Joshua 4:6

The Meaning Of A Monument

What mean ye by these stones? Joshua 4:6.

Lately we have all been hearing a great deal about monuments. Nearly every town, every village, every church, even every large school has been talking about the monument, the memorial, that it is to raise to the memory of its heroes who fell in World War I.

When we speak of a monument we usually think of something in the way of a tall column, such as the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, London; or of a building not unlike a church spire with a statue in the center of it, such as Sir Walter Scott's Monument in Princes Street, Edinburgh. But a monument does not need to be made of stone. A monument or memorial sometimes takes the form of a stained-glass window, or a brass tablet, or an organ, or a library, or a scholarship, or but we might go on for an hour suggesting memorials!

Even stone monuments are as varied as the men who designed them. The Pyramids of Egypt, the greatest of which is 7000 years old, are monuments the largest in the world. The Sphinx is a monument, so is the Arch of Titus in Rome, so is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris; so, too, though their meaning is an enigma, are these great stone circles which the Druids left behind them at Stonehenge and many other places in our Islands. People think that these “standing stones,” as they are called, must have formed part of a Druid Temple. The men who set them up have left no record of their purpose. Nevertheless they are very real monuments to those who placed them there.

The stones of our text must have been a little like those Druid “standing stones.” They were rough boulders taken from the bed of the river Jordan. Twelve men, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, each shouldered a stone and set it up near the spot where the Israelites had crossed, so that their children's children's children when they looked at these stones and asked, “What do these mean?” would be told, “These mean that God held up the waters of the river so that your forefathers might walk over dry-shod.”

I said that a monument is not always a stone. today I want to speak of two of the most beautiful monuments there are; and neither of them is a stone. Yet, looking at them, we say, “What mean these?”

The first is a road. In far-off Samoa there is a beautiful road fringed with palm-trees. It leads to a house that is famous all the world over, for it was there that Robert Louis Stevenson, the man who wrote Treasure Island and many other fascinating tales, passed the last years of his life.

That road was built for Stevenson by certain of the Samoan chiefs to whom he had been kind. They had been thrown into prison for political reasons, and Stevenson had managed to get them released. When the chiefs were set free, though some of them were old, and some were sick, and the weather was unusually hot, they set to work to make with their own hands this road. It was an offering of gratitude to their friend, “Tusitala,” as they called him. And at a corner of the road, they erected a notice bearing their names and reading thus:

“Remembering the great love of his highness Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug to last for ever.” And at the top of the notice Stevenson put the name of the road “THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART.”

Don't you agree that that was a fine monument? Don't you think anyone looking at that road and reading that notice-board would say, “Here is a monument which means gratitude and love”?

The last monument I wish to speak of also means love. But it means love greater than the love those chiefs bore to their Tusitala. Yes, and more wonderful still, it means love for you and me.

What is this last splendid monument? It is the Lord's Supper. You know that on His last night on earth Jesus took bread and broke it, and gave to His disciples. He took the cup also and drank of it with them. And He told them that He was going to die for them and for the whole world, and He asked them when they met together to break bread in memory of His broken body, and to drink the cup in memory of His shed blood.

And so that monument of the Lord's Supper is seen today in every land and every clime. It is seen wherever those who love their Savior meet. And if anyone asks, “What mean ye by these?” the answer is, “We mean love the love of Christ who died for us, and the love of man for Him who died.”