," God says, "there is she" (Job
39: 30). A lectern (presumably for this reason) is often constructed, on
the under side, with the figure of an eagle. "What was it in
my sermon that won you to Christ?" a preacher asked a new convert.
"It was nothing you said," was the reply, "but
something that came out of the back of the eagle." We are Christ-based. "She dwelleth on the
rock, and hath lodging there" (Job
39: 28). The Eagle is the
greatest enemy the Serpent has on earth: some species of eagles are called
"snake-eating eagles," which they
disable and consume, with rapid blows from the beak: and so it is when the
Dragon approaches (Rev. 9: 11), that God
sends forth (Rev. 8: 13) His warning Eagle.
Eagles are also used for hunting wolves, and in
[*
An ass (2 Pet. 2: 16) warned a single
prophet.]
**
Mr. Matthew Edwards describes the
combat between a wolf and two hunting eagles. "The wolf stood
at bay, and though his eyes were gone he lashed out this way and that with flashing fangs in the hope of
finding his assailants. Ballah and Naja had been taking
turns in dealing sharp, quick blows with their razor-like beaks. As we watched, the wolf sank to the ground,
and, as quick as a flash, Ballah seized him by the
scruff of the neck with his terrible talons and swept up into the air. Up and up the big bird mounted, and at about
two hundred feet he picked out a rocky spot and let his quarry drop. When we got to Mr. Wolf he was nothing but a
bag of broken bones".]
So powerful is its upward flight, and so native is it to
heaven, that the eagle, alone of birds, disappears altogether from the sight.
It is a rapt eagle.
"I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought
you unto myself" (Ex. 19: 4). "Where the carcase is," our Saviour says, "there will the eagles be together"
(Matt. 24: 28). Above the carcase of a corrupting world,
death-doomed, in the eyrie of the
But
the very soaring capacities of the human soul can make it a more awful wreck. The largest and most powerful of all
eagles (or vultures) is the Condor; and Nietzsche, of moderns the most
virulently anti-Christian - "Christianity,"
he says, "is the one immortal blemish of mankind"
- says : "I am a condor
of the air." Such swarm
around all who would soar to-day. A flock of black condors above the Brazilian
jungle, the greatest and swiftest of soaring birds charged and wheeled, and
charged again, swooping closer and closer. In momentary dread lest one of the huge
creatures, with its wing-spread of ten or twelve feet, should foul the
propeller and bring down the plane, de Pinedo
resorted to - "the manoeuvres and trick stunts in
his gamut of airmanship Diving, soaring, speeding, looping, tumbling, he sought
desperately to shake off this terrifying pursuit, only to find himself still
the quarry of an ever-augmenting flock of the great birds of prey."
But the end of the earth-bound eagle is
tragedy itself. A man one winter's day
was scanning the whirl of the waters above the
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Note
[1. The
literal translation of 2 Cor.
4: 4 is: "In whom the god of this age
blinded the thoughts of the unbelieving with a view not to shine forth the
enlightenment of the GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST." Satan blinds the thoughts of unbelieving
Christians relative to Christ’s coming glory.]
2. See
also Prov. 23: 4-8.