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T^h^, Z"*^^-^ 
 
 MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD. 
 
MOSES 
 
 THE MAN OF GOD 
 
 A COUESE OF LECTURES. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 JAMES "Hamilton, d.d. r.L.s. 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 
 
 530 BROADWAY. 
 1871. 
 
EDINBl RGH : FEINTED BY THOMAS AND ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTERS TO THE QCERN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
PEEFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 The following Course of Lectures was delivered 
 to the congregation of Eegent Square during the 
 winter of 1859-60. 
 
 The MSS., although not prepared for the press by 
 the Author, bear sufficient indications of his ulti- 
 mate intention to justify their publication in a 
 collected form. Where alternative forms of expres- 
 sion appear in the MSS., those that seem to be the 
 later have been retained. 
 
 I-oxDOX, Octoher 14, 1870. 
 
':i3' 
 
 T?T15rf]™'TT>- 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THEGLG8iO-iL 
 
 I.— THE ARK OF BULRtfSHES. . 
 
 II.— THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY, 
 
 III.— THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE, . 
 
 IV.— THE FATHER OF HISTORY, 
 
 v.— THE CALL, 
 
 VI.— THE BURNING BUSH, 
 
 VIL— MOSES AND MESSIAH, 
 
 VIII.— SIGNS AND WONDERS : THE PLAGUES, 
 
 IX.— THE PASSOVER, 
 
 X.— THE PASSOVER— (con<i?iwecZ), . 
 
 XI.— THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAR, 
 
 XIL— THE RED SEA, . 
 
 XIII.— MARAH, .... 
 
 XIV.— MURMURS, 
 
 XV.— THE DECALOGUE, 
 
 XVI.— THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER, 
 
 XVII.— THE THEOCRATIC KING AND THE OATH OF 
 GIANCE, 
 
 PAGE . 
 1 '^ 
 
 43 • 
 
 64 
 
 83 
 100 
 116 
 131 
 152 
 168 
 180 
 194 
 206 
 223 
 232 
 250 
 
 ALLE- 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XVIII.— THE TABERNACLE, . 
 
 XIX.— THE DIVINE GLORY, . 
 XX.— THE LAWGIVER, 
 
 XXI.— THE WATER OP MERIBAH, 
 XXII.— THE HERMIT NATION, 
 XXIII.— THE HERMIT NATION— (continued), 
 XXIV. -"A PRAYER OF MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD, 
 
 XXV.— DEATH OF MOSES, .... 
 
 306 
 314 
 327 
 340 
 353 
 365 
 
i 
 
 I. 
 
 ^ht ^rfe of fiukushcs. 
 
 ■ She took for him an ark of bulrushes, . . . and put the child 
 therein."— Ex. ii. 3. 
 
 In this climate of ours there are some plants 
 which need no culture. The thistle takes care of 
 itself. It requires no husbandman to break up the 
 ground and scatter the seed and drive away the 
 fowls of heaven ; but wherever there is a breeze 
 it finds a carrier, and wherever it finds a sod it 
 makes a home. Here are downs which have not 
 felt the plough since the days of Alfred or Carac- 
 tacus, and thistles grow on them still — the descen- 
 dants of those prickly sires which were crimsoned 
 by the blood of battling Danes or Britons in the far 
 far distant times of old. 
 
 But if you sow any kind of corn you must take a 
 great deal of trouble. You must cleave open and 
 crumble the mould ; you must cover it in ; you 
 must uproot the weeds that would choke it, and 
 
 A 
 
2 THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 • 
 
 you must drive away the beasts that seek to devour 
 it. And the crop of this season, if left to itself, will 
 insure no successor. A few straggling ears may 
 survive for an autumn or two, but presently there 
 is no more trace of the golden grain on your 
 neglected meadow than there would be on the 
 sands of the shore. 
 
 At the first God gave to mankind many great 
 truths and lessons : the knowledge of Himself as 
 the Father of spirits, holy, beneficent, forgiving; 
 the great rules of piety and virtue ; and above all, 
 the promise, so gracious and animating, of a coming 
 Deliverer from sin and from sorrow — a promise 
 which, as a blessed element of hope and elasticity, 
 should keep man's face still upward, and his heart 
 still strong for his toils and trials. All these God 
 gave, and at the first He flung them broadcast. 
 They were public property, and at the first were 
 intrusted to the general memory. But this was 
 enough to show that for saving truths the mind of 
 man has ceased to be the proper soil ; for knowledge 
 heaven-descended earth is no longer a congenial 
 clime. " Thistles grow instead of wheat." Ambition, 
 revenge, cruelty, falsehood, rapine, float tln-ough all 
 the atmosphere, and these can spring up anywhere : 
 not so integrity, truth, chastity, respect for the rights 
 of others, brotherly-kindness : and midway betwixt 
 the Creation and the Advent the world had sunk 
 
THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 3 
 
 into sucli a depth of idolatry and immorality as to 
 make it perfectly plain that on the self-propagating 
 principle those precious seeds which had been 
 carried away from Eden would soon disappear 
 altogether. For the bread of life there was too 
 little appetite to intrust its preservation any longer 
 to the careless and promiscuous multitude, — the sin- 
 loving, God-forsaking, demon-adoring nations of 
 mankind. 
 
 Accordingly, at this period the Most High, in His 
 wisdom, took means for the conservation of the 
 priceless blessing. Instead of dealing any longer 
 with the millions of the race — instead of emptying 
 garners of truth over fens and swamps which en- 
 gulfed the seed and yielded no return — He took 
 in " a little piece of holy ground." He laid hold of 
 one family, and selected it as the recipient and 
 custodier of Divine Eevelation. By a very remark- 
 able process He fenced in and secluded that family, 
 making it a peculiar people, dwelling alone, and not 
 reckoned among the nations; and when the great 
 purpose was answered, and the wall of separation 
 was broken down, it was on the hills of Palestine 
 that the handful of corn was found which now 
 waves on our English fields, and will yet make all 
 tlie mountains of the earth like Lebanon. 
 
 When trying to Christianize a deeply sunken com- 
 munity — Eijians or Savage Islanders — it is some- 
 
4 THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 times a good plan to get hold of one or two of the 
 natives, and bring them to an adjacent mission- 
 settlement, where they may be taught and trained, 
 and then, with the help of these native pioneers, the 
 missionaries find their work exceedingly facilitated. 
 So in His great process of reclaiming a sunken 
 world, the Lord laid hold of one particular family. 
 He raised up the righteous man from the East, and 
 called him to His feet. From the surrounding 
 grossness and superstition He snatched away that 
 family, and after a dreary probation in the desert — 
 after a long discipline in the Eeformatory of that 
 great wilderness, — He promoted it to the pleasant 
 school of Palestine. "The mill of God grinds 
 slowly," and it took a thousand years before the 
 pupil nation was ready to give its lesson to man- 
 kind. But at last, thoroughly weaned from idol- 
 atry, with the unity and the spirituality of the 
 Godhead engraven on its inmost conviction, with 
 that essence of all ethics — the Ten Commands — 
 familiar as the alphabet, by daily usages inured to 
 those expiatory and mediatorial ideas which lie at 
 the root of God's method with mankind, and by 
 accumulating and converging prophecies not only 
 taught to expect the Saviour, but looking for His 
 arrival with nervous excitement, — above all, with 
 a text -book in its hands infinitely holier and wiser 
 than itself, — the old scholar was now ready to act 
 
THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 5 
 
 the part of teacher and evangelist, and go forth as 
 God's own missionary, in the person of its more 
 enlightened members able to tell to Greeks and 
 Eomans even such unheard-of wonders as Jesus 
 and the Resurrection. 
 
 A few years ago we gave a course of lectures on 
 the Father of the Hebrew Family. We now pur- 
 pose to accompany in his career the Founder of 
 the Hebrew Nationality — that great Liberator and 
 Lawgiver who fulfilled a more important function 
 than any other man in the ages before Messiah. 
 
 Abraham and his immediate descendants were 
 shepherds, and they were that kind of shepherds 
 whom we call nomads. It was no object of theirs 
 to cultivate land or build houses, or in any way 
 improve the country where they sojourned. They 
 drove their flocks to any spot where grass and water 
 could be found, and as soon as the herbage of that 
 region was consumed, they packed up their canvas 
 village, and moved on till pastures green invited 
 them to halt once more. But with their migratory 
 habits they had no inducement to sow fields and 
 plant vineyards, nor did it suit their purpose to 
 rear dwellings of stone or temples for worship. 
 They wanted portable houses which could accom- 
 pany their cattle ; and, if they were rich, they 
 invested their wealth not in handsome buildings 
 and spacious gardens and bulky furniture, but in 
 
6 THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 jewels and costly robes, which were not cumbrous 
 to carry. But for this roving unresting people 
 the Lord had selected a land which pre-eminently 
 needed settled habits and the arts of mechanic 
 industry. To treat Palestine as a mere sheep-walk 
 would be to throw it utterly away. It was " a land 
 for wheat and barley ; for \dnes and fig-trees and 
 pomegranates ; a land of oil, olive, and honey ; a 
 land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills 
 brass mic'ht be dusr." But Jacob and his sons 
 were incapable of turning to account such a land. 
 They were neither horticulturists nor farmers nor 
 metallurgists, and in order to do justice to their 
 goodly heritage it was needful that the shepherds 
 should learn to be farmers and workers in stone 
 and in wood, in clay and in metal. Accordingly, 
 He who had pro\-ided the land for His people took 
 means to prepare the people for the land, — means 
 wonderfully marked by His own foreknowledge 
 and wisdom. After giving the favoured family a 
 glimpse of their promised and predestined home, 
 the Lord removed them to a land where they might 
 be trained and qualified so as to make the most 
 of Palestine when once they should obtain final 
 possession. Egypt was then the most advanced 
 and enhghtened of all lands, — its exhaustless soil 
 waving with crops and over-canopied by palms and 
 pomegranates, and its cities stupendous with colossal 
 
THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 7 
 
 temples and palaces in which art emulated the im- 
 mensity and indestructibility of nature. Proficients 
 in masonry and in the fictile arts, weaving that 
 fine linen which all antiquity regarded as a glory of 
 the loom, and rearing those enormous structures 
 which are still a wonder to the world, — musicians, 
 armourers, jewellers, — there was scarcely an art 
 which its industrious citizens did not practise, and 
 which might not there be learned by any ob- 
 servant visitor who possessed a passport to their 
 favour. With such a passport the Lord provided 
 Jacob and his sons. " He sent a man before them," 
 and through the popularity and power of Joseph, 
 Egypt, usually so jealous of strangers, gave hearty 
 welcome to its benefactor's kinsmen. Assigned a 
 region which should be all their own, the length 
 and breadth of the land were before them, and the 
 Aholiabs and Bezaleels who should arise were free 
 to copy each Egyptian craft and mystery.^ 
 
 In the succinct Bible summary, four hundred 
 years are passed over in one breath, and an ex- 
 pression of Stephen (Acts vii. 6) would seem to 
 indicate that during all these years the Israelites 
 
 1 For practising some of their acquisitions, — "labour in the field," 
 — the forty j^ears in the desert gave small opportunity. But such 
 knowledge is transmitted from sire to son ; and in the meanwhile four 
 hundred years of Egj'pt had gone far to alter early habits and change 
 the shepherds into agriculturists and artificers. The Tabernacle, the 
 Golden Calf, etc., show that handicrafts were practised. 
 
8 THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 had been " evil- entreated." But when we look 
 into it more carefully, we shall find that the evil 
 treatment only began at the close of the period. 
 As long as Joseph was remembered, and as long 
 as the dynasty continued on the throne who had 
 been so dee^Dly Joseph's debtors, the Hebrews 
 were protected and befriended. " They were fruit- 
 ful and increased abundantly, and multiplied and 
 waxed exceeding mighty;" and far from con- 
 tinuing cooped up in their own Goshen, they 
 spread over the country, " and the land was filled 
 with them." They were so prosperous and so 
 exceedingly numerous that at last a sovereign — 
 most likely of a new race of kings — grew appre- 
 hensive of their ascendancy. He said to his people, 
 "Behold, the children of Israel are more and 
 mightier than we;" and for fear that in the event 
 of a war they should make common cause with the 
 invader, he adopted towards them a rigid and re- 
 pressive policy. Their spirit, and their very lives, 
 he tried to crush out by tremendous toils ; and 
 when the brick-kilns and the burning sun were not 
 ridding him fast enough of the dangerous foreigners, 
 he promulgated one of those ordinances which 
 make tyranny so terrible, and commanded that 
 henceforward every male child of Hebrew parent- 
 age should perish as soon as born. 
 
 There have been many commentaries written on 
 
THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 9 
 
 the Book of Exodus ; but by far the most interest- 
 ing and remarkable is one for which we are in- 
 debted to Pharaoh himself — that pictorial Bible 
 executed by order of the kings of Egypt, and 
 preserved for three thousand years bright and clear 
 beneath the sands of the Libyan desert. There we 
 learn how Egypt was invaded and for a time con- 
 quered and held down by a race of shepherd-kings 
 from Arabia — a disgrace and disaster which made 
 shepherds an abomination to the Egyptians, and 
 which rendered the Egyptians especially nervous at 
 the increase within their borders of a shepherd- race, 
 the kinsmen of their shepherd conquerors. There 
 we have preserved countless specimens of such 
 bricks as the Hebrews made — bricks sun-dried, with 
 chaff or straw mixed throughout their substance to 
 make them more tenacious. There we have de- 
 picted groups of foreign bondmen, measuring out 
 the clay, moulding it into blocks, carrying away 
 on yokes the finished bricks, and piling them under 
 the eye of an Egyptian taskmaster, who, rod in 
 hand, sits at his ease and looks on in leisure. 
 There too we have numberless examples of the 
 arrogance and cruelty of the Egyptians, trampling 
 on the necks of their enemies ; and there we read 
 inscriptions on temples and palaces, boasting how 
 in the construction of those gigantic fabrics no 
 native Egyptian had been employed, but that they 
 
10 THE ARK OF BULEUSHES. 
 
 were all tlie work of foreigners. And there, " with 
 a pen of iron, written in the rock for ever," we have 
 the Pagan's attestation to a thousand minutiae in 
 the Pentateuch — a sculptured panorama at which 
 we shall hereafter have occasion to glance when we 
 wish to know the meaning of many a scriptural 
 allusion, as well as to know the abode in which 
 the hero of our history spent the morning of his 
 days. 
 
 The edict of Pharaoh had not long been issued 
 before it fell in all its bitterness on a family of the 
 house of Levi. In that family there was already a 
 boy three or four years of age, who had the good 
 fortune to be born before the reign of terror ; and 
 there was also a little girl twice the age — a clever, 
 dark-eyed maiden, with a fine ear for music, and 
 with her sensible active ways the help and comfort 
 of her mother. But now, when there ought to have 
 been great joy in the house, for another son was 
 born into it, all was hushed and silent. No 
 neighbour came to congratulate, and it was any- 
 thing but pride which the poor mother felt as she 
 gazed on her " proper child." Day after day 
 passed on, and every day the babe grew more 
 endearing and more beautiful ; but every day made 
 concealment more difficult. It was a wonder that 
 no spy nor informant had yet found out the fatal 
 secret ; every foot-fall at the door sent panic 
 
THE AEK OF BULKUSHES. 1 1 
 
 tlirongli the house ; and sometimes it was impos- 
 sible to hush those infant outcries, which, if over- 
 heard, would attract the murderer to the cradle and 
 be the death of every one of them. This anxiety 
 could not last. The babe was three months old, 
 when one day Jochebed took a basket of papyrus, 
 such as might have long been used for household 
 purposes, and began to make it ready. As with 
 pitch she filled the chinks and made it water- 
 tight, as she lined the interior with bitumen, and 
 smoothed and polished it so carefully, the tears ran 
 down, and the little Mary wondered what her 
 mother could intend to do with it. At last all was 
 finished, and in the early morning they set off for 
 the river-side. Jochebed told her daughter what 
 the basket was intended for, and you may be sure 
 it was with a bursting heart that the sister thought 
 of the likely fate of that baby-brother whom she 
 had so often helped to nurse and dandle. But here 
 was a quiet spot on the water's edge, where the 
 reeds grew tall and the current hardly came ; and 
 why not here ? " By faith her child had been hid 
 three months," notwithstanding " the king's com- 
 mandment," and the same faith which had kept up 
 the timid mother's heart through many real dangers 
 and false alarms had moved her to prepare this 
 ark ; and although the shore was desolate and the 
 crocodiles were hungry — though her cheeks were 
 
1 2 THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 pale and the sword, was piercing through her soul, 
 — that true daughter of Abraham still could trust 
 in G-od, and cherished in her heart some vasue 
 hope of which her " prepared ark " was sign and 
 sacrament. And now, the last meal given, and the 
 babe adjusted in his new strange cradle, the last 
 kiss imprinted on his broad untroubled brow, and 
 the last look of maternal agony upturned towards 
 Israel's God, Miriam took her hidden post of ob- 
 servation and the wife of Amram tore herself 
 away. 
 
 But she had not long been home when Miriam 
 burst into the house, too wild and agitated to tell 
 aU the happy tale, but bidding her mother haste 
 and come. And there, sure enough, they were — a 
 group of ladies grandly dressed around the weep- 
 ing boy, and one of them the king's own daughter, 
 and from amidst her laughing, wondering maidens, 
 turning round to Jochebed, the princess said, " Take 
 this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee 
 thy wages." Oh what an evening that would be in 
 Amram's cottage ! How eagerly they all by turns 
 would embrace and coax the little outcast ! How 
 secure the joy of the happy mother as she clasped 
 her own darling, safe beneath the shadow of the 
 throne ! How often would Miriam tell over the 
 adventures of the morning ; her " frights" with 
 vultures and with what at first seemed crocodiles ; 
 
THE AKK OF BULEUSHES. 13 
 
 her wonder when the five ladies came at last in 
 sight, walking along the bank, whether they would 
 notice anything, and how she rather thought 
 that they would have passed on, if just then the 
 baby had not begun to cry; and how she herself 
 had contrived to come up as if by chance at the 
 very moment, and how the princess looked so good 
 and pitiful, and how she, the sensible and self- 
 possessed little Miriam, had offered to run and get 
 a nurse for the noisy unappeasable foundling ! 
 And oh ! how heartfelt would be the thanksgiving 
 to the God of Abraham which arose that evening 
 from beneath the roof of that humble Hebrew 
 dwelling, for the lost one had been found; this their 
 son who had been dead was alive again ; the ark 
 of bulrushes was transformed into a golden cradle, 
 and, guided by a Hand Divine, had landed its help- 
 less freight in no monster's jaws, but on the very 
 steps of Pharaoh's throne. 
 
 Singular preservations like this have marked the 
 infancy of many who afterwards grew memorable. 
 Every one will recall the story of Eomulus and 
 Eemus, nursed by a wolf, and thus preserved to 
 lay the foundations of Eome and the Eoman empire; 
 and the readers of Herodotus will remember how he 
 tells that Astyages ordered his infant grandson to 
 be thrown out into the wilderness, but how a shep- 
 herd's wife, whose own babe was dead, adopted the 
 
14 THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 "goodly child," -^ and so saved from the liysenas 
 that Cyrus who was to create the Medo-Persian 
 monarchy, and fill so large a space in history. And 
 every one is now familiar with the legend of om^ 
 own king Arthur, revived as it has been by the 
 Laureate : — 
 
 " No man knew from whence he came ; 
 But after tempest, when the long wave broke 
 All down the thundering shores of Bude and Boss, 
 There came a day as still as heaven, and then 
 They found a naked child upon the sands 
 Of wild Dundagil by the Cornish sea ; 
 And that was Arthur ; and they fostered him 
 Till he by miracle was appro ven king."^ 
 
 Conceding, however, that these tales are legends, — 
 confused echoes, possibly, from the story now under 
 consideration, — it is well to note how often in their 
 precarious outset precious lives have been preserved 
 from imminent danger, and sometimes by wdiat we 
 deem a trivial circumstance. In the beginning of 
 last century, in the house of a London tradesman, 
 a babe was born wdio looked so inanimate and 
 insignificant that it was taken for granted he was 
 dead, when afterwards gazing at the tiny form an 
 attendant noticed a gentle movement in the chest, 
 and her efforts were rewarded by fostering into life 
 
 ^ Like Moses, rb iraidiov juiya re /cat eieidh. — Herod, i. 112. 
 
 2 Tennyson's Idylls, p. 240. For similar stories see Suetonii 
 Augustus, c. 95, and the Tamul tale (referred to by Ewald) in B. 
 Schmid's Zerstreute Blatter (1843), st. 2. 
 
THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 1 5 
 
 the author of The Rise and Progress. Contemporary 
 with Philip Doddridge there was growing up in a 
 parsonage of Lincolnshire a hoy of great promise 
 who had already reached his sixth summer, when 
 the rectory took fire ; all awoke in time and saved 
 themselves, but the little boy was forgotten, or 
 rather, it was left to God Himself to save him, and 
 the " brand plucked from the burning" grew up to 
 be the founder of English Methodism. A poor 
 woman in the town of Stirling sprang up from her 
 spinning-wheel with an impression on her mind 
 that her child had fallen into a neighbouring well. 
 She was just in time to snatch hold of a lint- white 
 head which had not yet disappeared, but which was 
 no child of her own but the minister's son. Tommy 
 Eandall, afterwards abundantly known as the bene- 
 volent and noble-minded Dr. Davidson of Edin- 
 burgh. 
 
 We forget it as regards ourselves, but we see and 
 feel it in our children. Surely a special Providence 
 superintends them, and in their hands angels bear 
 them up, lest at any time they dash their foot against 
 a stone. Playing with the cockatrice ; putting their 
 hand on the lion's mane ; making toys of edge-tools, 
 and rolling down-hill live shells ; scrambling up 
 precipices, and falling out from open windows ; 
 swept a helpless bundle down the swollen torrent, 
 or picked up from beneath the carriage-wheels ; 
 
16 THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 restored from desperate sickness or preserved amidst 
 frigrhtful accidents, — what mother is there who, at 
 some moment, has not felt like the Alpine peasant 
 when she saw the eagle sailing overhead with her 
 infant in its talons ? Who that has not once and 
 again shrieked out in helpless agony, and then wildly 
 laughed or wept at the marvellous preservation ? 
 AVho is there that has a son grown up who does not 
 acknowledge that he is the child of Providence ? 
 And who is there that has grown up himself but 
 says with Addison : — 
 
 *' When in the slipp'ry paths of yoiitli 
 
 With heedless steps I ran ; 
 Thine arm, unseen, convey'd me safe, 
 
 And led me up to man : 
 Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths. 
 
 It gently clear'd my way ; 
 And through the pleasing snares of vice, 
 
 More to be feared than they." 
 
 Nobody knows the original name of Amram's 
 second son ; the name his parents gave him became 
 entirely superseded and absorbed in the name which 
 the princess gave him. And so any prized posses- 
 sion which we have succeeded in acquiring, or in 
 long retaining, has attached to it, usually speaking, 
 some circumstance of wonder or surprise in its 
 bestowment or restoration. From a thing so small 
 as some earthly possession, up to a thing so great as 
 the salvation of the soul, it is a salvage from the 
 
THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 1 7 
 
 flames ; like Joshua the high priest, " a brand 
 plucked from the fire : " it is a gift from the flood, 
 you name it Moses, and say, " Because I drew it out 
 of the water." 
 
 The time of Moses' birth is one of the most in- 
 structive incidents in this history. "We have no 
 reason to suppose that the exterminating edict of 
 the king remained in force for any considerable 
 period. It did not exist when Moses' own brother 
 was born, three or four years before, and if it had 
 been in active operation for any length of time, it is 
 utterly impossible that there could have been 600,000 
 grown-up males ready to accompany Moses in the 
 march from Egypt. Much likelier is it that this 
 was one of those frantic expedients to which des- 
 potism resorts in a moment of rage, and which after 
 a while its myrmidons cease to execute, and are 
 right in their calculation that it will not be renewed. 
 Not improbably the decree became a dead letter 
 soon after Moses was taken up and adopted by 
 Pharaoh's daughter, and there can be no doubt that 
 it had only newly come forth when Moses was born. 
 In any case, it was the most dismal moment in the 
 history of Israel's bondage — the very noon of Hebrew 
 night ; and it was the moment when the man was 
 born who should put an end to it all. Israel's 
 extremity was God's opportunity ; and the wrath of 
 Pharaoh wrought the purpose of Jehovah. But for 
 B 
 
1 8 THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 tliat bloodthirsty decree the son of Amram miglit 
 have grown up a peasant and a bondsman, but this 
 decree promoted him to the palace, and trained 
 him to be the deliverer of his countrymen, the 
 conqueror of Egypt, and the death of Pharaoh's 
 successor. 
 
 Such is God's method. The darker the cloud, the 
 more brilliant the rainbow; the wilder the storm, 
 the more welcome the haven ; the more desperate 
 the danger, the more delightful is the sense of 
 deliverance and the more rapturous the thanks of 
 the rescued. And so in His wisdom the Most High 
 sometimes allows His people to reach the sorest 
 pass before He breaks the silence and makes bare 
 His mighty arm. Not only does He allow the bottle 
 to be spent, but the dying boy to be cast away 
 beneath the bushes, before Hagar's eyes are opened 
 on the well. Not only does He allow Joseph to be 
 sold into slavery, but to be flung into a dungeon and 
 forgotten, before He calls him to the steps of the 
 throne and the smiles of the raonarch. Not only 
 does He suffer the Holy Land to be invaded, but 
 Jerusalem to be hopelessly invested, before the angel 
 of death spreads his wings and exterminates the 
 host of Sennacherib.-^ Not only does He permit the 
 plot against the Jews to mature, but the scaffold 
 for Mordecai is erected, before God gives the signal, 
 
 ^ Oosterzee, p. 10. 
 
THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 19 
 
 and on His people's enemies executes vengeance. 
 Not only does He permit a hostile king to take the 
 crown, but He lets the bondage begin, and the brick- 
 kilns glow fiercer, and the murderous edict come 
 forth, before the knell of tyranny is rung, and Moses 
 is born. And so, if you have a clear precept to 
 start you off, and plain promises to keep you going, 
 do not fear though the path should grow precarious 
 and narrow, do not flinch though dangers should 
 swarm and multiply. It is the valley of Achor, 
 trouble in every step, and a wall of rock in front, — 
 a rock which no agility can climb nor any strength 
 can penetrate. But in faith and fearlessness go for- 
 ward, and as you reach the barrier a door of hope 
 will open, and usher you into an elysium of repose 
 or a paradise of beauty. If you have a plain intima- 
 tion of God's will, you need be afraid of no king's 
 commandment, for that God in whom you trust will 
 find means to protect His own ; and when He has 
 a purpose to fulfil He can make the Nile-monster a 
 nursing mother, and for Pharaoh's victims create a 
 shield in Pharaoh's daughter. 
 
 So we leave safely landed the little papyrus boat, 
 the ark of bulrushes, — which grows mystic as we 
 gaze, and makes us think of other arks which have 
 gone God's voyages, and, like the babe that sailed 
 away from a bond-mother's arms to the bosom of a 
 princess, have carried their freight to a brilliant 
 
20 THE AEK OF BULRUSHES. 
 
 haven. And not so mucli that colossal ark, which 
 from out of a cursed and God-forsaken world, and 
 across the ferry of the Flood, carried Noah and his 
 family into that new and more favoured world 
 which God would curse no more, and on which, in 
 the person of Incarnate Deity, unimagined blessing 
 was destined to descend : not so much of it as 
 of that other ark in which this great advent 
 was effected — the manger which, not to Egyptian 
 maids, but to Eastern sages, disclosed not Moses, 
 but Messiah, that infant of days whose name 
 should expand into " The Wonderful, the Coun- 
 sellor, the mighty God;" and who, emerging from 
 that manger, is ascended to the right hand of the 
 Father, a Prince and a Saviour, and will return 
 on His great white throne. And it makes us think 
 of that papyrus ark to which infinite wisdom has 
 intrusted the revelation of Himself — the parchment 
 scroll, the paper book, the poor frail vehicle which, 
 launched on the tide of Time, has had so many 
 escapes from the chances of the stream, as well as 
 the fury of its foes, but is now escaped from the 
 house of bondage, and made a blessing to all nations. 
 And as we see the mournful mother carrying 
 
 *' Her babe, close cradled in her arms, 
 To Nile's green sloping shore," 
 
 and intrusting it to the unfriendly-looking flood, 
 little witting of the surprise which in a few hours 
 
THE ARK OF BULRUSHES. 21 
 
 awaited her, so we think of the rapture that awaits 
 many a Christian parent, who in tears has stood 
 over that sorrowful ark, the cof&n of her child, and 
 think of her joy and her wonder when the loved 
 one, who in the earthly dwelling makes '' a blank 
 so large," is recognised in the palace of Heaven's 
 own King. 
 
11. 
 
 ^he Ji^thtr of ChibaltB* 
 
 *' Moses . . . was mighty iu words and in deeds." 
 
 Acts vii. 22. 
 
 A MAGNIFICENT land was the Egypt in the midst 
 of which Moses grew up. With an atmosphere 
 clear and dry, with a soil which no harvests could 
 exhaust, with towns and temples at every bend of 
 the river emerging from the midst of the great 
 garden into which the surface had been carefully 
 cultured, and with its bountiful Nile flowing on 
 beneath the scented lotus, or spreading over the 
 plain, with all the wealth of its far-travelled waters, 
 nothing could be a more perfect symbol of prosperity 
 and self-sufficing abundance, whilst a peculiar archi- 
 tecture imparted to it all an air of wonderful gran- 
 deur. That architecture was chiefly monuments and 
 temples. The abodes of the living were sufficiently 
 simple, but all the wealth and genius of the country 
 were exerted to embody their ideas of immortality, 
 and to do homage to the powers unseen. Already, 
 in the days of Moses, the pyramid of Cheops had 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 23 
 
 stood for nearly a thousand years — a mountain of 
 masonry a furlong in length and breadth; and in 
 temples which covered acres of land, and where 
 colossal figures towered up a hundred feet in height, 
 sculpture did its best to rescue kingly memories 
 from the tooth of Time, and awaken in the specta- 
 tor's mind awful ideas of the immense and invisible, 
 so that all the opulence and activity of the present 
 were visibly linked to a remote and stupendous 
 past, and through the sunny stir of the passing hour 
 there fell constant and gigantic shadows from the 
 surrounding " silent land." 
 
 The people who then inhabited this country, — and 
 since then three millenniums and a half have passed 
 away, — were more refined and intelligent than any 
 race of which we possess the memorials. But when 
 we say this we speak of the privileged orders : for 
 just as the soil was the property of the sovereign, so 
 learning was the monopoly of the priests or profes- 
 sional caste, and in all likelihood the mass of the 
 people were as poor and ignorant as they usually 
 were under all the ancient despotisms. But by the 
 arrangements of Providence Moses was brought up a 
 member of the privileged class. Adopted by one of 
 the royal family, his princess-mother obtained for 
 him the best instructors. He would be taught to 
 read the curious character to which Egyptian sages 
 had consigned their speculations and their learning, 
 
24 THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 and his own meditations he would be taught to con- 
 sign to a scroll of papyrus. In that geometry which 
 the land-surveying exigencies of their inundated 
 land made so necessary, and in the cognate astro- 
 nomy in which they were wonderful adepts, it is 
 likely that he would be in due time initiated; 
 and from the fact that he was afterwards able 
 to reduce a golden image to dust, it has been 
 surmised that he was no stranger to the pro- 
 cesses of their practical chemistry, which had already 
 presented them with glass and bronze and many 
 pure and exquisite pigments. At the same time it 
 is right to confess that a great deal of that Egyptian 
 wisdom was the merest foolishness, and, if Moses 
 ever mastered it, it would seem to have dropped 
 from the memory of his more enlightened years, as 
 baby gewgaws drop from the open hand of man- 
 hood ; and of their historical m}i:hology there is no 
 more trace in the Book of Genesis than there is in the 
 worship of Jehovah trace of their ridiculous idolatry. 
 But Moses was not only a scholar ; as years went 
 on he had an opportunity of earning distinction as a 
 warrior. According to Josephus, and we have no 
 reason to doubt the correctness of his statement, the 
 Ethiopians made an incursion into Egypt, and 
 routed the army which was sent to resist them. 
 Panic spread over the country, and Pharaoh trembled 
 at the approach of the swarthy savages, who were 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 25 
 
 already close to Memphis. The oracles were con- 
 sulted; that is to say, advice was asked from the 
 best-informed and most sagacious body of men in 
 the capital, — the heads of the priesthood ; and, well 
 aware of his remarkable abilities, they advised that 
 the command should be intrusted to INFoses. He 
 immediately took the field, and by a rapid though 
 round-about march surprised the enemy, defeated 
 them with heavy slaughter, drove them back into 
 their own territories, and followed them up so hard, 
 capturing one city after another, that they found no 
 asylum till they reached the swamp-girdled city of 
 Meroe. Here Moses lay down with his army, and 
 would have found the blockade both tedious and 
 difficult had he not happened to gain the affections of 
 an Ethiopian lady, w^hom he promised to marry pro- 
 vided she put them in the way to gain possession of 
 the city. Her admiration of the handsome Hebrew 
 was too strong for her patriotism, and the conqueror 
 returned from his triumphant campaign, bringing 
 with him his sable princess and the spoils of Meroe, 
 and filling the minds of all his fellow-countrymen 
 with hope and exultation.-^ 
 
 The substantial truth of this statement there is 
 no reason to doubt. It could be no invention of 
 Josephus, and it is adopted by Irenaeus, a Christian 
 father of the second century, and receives incidental 
 
 ^ Josephus, Antiquities, book ii. chap. 10. 
 
26 THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 confirmation from tlie fact that Stephen speaks of 
 Moses as " miglity in words and in deeds!' — a man 
 of brilliant achievements whilst still a resident at 
 the Egyptian court, and it is still more confirmed by 
 Moses himself, who casually mentions that his wife 
 was a native of Ethiopia.^ With the capacity 
 which Moses had by this time abundantly indicated, 
 and with the position which he occupied so near 
 the person of the sovereign, nothing could be more 
 natural than to intrust him with the command of an 
 important expedition ; nor is the probability dimi- 
 nished by the hint which Josephus gives, that the 
 counsellors who suggested it calculated on one if not 
 both of two alternatives : they were bound to hope 
 that Moses might rid Egypt of the invader ; if not, 
 they would not be sorry that the invaders should 
 rid themselves of an unwelcome rival and the court 
 of Pharaoh of a powerful and dangerous upstart. 
 
 In some respects the nearest modern counterpart to 
 Moses was that great Prince of Orange known to his- 
 tory as William the Self-contained or Silent. Like 
 Moses, the son of a pious mother, her lessons were 
 not lost, but for a long time they continued latent. 
 Like Moses, he soon left his home, and in early 
 boyhood became a page to the great Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth. The shrewd old Kaiser soon 
 perceived the wonderful depth and quickness of 
 the child, and by the time he was fifteen years of 
 
 1 Numb. xii. 1. 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 27 
 
 age, the page had become a sort of privy coun- 
 cillor — present at the most confidential interviews, 
 and master of all the Emperor's policy. Under the 
 ablest tutor of the time, he learned a science far 
 more arduous than Egyptian hieroglyphics, till he 
 could read at a glance the hearts of princes, 
 and from the lies of statesmen could enucleate 
 their meaning and their motive ; and under the 
 greatest captain of the age he learned to be 
 the cautious campaigner and the resourceful war- 
 rior ; — such a favourite pupil that when the 
 famous abdication took place it was on William's 
 shoulder that the feeble Emperor leaned his hand 
 whilst addressing the States- General. Charles re- 
 signed — Charles, who with his exterminating edicts 
 and remorseless executions had been a Pharaoh 
 to the Protestants ; Charles resigned, and was suc- 
 ceeded by a Pharaoh of narrower intellect and 
 harder heart — Philip the Second. But all this 
 while William was the gay and hilarious courtier, 
 captivating every acquaintance by his exquisite 
 address, and charming wide circles by the bright 
 overflow of spirits on which no burden pressed. 
 When one day hunting with the King of Prance 
 in the forest of Vincennes, as the two rode along 
 together, Henry told William of a secret league into 
 which Henry of Prance had entered with Philip 
 of Spain to extinguish Protestantism throughout 
 Europe, by extirpating every Protestant. Too good a 
 
28 THE FATHER OF CHR^\LRY. 
 
 diplomatist to gasp or change colour at the astound- 
 ing disclosure, William rode on and finished the 
 hunt ; but took the first opportunity to gallop off 
 with his terrible secret. The doom that hung over 
 his fellow-subjects in Holland roused all his patriot- 
 ism, and by and bye the lessons of his pious mother 
 revived in his emancipation from Popery; and 
 turning to account the lessons of soldiership and 
 diplomacy which he had learned from his grim old 
 tutor, in the hand of God he became the instrument 
 to shatter the Eomish league, to stultify the Pope, 
 to roll back the hosts of Philip, to break the yoke 
 of Spain, and lead forth to freedom the Seven 
 United Provinces, — the Moses of a modern Exodus. 
 So we can quite conceive that it was his very 
 success which precipitated the decision of the son 
 of Amram and expedited his flight from the halls 
 of Pharaoh. With his acknowledged ability, with 
 his influential position, and still more with his 
 military renown, it would have been natural for 
 his compatriots to look up to him as their guardian 
 and protector ; and " he supposed his brethren 
 would have understood how that God by his hand 
 would deliver them."^ But if " his brethren " under- 
 stood not, the more perspicacious Egyptians would 
 form their own conclusion, and the unscrupulous 
 Pharaoh would have his fears. As the Jewish 
 antiquarian tells us, " After being saved from the 
 
 1 Acts vii. 25. 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 29 
 
 Ethiopians by Moses, the Egyptians began to hate 
 him, and feared that he might stir np sedition and 
 effect a revolution in the land; and, instigated 
 by the sacred scribes, the king at last sought to 
 slay him." The fear was not preposterous. These 
 Hebrews had a mysterious aptitude for rising ; and 
 as a slave of this nation had once risen to be vice- 
 roy, who could tell but this fortunate foundling 
 might aspire a step higher, and seek to be king ? 
 He had already commanded an army, and were 
 there not scattered through the land half a million 
 of his brethren ready to rise at his summons ? 
 
 In any case his growing importance made de- 
 cision more urgent, and if he was to continue at 
 court, if he was to insure his own safety, there 
 was now no option : he must conform to the estab- 
 lished religion, he must bow to the idols, he must 
 become out and out an Egyptian. It was a solemn 
 alternative. On the one side, Egypt with its trea- 
 sures, the prospect of rising to the highest rank in 
 a nation the most renowned and the proudest of 
 the earth, the society of sages, the splendours of a 
 palace, the glories of a princely equipage passing 
 through the admiring populace amidst shouts of 
 " Bow the knee !" and, on the other, Goshen, with 
 its slaves, the fellowship of thralls, with aU gene- 
 rosity and spirit, all taste and intelligence crushed 
 out of them, with bread of tears in lieu of royal 
 dainties, and instead of floating down the Nile in 
 
30 THE FATHER OF CHIVALFcY. 
 
 a golden barge amidst the strains of voluptuous 
 music, scorching in the brick-field amidst the 
 groans of companions in captivity. But these 
 bondmen were his brethren ; their God, and not 
 Osiris, was the true God ; and afflicted and de- 
 pressed as they presently were, their God had pro- 
 mised to deliver them ; and who could tell but He 
 mioht honour Moses himself to be their deliverer ? 
 
 o 
 
 So farewell Memphis ; farewell kind foster-mother ; 
 farewell gloomy and fitful Pharaoh ; farewell, ye 
 dreams of ambition ; ye prospects of greatness and 
 pleasures of sin, farewell ! 
 
 A noble decision ! Affliction with the people of 
 God he preferred to the pleasures of sin, and re- 
 proach as one of Messiah's people he deemed greater 
 riches than the treasures in Egypt. And the 
 sequel proves him right. The day that he re- 
 nounced his earthly prospects God served him heir 
 to an inheritance incorruptible and which fadeth 
 not away ; and for ages past his solitary name has 
 outshone all the monarchs combined of the one-and- 
 thirty dynasties. 
 
 On his benevolent errand he reached the head- 
 quarters of his countrymen. He examined into their 
 circumstances, and found their position abundantly 
 degraded and distressing. No doubt he did what he 
 could to comfort them, and if he had brought away 
 aught of his wonted wealth from the capital, we may 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 31 
 
 be sure that words would not be bis only consola- 
 tion; but as he "looked on their burdens" his 
 generous spirit boiled with indignation, and he 
 could ill repress the inward rage awakened as coarse 
 ruffians jeered and buffeted his brethren, and, like 
 " dumb, driven cattle," forced to their tasks with 
 heavy blows steps weak with age or staggering with 
 infirmity. At last he came up one day as one of 
 these sturdy tyrants was striking a Hebrew, possibly 
 a kinsman of his own.^ With a quick glance he 
 satisfied himself that there were no witnesses in 
 sight, and, Hebrew as he was, he stepped forth his 
 brother s champion. To Moses the man " mighty in 
 deeds," it was a small affair to fell the caitiff, and a 
 few moments sufficed to obliterate all trace by hiding 
 the body in the sand. But oppression demoralizes its 
 victims. In taking his own high spirit as the rule, 
 Moses miscalculated the mettle of his countrymen. 
 Not only was there no readiness to rise against their 
 taskmasters, but there was no honourable feeling 
 amongst themselves. The man whom his ready 
 stroke had rescued from blows and bruises, and per- 
 haps from death, had compromised his benefactor's 
 life by noising abroad the matter ; and when on 
 a subsequent occasion he sought to separate two 
 Hebrew combatants, he was met with the rough 
 retort, " Who made thee a prince and a judge over 
 
 1 Ex. ii. 11—" One of his brethren." 
 
32 THE FATHER OF CHIVALllY. 
 
 US ? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the 
 Egyptian?" And soon finding that the affair had 
 reached the ears and roused the wrath of Pharaoh, 
 nothing remained to Moses but to seek safety in 
 flight. 
 
 For his subsequent asylum Moses was indebted 
 to Eastern hospitality and his own chivalry. Of 
 that hospitality the traces still continue in these 
 unchanging regions. A French traveller (M. Pou- 
 joulat) who had made himself at home in the desert, 
 tells us how he one day rode up to the tent of a 
 sheikh near Hebron. " I am tired with my journey, 
 and when I saw your tents I blessed God." " You 
 are welcome," replied the sheikh ; " a guest is a 
 favour from Heaven ; rest you in safety." And find- 
 ing, on longer acquaintance, what an enthusiast for 
 Arab life was his visitor, how he preferred the tents 
 of Kedar to the palaces of Prance, the old Bedouin 
 would not allow him to go away ; and it was only 
 on the third morning that he could extricate himself 
 from the affectionate embrace of the Arab, who 
 asked him, with tears in his eyes, " Why leave me ? 
 My tent and my flock shall be yours, and if you 
 wish to have a wife, there is my daughter," ^ 
 
 In some such fashion was Moses invited into the 
 tent of the priest or chieftain of Midian, only that 
 he had rendered a service which well entitled him 
 
 1 " Corresp. d'Orient," quoted in Migue's Dictionnaire de la Bible. 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 33 
 
 to a distinguished reception. He had now fairly 
 escaped from Egypt, and had nothing to fear from 
 Pharaoh, but he was a houseless wanderer — 
 
 " The world was all before hira, where to choose 
 His place of rest, and Providence his guide." 
 
 That Providence conducted him to a silent and 
 lonely region beyond the nearer branch of the Eed 
 Sea — a district extremely desolate and solemn — 
 lofty mountains raising their sharp ribs and bald 
 summits far into the sky ; and where, if his bag of 
 dates and water-sack were not spent, the pilgrim 
 might pass many days without ever encountering 
 the " human face divine ;" seldom a living creature 
 to be seen except the- lizard looking timidly from 
 under the stone, or a coney as timid venturing forth 
 for a furtive nibble in the cool of the day ; seldom a 
 sound to be heard, except the rare murmur of the 
 bee among the acacia blooms, or the tinkle of the 
 sand as it slid tunefully down the slopes of the 
 granite — the desert's musical hour-glass — an oratory 
 vast and tranquil and unprofaned, and with its ab- 
 sence of idols pleasant contrast to Egypt — where, for 
 the next forty years, Moses was destined to spend 
 many a day of exalted communion with Abraham's 
 God and his own ; and where, before the history 
 ended, he should see the mountains shake, and hear 
 those hushed valleys re-echo to the trumpet of 
 angels and the voice of Jehovah. 
 
34 THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 One day lie had readied a little oasis. There was 
 pasture in the district, and if there were people they 
 would be sure to come to the well. As Moses sat 
 waiting, the first who arrived were seven sisters, 
 who proceeded to draw water from the well and 
 pour it into a trough, that the sheep might get 
 their daily drink ; but they had no sooner filled the 
 trough than a set of rude fellows came up and drove 
 forward their flock to appropriate the precious supply. 
 With his native gallantry and his high-spirited re- 
 sistance to wrong, Moses felt outraged, and whether 
 it was awe for the magnificent man, or respect for 
 his Egyptian uniform, the churls fell back and con- 
 ceded to the terrible stranger what they would not 
 have yielded to manly feeling, or even the more 
 commonplace regard for fair play : a characteristic 
 action which introduced its gallant author to Eaguel 
 or Jethro, and which was rewarded with a home in 
 a good man's house, and in the midst of a family 
 where the true God was feared and worshipped. 
 
 We hereafter read that "the man Moses was 
 exceeding meek." At first sight the actions which 
 we have now been observing seem hardly con- 
 sistent with such a character, and, like that son of 
 thunder and summoner of fire from heaven who 
 softened down into the beloved and loving apostle, 
 we might be apt to suppose that, in the case of 
 Moses, the hot spirit of the youthful soldier had 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 35 
 
 mellowed down at last into the meekness of the 
 law-giver. 'Tis possible ; yet we are loath to 
 concede that the ingredients are incompatible : 
 courage on the one side, with instant and energetic 
 resistance to the wrong inflicted on others ; and on 
 the other side patience, gentleness, and much 
 endurance. As the great Lord Erskine said, " I 
 never knew a man remarkable for heroic bearing 
 whose very aspect was not lighted up by gentleness 
 and humanity ; nor a kill- and- eat-Tiim countenance 
 that did not cover the heart of a bully or poltroon." 
 And so to our conception the man Moses with the 
 meekness or magnanimity which could bear any 
 amount of personal abuse and obloquy, but with 
 blood ready to rush up in the cause of the op- 
 pressed and feeble, in the quarrel of weak women 
 or down-trampled slaves, counting no odds and 
 fearing no consequence, stands forth the highest 
 type of heroism, the presage of what in later times 
 came to be known as Christian chivalry. 
 
 And, my friends, a chivalry truly Christian is 
 one of the noblest forms which goodness can 
 assume ; and although what commonly goes by the 
 name was soon caricatured and perished, in its 
 origin it was a noble effort. On the trunk of old 
 Teutonism it w^as an effort to engraft the Christian 
 graces; those rugged blood-splashed warriors from 
 Scandinavian fiords and German forests, so fierce 
 
36 THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 and cruel that when Ultilas translated the Bible 
 into Gothic he left out the wars of the Israelites 
 for fear of worse inflaming their thirst of slaughter 
 — it was an effort to soften into manliness those 
 bulls of Bashan, an effort to take up and turn into 
 right channels, and thus to sanctify, the martial 
 instinct, so deep in hot redundant natures. So 
 after watching his arms in a church all night — 
 after musing and praying over the high career 
 before him — on the morrow when the knight was 
 to receive his spurs he placed his hands between 
 the hands of the sovereign, and swore " to speak 
 the truth, to succour the helpless and oppressed, 
 and never to turn back from an enemy" — or, as it 
 was sometimes expanded, 
 
 *' To teach the heathen and uphold the Christ ; 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds, 
 Until they won her."^ 
 
 And although, as we have said, human depravity 
 proved too strong for knightly vows — although by 
 and bye some orders had to be broken up for their 
 intolerable crimes, and the system itself became a 
 fair subject for ridicule — in its outset the institu- 
 tion went far to humanize Europe and redeem its 
 
 1 Tennyson's Idylls. 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 37 
 
 most dismal era. And in order to understand wliat 
 was the ideal, what was expected from the wearer 
 of the hard- won badge, we have only to read the 
 descriptions in our older minstrelsy. For example, 
 take Chaucer : — 
 
 *' A knight ther was, and that a worthy man, 
 That fro the time that he firste began 
 To riden out, he loved chevalrie, 
 Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie. 
 And of his port, as meke as is a mayde, 
 He never yet no vilanie ne sayde 
 In alle his lif, until no manere wight, 
 He was a veray parfit gentil knight." 
 
 And of a type still higher the hero of the first book 
 of the Faery Queen : — 
 
 " A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine, 
 Yclad in mightie armes and silver shielde. . . . 
 And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, 
 The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, 
 For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, 
 And dead, as living, ever him adored : 
 Upon his shield the like was also scored, 
 For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had. 
 Right, faithfull, true he was in deed and word ; 
 But of his cheere did seeme too solemn sad ; 
 Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad." 
 
 It is true that in as far as the defence of the 
 weak, generosity, truth, and a lofty standard of 
 personal purity constituted chivalry, there was 
 nothing in that institution which was not already 
 in Christianity ; but it was of some consequence in 
 those regardless times to have even a limited 
 
38 THE FATHER OF CHIVALKY. 
 
 number of virtues canonized and surrounded by the 
 highest sanctions. And the fruits were fair. It 
 was from a true feeling of chivahy that, when his 
 favourite son broke his parole and escaped from the 
 Tower of London, John of France took the place of 
 the runaway hostage and died a prisoner in Eng- 
 land. It was from the same feeling that when 
 Edward the Third was about to put to death the 
 citizens of Calais, the angry monarch who had 
 resisted other intercession felt constrained to grant 
 the demand of his good Queen Philippa. " Dame, 
 I wish you had been somcAvhere else ; but I cannot 
 refuse you. I put them at your disposal." It was 
 the same feeling which, on the eve of the battle of 
 Ivry, induced Henry of Navarre to go up to 
 Colonel Schomberg and apologize for some hasty 
 word, " in case I don't survive," and which led the 
 gallant German to stammer forth, " Ah, sire ! you 
 kill me with your words ; for now there is nothing 
 for me but to die in your defence," as next day he did, 
 in rescue of the king, and before his eyes. And the 
 same knightly sentiment it was — not the less noble 
 for being Christian — which on the field of Zutphen, 
 when the flask of water was held to the lips of the 
 dying Sydney, and he noticed the wistful look of the 
 bleeding soldier near him, pushed it away with the 
 words, " Give it to that man, his need is greater 
 than mine." . ■ 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 39 
 
 Such things are no doubt older than mediaeval 
 chivalry, — some of them, we think, as old as Moses, 
 and all of them as old as that Divine model from 
 whose inspiring example, through channels suffi- 
 ciently tortuous and turbid, they originally came. 
 But something is due to the system which in days 
 dark and savage caught up a few of those graces 
 which once encircled the brow of Absolute Good- 
 ness, and entwining them together taught rough 
 warriors to contend for the chaplet of knightly 
 renown. And right sorry should we be if in stand- 
 ing up for the absent or feeble, if in forgiving the 
 fallen, if in fulfilling his promise, if in commanding 
 his passions, the soldier of Jesus Christ did not 
 show that piety is the supreme of nobleness, and 
 that the Christian is the flower of chivahy. 
 
 For example : Championship is chivalrous. Scenes 
 like what Moses witnessed are of frequent occur- 
 rence ; but when the bludgeoned Egyptian smites 
 the unarmed Hebrew, w^hen great hulking clowns 
 water their flocks at troughs which feeble women 
 have filled, there is not always a Moses at hand to 
 punish the miscreants and redress the wrong. On 
 such occasions be the Moses yourself: stand up 
 for the weak and the weaponless. Your absent 
 acquaintance is disparaged, or a man of worth who 
 is no acquaintance at all — by your silent displeasure 
 or outspoken defence let it be seen that in you the 
 
40 THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 absent have a constant advocate. In tlie public 
 vehicle some solitary traveller, poor sempstress or 
 servant-girl, is annoyed by the rude gaze or ruder 
 remarks of some low-minded passenger, change 
 places with her, or reprove the ruffian outright ; 
 and you need not be afraid, these coarse fellows are 
 so cowardly. Or some unfortunate neighbour can- 
 not get his rights, by that most terrible tyrant, 
 English Law, confused, contradictory, uncodified, 
 with all its torture-chambers — Courts of Exchequer, 
 Courts of Queen's Bench, Courts of Chancery : by 
 its tremendous intimidation in the hands of unprin- 
 cipled rapacity the rights of the widow and the 
 fatherless are withheld : — if with the help of any 
 good angel in a long black robe you could overturn 
 the throne of iniquity and recover the spoils of 
 injustice ; or, better still, if you could explode the 
 whole system of legal oppression, Hercules with his 
 hydra, George with his dragon, would be champions 
 less worthy than you; England would thank for 
 ever the great legal reformer who smote its Egyp- 
 tian, and hid him in the sand. 
 
 Or say, Generosity. When after the great fight 
 of Crecy the prince bestowed 500 merks a year on 
 Lord Audley, it was deemed a noble deed when he 
 at once divided them among the four valiant friends 
 to whom he felt that his success was owing. And 
 so, few things should be better understood in this 
 
THE FATHER OF CHIVALRY. 41 
 
 our day than pure and disinterested conduct in 
 regard to money. Like Moses coming away from 
 the treasures of Egypt, show plainly that you have 
 elsewhere a better and enduring substance. Show 
 plainly that if there are occasions on which you do 
 not grudge to give wealth away, there are ways in 
 which you disdain to make it. 
 
 Having mentioned as an attribute of Christian 
 nobleness forbearance to the fallen — and it comes 
 from the original code of honour, the statute-book 
 of that Grand-Master who said, " If thine enemy 
 hunger, feed him," — I shall end with an instance 
 taken from no book of heraldry, but from the 
 humble annals of a Scottish minister. The Spanish 
 Armada created great consternation in Scotland ; 
 but one morning James Melville awoke to find one 
 of the magistrates of Anstruther at his bedside with 
 the news that a shipful of Spaniards was in the 
 harbour in great distress, and the captain ashore. 
 " Up I got with diligence, and there presents us a 
 very reverend man, of big stature, grey-haired, and 
 very humble-like, who, after meikle courtesy, bow- 
 ing close with his face near the ground, and touch- 
 ing my shoe with his hand, began his harangue in 
 the Spanish tongue." Of that the purport w^as the 
 wreck of the Armada and the straits to which they 
 themselves were driven. " I answered that how- 
 beit neither our friendship (which could not be 
 
42 THE FATHER OF CHIVALEY. 
 
 great, seeing tlieir king and they were friends to 
 Christ's greatest enemy, the Pope of Eome), nor yet 
 their cause, against our neighbours and special 
 friends of England, could procure any benefit at our 
 hands, nevertheless they should know that we were 
 men, moved by human compassion, and Christians 
 of better religion nor they. For whereas our people 
 resorting amongst them on peaceable and lawful 
 affairs of merchandise, were taken and cast into 
 prison, their goods and gear confiscated, and their 
 bodies committed to the cruel flaming fire for the 
 cause of religion, they should find amongst us 
 nothing but Christian pity and works of mercy." 
 Accordingly the laird of Anstruther received Don 
 Gomez and the other officers into his house, and 
 entertained them generously, whilst the crew and 
 soldiers, to the number of 260, were regaled during 
 their stay with such food as the place could supply. 
 It is pleasant to know, what Melville adds, " This 
 Don Gomez showed great kindness to a ship of our 
 town which he found arrested at Cadiz at his home- 
 coming, rode to court for her, made great praise of 
 Scotland to his king, took the honest men to his 
 house, inquired for the laird of Anstruther, for the 
 minister, and his host, and sent home many com- 
 mendations."^ 
 
 1 James Melville's Diary, 260-264. 
 
III. 
 
 By faith Moses, Avlien he was come to years, refused to be called 
 the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; choosing rather to suffer affliction 
 with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
 season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
 treasures in Egypt : for he had respect unto the recompense of the 
 reward. By faith he forsook Egj^pt, not fearing the wrath of the 
 king : for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible." — Heb. XI. 
 24-27. 
 
 When Hercules had grown up lie went out into 
 a solitary place to muse over his future course of 
 life. After a while he saw two female figures 
 approaching ; the one in white apparel, with a noble 
 aspect, open and innocent ; the other painted and 
 bedizened, and looking to see if people looked at 
 her. As they drew nearer, this last ran briskly up, 
 and was the first to accost him : — " Oh, Hercules, I 
 see that you are perplexed about your path in life. 
 If you will make a friend of me, I shall conduct 
 you the smoothest and most charming road. You 
 wiU not be troubled with business, or battles, or 
 tasks of any kind ; but your whole study shall be 
 where to find the best wines and the nicest dishes, 
 
44 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 the newest scents and the most fashionable clothes, 
 the merriest companions and the most exciting 
 amusements. And you need take no trouble about 
 the whereivithal, for if you will surrender to my 
 guidance there are friends and familiars of mine 
 who will take care to provide the supplies." " And 
 pray, madam," said Hercules, " what may be your 
 name?" "My name," she replied, "is Pleasure, 
 although my enemies have nicknamed me Vice." 
 
 Then said the other : " Hercules, I knew your 
 parents ; and from what I saw of you in your boy- 
 hood I am sure you are capable of noble deeds ; but 
 I must not deceive you with delusive promises. As 
 the Higher Powers have arranged the world, you can 
 hope for nothing good or desirable without labour. 
 If you want the gods to be your friends, you must 
 serve them ; if you want to be loved by your 
 acquaintances, you must make yourself useful ; if 
 you want your field to be fruitful, you must till it ; 
 if you want to be honoured by all Greece, you must 
 do it some great service ; if you wish to be a mighty 
 warrior, setting free your friends from chains and 
 slavery, you must take lessons from some good 
 soldier ; you must learn to bring the body into sub- 
 jection, and must submit to discipline." 
 
 It was a frank statement, but there was in the 
 speaker a truth and winsomeness which at once 
 secured the honest heart of Hercules, and he rose up 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 45 
 
 to follow Virtue along the rugged path to immor- 
 tality.^ 
 
 The choice of Hercules was no myth in the case 
 of Moses. He had only to continue as he was, and 
 he had everything that heart could wish. He had 
 only to conform to the wishes of the kind-hearted 
 Thermuthis, and his future was already made. A 
 palace was his home, royal dainties were his daily 
 fare, pages and lackeys were around to anticipate 
 his every wish, and there was nothing to restrain 
 the love of amusement or the appetite for sensual 
 indulgence. 
 
 But at whatever period he first learned it, Moses 
 had come to know that he was no Egyptian. Be- 
 like he had learned it from his parents early. His 
 parents were believers. It was from their " faith " 
 in God, and in all probability from some special 
 revelation regarding their remarkably beautiful child, 
 that they had ventured to conceal him so long ; and 
 after his wonderful preservation and promotion, it 
 is not likely that, either for their own sake or their 
 people's sake, they would hide from him his birth 
 or his hoped-for destiny. At all events, in due time 
 Moses came to know it, and the decision to which 
 he came is one of the most heroic things in history. 
 But, like all the higher feats of heroism, its motive 
 and inspiration was his faith. God had promised to 
 
 1 Xenophon, Memorabilia, ii. 1. 
 
46 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 Abraham, " In thee and in thy seed shall all families 
 of the earth be blessed ; " and Jacob had died pre- 
 dicting, " The sceptre shall not depart from Jndah 
 till that Shiloh come to whom all nations shall 
 rally." And this Moses believed. He believed that 
 the poor down- trampled people in Goshen were 
 greater than their tyrants and taskmasters. He 
 believed that, broiling out there amongst the brick- 
 kilns, were slaves whose descendants would throw 
 into the shade all the pomp and power of Pharaoh. 
 Above all, he believed that the true God was none 
 of those idols on whom Egypt wasted its worship, 
 and to whom it erected fanes so imposing ; but he 
 believed that the one living God was that unseen 
 Creator whom his fathers had worshipped, of whom 
 he had never seen any image or symbol, who had 
 built his own temple in the universe, and Avho to 
 Abraham had foretold, " Thy seed shall be four 
 hundred years a stranger and a servant in a foreign 
 land ; and afterward I shall punish their oppressors, 
 and bring out themselves with great substance." ^ 
 And, acting on this belief, he refused to be called the 
 son of the princess. No doubt she thought it per- 
 verse, nor could his companions admire his taste. 
 To avow such base connections they thought mean- 
 spirited and abject, and the very thing of which 
 Moses gloried as his nation's destiny had become a 
 
 1 Gen. XV. 13, 14. 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 47 
 
 subject of derision. It seemed a pleasant fancy — a 
 Messiah emerging from these mud-fiehls, a sovereign 
 of mankind who should boast for his ancestry hod- 
 men and brick-bakers; and in the mouths of the 
 heartless but humorous Egyptians the hope of Israel 
 had become a taunt and a byword. But Moses 
 believed it, and " the reproach of Christ " was to him 
 greater riches than the treasures in Egypt ; and, in 
 circumstances far more trying, he made a choice 
 more noble than the son of Alcmena, for he not only 
 preferred virtue with all its hardships to sin with all 
 its pleasures, but renounced all that this world could 
 offer, for the sake of a people who had nothing 
 earthly to ofTer in return. 
 
 The choice of Moses was an act of faith. It was 
 " through faith that he refused to be called the sou 
 of Pharaoh's daughter;" just as it was "through 
 faith " that his parents hid him. And this is well 
 explained by what afterwards is added : " He 
 looked away to the future recompense ; " " he en- 
 dured," — he held out or bore up, — " as seeing Him 
 who is invisible." There was an attraction in the 
 pleasures of sin ; but Moses looked away from these 
 allurements to pleasures higher and more enduring. 
 There was terror in the monarch's frown, but Moses 
 took refuge from it in the smile of a mightier 
 Potentate. And this was faith. ' Had he merely 
 closed his eyes on the charms of Egypt, — had he 
 
48 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 merely steeled his nerves against tlie threats of 
 Pharaoh, — it might have been manly or noble- 
 minded ; but besides that without faith he was not 
 likely to have done it at all, through faith he could 
 afford to do it cheerfully. God had opened his 
 eyes and shown him in heaven a better and en- 
 during substance, so he could lay down without a 
 sigh a chain of gold or even a kingly crown. God 
 had opened his ear, and through all the din and 
 angry demonstration, like father Abraham before 
 him, a sustaining voice upheld him, — " Fear not, for 
 / am thy shield ; " and though the idols of On were 
 so awful to their votaries, and though Pharaoh had 
 an army at his beck, the Lord on high was mightier 
 than all, and Moses went through with it serenely, 
 sublimely, " as seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 Prom time to time the Lord allows to take place 
 like trials of the faith of His people. In the reign 
 of Louis XIV. the Protestants were the flower of 
 France, just as France was then the foremost of 
 nations. Owing to their superior intelligence and 
 morality the Huguenots had got into their own 
 hands a large share in the trade and the largest 
 share in the manufactures of the kingdom. They 
 were prosperous and wealthy and increasing, when 
 a decree came forth proscribing the Protestant 
 religion and prohibiting all Protestant worship. By 
 a double stroke of despotism every Protestant 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 49 
 
 minister was banished, every Protestant layman was 
 interdicted from leaving the kingdom. But whilst 
 the Calvinistic laity were kept at home, they were 
 ordered to consign their children to the care of 
 Eomish teachers, they were forbidden to employ any 
 but Eomish servants in their families, and death 
 was denounced on those who should attend any 
 other than Eomish worship. For the faith of some 
 these penalties were too awful, and they yielded and 
 conformed. But a glorious army preferred the 
 reproach of Christ, and showed that they were not 
 afraid of the king's commandment. They loved 
 their beautiful France, and they hardly hoped to find 
 another land with an air so elastic and with an in- 
 spiration so gladsome and gay : but France was not 
 heaven, and after a few years of the better country 
 the fogs of England and Holland would be forgotten. 
 They loved the home of their fathers, and grudged 
 to surrender to the Papist and stranger the fields 
 they had bought with their earnings and the 
 orchards they had planted for their children. And 
 some of them, like Eapin and Savery, and Lyonnet 
 and Basnage, were scholars and men of science, and 
 they grieved to leave behind them the libraries and 
 learned reunions of Paris. And the attempt was 
 dangerous. If intercepted they were doomed to the 
 galleys ; that is, for the rest of their days they were 
 chained two and two on benches in long flat boats, 
 
 D 
 
50 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 and obliged to row with long heavy oars, unsheltered 
 from the weather, and allowed no other bed at night 
 than the bench to which they were fastened by day. 
 Yet, looking anxiously at it, they saw no alternative. 
 To return to Popery would be to deny the Lord who 
 bought them, and even if caught and consigned to 
 the galleys, it would be better to " suffer afiliction 
 with the people of God than to .enjoy the pleasures 
 of sin for a season." And so by faith they forsook 
 France, not fearing the wrath of the king, and the 
 sentinels whom he had posted along the frontiers. 
 Hid amongst bales of goods on ship-board, or in 
 empty casks with only the bung-hole to breathe 
 through; venturing to sea in open boats without 
 provisions in wintry weather, with nothing to give 
 their famished children but the falling snow ; fine 
 ladies disguised as market-women, and trundling 
 barrows along the miry roads ; grey-headed nobles 
 driving cattle, or travelling by night and lurking in 
 barns or caverns all day, — three hundred thousand 
 of them earned their recompense of reward, and if 
 they impoverished France they have ennobled 
 Europe, and enriched the records of the faith by 
 their martyr-like migration. 
 
 Events like these— the decision of Moses, the 
 flight of the French Huguenots, the death of our 
 own worthies, — God permits from time to time as 
 trials of his people's faith and tokens of His own 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 51 
 
 power to support and carry tliroiigli. And tliey are 
 of great value as tests or touclistones of our own 
 sincerity, and as incentives to our own devotedness. 
 Have we a faith like theirs ? From the things pre- 
 sent do we look away to the future recompense ? 
 And amidst all the witnesses of our conduct, do we 
 remember that great Spectator who is invisible ? 
 
 The lesson is especially significant to those who 
 are in the outset of their career, and who have not 
 yet given themselves to God. Let us look at it as 
 calmly and yet as carefully as we can. 
 
 Perhaps you don't much like the people of God. 
 You say that they are dull and melancholy, cen- 
 sorious and severe, narrow-minded and bigoted, 
 and that you cannot take to them at all. Well, you 
 certainly are not bound to love gloom and moroseness 
 and uncharitable partisanship, and it is to be re- 
 gretted if the Christians you have met are marred 
 by such infirmities. They would be far nobler 
 characters and much worthier of their name if they 
 were bright and open, expansive and magnanimous. 
 And that is the sort of Christian which the Lord 
 asks you to become, — upright and manly, brave and 
 truth-loving, with a mind as highly cultured as 
 you please, but with a pure heart and a fervent. It 
 is not so much with God's people as with God Him- 
 self that you have to do, and His claims are para- 
 mount. To Him give your heart. He asks it, He 
 
52 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 deserves it, and if you have a heart to give, and hold 
 •it back from infinite excellence, — if you have a heart 
 to give, and refuse it to your best Benefactor, — there 
 may be blemishes in Christians, but amongst true 
 Christians there is no one with ingratitude so base 
 and rebellion so dark as yours ; there is no one 
 saying to the best of Beings, "Depart from me," 
 none turning his back like you on the Friend of 
 sinners. 
 
 Hard words and strong, but I fear too true : for 
 if conduct speaks as well as words, is not this the 
 language of your life? — "0 God, I do not love 
 Thee. I wish Thou wert not so holy ; I wish Thou 
 wouldst not haunt me. I sometimes try to love 
 Thee by hoping that Thou art kind and easy and 
 indulgent to the foibles of poor wretches. But when 
 I turn to the Bible my mind shuts up : I cannot 
 love a God so righteous, strict, and true." Is not 
 this the language of your life ? — " Christ, I cannot 
 thank Thee. That kingdom of heaven which Thou 
 didst open is not one into which I desire to enter. 
 That heaven which Thou didst purchase has no 
 attractions for me, except as the only asylum from 
 hell. If it was to save from sin that Thou didst 
 die, I have no present wish for such salvation." 
 
 And this brings out what is possibly the main 
 point after all : " the pleasures of sin." I have no 
 doubt that Christ's great competitor is Sin, and 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 53 
 
 if it were not for some habit, evil and inveterate, 
 perhaps the most of men would be Christians. 
 
 I cannot agree with those who speak as if sin had 
 no pleasures. Surely all experience is against 
 them. Probably the consciousness of many here 
 contradicts them. If there were not something 
 very sweet in the devil's bait, would so many 
 nibble at it with full knowledge that a fatal hook is 
 lurking underneath? if the flowers were not fair 
 and the fruits were not tempting, would so many 
 venture within the precincts where prowls the 
 murderer of souls ? 
 
 To some intoxication has its pleasures. They 
 like to forget their misery or to feel their powers 
 enhanced by the false and flattering cup; or they 
 like to look at life with the purple tints it wears as 
 seen through the mantling amethyst. Such plea- 
 sures has this sin, that they will drink though ruin 
 stares them in the face. They will drink though 
 the clothes are rotting off their backs, and the flesh 
 is wasting from their bones. They will drink 
 though decent friends are dropping off and desola- 
 tion reigns in their joyless and dismantled dwelling. 
 They will drink although in their sober intervals 
 spectres haunt their brain, and God's own warning, 
 " Drunkards shall have their portion in the lake 
 that burneth," is fearfully countersigned by the fire 
 already kindled in their bosom. 
 
54 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 Others cannot resist the pleasures of sense and 
 the gratification of the coarsest appetites. The 
 books they read are bad ; the places they frequent 
 are infamous ; their very " mind and conscience 
 are defiled," and " having eyes full of adultery they 
 cannot cease from sin." It is a shame to s^eak of 
 the things they do ; but surely they would not do 
 them if they did not feel some fearful fascination in 
 their swinish paradise. 
 
 To some a pleasant sin is gambling. They know 
 it to be wrong, they feel it to be low, they confess 
 that it is foolish ; but they still go on. They have 
 burnt their fingers once or twice, but still their 
 fingers itch for the golden pieces which the tempter 
 holds out to them in his red-hot tongs ; and rather 
 than not bet or go back to the billiard-room they 
 will risk the workhouse and the prison, the out- 
 law's hue and cry, the gambler's blood -besprinkled 
 grave. 
 
 No indeed, there is no use to deny a fact so clear 
 and manifest. Sin has its pleasures. Some of 
 these pleasures are so great as to act on certain 
 minds like a spell or a sorcery. Like the little 
 bird within spring of the rattlesnake, they look 
 uneasy at sight of their enchanting enemy, and flap 
 their wings, and flutter to and fro, and do every- 
 thing but the one thing that would save them — 
 everything but fly away. Sin has its pleasures, and 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 55 
 
 consequently the minister of Christ pleads at a 
 prodigious disadvantage, for he can only appeal and 
 argue from without, whilst sin has already its advo- 
 cate within. 
 
 Yet, brethren, try to look at it dispassionately. 
 We admit that sin has its pleasures ; must you not 
 admit that it has also its pains? Is there not 
 sometimes pain at the moment — a musk-rat in the 
 bottle — wormwood in the wine — the miserable 
 mar-all consciousness that you are doing wrong? 
 the consciousness that this Sunday excursion is 
 clouded by God's frown — the consciousness that 
 in these gains of ungodliness you are resisted by a 
 father's prayer ? And when the pleasure is over, is 
 there not often a pain in what follows ? When the 
 crackling of the thorns has subsided, do you find 
 aught but the ashes — perhaps too the scorpions 
 which the fire has awakened ? The debauch is over 
 — not so the headache ; the night at the casino is 
 over — but when will be an end to its consequences? 
 the race- week is over, but when will its debts be 
 discharged, and when will you see an end to its 
 debasing or dishonest entanglements? And what 
 of the lucid intervals? When moments of re- 
 flection clear and sober come — what do you think 
 of yourself? You who have been living the beast- 
 life, who have thrown the rein on the neck of 
 appetite and allowed it to run away with the man 
 
56 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 and the immortal, what cau you say for yourself ? 
 You who have wilfully put out the eyes of your 
 understanding and doomed the mighty Samson to 
 work so gross and grovelling — what say you for 
 your moral suicide ? What say you for having 
 slain and buried the purest tastes and highest 
 powers which God had given you ? And you who 
 have been living the demon-life — who as the sceptic 
 or seducer have ruined another's hope or another's 
 virtue — who as the gambler have expatriated your- 
 self from the domain of Providence and been 
 obliged to give up prayer — what say you for con- 
 verting into instruments of iniquity those very 
 faculties which might have been used to serve God 
 and bless your brethren ? — what say you for all the 
 ruin you have wrought and which you never can 
 restore ? 
 
 Perhaps this is a lucid interval. So think now 
 what you will think at last. These pleasures of sin 
 " are but for a season." Another world awaits you, 
 and oh how soon its unending realities may 
 enclasp you ! It is the prospect of that world 
 which gives such importance and urgency to the 
 present. My hearer, you are to exist for ever ! 
 Your Creator has given you the priceless but awful 
 endowment of immortality. Oh do not make that 
 immortality a perpetuity of woe ! 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 57 
 
 " As on a sphere all smooth and round, 
 End and beginning are not found ; 
 For ever, even thus with thee — 
 Unending, vast Eternity, 
 Eternity ! Eternity ! 
 How long art thou, Eternity ! 
 Man, full oft thy thoughts should dwell 
 Upon the pains of sin and hell, 
 And on the glories of the pure. 
 That both beyond all time endure. 
 Ponder, Man, Eternity ! " 
 
 Of that eternity you are soon to be the inhabitant, 
 and whatever you are when you enter it, that 
 you must continue all throughout. And sin has 
 no pleasures there. The season of enjoyment is 
 past; the season of remorse and punishment has 
 come. Even now you are not without the occa- 
 sional presentiment — for although you may bury 
 your sense of immortality you cannot extinguish 
 it : you may besot and stupify it, but it wakes 
 again. that it would cry so loud as to scare 
 you from your sins before you hear the waves of 
 the eternal ocean chiming, " He that is filthy, let 
 him be filthy still ; he that is holy, let him be holy 
 still." that it would rouse you who are lovers of 
 pleasure more than lovers of God, before you hear 
 that strange and startling sentence, irresistible, ir- 
 revocable, that inverted gospel which your own 
 impenitence extorts from no other lips than those 
 of a long-rejected Saviour, "Depart from me, ye 
 
58 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
 and his angels." 
 
 Oh brethren, look away from the things present, 
 have respect to the recompense of reward. Those 
 prudential prospective faculties which you use so 
 often to secure a temporal good, use them to insure 
 a holy and happy immortality ; that self-denial 
 which you often exert, abjuring for days and years 
 together ease and enjoyment, in order to win wealth 
 or fame, exert it here, and in order to insure an 
 eternity of blessedness renounce for the season of 
 this mortal pilgrimage the pleasures of sin. 
 A " The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence," and 
 there is no effort so vehement but it would be 
 worth while to exert it here. In order to break off 
 from the society of a bad companion, towards whom 
 he felt a fatal fascination, we have read how Alfieri 
 the Italian dramatist got his hair cropped, so that 
 he should be unfit to go out of doors, and made his 
 servants bind him in his own arm-chair till he was 
 cured of his infatuation. And such are the struggles 
 of men in earnest. By force like this should you 
 take the kingdom of heaven rather than lose it 
 altogether. By force like this should you rescue 
 from the enemies now swarming over it that pearl 
 of great price, your never-dying soul. 
 
 Yet, after all, it is not force, for which there is 
 occasion here so much as faitli. Moses opened his 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 59 
 
 eyes, and illusions fled away. He put his hand in 
 the hand of God, and forth from the impure and 
 idolatrous purlieus of Memphis was led by way of 
 INIidian and Sinai and Pisgah to heaven. By faith 
 he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daugh- 
 ter ; but in so doing he rose to a higher rank, for at 
 once God called him His son. By faith he re- 
 nounced a fortune purchased by sinful compliances, 
 and instantly found that he was richer than ever, — 
 rich in peace of conscience and in the friendship of 
 All- sufficiency. By faith he forsook Egypt, and in 
 that very forsaking found life everlasting. By faith 
 he surrendered the pleasures of sin ; at the very 
 longest they could have only lasted for fourscore 
 years, and must have run very low before the end 
 of that " season :" for three thousand years he has 
 been enjoying the pleasures which are at God's 
 right hand, — pleasures which neither pall nor perish, 
 for they are pleasures evermore. 
 
 So, dear brethren, look away from the things 
 immediately surrounding, and surrender to the 
 influence of those which are not the less urgent 
 because " invisible." By faith you know that you 
 must die, although that final hour of your earthly 
 history is not seen as yet ; and when it comes the 
 merriest of companions will be but a sorry com- 
 forter. You will want some one who can go into 
 God's presence with you and so befriend you there 
 
60 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 as to take off the terror which must otherwise 
 attend a guilty creature's interview with his Sove- 
 reign and Judge. But by faith you know — if not, 
 learn it on the instant, — that there is a Friend of 
 sinners, God's beloved Son, who will with all zeal 
 and all efficacy perform that gracious office then, if 
 you accept His friendship now. He is invisible, but 
 He is not far away. He is here present ; and how 
 it would rejoice His tender generous heart if this 
 very moment you would say, "Lord Jesus, Thou art 
 worthy, and to Thee I give myself, body, soul, and 
 spirit, to be for ever Thine. Lord Jesus, Thou art 
 mighty : keep me from sin and Satan ; keep me to 
 Thy heavenly kingdom. Lord Jesus, Thou art mer- 
 ciful : wash away my sins in Thy own most precious 
 blood ; take me from the fearful pit and put into 
 my mouth the new" song of the pardoned sinner : — 
 
 * A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, 
 On Thy kind arms I fall ; 
 Be Thou my strength and righteousness, 
 My Saviour and my All.'" 
 
 On the night after Hedley Vicars read in his Bible, 
 " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," 
 he could hardly sleep for thinking over that most 
 wonderful of all truths which a sinner can discover. 
 But it was enough. His mind was made up. " If 
 this be true for me, henceforth, by the grace of God, 
 I will live as a man should live who has been 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 61 
 
 washed in the blood of Jesus Christ." He dis- 
 played his banner. The Bible, lying open on his 
 table at this passage was thenceforward to tell what 
 a Saviour he had found, and under whose colours 
 he intended to march the rest of his journey. And 
 God gave him grace to hold on, till in the trenches 
 of Sebastopol the bullet pierced his heart, and the 
 good fight was ended. Oh my friends, young and 
 old, who are not yet decided, may God give you 
 grace to do as that gallant soldier did, as did the 
 most illustrious of all the Hebrews ! May He so 
 reveal to you the surpassing worth of your never- 
 dying soul, and the peerless claims of the Son of 
 God the Saviour, that there shall henceforth be 
 no more halting betwixt two opinions, but that for 
 you to live henceforward shall be Christ — the sole 
 foundation of your hopes, the supreme object of 
 your affection ! Oh that the Holy Spirit would in 
 His mercy make you wise and make you willing ! 
 Oh that He would make this a time much to be 
 remembered, and this place to you ever sacred and 
 ever dear as the valley of decision ! 
 
 No ; do not say, I will attend to it very soon, but 
 this is not a convenient season. Perhaps it is not 
 convenient ; perhaps you have projects in view or 
 engagements in hand which prevent you from in- 
 stantly commencing a Christian career. If so, it 
 would be better to abandon them instantly ; for if 
 
62 THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 
 
 you wait till the devil gives you leave to come to 
 Christ, you will wait too long ; if you wait till pride 
 and vanity, till worldly-mindedness and sinful pas- 
 sions, give their vote for goodness and for God, you 
 will wait till repentance comes too late, and wisdom 
 costs too dear. But why delay ? Is it anything so 
 dreadful that you are asked to do? Is it such a 
 hardship to give up husks for royal dainties — the 
 prodigal's rags for robes of beauty — the swineherd's 
 hovel for the Father's bosom ? You say this season 
 is not for you convenient. But is there no other 
 whose convenience ought to be consulted ? Must 
 the teacher wait till it is convenient for the pupil to 
 take his lesson ? Must the sovereign be kept wait- 
 ing tin the criminal shall make up his mind about 
 accepting the pardon ? Must the physician wait till 
 the patient, who has received an envenomed wound, 
 shall have leisure to take the remedies ? Must the 
 Saviour stand here, and follow you hence, and hover 
 round you, offering you that pardon which He pur- 
 chased with His blood ? and is He bound to wait tiU 
 you are disengaged, or have a fit of sickness, or some 
 scrap of useless time to spare for Him ? And must 
 that kind Monitor and Persuader, who has so oft 
 dealt with you, and despite your inveterate earthli- 
 ness almost persuaded you, must the Holy Spirit 
 wait till you are willing to be made more willing ? 
 Ah ! I know not how it may be with you, but with 
 
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE. 63 
 
 that God whom you have offended, and who now 
 offers to be reconciled, this is the time convenient. 
 With that Saviour who this day holds ont His arms 
 of invitation, saying to you, sinner, ''' Come unto 
 me," this is the time convenient. With that gracious 
 Convincer who this moment makes you anxious in 
 order to make you happy for ever, to-day, this hour, 
 is the time convenient. Oh then harden not your 
 heart ! With God this is the day of grace — this is 
 the accepted time — let it be to you also the con- 
 venient season, and then it will be the day of 
 salvation ! 
 
IV. 
 
 ^It^ Jather 0f '^XBtov^. 
 
 The Book of Gknesis— Chap, i.— l. 
 
 One of the most delightful books which ancient 
 Greece has handed down to us is the History of 
 Herodotus. With its old stories of Persia, Egypt, and 
 Babylon — with its romantic episodes and amusing 
 anecdotes — with its clever sketches of character and 
 its interesting details regarding countries which the 
 writer actually visited, all given off with matchless 
 simplicity and freshness, in a style free, open, and 
 flowing, it forms a repertory of entertainment and 
 instruction of which the reader never wearies, and 
 to which, all its credulity and superstition notwith- 
 standing, we return from time to time with affec- 
 tionate gratitude. Its nine books, dedicated to the 
 nine Muses, are said to have been publicly read 
 over to the Athenians, who rewarded the recital 
 with a vote of ten talents (£2400) ; and. Homer 
 excepted, no Greek author has taken such hold of 
 succeeding generations as he whom, with fond con- 
 
 64 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 65 
 
 sent, they have agreed to call " The Father of 
 History." 
 
 There is no risk that we shall pluck a leaf from 
 these ancient laurels if we remark that there is 
 another more strictly entitled to the epithet. For 
 the true Father of History we must go back a thou- 
 sand years before the days of Herodotus ; and the 
 fact that it forms a portion of the sacred canon is 
 no reason why we should close our eyes on the his- 
 toric value of the first book of the Bible and its 
 many incidental charms. 
 
 We have already so far traced the history of Moses. 
 Born in the midst of mournful circiunstances, but 
 miraculously preserved, we have seen him brought 
 up amidst w^ealth and luxury and brilliant expecta- 
 tions ; we have seen him initiated in all the wisdom 
 of the Egyptians, and have no doubt that geometry 
 and the movements of the heavenly bodies, with 
 the jurisprudence and chronology of that wise and 
 ancient people, became familiar to his mind. But 
 although adorned with these " Egyptian jewels," we 
 have seen how his heart continued leal to his own 
 people, and how, disdaining the bribes of ambition, 
 he quitted the tyrant's palace a Hebrew and a 
 patriot. We have seen how the active and athletic 
 frame into which his goodly childhood had grown, 
 prophetic of a green and energetic old age, was ani- 
 mated by the soul of a hero ; and in our last lecture 
 
 E 
 
66 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 we saw tliat patriot and hero come out the noblest 
 style of manhood, — a saint renouncing the pleasures 
 of sin, — a believer casting himself on the protection 
 and promises of God. We saw him an exile and an 
 outlaw, escaping to a sublime but lonely region, and 
 finding an asylum in a good man's tent, where, 
 amidst simple pursuits, domestic affections, and the 
 society of those by whom the true God was known 
 and worshipped, Egypt and its enjoyments, if not 
 Egypt and its captives, could easily be foTgotten. 
 
 Here it was, we have little doubt, that he wrote 
 the Book of Genesis. How much of its information 
 lingered in the memory of the Israelites, how many 
 of its narratives and incidents had, with other patri- 
 archal traditions, come down in the family of Jethro, 
 it is idle to inquire, because impossible to ascertain. 
 Enough for us to know that it is a portion of that 
 canon to which the Saviour pointed when He said, 
 "Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify 
 of me ;" and of which St. Paul declares, " They are 
 all given by inspiration of God." And we may just 
 add, that with what has recently come to light of 
 Egyptian theology and cosmogony, it is the last 
 book which an Egyj)tian, or one learned in no other 
 " wisdom " than theirs, could have written. 
 
 There are two ways in which the Book of Genesis 
 throws light on its author. It helps to show us 
 what manner of man he was, and it shows how far 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 67 
 
 lie was furnished for the work God had given him 
 to do. 
 
 True, the book is inspired, but it is all the more 
 expressive of its author on this account. Believing 
 as we do the plenary inspiration of Scripture, we 
 deprecate the theory which confounds a true inspira- 
 tion with a mere mechanical instrumentation. An 
 organ is an instrument. To the hand of a mighty 
 master it yields effects which it might never other- 
 wise have entered into the heart of man to conceive, 
 but when that hand is witlidrawn it falls mute and 
 dead. Before Milton or Handel touched it, it was 
 not thinking of Bethlehem or Messiah, and now that 
 the strain is ended there is no longer any actual 
 sympathy between the engine and the theme which 
 it discoursed so grandly. But a mind, if it be an 
 instrument, is also a great deal more. With its 
 intelligence and will, with its affections and feelings, 
 when God uses as His instrument the mind of man, 
 He does homage to the laws with which He has 
 Himself impressed it, and brings it into unison with 
 His own ; and setting aside the exceptional cases 
 of Balaam and Annas, we may safely affirm that 
 when God condescends to give forth His mind 
 through the minds of our fellow-men, the prophecy 
 and tlie character of the prophet are in keeping. 
 Glorious gospels are not proclaimed by fierce and 
 fiery Hildebrands, and great tribulations are not 
 
68 THE FATHER OF HISTOEY. 
 
 predicted by smart and dapper seers, who buy con- 
 sols with the proceeds ; but just as holy men speak as 
 they are moved by the Holy Spirit, we expect a con- 
 gruity throughout. We expect that the light-giver 
 will be himself enlightened ; that the utterer of 
 great thoughts will be himself a thinker ; that the 
 evangelist's own feet will be beautifnl on the moun- 
 tains ; that the life of a Jeremiah will be itself a 
 lamentation. In other words, instead of setting 
 aside the penman, or using him as a mere mouth- 
 piece or machine, we expect to find the prophet full 
 of his own oracle ; the sacred scribe his own volume 
 impersonate and alive. The men of God we expect 
 to find the truest types at once of manhood and of 
 godliness ; God's men, but still men, our fellow-men, 
 men of like passions with ourselves ; and none the 
 less because it constitutes a portion of God's own 
 book, do we regard the first volume of the Penta- 
 teuch as one of the books of Moses : a book indi- 
 cative of his belief and his feelings, of his intelligence, 
 of his taste, of his habits of thought and tone of 
 mind. 
 
 Try to isolate this book. Imagine that it is once 
 again what Genesis was once before, all the Bible in 
 the world, then try to form from it a little summary 
 of religion, a little system of theology, and you will 
 be surprised to see how clear and ample is the light 
 which, let forth from God, it sheds on man. Of God 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTOEY. 6 9 
 
 it teaches at once the spirituality and unity, revealing 
 Him as the Supreme Creator, the ever-present, ever- 
 watchful Governor. In the instantaneous expulsion 
 from Eden it exhibits the strictness of His threaten- 
 ings, in His dealings with Abraham and his descend- 
 ants, the steadfastness of His promises. In Enoch, 
 with his early assumption to congenial climes, it 
 shows God's affection for His children, and the fond 
 delight with which He takes all goodness to its 
 proper home, even as we have the opposite abhor- 
 rence of iniquity in that Nemesis which, at the 
 moment of his crime, clutched the first murderer, 
 and, with fiery brain and branded brow, hurried him 
 away from all but his own horrible companionship. 
 That same revulsion from evil we perceive in the 
 deluge which washed over a polluted world, and in 
 the midst of their orgies swept down into the abyss 
 the revellers obscene ; and the same lesson we read 
 again in the flames which, like a blot from the land- 
 scape, burned out Sodom. Yet God's mercy and 
 patience and long-suffering, how soft and full they 
 shine in the 120 years' reprieve granted to the 
 guilty antediluvians, in those constant concessions 
 to the cities of the plain, which only ceased w^hen 
 Abraham was ashamed to ask. And, so to put it, 
 which of us could desire a God more gracious, more 
 kind and condescending, than He who talked with 
 Adam in the bowers of Paradise, and with whom 
 
70 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Enoch walked in the solitude of the surrounding 
 wickedness ? Which of us could desire a pavilion 
 more secure or a portion more divine than opened 
 to Abraham in the words, " Fear not, Abram, for I am 
 thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward "? Who 
 could desire a protector more assiduous and more 
 provident than the Guardian who stood by Joseph 
 in the dungeon as truly as on the steps of Pharaoh's 
 throne ; or who could seek a trustee and adminis- 
 trator more faithful and powerful than that great 
 Covenant-keeper who gathered to their fatliers, took 
 to the abode of their godly ancestors, each successive 
 patriarch, and at the same time watched so carefully 
 the fortunes of their surviving and often sinful 
 descendants ? 
 
 Then for Man. In this little book we have man's 
 original rectitude and innocence ; we have the ac- 
 count of his early fall, with its forfeiture of God's 
 friendship ; and, both in the old-world fathers and 
 in the races which radiated from around Mount 
 Ararat, we have, in countless developments, the evil 
 and worse- ward tendencies of unaided unsanctified 
 human nature. 
 
 But at the same time we have in this little 
 volume the two sublimest and most sustaining 
 truths which bear /upon the history of our species ; 
 the one distinctly announced, the other more dimly 
 foreshadowed. What is man, and whence comes 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 71 
 
 he ? is a question wliicli tlie wisest of antiquity have 
 asked, and which was often most absurdly answered. 
 Prometheus made a statue, then lighted a torch at 
 the chariot of the sun, and man, the fire-kindler, 
 became king of the other creatures. Cadmus killed 
 a dracjon, and sowed in the OTound its teeth, and 
 they sprang up a crop of warriors ready armed. 
 Deucalion and his wife found themselves in a 
 drowned and desolate world, beginning to dry up ; 
 and, directed by an oracle, they flung stones back- 
 ward over their shoulder, and shortly afterwards 
 from the soft warm mud sprang forth the various 
 nations of mankind. But, taught by the Almighty 
 Maker himself, Moses tells how from earthly ele- 
 ments God formed man's body, and how, from God 
 himself, and His inbreathing, came man's soul. 
 "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life, and man became a living soul." But what 
 about that soul ? What other soul or spirit did it 
 most resemble ? The soul of the surrounding crea- 
 tures, or that of some pre-existing race of spirits 
 elsewhere? AVonder, heavens ! and, man, be 
 astonished at thy own prerogative ! " God created 
 man in his own image ; in the image of God 
 created He him." By faith we understand that 
 the worlds were framed by the word of God ; and 
 by faith we understand that a house eternal awaits 
 
72 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 elsewhere the renewed and ransomed spirit : but 
 surely it needs the same faith to credit this astound- 
 ing declaration. To look round on man as he actually 
 is, to look round on him as he met the eyes of 
 Moses — brutalized, besotted, scant of intellect, — and 
 through the disfiguring filth and wretchedness espy 
 the immortal, the run-away child of the Eternal, it 
 needs great faith ; but he who, with Moses, knows 
 that it is true, needs no poet to proclaim the dignity 
 of human nature, and he need not stagger at aught 
 which God deems fit to do for the recovery of a 
 nature originally so exalted, and for the reinstate- 
 ment of children once so dear, and still so tenderly 
 desired. 
 
 " God made man after His own image" Behold 
 the fact surpassing fable ! Behold the faithful 
 saying which should make each man a terror and a 
 glory, a grief and a rejoicing to himself ! Is it so ? 
 Is this understanding of mine an image of God's 
 intelligence ? — this imagination of mine an image of 
 God's immensity? — this immortality of mine an 
 image of God's eternity ? This soul which I have 
 got, was it made on purpose to love the holy as God 
 loves it ? — to shed affection and blessing and good- 
 will as these pour with sun-like constancy from 
 God's own beneficence ? — was it made to commune 
 with the Most High in lowly confidence and ever- 
 nearing intimacy ? Then what a work there is for 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 73 
 
 thee, Spirit of all grace, to bring this nature, so 
 debauched, debased, to bring it back to its first 
 estate ! and to recover tastes pure and holy, aspira- 
 tions high and heavenly, what a work is there for 
 myself ! " God made man after His own image." 
 That one sentence at the opening of the Bible 
 accounts for all that follows. It shows how im- 
 portant is the race which was about to become the 
 subject of a great experiment, and the man who 
 believes this sentence — a sentence which to mental 
 science gives new grandeur, and to man himself an 
 awful and august significance — has no right to 
 stagger at any interposition which Divine goodness 
 might prompt or Divine wisdom devise on behalf of 
 a race so illustrious in its origin and so vast in its 
 capabilities, if withal so woful in its self-entailed 
 ruin. " Great is the mystery of godliness, — God 
 manifest in flesh." But if it does not diminish the 
 mystery, it gives the antecedent possibility when 
 we read regarding the race thus distinguished, 
 " God made man after His own image." 
 
 Alongside of man's exalted origin thus clearly 
 revealed, Moses knew the good which God had in 
 store for him, although in more obscure presenti- 
 ment. In this same Genesis is preserved that germ 
 of all subsequent gospels, — the promise spoken in 
 Paradise, and which assured the disconsolate 
 Mother of Mankind that her offspring should crush 
 
74 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the head of the Deceiver. Here is also preserved 
 that great promise to the Father of the selected 
 Family : " In thee shall all families of the earth be 
 blessed." And here too is recorded dying Israel's 
 prediction : " The sceptre shall not depart from 
 Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, until 
 Shiloh (the Prince of Peace or Eest -giver ■^) come, 
 and to Him the people shall adhere," — the nations 
 shall gather. And whatever might be the specific 
 form which the promise assumed to Moses' wistful 
 and forth-going fancy, as he looked on the sin and 
 the misery — as he recalled the groans of the brick- 
 bakers in Egypt and the blows of their taskmasters 
 — as he saw on every side the trail of the serpent 
 and the work of the destroyer, — he exulted in the 
 hope of a great deliverer, who, breaking Israel's yoke 
 and giving rest to the nations, should bruise the 
 head of the serpent and to all families of the earth 
 be a blessino-. 
 
 Compiled from the Book of Genesis, such we 
 believe to have been in substance the creed of 
 Moses. It was a possession unspeakably more 
 precious than all the wisdom he acquired in Egypt, 
 and in conjunction with his patriotism, his gallantry, 
 and his expansion of mind, it wonderfully fitted 
 him for the work God designed him to do. Even 
 before that special manifestation at the burning 
 
 1 Hengstenberg's Christology, i. 46. 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 75 
 
 biisli, the Most Hisjh was to him no unknown God, 
 and entering on the tremendous undertaking to 
 which he was called as Israel's Liberator and Law- 
 giver, it was of infinite value to have his spirit 
 sustained by considerations so exalted and motives 
 so sublime as those which must have been familiar to 
 the mind pervaded by the sayings of that one book. 
 Of the contents of this most comprehensive book 
 it is hardly possible in a few flying sentences to 
 present an epitome. Commencing with the com- 
 mencement of our human history; nay, we may 
 say commencing with the commencement of the 
 universe — for it tells that the universe is not eter- 
 nal: it had a beginning and God is its Creator — 
 commencing with the dawn of human history, it 
 exhibits man at home in his own world, with the 
 production of six creative days all ready around 
 him, the plants and animals so various, so beautiful, 
 and so fitted for man's use. There is rest and there 
 is worship — for it is the Sabbath — the first in a 
 long series. Then come work, observation, intel- 
 ligence, culture, the muster of the animals named 
 by an acute and friendly naturalist, that tilling and 
 dressing of the ground in which man exercises his 
 delegated faculty as a subordinate creator and im- 
 prover, making that which is already "good" still 
 better ; that social converse which is the still more 
 important culture of himself. Then follows the 
 
76 THE FATHER OF HISTOEY. 
 
 first sin, — the first shame, — the first flight from 
 God's presence. Then comes the first death, — a 
 very dismal one, — the death of one who had brought 
 back to earth much of the lost innocence and piety ; 
 a death amidst blows and bloodshed; a death by 
 that dear hand which in tottering infancy the 
 younger brother had often clasped as much for love 
 as guidance ; a death which leaves the afflicted 
 parents doubly desolate, for their one son is in a 
 martyr's early grave, and their other son is the 
 murderer. Sin worketh death ; and we have the 
 development in that old world's depravity, till the 
 Flood comes and clears it all away. The Ark is 
 aground on Ararat, and for a moment there is 
 devotion, there is gratitude. But Noah's altar has 
 scarcely ceased to smoke, above the dripping crags 
 and from the sundering clouds the rainbow flag has 
 scarcely disappeared, when on the soil of the re- 
 scued family sin is sprouting faster than blades of 
 grass are springing from the surface of the soft and 
 reeking earth. And by and bye we see the Tower of 
 Babel rising, with its proud effort to lift the name 
 of Mmrod to the stars, and form a capital for all 
 mankind. But lo ! by a strange confusion in their 
 speech, we see the centripetal attraction suddenly 
 exchanged for a centrifugal repulsion, and from 
 around the stunted, unfinished tower the vexed and 
 alienated clans are pressing outward, each along his 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 77 
 
 separate radius, — to meet no more till one great 
 speech shall reunite the fragments of the exploded 
 family. Having sent forth on their several ways 
 the races still so interesting : those sons of Ham, 
 on whom a father's fault has long pressed heavily ; 
 those phlegmatic sons of Shem, with whom India 
 and China still are teeming ; and those others with 
 the flowing beard and flashing eye, in whom we 
 still recognise the Arab and the Jew ; and last of 
 all, those sons of Japheth, by whom the isles of the 
 Gentiles should be peopled — pilgrims of the square 
 forehead, the sturdy step, and iron sinew, — having 
 for the present sent away to harden amidst their 
 northern mists and snows these future tutors and 
 rulers of mankind, till such season as they should 
 reappear and take up their residence in the tents of 
 Shem, — the record narrows in, and leaving the 
 history of the world, the sacred penman restricts 
 himself to the fortunes of the peculiar people. And 
 throughout those nine-and-thirty chapters which it 
 fills, that history is rather a succession of family 
 records than the annals of a nation. Patriarch 
 follows patriarch, and many an incidental personage 
 flits across the scene. But even at the last the clan 
 only musters threescore souls and ten, and it is only 
 in the four centuries which lie betwixt Genesis and 
 Exodus that the Abrahamic clan has grown into the 
 great and numerous Hebrew nation. 
 
78 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 To no liistorian was it ever permitted to recite 
 events so stupendous as rise one after another in 
 the opening chapters of Genesis, nor incidents more 
 striking and touching or more fraught with special 
 Providence than those which fill the remainder. 
 And although we do not forget the protest of Hein- 
 rich Heine against Longinus and the critics who 
 have attempted to point out the beauties of the 
 Bible : " Vain words, your talk of its sublimity, its 
 simplicity : vain tests of human judgment. It is 
 God's production, — like a tree, like a flower, like the 
 ocean, like Man himself, — it is the Word of God ; 
 that, and no more,"^ — yet, as we have said, there is 
 a human underside, and we cannot help forming 
 our own inference as to an author's dispositions 
 from the way he performs his work, from the 
 incidents he selects, from the scenes on which 
 he dwells, from the conclusions which he forces 
 his readers to deduce. Tried by that standard 
 no author can be greater or more good. What 
 tenderness flows forth in that tale of peerless pathos, 
 Joseph and his brethren ; what sympathy with the 
 high-souled, pelf-spurning Abraham in his restora- 
 tion of the spoil and in his purchase of Machpelah ; 
 what a love of rural quiet and pastoral simplicity 
 in the fond minuteness with which he paints 
 Abraham's interviews at Mamre, Eleazar's confi- 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. civ, 208. 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 79 
 
 dential embassy, Jacob's flight and adventures at 
 Bethel, at Padan-aram, at the brook Jabbok ; what 
 clear- eyed faith, what devout recognition of the 
 Most High everywhere ! And although the gran- 
 deur of the themes be itself explanation sufficient, 
 has it not in some measure been owing to the 
 Divine artlessness and power of the narrative that 
 Genesis has gathered towards itself so much of the 
 genius of Christendom ? And after gazing on the 
 ' Deluge' of Turner or listening to the ' Creation' of 
 Haydn, after reading Yondel's Lucifer, or Milton's 
 Paradise Lost, The Death of Ahel by Gesner, The 
 World hefore the Flood by Montgomery, how is it 
 that it all feels so familiar and so fundamentally true, 
 unless it be that the original has been sketched in 
 outlines so firm, with tints so transparent and 
 details so suggestive, that the world could not bear 
 the books which might be written, by expanding the 
 great facts embodied in this Book of the Beginning ? 
 For Moses we claim that he is the true Father of 
 History ; and what a delightful study would be the 
 annals of our species, if always written in his spirit, 
 so devout and candid and God-recognising ! Even 
 as it is, pens the most flippant have unconsciously 
 recorded the fulfilment of prophecy, and the most 
 hostile witnesses have been betrayed into involun- 
 tary recognitions of God's ever-working and aU- 
 commanding Providence ; whilst in the pages of 
 
80 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Sismondi and Guizot, of Merle and N'eander, of the 
 old Thiianiis and the recent Miiller, the devout 
 student joyfully recognises the outstretched arm of 
 that great Governor among the nations, who is wise 
 in counsel and excellent in working. 
 
 Of good history there is already more than any 
 one here present is ever likely to overtake ; but it 
 is a literature of that kind for which there will be 
 scope and fitness in the leisure of a coming world. 
 Amongst the spirits made perfect will there not be 
 some wdio shall still look back with wistful interest 
 to that strange and intricate scene in which they 
 once were actors, and who, with the fuller lights 
 supplied by the archives . of the Upper Sanctuary, 
 will love to trace again Earth's finished story ? 
 Even now the subject is full of interest, and, 
 amidst all its appeals to our human sympathies, he 
 is blind indeed who is not startled ever and anon 
 by the sundering of the cloud, and the coming forth 
 of a resistless and ever-watchful Sovereignty. 
 
 Still, interesting as is the past, I must confess our 
 personal concern lies mainly with the present and 
 the future. In reading these bygone records our 
 indignation is often roused by instances of gTeat 
 wickedness or stupendous folly, and we cannot help 
 feeling chagrined and mortified when we see splendid 
 opportunities vilely thrown away. But each of us 
 is at this moment making history ; each of us has 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 81 
 
 the option of securing an everlasting abode in those 
 regions to which Moses and all the best and wisest 
 of past ages are already gone. Surely we don't 
 mean to squander our accepted time and throw away 
 this opportunity, and so furnish angel witnesses 
 with a new occasion for astonishment, and ourselves 
 with the materials of unending and unavailing re- 
 gret. Indeed, my dear friends, if your taste be in 
 unison with this evening's theme, let me make that 
 very circumstance a motive and an argument for 
 sparing no diligence so as to make salvation sure. 
 In giving you the thirst for knowledge, God has 
 taken you out of the common herd. Won't you 
 suffer Him to take you into a company still more 
 select and favoured, by awaking within you the 
 " hunger after righteousness" ? If the two co-exist, 
 ample satisfactions are in store for you ; but it will 
 be very sad to carry hence an eager, expansive intel- 
 lect, but in virtue of a heart godless, sensual, and 
 unsanctified, to find yourself in that outer darkness 
 where a superior understanding will only prove a 
 sorer privation and a severer punishment. There 
 are some historic facts to which you have not suffi- 
 ciently adverted, and they differ from many which 
 you read in your favourite authors, in as far as you 
 are personally implicated, and are yet to come in 
 contact with the Great Agent in them. The Incar- 
 nation of the Son of God, His death at Jerusalem, 
 
 F 
 
82 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 and the commission with wliich He intrusted dis- 
 ciples before ascending into heaven, — these events 
 are not only amongst the best -authenticated inci- 
 dents in our earthly annals, but to every man who 
 knows them they are full of anxious import. be 
 entreated to advert to them, and dwell upon them, 
 till they become the hinges of your happier history ; 
 dwell upon them till, with its simple key, the 
 gospel opens for you a door in your vale of trouble, 
 and lets you out into a golden future ; dwell upon 
 them till, not in knowledge onty, but in righteous- 
 ness and true holiness, your mind is renewed after 
 the image of the second Adam ; dwell upon them 
 till Christ's resurrection has bridged a path over 
 your own grave, and His ascension and intercession 
 have taught your thoughts to mount toward heaven. 
 
V. 
 
 ^hc Call. 
 
 " Now Moses kejit tlie flock of Jetliro his father-in-law, the priest of 
 Midian : and he led the flock to the back-side of the desert, and 
 came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the Angel of 
 the Lord appeared unto him," etc. — Ex. iii. 1, 2. 
 
 The fortiines of the little Hebrew foundlincr we 
 have so far traced. By a remarkable Providence 
 we have seen the child of slavery transferred from 
 the hovel to the palace, or rather from the jaws of 
 the crocodile to the arms of a princess. AYe have 
 seen him growing up a scholar, an inquiring spirit, 
 intellectual and wxll informed, — a master of such 
 wisdom as Eg}^t could supply ; we have seen him 
 coming out a hero and a patriot, even in the court 
 of Pharaoh unable to forget that he was a Hebrew 
 of the Hebrews ; and at last, from devotion to his 
 own down-trampled brethren, casting away all pro- 
 spects of earthly promotion, and jeopardizing his 
 life in the quarrel of his country. We have seen 
 him the fugitive and the exile, and last Lecture we 
 devoted to what is believed to have been one of the 
 employments of his seclusion, and, without forgetting 
 
 S3 
 
84 THE CALL. 
 
 the Divine original of Genesis, we considered his 
 claims and characteristics as the Father of History. 
 
 Quiet and happy lives make poor materials for 
 biography. The tourist who journeys from Eotter- 
 dam up the Ehine seldom looks at the river, for 
 whatsoever may be the wealth afloat on its bosom, 
 whatsoever the fertility conveyed by its waters, there 
 is nothing striking or arresting in its current ; and 
 it is only when vexed into rapids at the Lurlei, or 
 when it comes in a thundering cataract down at 
 Schaffhausen, that eyes which watched the clouds 
 or ranged along the banks are recalfed to the for- 
 gotten stream. So of the three stages of his history 
 Moses would probably have named as the happiest 
 his forty years in the land of Midian. They were 
 very obscure and inconspicuous. It was a great 
 change from the court-end of Memphis, the fashion- 
 able quarter of Egypt's metropoHs, to the back of 
 the desert ; it was a great change from a palace to 
 the scanty accommodation of a tent, and from com- 
 manding an army it was a greater change to herding 
 sheep. But " the mind is its own place," and the 
 greatest minds are the least dependent on outward 
 accommodations. The pleasures of Egypt were far 
 from unalloyed. They were too mainly the joys of 
 sense, and were so mixed up with idolatrous observ- 
 ances as to pollute and poison them all, and make 
 them no better than " pleasures of sin." But with 
 
THE CALL. 85 
 
 the meditative leisure he eD joyed amongst the lonely 
 mountains, with the piety which he found in the 
 homestead of the priest of Midian, and with the 
 domestic affection to which he returned when in 
 the cool of the day he brought back his flock to the 
 canvas village, and Zi23porah and his boy came forth 
 to meet him, he was thankful for his peaceful seclu- 
 sion, and felt what another was afterwards to sing, 
 " The Lord is my shepherd ; He maketh me to lie 
 down in green pastures ; He leadeth me in the 
 paths of righteousness." 
 
 There had once been a period when Moses had 
 hoped to deliver Israel. How this hope had arisen 
 — whether, as Josephus says {Ant. ii. 9. 3), a Divine 
 premonition of his father had been communicated 
 by Amram to his son, or whether his exalted posi- 
 tion had wdiispered the hope to his patriotism, — 
 sure enough not only had Moses been led to 
 cherish the noble purpose, but (as Stephen relates) 
 " he supposed his brethren would have understood 
 how that God by his hand would deliver them." ^ 
 That hope had been thwarted. It had been 
 thwarted in circumstances as mortifying to self-love 
 as they w^ere calculated to quench his patriotism. 
 " Who made thee a prince and a judge over us ?" 
 and after forsaking the court and casting himself on 
 his own countrymen, they plainly told him that 
 
 1 Acts vii. 25. 
 
86 THE CALL. 
 
 tliey did not want his services. Proscribed by the 
 king and repudiated by his own brethren, nothing 
 remained to him except to flee. And it would 
 seem as if, in the asylum which he found, his 
 ambitious projects had died away. Probably news 
 did not travel very fast from Memphis to Midian, 
 and in the mood of both Egyptians and Israelites 
 it was prudent not to apprise any of his hiding- 
 place. But all unconsciously the preparation was 
 advancing in the school of God's selecting ; and of 
 that preparation not the least was the meekening 
 process in the mind of God's destined agent and 
 envoy. 
 
 John Knox was forty -two before he began to 
 preach. To himself it was a great surprise when 
 he was summoned to the work. Already in writing 
 and in conversational discussion he had served the 
 cause of truth ; but when an unexpected appeal 
 was made to him and a solemn charge laid upon 
 him, " the said John, abashed, burst forth in most 
 abundant tears, and withdrew himself to his 
 chamber. His countenance and behaviour from 
 that day till the day that he was compelled to 
 present himself to the public place of preaching, 
 did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his 
 heart ; for no man saw any sign of mirth of him, 
 neither yet had he pleasure to accompany any man, 
 many days together." Yet it was no faltering in the 
 
THE CALL. 87 
 
 faith, nor was it any fear for himself that made him 
 hesitate ; for when the next Sunday came and with 
 it the first sermon, the hearers exclaimed, ^' Others 
 sned the branches of the Papistry, bnt he strikes at 
 the root," and others more ominously hinted, " George 
 Wishart spake never so plainly, and yet he was 
 burnt : even so will he be." -^ 
 
 In early life spirits are high and hope is sanguine, 
 and therefore it is fortunate that in early life most 
 persons get committed to their career. But Moses 
 was about to commence an undertaking for which 
 the self-reliance of a sanguine temperament would 
 have been wholly insufficient. Had he been en- 
 couraged in his first attempt, had he found his 
 compatriots ready to revolt when he was prepared 
 to be their leader, we can imagine a successful 
 insurrection. The Israelites were very numerous, 
 and a sudden servile rising of half a million, most 
 of them concentred in one region, might have 
 found the effeminate Egy ptians off their guard, and 
 before they could rally an exodus might have been 
 effected, and by a sudden dash across the shorter 
 desert a portion of southern Canaan might easily 
 have been wrenched from the unprepared inhabi- 
 tants ; and so in a few days and by a succession of 
 brilliant strokes the bondage of centuries might 
 have ended in a speedy and triumphant return to 
 
 1 Knox's Work^ bv Lain.?, i. 188, 192. 
 
88 THE CALL. 
 
 Palestine. In that event, however, the training and 
 purifying processes of the long wilderness would 
 have all been superseded, and instead of entering 
 the Land of Promise a peculiar people, God-guided 
 and God-governed, they would have tumultuated 
 into their new abode a mob of self- emancipated 
 slaves and self-gratulating victors, with the vices of 
 Egypt still uncured, and utterly unfitted to subserve 
 Jehovah's special purpose. 
 
 In accordance, therefore, with the determinate 
 counsel and foreknowledge of God, although much 
 to the mortification of the moment, when in the 
 flush of youthful enthusiasm — for at forty he w^as 
 young — Moses offered his services, they w^ere 
 ungraciously declined, and the disapj)ointed patriot 
 seems to have abandoned all hope of being Israel's 
 deliverer. But from the instant that he despaired 
 of himseK he began to grow fit for God's purpose. 
 He whose way it has ever been to thrust dow^n the 
 mighty from their seats could now answer the 
 question, " By whom shall Israel arise ?" for Moses 
 had grown humble and meek. In the long and 
 sequestered years he had learned to know his own 
 deficiencies, and in any work to which God might 
 call him he w^as prepared to merge himself in the 
 will of the Most High. Instead of rushing on the 
 work in vain-glorious confidence, he would now 
 feel that it was one which God alone could accom- 
 
THE CALL. 89 
 
 plisli. Instead of starting up the self- constituted 
 agitator and orator, lie was now prepared to go 
 before Pharaoh in calm superhuman solemnity as 
 Jehovah's messenger. And instead of maturing his 
 own plans and devising his own expedients, and 
 giving forth his own orders, he was in that state 
 of mind which no longer caters for applause, but, 
 prefacing its oracles with " Thus saith the Lord," 
 ascribes of all prosperous achievement the glory to 
 Him from whom all glories are. 
 
 When a youth leaves school or ends his course at 
 college he is apt to feel a certain complacency. He 
 knows three or four languages, and astronomy, and 
 geography, and, in short, more or less of all things 
 knowable. So learned is he that he would not 
 like to be thought ignorant of anything, and would 
 almost blush to be asked a question which he could 
 not answer. But wait for twenty years ; and 
 although at the end of that time he has immeasur- 
 ably extended his attainments, and is now so far a 
 master or monopolist in some department as to 
 receive homage from adepts and pilgrimages from 
 strangers, — with himself far more profound than the 
 sense of proficiency is the sense of imperfection, and 
 whilst he sighs over vast departments on which he 
 can never hope to enter, there is no phrase he uses 
 oftener than the one formerly so much evaded, " I 
 don't know." AVhen a man begins a religious life, 
 
90 THE CALL. 
 
 there is apt to be a self-complacent stage in his 
 incipient piety. His conduct is correct. Compared 
 with some older Christians, there is more fervour 
 in his zeal, more freshness in his feelings. In 
 worship, praise and thanksgiving and intercession 
 are the exercises in which his spirit is freely 
 carried forth ; he could almost dispense with con- 
 fession. But as the years move on, he has appar- 
 ently grown worse ; for although others speak of 
 him as so good a man, to take his own account his 
 character is made up of desiderata, his career is all 
 one shortcoming. There was once a time when 
 Moses thought that he was the man to deliver 
 v Israel. But now when God actually proposes it, he 
 is startled, almost petrified. " Who am I, that I 
 should go unto Pharaoh, and bring forth the children 
 of Israel?" Are not you the son of Pharaoh's 
 daughter and the topmost man among your people 
 — the fosterling of royalty — the favourite of fortune 
 — the statesman and the sage ? and if not you, who 
 is there else ? But all these proud swelling thoughts 
 have long since subsided, and Moses has again in liis 
 own eyes dwindled down into the son of the Hebrew 
 thrall and the herdman of Jethro's cattle. And so 
 as regarded superior sanctity, personal prowess, the 
 gift of persuasive oratory — on every attribute of 
 special aptitude for such a work he founded a 
 special difficulty ; and the man who earlier in the 
 
THE CALL. 91 
 
 day had been so little deterred by any felt defi- 
 ciency that he would have volunteered on the 
 service, now that he is summoned to assume it he 
 has only one plea after another : " They will ask 
 me, What is God's name ? They will not believe me. 
 They will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto 
 thee. And then, my Lord, I am not eloquent." 
 
 From a subsequent expression of his father-in- 
 law (iv. 18), it would seem as if Moses had little 
 idea how affairs were proceeding in Egypt ; but a 
 new crisis had arisen. The old king was dead. In 
 all likelihood this was an event to which his 
 hapless vassals had looked forward with hope ; for 
 however profligate and unprincipled a young prince 
 may be, he is seldom so cruel as a surly old tyrant. 
 But in this instance a Claudius was followed by a 
 Nero, and when the wretched bondmen found that 
 the new sovereign meant to carry through the 
 harsh measures of his father, their spirits failed. 
 They could no longer cheat their misery with the 
 hope of change. They could no longer cheer one 
 another with bulletins of the old king's failing 
 strength and advancing infirmities. The new king 
 was young and strong, and in the course of nature 
 would see half of them into their graves ; and with 
 liis iron heart and savage humour it was a fearful 
 prospect for themselves and their children. But 
 having no heir-apparent now to look to, they looked 
 
92 THE CALL. 
 
 — where few of them, it is to be feared, had looked 
 before — they looked to the Lord ; and as the cry of 
 their agony pierced the heavens, " God heard their 
 groaning." He remembered His covenant with 
 Abraham, and slight as was the personal claim of 
 the suppliants, He recalled His promise to their 
 believing fathers and resolved to deliver them. 
 But Israel saw no sign. There was no diminution 
 of their tasks, no mollifying on the part of their 
 inexorable masters, no hint of release or holiday : 
 but the sky burnt hot and the rod fell hard as ever. 
 Nay, there was not even an angelic messenger, nor 
 a prophet sent from among their brethren to bid 
 them bear up and hold on. Yet it was all in 
 motion : the Lord had arisen out of His place and 
 deliverance was at hand ; for w^hilst they were 
 weeping and slaving and pouring forth the petitions 
 of despair in Egypt, the bush was already burning 
 in Horeb and the appointed deliverer was receiving 
 his instructions and commission, and hastening on 
 the path of rescue. 
 
 Wherever there is prayer God is present ; nay, 
 wherever there is prayer on the part of man, there 
 is an immediate answer on the part of God, 
 although that answer is not always instantly per- 
 ceptible. The cry may go up from Egypt and the 
 answer may come down at the back of the desert. 
 Nay, God Himself may have come down to the 
 
THE CALL. 93 
 
 very spot, and may be surveying tlie sorrow and 
 sustaining the sufferer with a secret but powerful 
 support ; and yet, as there is no voice to break the 
 silence, no visible glory to irradiate the gloom, the 
 groaning may still go on and for a time the sup- 
 pliant may continue to exclaim, " Hath God 
 forgotten to be gracious ?" 
 
 What makes your misery? Perhaps you suffer 
 through your fellow- men, through man's unfairness 
 or man's oppression. You make bricks for the 
 Egyptians. You serve an unkind or thankless 
 master. You are unequally yoked with a com- 
 panion morose and savage. If so, without omitting 
 any reasonable measure for redress, your true refuge 
 is in prayer. And hitherto all your efforts at extri- 
 cation may have been allowed to fail just on very 
 purpose to shut you up to this, the true and God- 
 glorifying resource. So, without losing longer time, 
 cry you to God, and He will hear your groaning, 
 and will come down and deliver you. By softening 
 some stern nature, by opening some stubborn door, 
 by raising up and sending to the rescue some for- 
 gotten or unexpected Moses, He will show that your 
 extremity is His opportunity ; that there are no 
 circumstances which Omnipotence cannot conquer ; 
 no jarring elements or conflicting interests which 
 Infinite Wisdom cannot reconcile. 
 
 What makes your misery ? You are perhaps in 
 
94 THE CALL. 
 
 slavery. You are serving divers lusts and passions. 
 The Hebrew is in bondage to the Egyptian. The 
 higher, finer nature is in subjection to the coarser 
 and the worse. You know it, and you sometimes 
 feel it ; and as you look on the ignominious fetters, 
 and shake the chains which gall you, you exclaim, 
 " wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me ?" 
 And you are beginning to see that you cannot 
 deliver yourself. You have tried both force and 
 flight, you have knocked down your tyrant and 
 tormentor, and you have also run away. But here 
 you are again, the slave of appetite, the victim of 
 strong drink, the gambler, the libertine, throwing 
 away your substance in the devil's service, and into 
 the bricks that are to build your own prison kneading 
 up your health, your peace of mind, your reputation. 
 Oh it is a bitter, bitter bondage ! the immortal in 
 thraldom to tl\e brute ; the foul fiend leading to and 
 fro, with a rope around his neck, one who might 
 have been the heir of heaven ! But if you really 
 loathe it, and cry to God by reason of the bondage. 
 He will come down and set you free. His Holy 
 Spirit entering will fill you with a joy and happiness 
 which will leave no lack and find no need for the 
 pleasures of sin ; and, inspiring you with new and 
 noble tastes, He will fortify you so as to resist and 
 vanquish the temptations which will still be sure 
 to come, until a better nature gets gradually built 
 
THE CALL. 95 
 
 up within, a nature on which gross allurements 
 exert no more attraction than the garbage which 
 brings the raven to your feet has power to lure the 
 turtle from the bough ; than the husks which the 
 swine do eat have power to bend an angel from his 
 flight. This is a kind which goes out by prayer and 
 fasting. So cry to God. For the glory of His 
 holy name, and for the sake of His interceding Son, 
 beg that He would break that chain with which you 
 have so long been bound, and the links of which 
 your own hands have forged in days of delirious 
 folly ; beg that He would loose you from your bond 
 this very Sabbath-day. 
 
 What makes your misery ? Perhaps you are in 
 bondage to a broken and threatening law. A law 
 fulfilled is friendly, and such is the law to which 
 the believer does homage ; a law fulfilled by his 
 Eepresentative, and therefore coming to himself, not 
 to curse and condemn, but to counsel and control, 
 to regulate and guide ; a law that is friendly and 
 propitious for the sake of the law^-magnifying Surety, 
 the law-fulfilling Saviour. But perhaps the only 
 law you know is the law^ which you have broken, 
 and which frowns and looks severe, and says ever- 
 more, — " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Or, 
 to put it more plainly, you want to reach the j)ro- 
 mised land of peace and reconciliation, but you have 
 in. the meanwhile got into a house of bondage. You 
 
96 THE CALL. 
 
 have fallen into the hands of a taskmaster, whom 
 we shall call the Commandment, and you say to 
 yourself, " If I could only please this rigid overseer 
 for a while, he would allow me to quit Egypt at last, 
 and I should go on my ^vay rejoicing. But he is so 
 strict and stern. I have no sooner done one thing 
 than he calls me to account for another. I said my 
 prayers this morning as seriously as possible, and 
 w^as rather pleased with myself because I read my 
 chapter with some pleasure, when on a sudden 
 provocation T lost my temper, and all my happiness 
 took flight. A few days ago I was beginning to 
 hope the best, for I w^as conscious of so much 
 obligingness and charity and general good- will; 
 when the spell Avas broken, and my love to the 
 brethren w^as sensibly impaired by that primary 
 and impracticable requirement, 'Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul.' To 
 confess the truth, in the way that he haunts and 
 harasses me I feel as if my Lord's commandment 
 did me more harm than good. He exacts bricks 
 without providing straw ; and when I begin to 
 brighten up and ask if I am not doing well, he 
 flourishes in my face a long list of faults and errors, 
 and positively, by his severe and peremptory tone, 
 he is like to put me out of love with goodness, and 
 drive me to despair." Such at least was the ex- 
 perience of an earnest, anxious man, who has left 
 
THE CALL. 97 
 
 his memoirs in tlie 7th to the Eomans, and who 
 tells us, " Sin taking occasion by the commandment, 
 wrought in me all sorts of bad desires ; and the 
 commandment, which was originally ordained as 
 the way to life, I found the means of death." And 
 so will it ever be as long as you continue in the 
 house of bondage, resting your hope on your own 
 prospective holiness ; resting your hope on propi- 
 tiating that law which has no power to pardon, only 
 the power to command and threaten and condemn. 
 But from this legal bondage, this thraldom to a 
 threatening, frowning law, the Lord Jesus offers to 
 deliver you ; and this by doing no disparagement 
 to the law itself, which He has magnified and made 
 honourable, and all whose righteous requirements He 
 fondly and loyally fulfilled. If to this greater than 
 Moses you listen, " the law of the life-giving Spirit 
 in Him will make you free from the law of sin and 
 death." ^ Crucified for your offences, and raised 
 again for your justification, you will find expiation 
 for the past in His sacrifice, and merit for the pre- 
 sent in His spotless obedience. Made free by the 
 Son, you shall be free indeed, and " walking " not 
 in laxity, but " at liberty," the taskmaster-precept 
 will be transformed into a commandment holy, just, 
 and good, and the mercenary obedience of the slave 
 into the devotion of the affectionate disciple. 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 2. 
 G 
 
98 THE CALL. 
 
 I shall enter no further on the narrative at 
 present. There was a famous column in the Forum 
 at Eome, and all the roads of the empire led to it, 
 and their miles were measured from it. The Mil- 
 liarium of the Bible — the centre of its system — is 
 the Cross. All its paths lead thither. To-night 
 we started from the back of the desert — we began 
 our walk among the bleak ravines of Sinai ; and 
 now, inevitably and by simply going on, we find 
 ourselves in sight of Calvary. And we won't turn 
 back. Let us go away looking at Him who took 
 upon Himself the form of a servant in order to 
 deliver us from a double slavery — from bondage 
 to sin, and bondage to a cursing, because broken, 
 law. My beloved hearers, are you sure of it ? 
 Has Christ given you this twofold liberty — deliver- 
 ance from the bondage of corruption ; deliverance 
 from the penalty of a violated covenant, a broken 
 commandment? Or, taking this last as the first, 
 Have you found that " the wages of sin is death ; 
 but that the gift of God is eternal life, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord"? Have you learned with 
 Luther, " Like as the earth engendereth not rain, 
 nor by her own strength and travail is able to pro- 
 cure it, but receives it from above, the mere gift of 
 God ; so that other gift of God, eternal life through 
 a Mediator, is given us without our works or de- 
 servings ? Look then, as much as the earth is able 
 
THE CALL. 99 
 
 to do ill procuring the shower that makes it fresh 
 and fruitful, — so much can our strength and works 
 achieve in winning that heavenly boon of God's 
 eternal righteousness. It is God's unspeakable gift, 
 and is ours by His mere imputation." 
 
 And has that same Divine Emancipator who 
 proclaims liberty to the captives and the opening 
 of the prison to them that are bound, has He 
 rescued you from the bond of iniquity, from be- 
 setting sins, from the despotism of imperious lusts 
 and passions ? If you fear not yet, let your cry go 
 up to Him now. There is no need that you should 
 die in the dungeon ; no need that you should perish 
 with Satan's fetters on your limbs, with a sinful 
 habit entwined and twisted round your soul. Cry 
 to God. In rage and revenge against the accursed 
 thing, cry to God to remember His covenant with 
 His own beloved Son, and look down in pity on 
 your struggle with this crucifier of Christ, this 
 vampire which has fastened on you, and is draining 
 the life's blood of your immortal soul. He is 
 very gracious. Most tender are His mercies, most 
 prompt and present is His aid. He will surely see 
 your affliction, and will hear your cry by reason of 
 this taskmaster. He knows yoiu? sorrows, and will 
 come down to deliver you ; and in due time will 
 bring you to a good land and a large, even a better 
 than that land which flowed with milk and honey. 
 
VI. 
 
 %\xt fiurning fiuBh. 
 
 And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out 
 of the midst of a bush ; and he looked, and, behold, the bush 
 burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." — Ex. ni. 2. 
 
 For His various pupils that great Teacher, the 
 Holy Spirit, has different methods of training, and 
 their education is carried on in widely different 
 seminaries. In the case, however, of those who are 
 destined to head mighty moral revolutions, we find 
 that a period of seclusion and abstraction has been 
 the almost uniform preparation. It was from a 
 prolonged retreat beside the brook Cherith, and 
 afterwards in a cavern of this very Horeb, that 
 Elijah issued forth on the two great incidents of his 
 grand career ; and it was from a similar but longer 
 sojourn in the hill-country of Judea, that, in the 
 spirit and power of Elijah, Messiah's harbinger 
 burst forth on an astonished people. Luther's 
 Horeb was the period he spent in the Augustinian 
 convent ; Knox's Horeb was his seventeen months 
 in the French galley ; and there are men now living 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 101 
 
 who are exertinf]^ a largre influence on tlieir brethren, 
 whose own spirit was first wound up to the right 
 intensity during a season of repose and solitude, 
 and who came forth from their chosen or enforced 
 retreat with a baptism on them which still re- 
 maineth. 
 
 A coated phial will hold a certain charge of 
 electricity ; but if there are a number of minute 
 conductors in contact with it, they will draw off the 
 force as fast as it flows in, and reduce to nothing what 
 might otherwise have been a flash of mimic light- 
 ning. A tree that grows in a forest, and surrounded 
 by a million more — it may be straight and tall, and 
 there may be no bend or flaw in its smooth and 
 taper bole ; but its roots are shallow, and sliould 
 some chance bereave it of its comrades — should it 
 be left alone — the first blast will lay its leafy 
 honours in the dust ; for its growth was entirely 
 gregarious ; its safety lay in its associates ; and now 
 that this shield is gone, having no depth of earth, 
 the moment that the long fingers of the hurricane 
 are twisted in its locks, it goes over with a crash, 
 and the birds no longer build in its branches. So 
 with earnest feeling in a bustling place : it gets 
 no leisure to accumulate. The seriousness of the 
 Sabbath is stolen by the week ; nay, it is spirited 
 away by the first beams of the following day. A 
 jocular companion, an urgent engagement, an ab- 
 
102 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 sorbing care, a multitude of matters, some idle and 
 some innocent — like so many furtive conductors, 
 like the very vapour in the atmosphere, are quietly 
 robbing you of the elevation or energy which you 
 felt at night ; and before the good purpose comes 
 forth in any definite or decisive act, the power has 
 vanished and you are weak as other men. And so 
 with the piety which is produced and fostered 
 merely by good comx^anionship : as long as you are 
 under the roof of pious parents, as long as you 
 enjoy the fellowship of earnest and fervent friends, 
 you may hold on ; but when cast on the wide 
 world, or brought into circumstances of strong 
 temptation, if you are not kept close to God by 
 God himself ; if you are not so rooted and grounded 
 in the truth as to render your piety decided and 
 independent of human support, it will be too likely 
 to fall wdien the weather breaks and the tempests 
 blow. 
 
 By choosing the better part, Moses was so far 
 ready for any work that God designed ; and in his 
 palace-life he had been unconsciously receiving a 
 portion of his training. He had got some insight to 
 statesmanship and military affairs ; he had acquired 
 the etiquette of the Egyptian court, and had learned 
 to be at home in the presence of princes. But these, 
 like "the wisdom of the Egyptians," were mere 
 accomplishments, and for the great but unguessed 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 103 
 
 •undertaking before him Moses needed a profound 
 and peculiar discipline. He needed to grow in 
 acquaintance with that God with whom he was 
 hereafter to commune face to face, and whose mes- 
 senger and spokesman he was to be in a manner so 
 special and pre-eminent. He needed to be lifted 
 completely and conclusively above those mixed or 
 meaner motives by which well-intentioned men are 
 so often in large measure actuated. He needed to 
 be raised nearer to heaven than earth ; and, we may 
 add, he needed to have his entire spirit so habituated 
 to lofty thoughts, so accustomed and inured to live 
 at a high level, that in after days, 
 
 " As some taU rock amidst the waves 
 The fury of the tempest braves," 
 
 so his spirit should be able to surmount the 
 molestations and the murmurs, the opposition and 
 the obloquy, which for the next forty years, like a 
 troubled sea, should chafe and churn around him. 
 
 For such purpose no retirement could have been 
 found more suitable than the desert of Horeb, that 
 " great and terrible wilderness," which a friend thus 
 describes : — " It was a vision of more utter barren- 
 ness and desolation than we had ever seen or 
 fancied ; no soft feature in the landscape to miti- 
 gate the unbroken horror. No green spot, no tree, 
 no flower, no rill, no lake, but dark brown 
 ridges, red peaks like pyramids of solid fire ; no 
 
104 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 rounded hillocks, or soft mountain curves such as 
 one sees in the ruggedest of home scenes, but mon- 
 strous and misshapen cliffs, rising tier above tier, 
 and surmounted here and there by some spire-like 
 summit, serrated for miles into ragged grandeur, and 
 grooved from head to foot by the winter torrents 
 that had swept down like bursting water-spouts, 
 tearing their naked loins, and cutting into the very 
 veins and sinews of the fiery rock." "^ Amidst this 
 labyrinth of bald and blasted mountains, Moses 
 dwelt for forty years; and although it is vain to 
 surmise what were all the thoughts and musings of 
 this protracted interval, we are inclined to think 
 that a glimpse is given in that Ninetieth Psalm, 
 entitled, " A prayer of Moses, the man of God," — and 
 which acquires new significance when we think of 
 the hermit lifting up his eyes to these lonely silent 
 pinnacles, and thinking, " Before the mountains 
 were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the 
 earth and the world, even from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting, thou art God." And then, when his thoughts 
 reverted to the wretched scenes in Egypt, " Eeturn, 
 Lord, how long ? and let it repent thee concern- 
 ing thy servants. Make us glad according to the 
 days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years 
 wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear 
 unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their chil- 
 
 1 Bonar's Desert of Smai, p. 236. 
 
THE BURNIXG BUSH. 105 
 
 dren. And let the beauty of tlie Lord our God be 
 upon us : and establish thou the work of our hands 
 upon us ; yea, the work of our hands establish thou 
 it." 
 
 At last came the eventful day, and yet a day 
 ushered in by no special sign nor devoted to any 
 unusual solemnity. Moses had led out his flock as 
 far as Sinai, where in some of the ravines could be 
 found a fragrant pasture for the goats and the sheep, 
 and where there was a good store of water. It was 
 a sword of fire which guarded the gates of Eden ; 
 it was in a chariot of fire that Elijah ascended to 
 heaven; it was a pillar of fire which guided the 
 pilgrims in their desert journey, and which after- 
 wards settled down between the cherubim in the 
 Holy of Holies ; it was with tongues of fire that 
 the Holy Spirit symbolized His presence on the day 
 of Pentecost ; and it was with an effulgence beyond 
 the noon that the fury-breathing persecutor was 
 dashed down on the way to Damascus ; so that the 
 element which we deem the purest and most pene- 
 trating, Jehovah seems to have employed throughout 
 as His especial badge and cognisance, the opening 
 of His eye, the flash of His finger. But of this 
 Moses was not thinking when a great sight arrested 
 his eye. A. bush, no palm nor olive, but a tamarisk 
 or a thorny acacia, shone out with a brilliant flame. 
 It did not crackle nor burn down, and Moses was 
 
106 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 hastening to tlie spot, when his foot was arrested by 
 a voice divine, — a voice which soon brought him to 
 the dust, hiding his face and fearing to look upon 
 God. In the wonderful interview which followed, 
 the Lord announced His name and the purpose for 
 which He had now appeared to His servant, and 
 with marvellous condescension meeting all the 
 scruples of a meek and self-disparaging recluse, He 
 sent him home the most highly favoured and the 
 most heavily burdened amongst the sons of men ; 
 the most highly favoured, inasmuch as he was the 
 first to whom, after the silence of ages, Jehovah had 
 spoken ; the most heavily burdened, inasmuch as 
 he felt crushed and overwhelmed with the com- 
 mission which he dared not lay down, and which 
 he trembled to discharge. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that Jehovah did not 
 announce Himself as the God of Levi, the God of 
 Kohath, the God of Amram, Moses' immediate 
 progenitors ; but He goes back hundreds of years, 
 and says, " I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and 
 of Jacob," to show at once that it was an everlast- 
 ing covenant, and that although it had not "grown" 
 of late, it was neither dead nor dormant. All the 
 parties between whom it had been originally ratified 
 still were extant : God lived, and Abraham, Isaac, 
 Jacob were living also. Thus Christ Himself explained 
 the words. " Have you any doubt as to the soul's 
 
THE BUENING BUSH. 107 
 
 immortality ? Do you not remember how at tlie 
 bush God spoke of the patriarchs as friends of His, 
 that is, as friends still living ? For He is not the 
 God of the dead. The great I am does not identify 
 Himself with that which has gone into annihilation 
 and ceased to be ; so that if at the bush He pro- 
 claimed Himself Abraham's God, Abraham must 
 still retain his identity and consciousness, and the 
 time must be coming when he shall resume his 
 body also, — that body by which alone his per- 
 sonality can be completed, and his identity mani- 
 fested to those who (like Elijah and the saints 
 surviving to the Advent and then translated) are 
 not pure spirits, but clothed in corporeity." 
 
 This proof of immortality, as exhibited by the 
 great Teacher, is sufficient; but we scarcely sup- 
 pose that He gave this proof because the strongest 
 or most telling. " In doubting the resurrection, in 
 questioning the soul's immortality, ye do err from 
 not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of 
 God. So pervaded with this doctrine is all Eevela- 
 tion, that it was implied in that fundamental 
 revelation made to Moses, that announcement of 
 God's name which commenced the theocratic his- 
 tory, and even the burning bush blazed with 
 immortality." But instead of bearing hard on those 
 whose cursory or cabalistic eyes so often scanned 
 the words and missed the revelation, let us be 
 
108 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 thankful for announcements more articulate, for 
 information more explicit, and for proofs so pal- 
 pable that faith needs no longer tremble nor ask 
 another sign. 
 
 And yet, with life and immortality brought to 
 light, how many close their eyes and miss the 
 comfort! A few days ago we read new biographies 
 of two of the greatest bards of modern Britain ; 
 one the most ethereal and idealistic of our poets, 
 the other such a master of the lyre as hardly Gray 
 or Dryden has surpassed. When Shelley was by a 
 sudden squall buried in the Gulf of Genoa, William 
 Godwin wrote to the young and distracted widow, 
 his own daughter, " My poor girl ! Wliat do you 
 mean to do with yourself? You surely do not 
 mean to stay in Italy ? . . . Above all, keep up 
 your courage. You have many duties to perform ; 
 you must now be the father as well as the mother, 
 and I trust you have energy of character enough to 
 enable you to perform your duties honourably and 
 well."^ Is not this exquisite sympathy from a 
 father to his favourite child, "My poor girl, what do 
 you mean to do with yourself ?" Is not this strong 
 consolation from the philosopher who could dispense 
 with Christianity : " Keep up your courage. I trust 
 to your energy !" Again, when Campbell lost his 
 wife (and I fear he had lost any practical faith in 
 
 1 Memorials of Shelley, p. 206. Lond. 1859. 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 109 
 
 Christianity beforehand) his reflection was, "These 
 are strange dispensations, and to what demonstrated 
 end?" but added, "There must be a God, that is 
 evident : there must be an all-powerful, inscrutable 
 God."^ With deaths so dreary, or rather with sur- 
 vivors so desolate in their sorrow, contrast the hope 
 full of immortality. " Surely," writes the great 
 scholar Bengel after the death of his child, "Surely, 
 when the door of paradise is opened to let in any of 
 our departed friends, delicious breezes blow through 
 it upon us from that abode of blessedness." "As I 
 reclined my head upon my dying child's little 
 couch, I thought I could gladly die with it that 
 moment." And when dying himself, said the suc- 
 cessful physician Dr. Gordon, "I have found in 
 Christ a happiness I did not think existed on this 
 side the grave. People have said that death is 
 frightful. I look on it with pleasure. I see no 
 monsters around me. Death ? I see no death at 
 my bed-side. It is that benign Saviour waiting to 
 take me. This is not the testimony of one who has 
 nothing to live for. I am in the prime of life, with 
 comforts and friends around me ; but the prospect 
 of heaven is more than all."^ 
 
 You are immortal, my brethren. If you have 
 found the Saviour, you have experienced a first 
 
 ^ Redding's Reminiscences of Campbell, vol. ii. p. 131. 
 2 Dr. Gordon, by Newman Hall, p. 171. 
 
110 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 resurrection. The heart which was dead before has 
 come alive again, and you have got new feelings 
 towards God and holiness. You trust in Jesus. 
 You believe that He has gone to His Father's house, 
 and you will believe that He will keep His promise, 
 and that where He is you shall be taken at last, to 
 dwell with Him for ever. But to keep that hope 
 alive, you must keep close to Him who gave it. 
 "A darkening universe" you may defy 
 
 " To quench your immortality 
 Or shake your trust in God." 
 
 But that which a darkening universe cannot do 
 may be effectually done by a sinful indulgence or a 
 departing Saviour : for the wages of sin is death, 
 and there is death in leaving the Fountain of Life. 
 Oh, it is a chilly clime, that land of estrangement 
 from God, — and under the hazy, frosty cloud which 
 a guilty conscience brings over the scene, confidence 
 Godward and the hope of a glorious hereafter 
 wither away, and even the strength for discharging 
 duty and the elasticity for bearing trial. So, dear 
 friends, as you would desire never to penetrate the 
 fearful mysteries of the second death, escape from 
 the darkness and horrors of the first. Be sure that 
 you have really emerged from the grave of ungodli- 
 ness, — the death of trespasses and sins. Be sure 
 that, like a tombstone on your soul, there is no bad 
 besetment, no sinful habit holding down your spirit. 
 
THE BUENING BUSH. Ill 
 
 And in loving obedience and affectionate com- 
 munion, keep near that Conqueror of death, who to 
 faithful discipleship says, " Because I live, ye shall 
 live also." And in daily devotion, in the sanctified 
 Sabbath and the frequented sanctuary, keep as near 
 as you can to heaven's gate, — in those connections 
 and employments where He who is " the God not 
 of the dead but of the living" will be apt to meet 
 you, and where you may be cheered by a glimpse of 
 that world in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
 now dwell with God. 
 
 There is something wonderfully sublime and 
 spirit-filling in that name by which the Llost High 
 now announced Himself to Moses, and by which, in 
 its form of Jehovah, He is designated throughout 
 the Old Testament Scriptures, " I am that I am," 
 the Self-existent, the Immutable, the Eternal, the 
 one living God, to the exclusion of the lords many 
 which Egypt and the other idolaters adored. But 
 self-sufficing as His own perfections are, great are 
 His compassions, most gracious and forthgoing His 
 propensities. The plenitude of His own joy occasions 
 no indifference to the cry of the Hebrew bondmen, 
 the absoluteness of His perfections is itself a neces- 
 sity for fulfilling the promise to the patriarchs. And 
 this is the believer's privilege. In the Divine nature 
 there is nothing so august or glorious but it may 
 become to him a theme of pleasing contemplation ; 
 
112 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 for that blessed relation to the Most High which 
 through the Mediator he has resumed, invests each 
 perfection with light and endearment. In itself, 
 " I AM THAT I am" is a name high and lifted up. 
 Its Divine independence seems to shut the creatures 
 outside ; it seems to fling " dust and ashes" to an 
 infinite distance. But when we find that, through 
 the grace of this glorious God, sinners may be saved 
 — when we find that frail fellow-mortals may be 
 taken up into God's eternity — when we find that 
 the life of Abraham is now locked up within the 
 life of God, whilst Abraham, the friend of God, 
 retains his personality and his place in God's affec- 
 tion, the name grows full of strength and comfort. 
 We venture to hope that we may be saved even 
 as they, and that we too may find, within that 
 unchanging name, our impregnable and immortal 
 dwelling-place ; and so we sing, at once adoring and 
 confiding — 
 
 " The God of Abram praise ! 
 Who reigns enthroned above ; 
 Ancient of everlasting days, 
 And God of love ! 
 Jehovah ! great I am ! 
 By earth and heaven confessed, 
 I bow and bless the sacred Name, 
 For ever blessed ! 
 
 The God of Abram praise ! 
 Whose all-sufi&cient grace 
 Shall guide me all my happy days 
 In all His ways : 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 113 
 
 He calls a worm His friend ! 
 He calls Himself my God ! 
 And He shall save me to the end 
 Through Jesus' blood." 
 
 That burning bush, laid a lasting hold on the 
 memory and imagination of Moses. When his com- 
 mission was ended, when about to lay down his 
 miraculous rod, and recalling how not one of the 
 good things which God had spoken had failed, and 
 how all the difficulties which his own timidity had 
 conjured up had disappeared, he reverted to this 
 memorable scene, and, in blessing all the tribes, the 
 best blessing he could wish for Joseph was " the 
 goodwill of Him that divelt in the hush."'^ Apart 
 from all its adjuncts the sight was striking; in 
 connection with the voice of Jehovah, in connection 
 with the affliction in Egypt and the deliverance 
 which from that instant dated, it was a sight never 
 to be forgotten. It was a sight profoundly signi- 
 ficant. As we have already hinted, the glory of 
 God was emblemed by the effulgence which out- 
 shone the day ; but it was not a mere effulgence. 
 " The bush burned ;" it did not simply gleam with 
 a mere phosphorescence or lambent light, but it 
 " burned with fire;" and it was with Moses the 
 amazement how so fierce a flame could involve the 
 branches and yet leave them fresh and green. As- 
 suredly a sign, it was a symbol also, not merely a 
 
 1 Deut. xxxiii. 16. 
 H 
 
^l 
 
 114 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 prodigy but a lesson to the eye, a symbol inter- 
 preted, wlien from the burning bush Jehovah said, 
 " I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, 
 and have heard their cry by reason of their task- 
 masters." And doubtless the Christian Fathers were 
 right in understanding the lowly bush preserved 
 amidst the fire as an emblem not only of Israel in 
 Egypt, but of the Church of God in a persecuting 
 world ; and our Church of Scotland fathers have not 
 only sanctioned the interpretation by adopting the 
 emblem, but their records have supplied new illus- 
 trations to their own chosen motto, " Nee tamen 
 consumebatur." 
 
 How signally the marvel has been repeated in the 
 Babylonish captivity as well as in the Egyptian 
 bondage, in the Christian Church passing through 
 its ten persecutions in the days of imperial Eome, 
 in the Albigenses, in the Lollards of England, in the 
 Huguenots of France, in the Covenanters of Scot- 
 land, we need not linger to repeat. There is one 
 inference of practical import with which we are 
 content to conclude. 
 
 The individual believer, like the collective com- 
 pany, may be compared to this bush. Like the 
 lowly shrub in Horeb, you feel small compared with 
 the trees of the wood. Your abode is obscure, your 
 attainments humble. You are a root out of a dry 
 ground, and growing where there are few advantages. 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 115 
 
 And, to make you more anxious, the fire lias 
 kindled upon you. You are in straits, in grievous 
 perplexity and trouble. You are in pain yourself, or 
 in deep distress on account of others, in the furnace 
 of affliction, as we say. Or you are assaulted by 
 fiery darts of Satan, fierce temptations, infidel sug- 
 gestions, allurements to some great wickedness, till, 
 in the red-hot rain, you feel as if you must be utterly 
 consumed. But call on God, and He will come to 
 your rescue. The bush may be in the fire, but if 
 God be in the bush it runs no risk ; the flame that 
 laps it round may consume the canker worms and 
 caterpillars that preyed upon its verdure, but they 
 will not scorch the tiniest sprig nor consume the 
 most tender blossom. There is no affliction so severe 
 but under it God can support, and out of it can carry 
 more than a conqueror. There is no furnace so hot as 
 to consume a hair of your head if the Son of God 
 be with you there. And although all other temples 
 should yield to the torch of the destroyer, like the 
 famed fabric at Ephesus, and the still more famous 
 shrine at Jerusalem, whether it be the frail body of 
 an afflicted believer or the twigs and tendrils of a 
 bush in the desert, which forms the place of God's 
 special indwelling, no fire of earth or hell can hurt a 
 living shrine of the Godhead, far less consume a 
 temple of the Holy Ghost. 
 
" I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto 
 thee, and will put my words in his mouth ; and he shall speak 
 unto them all that I shall command him." — Deut. xviii. 18. 
 
 " For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet shall the Lord 
 your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me ; him 
 shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you." — 
 Acts hi. 22. 
 
 Any one who lias a wide acquaintance with the 
 story of mankind must have fallen in with many 
 individuals and many incidents which, to a remark- 
 able extent, are the repetition of one another. You 
 are reading the battle of Morgarten, where a handful 
 of Swiss drove back from their valleys the vast 
 array of Austria, and you are irresistibly reminded 
 of Marathon and the little Athenian company which 
 there hurled into the dust the pride of Persia. You 
 read the disastrous march of Darius into the bleak 
 and hungry wilds of Scythia, and you see as in a 
 glass Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. At Salamis 
 you are startled with strange foreshado wings of the 
 Spanish Armada and its destruction on the coasts 
 of Britain ; and even at Lucknow you will find few 
 
 116 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 1 1 7 
 
 incidents absolutely new, if already familiar with 
 the defence and relief of Malta and of Leyden. And 
 as with incidents so with individuals. Miltiades 
 and Aristides, the saviours of Greece, are one day 
 all but deified, another day the one is banished, and 
 the other dies impoverished and disgraced. With 
 such precedents, with such knowledge of the impul- 
 siveness and ingratitude of a people, you do not 
 wonder to find the brothers De Witt, after all their 
 services to the republic, torn to pieces by the mob 
 of Amsterdam. Caligula, savage, capricious, and 
 fantastic in his cruelties, keeps the world in tremor, 
 till in seK-defence his parasites and favourites are 
 obliged to join together and destroy the blood- 
 thirsty madman. Seventeen centuries later the 
 same words would describe the career and fate of 
 another emperor, Paul of Eussia.^ All this is 
 natural. If there be certain rules which guide the 
 course of Providence, and certain laws which govern 
 human nature, such self- repetitions must abound in 
 the annals of our species. Selfishness and passion, 
 if unrestrained — and there is nothing to restrain a 
 despot — will develop into a fierce and headlong 
 brutality, till even flatterers find themselves en- 
 dangered, and in self-defence knock on the head the 
 infuriate monster ; hence Caligula, hence Paul of 
 Eussia, hence the history of Oriental despotisms. 
 
 1 See Historical Parallels. — Lib. Ent. Knowledge. 
 
1 1 8 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 A people so fond of liberty as not to care for life 
 without it, will seldom be allowed to lose it ; hence 
 Marathon, hence Morgarten and Sempach, hence 
 Bannockburn. And hence the philosophy of his- 
 tory. Hence it is that a thoughtful man, acquainted 
 with human nature in its springs of action and its 
 actual doings, will often predict, with surprising 
 accuracy, the history of a popular favourite, the 
 career of a commonwealth, the effects of an im- 
 portant law, the outgoings of a revolution. Give 
 again similar men and similar circumstances, and 
 you will have again similar results. 
 
 To these parallelisms we have adverted from time 
 to time in our sketch of Moses, and as we proceed 
 we shall likely notice others. But we are now 
 called to mark an identity betwixt Moses and an- 
 other, which cannot be accounted for as a mere 
 casual coincidence, nor even as one of those histo- 
 rical parallelisms which are occasioned by similarity 
 of disposition and circumstances. In the hand of 
 God, Moses was himself a prophecy of a more illus- 
 trious Successor, and through his deeds and services 
 the minds of the peculiar people were taught ideas 
 which found their eventual realization in that great 
 Prophet like unto Moses whom the Lord at last 
 raised up from amongst His brethren. 
 
 When we say this we have not in view those 
 outward or incidental resemblances with which 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 119 
 
 every one is struck, and which certainly did not 
 happen without the Divine intention and control. 
 For example, Moses was born of parents in obscure 
 and humble station, peasants, exiles, slaves ; and 
 Christ, born of a poor virgin, was called the carpen- 
 ter's son ; whilst the ark of bulrushes finds its equi- 
 valent in the manger at Bethlehem. Moses in his 
 infancy had well-nigh fallen a victim to the wrath 
 of Pharaoh ; Jesus was only snatched by a hand 
 Divine from the cruelty of Herod. The 'proper' 
 child, the son of Amram, beautiful exceedingly, is 
 suggestive of that fairest of all men wdiom God 
 anointed with the oil of gladness above all His 
 fellows. And "the man Moses, exceeding meek," 
 makes us think of Him who says, " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labour, for I am meek and lowly." 
 
 But the identity to which we allude is deeper, 
 and it will come out, I hope, as we proceed. 
 
 1. Moses was a great Deliverer. The Israelites 
 were in despair. They laboured and found no rest. 
 Their tyrants died, but the tyranny did not abate. 
 The years went on, but their sorrows did not lessen ; 
 and amidst their growing burdens and deepening 
 anguish, it was vainly that they looked around for 
 a protector or champion, for he was never like to 
 come. Cowed and heart-broken, their cry, their 
 " groaning " went up to God, and from God direct a 
 deliverer dropped into their midst. 
 
120 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 And the world was all one Egypt wlien Christ 
 came. Men were very miserable. The great Eoman 
 bully had knocked down all his neighbours, and 
 left no independent nation within sight of his Seven 
 Hills. The submissive fed their masters, the resist- 
 ful only supplied victims by the thousand for the 
 gladiatorial games. And worse than prsetors and 
 proconsuls, men were serving divers lusts and 
 passions, — the slaves of an unseen but ubiquitous 
 Apollyon. The old Pagan faiths were worn out, 
 and such poor virtues as heathenism for a time 
 retained had yielded to unheard-of crimes, till the 
 whole creation groaned, — till, mutually embittered 
 and self-disgusted, all mankind had yielded to the 
 bondage of corruption. It was then that Christ 
 came. It was then that, hearing the cry, confused 
 and anguish- stricken, from a world which had 
 lost all means of self-emancipation or amendment, 
 God remembered His covenant and came down to 
 deliver. It was then that the Son of God was 
 manifest. 
 
 2. Moses was a Prophet. Not that he uttered 
 many predictions — for to foretell the future is a very 
 secondary and subordinate function of the seer ; 
 and the man of God who teUs. me what God is and 
 who supplies me with motives to become what God 
 desires, does me a far greater service than if he had 
 projected ever so minute a map of the future. Of 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 121 
 
 predictions strictly so called our text is almost the 
 only example whicli occurs in the long career of 
 Moses ; and yet, among the mere sons of men, he 
 stands forth unequalled for the contribution which 
 he has been the means of making to our knowledge 
 of God and of human duty. The entire Bible is 
 built on Genesis. The whole subsequent revelations 
 assume the unity of the Supreme Creator there 
 revealed, and they assume the minute and careful 
 vigilance of the great Governor, — the care taken of 
 one poor lad from the pit in Dothan to the palace- 
 gates of On by that same God who said " Let there 
 be light," and who launched the planets on their 
 paths, — that ability of attending to every affair, 
 large or little, which infinite power gives to infinite 
 goodness, and which we call particular or special 
 Providence, the Providence of Omnipotence. And 
 to this fundamental lesson of all piety, transmitted 
 from patriarchal times and preserved in Genesis, 
 what emphasis is given, how important are the 
 additions made in the teaching more immediately 
 Mosaic ! The absolute oneness and spirituality of 
 the Divine nature. His unspotted sanctity. His over- 
 flowing goodness. His great compassions ! And 
 then the Ten Commandments ! " The law was 
 given by Moses," and no tongue can tell the service 
 rendered to the cause of virtue and of God by those 
 way marks and warnings, — those ten words of infinite 
 
122 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 weight which have kept on the path so many way- 
 ward feet, and which have haunted so many con- 
 sciences till the wanderer returned, — that great 
 manual -of duty, that little hand-book of human 
 happiness, which we call the Two Tables, or Deca- 
 logue. 
 
 But if the law was given by Moses, grace and 
 truth came by Jesus Christ. Still mightier in deed 
 and in word than the great legislator, needing no 
 wonder-working rod, for He had but to speak and it 
 was done, needing no thunder nor trumpet to over- 
 ture His discourse and astonish His audience, the 
 Lord Jesus gave a new idea of goodness and a new 
 exhibition of the Godhead. With Moses the first 
 prodigy was to turn water into blood, with Jesus 
 the beginning of miracles was to turn water into 
 wine ; and on the key-note thus sounded in the 
 case of each the subsequent anthem went forward : 
 severity, stern sanctions, the one, — grace, attraction, 
 encouragement, the other ; the shekinah of the one 
 burning with fire, and fenced round with the warn- 
 ing, "Put off thy shoe, for this is holy ground," 
 heaven so opening over the other as to delight 
 whilst it dazzled, and make frail mortality still 
 exclaim, " Master, it is good to be here." How 
 mild the accents, yet how holy and how pure ! how 
 j)enetrating, how satisfying! softly falling like the 
 dew, mellifluous as the manna, and filling each 
 
, MOSES AND MESSIAH. 123 
 
 capacity, the greatest and the smallest, like the 
 snow which gives its convenient portion to the 
 crocus -cup or the lichen, and of which there is 
 enough for the widest valley ! Xot that Jesus 
 ignored or set aside the law. " The law was given 
 by Closes," but it lived in Jesus Christ. That holy 
 law of God, He hid it in His heart, and so it 
 circulated in the vital current of His blood, mant- 
 ling in His cheek when a sinless indignation flashed 
 on stupendous wickedness, and flowing forth in the 
 more familiar tear which bewailed the fate which 
 this wickedness entailed, — gleaming in the gracious 
 smile which reassured the broken-hearted penitent, 
 and bursting^ forth in that crimson sweat which, 
 fainting yet pursued, and which, conquering its 
 own reluctance, cried, " Father, Thy will be done !" 
 But if in Jesus the law was fulfilled, so in Jesas 
 God was manifest. True : He spoke many kind 
 words concerning God, and some very solemn ones : 
 some very solemn ones, — for it was He who said, 
 " If ye forgive not them which trespass against you, 
 neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your 
 trespasses." It was He who said, " It is better to 
 enter into life halt or maimed, than having two 
 hands or two feet to be cast into hell-fire." But 
 mostly kind and comforting — indeed all kind and 
 comforting, if we only listen to them sitting at the 
 Master's feet, and so under the shadow of the 
 
124 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 Mediator's wing. Indeed, so kind and comforting, 
 that He has only one name for the Most High, — 
 " the Father," " your heavenly Father," — inviting 
 us in His name to take it up and say, " Our Father 
 which art in heaven." But just as the Lord Jesus 
 lived the law, so it was chiefly by His life that He 
 let forth the glories of the Godhead — and for that 
 manifestation of Him whom no man hath seen we 
 must go not more to the words than to the mien, 
 / the movements, the works of Immanuel. " Moses 
 verily was faithful in all his house," but it was 
 the faithfulness of a servant, — " but Christ as a Son 
 over His own house," — a Son the express image of 
 the Father — the Only-Begotten, familiar with His 
 Father's thoughts from aU eternity, and giving forth 
 no new revelation as it gradually dawned upon 
 Him, but freely acting forth the Father's mind as it 
 had been from the beginning — acting forth as far 
 as a true body and reasoning soul gave scope for 
 the manifestation. And so for the knowledge of 
 Him with whom we have to do we must look 
 to His incarnate Son. If we wish to know what 
 are the prayers which God will not regard, we must 
 note those which Jesus did not answer. If we wish 
 to know what is the exigency in which God will 
 not or cannot rescue, we must find out the cases 
 where imperilled discipleship vainly exclaimed, 
 " Save, Lord, or I perish." If we wish to know 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 125 
 
 what is the sorrow of which the Most High is a 
 heedless or unconcerned spectator, we must mark 
 the sufferers against w^hose cry of anguish Jesus 
 stops His ear, we must mark the graves by whose 
 brink He stands without a tear. If we wish to 
 know w^hat is the unpardonable sin and w^ho are 
 the penitents who need ask no forgiveness, we must 
 find some sinner who clasped the feet of Jesus and 
 was shaken off — we must find some blaspheming 
 renegade, some cursing and swearing apostate, at 
 whom Jesus would never look again, and regarding 
 whom He made a special exception, 'Go and tell 
 them all (save Peter) that I go before into Galilee 
 and shall be glad to meet them again/ 
 
 The likeness between Moses and Messiah we 
 might pursue much further, and the parallel would 
 not be the less impressive because in each parti- 
 cular we should find that the type was excelled or 
 surmounted by the antitype. For instance, as a 
 man, as a model or ensample to his people, Moses 
 was nearly perfect ; but although almost he was 
 not altogether, and in the ebullition at Meribah the 
 human frailty broke through. Not so with Jesus. 
 If angry He sinned not. He never spake un- 
 advisedly with His lips, and complete as was His 
 code, sublime as were His maxims, there was a 
 finish in His goodness, a divine felicity in His 
 entire demeanour, which leaves Him unique and 
 
/ 
 
 126 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 unapproachable among the sons of men. Again, 
 the mh^acles which ]\Ioses wrought were by a 
 delegated power : the rod he carried was a 
 borrowed sceptre, and a higher power wrought all 
 its wonders. But affluent in His own omnipotence, 
 the will of Jesu.s was itself a fiat, and a touch, a 
 word, a look was followed by a feast for five 
 thousand guests, by a blind man's cure, by a dead 
 man's resurrection. Once more, as a mediator 
 Moses had compassion on the ignorant and on them 
 that were out of the way ; and he had great power 
 with God. But it is Jesus alone who is able to 
 save unto the uttermost them that come unto God 
 by Him, and Jesus is the only mediator who in His 
 intercession says, " Father, I will." And yet 
 again, as the leader of the rescued Israelites Moses 
 carried them far. He conducted them safely 
 through the Eed Sea and through the howling 
 wilderness ; but he did not bring them into the 
 Promised Land. But Jesus is Moses and Joshua 
 both in one. Those whom He brings out of sin's 
 bondage He carries through and sees them safe to 
 the better country. His guidance never ceases, 
 His eye never dims. His interest never flags ; but 
 those who once place themselves beneath His 
 guardianship, lo ! He is with them to the end. 
 
 So, Moses is no isolated personage. He is 
 " that prophet " (John i.) who prefigures the greatest 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 127 
 
 of all, and when we survey him we are looking at 
 one who is looking nnto Jesns. This view of his 
 character and attitude we shall often find instruc- 
 tive. Like his own rod it will draw water from the 
 flinty rock, and convert into green pastures the 
 passages most arid-looking in all the history. 
 
 Meanwhile, it is with the prophet like unto 
 Moses that we have expressly to do ; and it behoves 
 us to ponder the words here subjoined, " Whoso- 
 ever will not hearken unto my words which He 
 shall speak in my name, I will require it of him," 
 or, as Peter gives the purport, " Every soul that 
 will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from 
 among the people." If there were any Hebrews so 
 besotted that they refused to quit Egypt, they had 
 only one opportunity. No second Passover came. 
 No new Moses appeared. The Eed Sea never 
 sundered again ; but by their own infatuation, cut 
 off from their own people, they drudged out the 
 dreary years in ignominious thankless bondage, and 
 died in slavery. 
 
 When Peter adduced this precedent he was ad- 
 dressing his Hebrew countrymen, and he added, 
 "Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the 
 covenant which God made with our fathers. Unto 
 you first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, 
 sent him to bless you, in turning every one of you 
 from your iniquities." Without any straining — 
 
128 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 retaining their real point and spirit — we might 
 apply the apostle's words to a congregation like 
 this, and say, " Ye are children of the prophets 
 and children of the covenant. Many of you have 
 had parents pious and God-fearing. You have 
 been trained in Bible-classes and Sabbath-schools. 
 You know a large extent of saving truth, and you 
 have enjoyed an immense amount of helpful Chris- 
 tian influence. If you were deciding now, what 
 an advantage you would have over the converted 
 Pagan, or even over the converted Papist ! How 
 friendly are all the surrounding circumstances ; how 
 propitious to your progress ! To you God gives the 
 first offer of the Saviour. Suffer Him to bless you. 
 Suffer Him to bless you by turning you from your 
 iniquities." 
 
 " Well, and (you say) it is not much that hin- 
 ders. In turning from my iniquities, I have not 
 to give up the gambling, or the drinking, or the 
 profligacy which you were describing last Lord's 
 day ; and as far as any rampant wickedness is 
 concerned, I fancy that I might soon become a 
 Christian. But I do not feel disposed. I do not 
 see the need. I know that I am not what you 
 would call a religious person ; but I hope that on 
 the whole I do my duty by one and all, and worldly 
 as you call me, I think I have some virtues not 
 possessed by aU. the godly." That is to say, you 
 
MOSES AND MESSIAH. 129 
 
 are in tlie position of an Israelite to whom with his 
 divine commission Moses might have gone, and he 
 should answer, " No, I thank you. My master is 
 humane. He does not set me any revolting task, 
 like so many of my brethren. I am neither sca- 
 venger nor swine-herd, but I wear this handsome 
 livery. And I like the leeks and the onions, the 
 melons and the cucumbers ; and have no notion of 
 going out into a stony desert to fast and hear your 
 sermons."^ ^ Oh, what an abject ! what a mean and 
 unmanly spirit which can thus plead for leave to 
 continue in bondage ! how well he deserves to have 
 his fetters made strong, and when times grow hard 
 with him, and his taskmaster turns on him and 
 delivers him to the tormentors, who shall pity him ? 
 Yes, indeed, Christ's offer is irksome. You have 
 learned to like Egypt. You cannot bear to be 
 called a slave, and yet you are not free. You are 
 in bondage to the world — to opinion and fashion ; 
 there are friends whose contempt or coldness you 
 could not stand. You are in bondage to the flesh ; 
 you are the slave of appetite or indolence; you 
 cling to the flesh-pots ; you deprecate the march 
 and the desert, the fatigue and the fighting. Or 
 one is your master, even the devil ; and by some 
 fallacy or sophism that father of lies persuades you 
 to put off or refuse altogether. Take care that 
 you are not taken at your word ! Seeing you hold 
 
 I 
 
130 MOSES AND MESSIAH. 
 
 salvation so cheap, take care lest when the Lord's 
 ransomed set forward yon be not left in the house 
 of your bondage. Take care lest God swear in His 
 wrath, " They shall not enter into my rest." 
 
 Finally, you who follow Christ, how much you owe 
 HiDi ! How much you owe Him already, and how 
 much more you shall owe Him before all is over ! 
 Of your salvation He is the Captain. Of His inter- 
 cession you may form some idea from that memor- 
 able prayer, " Lord, this people have sinned a 
 great sin ; howbeit, if Thou wilt forgive their 
 trespass ; and if not — then I pray Thee blot out 
 my name from Thy book." But as that is a name 
 which cannot be blotted out, forgiveness asked by 
 the great Intercessor cannot be refused. If once 
 He takes charge of you, He will see you safe 
 through. Of all guides and leaders, He is the 
 meekest and most magnanimous; and those who 
 sing the song of Moses and the Lamb will have the 
 same tale to tell of murmurings forgiven and mercies 
 multiplied — of a patience which never intermitted 
 and a love that never was exhausted. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Signs mh MonhtxB—%\xz f kgu^s. 
 
 And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to 
 Pharaoh ; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou 
 shalt speak all that I command thee ; and Aaron thy brother 
 shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out 
 of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply 
 my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh 
 shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, 
 and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, 
 out of the land of Egypt, by gi-eat judgments. And the Egyp- 
 tians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine 
 hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from 
 among them. And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded 
 them, so did they." — ExOD. vii, 1-6. 
 
 God's contributions to the world's stock of know- 
 ledge and goodness have been sent through the 
 persons of our fellow-men ; and of these Heaven- 
 sent messengers, of these mediums for bringing 
 the mind of God to earth, none is more remarkable 
 than Moses. As the Tell or Washington of early 
 Eastern story, he would have claims on our admira- 
 tion ; as the first assertor of national independence ; 
 as the leader of the first war of religious emancipa- 
 tion; as the liberator of his people; as the divinely- 
 
 131 
 
132 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 commissioned conductor of tlie Exodus. But on 
 tlie world's gratitude lie has claims still stronger. 
 Through whose hand was it that God issued to 
 mankind the Decalogue, and gave a rule of conduct 
 at once so plain, so portable, so comprehensive, as 
 the Ten Commandments ? To whom are we in- 
 debted for the first promulgation of the unity, the 
 spirituality, the self- existence, and all-pervasive 
 providence of the Most High ? Who was it that 
 took in "that little piece of holy ground," — the 
 Jewish nationality, — and at once fencing the en- 
 closure and trenching the soil, prepared the plat or 
 bed in which Christianity should fifteen centuries 
 afterwards strike root and grow till large enough to 
 be transplanted into the outside world? Who is 
 the penman of the Pentateuch ? To whom are we 
 indebted for those foundation-truths, those funda- 
 mental oracles on which David and Isaiah, Paul 
 and John, have built up the fabric of Divine 
 Eevelation ? 
 
 In the person of Moses the Most High inaugu- 
 rated a new era in His dealings with mankind. 
 Noah hardly excepted, Moses was the first in that 
 series of prophets who were at once seers and workers 
 of signs. He was the first, as the apostles were the 
 last, who wrought miracles in attestation of their 
 Divine commission, and to show that God was with 
 them. And as the first example of a Divine mes- 
 
THE PLAGUES. 133 
 
 sage accredited by miracles, as tlie commencement 
 of that system in the Divine dealings where 
 Heaven-imparted truth calls in as its seconder or 
 sanction Heaven-imparted power, the narrative is at 
 this point peculiarly instructive. 
 
 After men have climbed it is a common trick 
 to spurn away the ladder. They push away the 
 ladder, and then at the top of their airy pinnacle 
 they shout to spectators and flap their sleeves, as if 
 these were the wings by which they had mounted. 
 So now-a-days there is a disposition to speak con- 
 temptuously of miracles. '' Moral truth is as much 
 more sublime than prodigies or portents as mind 
 is greater than matter ; and the Sermon on the 
 Moimt is more full of God than the resurrection of 
 Lazarus;" whilst some put it differently, and say, 
 "The course of nature is much more stupendous 
 than any possible interruption. The perpetual 
 miracle which raises that fig-tree from an atom, and 
 out of dirty mould and viewless vapour builds up 
 its broad-leafed canopy, is greater than the casual 
 miracle which in a moment blasts it." Or to come 
 to the actual case before us : — 
 
 " Earth's crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God : 
 But only he who sees, takes off his shoes : 
 The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."^ 
 
 But it won't do to stand on the top of the obelisk 
 
 1 Aurora Leigh, 304. 
 
134 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 and wave your cloak, pretending that your own 
 wings took you thither. It won't do, Master Poet 
 or Philosopher, to perch on some top-truth of 
 Eevelation, and make-believe that you soared 
 straiglit up there with a few easy flaps of your own 
 intellectual pinions. Here is the ladder lying at 
 the foot, with the marks on every round of miry 
 shoes and hob-nails somewhat heavy. 
 
 You say, "Prodigies are for barbarians and babes; 
 but the mature man, the philosopher, prefers great 
 truths and high principles to vulgar signs and 
 wonders." And in this the Word of God so far 
 agrees with you. "Tongues," says the apostle, "are 
 a sign to them that believe not." As soon as men 
 are believers, they don't need this prodigy to arrest 
 their heedlessness and convince their incredulity. 
 And says Jesus himself, " It is an evil generation 
 that seeketh after a sign." If it were sufficiently 
 sincere the truth would be its own witness. But 
 unfortunately in its first coming into a world like 
 this, God's truth does not find men friendly but 
 hostile : it finds them not eagerly awaiting its 
 advent but rather looking the other way. It needs 
 to catch their eye, and conquer their aversion. As 
 babes or barbarians it has to appeal to their faculty 
 of wonder ; and as more or less besotted, more or 
 less wedded to evil or error, it needs to appeal to 
 their fears or their self-interest, and convince them 
 
THE PLAGUES. 135 
 
 that if it comes to a contest the truth is stronger 
 than they. 
 
 Wheatstone or Faraday is not always sending 
 paper kites up into the clouds or drawing sparks 
 from a coated phial in order to convince himself 
 that electricity exists. " Excuse me, my good 
 friend," he would be apt to say, " but I am far past 
 that. I not only believe that the thing exists ; 
 but to my mind it is present everywhere. It is not 
 the jar alone, but this room that is full of it ; and 
 you need not send up for it to the clouds, for at this 
 moment you and I are under its powerful influence. 
 Rather than be repeating evermore these elementary 
 experiments, I love to trace still further its opera- 
 tion, and meditate upon its laws." And yet he will 
 be far from despising the day of small things. He 
 knows that in the whole of this matter a hundred 
 years ago men were as barbarians or as babes, and 
 that if their feeling of wonder had not been roused, 
 if their sense had not been dazzled, babes and bar- 
 barians they must have still remained. It was by 
 working what may be called scientific signs and 
 wonders,^it was by drawing a flash of fire from the 
 human body, it was by drawing lightning from the 
 clouds, that Dufaye and Franklin waked the wonder 
 of the world, and founded a new science ; and 
 therefore he looks back with reverence to that 
 paper kite or Ley den jar as the parent of the 
 
13G SIGNS AXD WONDERS — 
 
 electric telegrapli and the transformer of modern 
 metallurgy. Each of them was a disturber or 
 interrupter of the course of nature ; but without the 
 interruption they produced the true course of 
 nature would never have been known : without the 
 spark or flash which these disturbers elicited, the 
 perpetual presence and the wondrous working of 
 the latent power would never have been surmised. 
 
 So with the signs and wonders which for a mo- 
 ment interrupting the usual course of Providence, 
 made the existence of that Providence more palpable. 
 So with the signs and wonders which from time to 
 time breaking the majestic silence of the Eternal, 
 like a tocsin from the firmament have startled the 
 world's apathy, and at once strengthened faith and 
 confounded incredulity. 
 
 Standing as we do on the clear high vantage of a 
 completed Christianity, it is difficult for us to get 
 back into the times of ignorance. Even amongst 
 the professed rejecters of Eevelation there is a gene- 
 ral admission of its sublimest truth, and few deny 
 the existence of the one Supreme Creator, infinitely 
 wise, irresistibly powerful. But once on a time it 
 was very different. Egypt believed in its own gods, 
 and left Ethiopia and Canaan free to believe in 
 theirs, and although the children of Israel should 
 hajR^e known that the God of Abraham was the one 
 true God, they were not absolutely sure. It looked 
 
THE PLAGUES. 137 
 
 too like as if Abraham's God was less kind or power- 
 ful than Egypt's gods ; and we have reached that 
 most interesting and eventful period when Jehovah 
 arose from His place and began to prove that He 
 was not merely one God among the many, but that 
 there was none besides the great I am supreme, 
 self-existent, exclusive of every other. 
 
 The first mind which it was needful to satisfy 
 was that of Moses himself. Possessing the know- 
 ledge which we find embodied in the Book of Genesis, 
 we may assume that his theology was sound. Be- 
 lieving in that God who created heaven and earth, 
 with whom Enoch walked, who had swept a crime- 
 laden race away, who had received Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob to their eternal homes, in the meditative 
 seclusion of Horeb Moses could sing the 90th Psalm, 
 and could look back with serene contempt on the 
 bull-adorers and beetle-worshippers amongst whom 
 he had passed his boyhood. But the faith which 
 assures the heart in calm retreats is not always 
 enough for energy and action ; and if tliere ever was 
 a man to whom it must have been a hardship to 
 quit the solitary place, with its continual sabbath, 
 that man was the fugitive from Pharaoh's palace, — 
 the meek, meditative, unambitious, world-weary 
 Moses. And yet for God's great design it was need- 
 ful that the recluse should be aroused and hurried 
 forth from his retirement ; it was needful that the 
 
138 SIGNS AND WONDEES — 
 
 hermit should be quickened up into a hero ; and so 
 that God, in whom he had long believed, burst upon 
 his view in a bright and startling manifestation. 
 To Moses that burning bush was itself a sign, and 
 one would have almost thought that a Divine com- 
 mission given from the midst of the flaming miracle 
 would have insured instant compliance. But even 
 after other difficulties were dispelled, an obstacle 
 seemingly insuperable occurred to Moses in the in- 
 credulity of his own countrymen. " To say nothing 
 of persuading Pharaoh, how shall I gain the con- 
 fidence of my own brethren ? They will not believe 
 me. They will say, The Lord hath not appeared 
 unto thee." And so, to furnish him with credentials 
 to his ow^n countrymen, just as the burning bush 
 had been sign sufficient to himself, the Lord sup- 
 plied him with three portable signs (so to speak), 
 and gave him the power of performing three pro- 
 digies, which should be as well adapted to the crass 
 and untutored minds of his brethren as the beautiful 
 sign of the burning bush had been adapted to his 
 own. ' Turn that rod into a serpent, from a serpent 
 back into a rod again ; draw thy hand from thy 
 bosom; it is leprous; do it again and it is sound. And 
 change into blood the water of the Nile ; for if they 
 will not believe thee, they will believe the sign, and 
 if one sign fail a second will succeed.' And thus 
 fortified, Moses set forth for Egypt. Along with Aaron 
 
THE PLAGUES. 139 
 
 his brother, who, divinely directed, came forth to 
 meet him, he reached it at a moment when the 
 people's anguish was kindled afresh by the accession 
 of the new despot and the infliction of further atro- 
 cities. The brothers delivered their message, and 
 " did the signs in the sight of the people ; and 
 the people believed." Their deliverers had come 
 opportune as angels from heaven, and grateful to 
 Abraham's God, who at last had looked on their 
 affliction, "they bowed their heads and worshipped" 
 (Exod. iv. 29-31). 
 
 A harder task remained. Moses and Aaron needed 
 no further sign. The burden of the Lord was upon 
 them, and God's hand thrust them forward. So to 
 speak, they could not help themselves, and you would 
 say it should not have been difficult to rouse the 
 hopes of sighing, wretched bondmen. But to beard 
 a tyrant on his throne — to persuade a proud and 
 obstinate king to surrender two millions of subjects, 
 including the most useful labourers in the land — was 
 an undertaking sure to be followed by discomfiture 
 and personal destruction, unless backed by Omni- 
 potence and enforced by the outstretched arm of 
 Jehovah. And therefore to stem and concuss into 
 submission the oppressor of Israel and the champion 
 of Egypt's false gods — to avenge the wrongs of ages 
 and signalize in its commencement Jehovah's war 
 with idolatry, Heaven opened its terrible artillery, 
 
140 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 and with plague upon plague crushed down the 
 key-post of Paganism, the stronghold of Egypt. 
 
 On these plagues we have no intention to dilate, 
 but we invite attention to one or two general re- 
 marks regarding them. 
 
 1. Pharaoh threw down the gauntlet. "Who is 
 Jehovah, that I should obey His voice, to let Israel 
 go ? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel 
 go." Pharaoh cast himself on the protection of the 
 idols of Egypt, and launched an insulting defiance 
 at the God of Israel. And the first retort was on 
 that idol which might well be considered the best 
 friend and greatest benefactor of Egypt, the Mle, 
 whose current was instantly converted into a fluid 
 so blood-like that its delicious waters were no long^er 
 drinkable, and the fish in which it abounded died. 
 In like manner, the magicians who mimicked the 
 earlier miracles, who by sleight of hand (to say 
 nothing of supernatural assistance) gave the im- 
 pression as if they could do on a small scale what 
 Moses' rod did over all the land, these magicians 
 were driven off the field when the infliction became 
 a corporeal malady, and personal. " The magicians 
 could not stand before Moses because of the boils ; . 
 for the boil was upon the magicians, and all the, 
 Egyptians." 
 
 2. A second remark which we venture to hazard 
 is a certain congruity betwixt these supernatural 
 
THE PLAGUES. 141 
 
 visitations and the land on wliicli tliey were in- 
 flicted. Although the rapidity with which they 
 succeeded one another, although the circumstance of 
 their coming on and departing whensoever Moses 
 gave the word, and no sooner, although the exemp- 
 tion of Goshen when the rest of Egypt was over- 
 whelmed, all show the Hand Omnipotent from which 
 they came, yet the visitations themselves were more 
 or less characteristic of the country and congruous 
 to it. The vials were inverted by an unseen Power, 
 but the channels in which the vengeance flowed 
 were the courses already cut by phenomena more 
 or less familiar to the people. For instance, the 
 Nile, which this time, in the beginning of the year, 
 flowed with blood, is, apt every June to assume a 
 reddish colour. Frogs, with gnats, flies, and other 
 insect plagues, are to this day no small source of 
 misery in Egypt ; and boils are of common occur- 
 rence among the people, and murrain among the 
 cattle ; and it may help to vivify the sacred text if 
 from the pages of the Prussian explorer Lepsius 
 I give two extracts, detailing a hail-storm and a 
 locust- shower, as he encountered them about the 
 close of the year 1842. 
 
 Hail. 
 
 " Winter began with a scene that will ever remain 
 impressed upon my memory. I had ridden out to 
 
142 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 the excavations, and as I observed a great black 
 cloud coming up, I sent an attendant to the tents, 
 to make them ready against it, but soon followed 
 him myself, as it began to rain a little. Shortly after 
 my arrival a storm began, and I therefore had the 
 tent-ropes made fast ; soon, however, there came a 
 pouring rain that frightened all our Arabs, and sent 
 them trooping to the rock-tomb, where our kitchen 
 is situated. Of our party, Erbkam and Franke were 
 only present. Suddenly the storm grew to a 
 tremendous hurricane, such as I have never seen 
 in Europe, and hail fell upon us in such masses as 
 almost to turn day into night. I had the greatest 
 difficulty in hunting our Arabs out from the cavern, 
 to bring our thins^s to the tombs under shelter, as 
 we might expect the destruction of our tents at any 
 moment; and it was no long time ere first our 
 common tent broke down, and then, as I hurried 
 from it into my own, to sustain it from the inside, 
 that also broke down above my head. When I had 
 crept out, I found that my things were tolerably 
 well covered by the tents, so that I could leave them 
 for the present, but only to run a greater risk. Our 
 tents lie in a valley, whither the plateau of the 
 Pyramids inclines, and are sheltered from the worst 
 winds from the north and west. Presently I saw 
 a dashing mountain flood hurrying down upon our 
 prostrate and sand- covered tents, like a giant serpent 
 
THE PLAGUES. 143 
 
 upon its certain prey. The principal stream rolled 
 on to the great tent ; another arm threatened mine, 
 without quite reaching it. But everything that had 
 been washed from our tents by the shower was torn 
 away by the two streams, which joined behind the 
 tents, and carried into a pool behind the Sphinx, 
 where a great lake immediately formed, which for- 
 tunately had no outlet. 
 
 " Just picture the scene ! Our tents, dashed 
 down by the storm and heavy rain, lying between 
 two mountain torrents, thrusting themselves in 
 several places to the depth of six feet into the sand, 
 and depositing our books, drawings, sketches, clothes, 
 and instruments, yes, even our levers and crowbars ; 
 in short, everything they could seize, in the dark, 
 foaming, mud ocean. Besides this, ourselves wet to 
 the skin, without hats, wading into the lake to the 
 waist to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed. 
 And all this was the work of a quarter of an hour, 
 at the end of which the sun shone radiantly again, 
 and announced the end of this flood by a bright and 
 glorious rainbow. 
 
 "For several days we fished and dug for our 
 things. Some things were lost, many were spoilt ; 
 the greater part of all the things that were not locked 
 up inside trunks or chests bore more or fewer marks 
 of this flood." ^ 
 
 1 Lepsius's Discoveries in Egypt, pp. 27-29. 
 
144 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 Locust Storm. 
 
 " I had descended into a mummy-pit, to open some 
 newly-discovered sarcophagi, and was not a little 
 astonished to find myself in a regular snow-drift of 
 locusts, which, almost darkening the heavens, flew 
 over our heads from the south-west from the desert 
 in hundreds of thousands to the valley. I took it 
 for a single flight, and called my companions from 
 the tombs, that they might see this Egyptian wonder 
 ere it was over. But the flight continued ; in- 
 deed, the work-people said it had begun an hour 
 before. Then we first observed that the whole 
 region, far and near, was covered with locusts. I 
 sent an attendant into the desert, to discover the 
 breadth of the swarm. He ran for the distance of a 
 quarter of an hour, then returned and told us that, 
 as far as he could see, there was no end to them. 
 I rode home in the midst of the locust-showier. 
 At the edge of the fruitful plain they fell down in 
 showers, and so it went on the whole day till the 
 evening, and so the next day from morning to even- 
 ing, and the third ; in short, to the sixth day, and 
 in weaker flights much longer. The Arabs are now 
 lighting great fires of smoke in the fields, and 
 clattering and making loud noises all day long, to 
 preserve their crops from the unexpected invasion. 
 
THE PLAGUES. 145 
 
 It will, however, do little good. Like a new ani- 
 mated vegetation, these millions of winged spoilers 
 cover even the neighbouring sandhills, so that 
 scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground ; and 
 when they rise from one place, they immediately 
 fall down somewhere in the neighbourhood ; they 
 are tired with their long journey, and seem to have 
 lost aU fear of their natural enemies — men, animals, 
 smoke, and noise — in their furious wish to fill their 
 stomachs, and in the feeling of their immense 
 number. The most wonderful thing, in my esti- 
 mation, is their flight over the naked wilderness, 
 and the instinct which has guided them from some 
 oasis over the inhospitable desert to the fat soil of 
 the Nile vale." ^ 
 
 To this land of locusts and hail-storms, of epi- 
 demic boils and disastrous murrain, the warnings of 
 Moses were abundantly intelligible. They were not 
 threatened with an unknown visitation, but were 
 in the predicament of a land like Britain, if, in the 
 course of a short year or so, we were forewarned of 
 nine such plagues as a frost in June, a potato-blight, 
 the Hessian fly, the cholera. "When they were fore- 
 told, we could have no difficulty in understanding 
 what was threatened, and when they came on the 
 predicted day, and on the predicted day when such 
 of them as could go away departed, we should have 
 
 ^ Lepsius's Discoveries, pp. 49, 50. 
 K 
 
146 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 no difficulty in identifying tliem as God's own 
 messengers. 
 
 3. Whilst, however, the plagues were of a kind 
 to demonstrate conclusively the superiority of 
 Jehovah and His commissioned messengers over 
 the idols and their ministers, they were so con- 
 ducted as to leave Pharaoh a free agent all through- 
 out. He was not put on the actual rack or held 
 over a slow fire till his cruel hand relaxed and 
 let the Hebrew bondmen go. The appeal was 
 loud, and each time that it was repeated he and 
 his people were shaken more severely than before ; 
 but after every demand there was a respite, a pause, 
 an opportunity to ponder, and either yield the 
 point or recall a past concession. During that 
 reprieve or lull, nine times repeated, the result was 
 uniform : " The heart of Pharaoh was hardened ;" 
 he turned on his hapless serfs as savage, and 
 scowled on their mysterious Protector as sullen and 
 defiant as before. And whilst we are so far ad- 
 mitted into the painful secret, whilst " the Scrip- 
 ture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose 
 have I raised thee up, that I might show my power 
 in thee, and that my name might be declared 
 through all the earth," so that "God hath mercy 
 on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he 
 hardeneth," we can so far understand how naturally, 
 in a proud and imperious mind, the process went 
 
THE PLAGUES. 147 
 
 on, and how truly it may also be said, " Pharaoh 
 hardened his own heart." 
 
 For, first of all, there was always time for doing 
 it. Except on the last occasion, when the Israelites 
 stood marshalled and ready to move off amidst the 
 amazement and anguish consequent on the death 
 of the first-born, — except on that last occasion the 
 Israelites were never ready to take Pharaoh at his 
 word ; but if he made some small concession over- 
 night, he was able to recall it in the morning. And 
 who will deny that he was strongly tempted ? To 
 let his own vassals go — to create a gap so instan- 
 taneous and so wide in his kingdom's industry ; to 
 part with the best bone and sinew of the realm, was 
 no small sacrifice. And then the humiliation : to 
 have that son of a slave glorying over him, to 
 receive the dictation of that runagate ; to let Apir 
 and Osiris bow before the Hebrews' God, what 
 would Mmrod and his Ethiopian neighbours say? 
 Besides, what if all this time he was under some 
 frightful spell, some horrible sorcery or glamour? 
 Assuredly there was something very startling in the 
 swift succession of so many plagues, and the God 
 of Israel must have great power to send them, and 
 to enable his servant to predict them. But perhaps 
 the gods of Egypt would triumph yet. It seemed 
 as if they too could turn water into blood and a 
 walking-stick into a serpent ; and they might yet 
 
148 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 enable their votary and champion to hold his own 
 and avenge these insults. And so, for as often as 
 he was reproved, Pharaoh still hardened his neck, 
 until he was suddenly cut off, and that without 
 remedy. 
 
 Such is still the method of God's procedure. No 
 force is laid on the human will, yet some are allowed 
 to harden themselves, whilst others are mercifully 
 constrained to have mercy on themselves and flee to 
 the Saviour of souls. 
 
 The process is insidious, — the self-hardening one 
 I mean. God often reproves. He gave Pharaoh 
 ten times a place of repentance, but the hard man 
 persisted, and was likely hoping still to escape 
 when he was suddenly cut off, and that without 
 remedy. 
 
 A man begins a course of dishonesty. Living 
 beyond his income, he must accommodate himself 
 with money passing through his hands ; but the 
 income of next year does not fill up the deficit, and 
 as the discrepancy has been so dexterously con- 
 cealed as to elicit no inquiry, he goes on and on 
 peculating and appropriating and purloining. And 
 God goes on reproving. He takes the man to 
 church, where he hears a sermon on the text " Thou 
 shalt not steal ; " but the embezzling goes on. He 
 takes him to a court of justice, and lets him listen 
 to a dreadful case, the facsimile of his own where 
 
THE PLAGUES. 149 
 
 from respectability and seeming affluence the delin- 
 quent is hurled down to the shame and wretchedness 
 of convicted felony, and under this painful homily 
 on righteousness and judgment to come Felix 
 trembles ; but after a few days the work of appro- 
 priation is once more resumed. And then to remind 
 him that an eye is on him, his merciful Eeprover 
 elicits from some one's lips a sentence which greatly 
 startles him. The cold sweat breaks, his face is 
 ashes, and from the ominous allusion he fancies 
 himself found out. But by and bye he finds that he 
 was wrong, and emboldened by impunity, as if it 
 gave an actual sanction to his crime, he launches 
 out more largely and with increasing confidence, till 
 some evening from the heart of a ruined home, and 
 the unavailing grasp of affection shrieking forth its 
 agony, he is hurried off to the trial which ends in a 
 felon's doom and a convict's infamy. 
 
 Or the social glass has grown into the cup which 
 does inebriate, and the misfortune is none the less 
 because the sin is great ; and in great mercy God's 
 Word and Spirit and Providence for a long time 
 reprove. If you don't put in the pin, says the 
 doctor, I won't answer for the consequences. If 
 you don't reform, says his employer, next term we 
 part company. If you don't repent, says God, you 
 shall perish. And there is not only remonstrance 
 but reproof. One night he comes home and finds 
 
150 SIGNS AND WONDERS — 
 
 that he has been robbed in the tavern or on the 
 road from it of his quarter's salary. " Ah ! that 
 comes of my drinking." Another day he wakes up 
 in a public hospital, and sees his miry garments 
 hanging by the bedside, whilst they are applying 
 iced lotions to his temples. " How came I here ? " 
 And when he hears that he was picked off the pave- 
 ment with a threatened fit, " Ah ! that too comes of 
 drinking. I must really take the pledge." But for 
 as often as he has been reproved, no sooner is he 
 well than his spirit again is hardened, and reeling 
 home in the moonlight beside the canal, the police- 
 man hears a plunge, and he himself feels a momen- 
 tary shock, and then opens his eyes, — not in the 
 hospital, — not in his own home, — not even amongst 
 the fumes of the tap-room, — but where there is no 
 more place for repentance, and where for reproof 
 habitually resisted there remains no remedy. 
 , Pharaoh ten times reproved, yet always persisting, 
 — Pharaoh repeatedly subdued, yet once more rebel- 
 ling, — Pharaoh humbling himself one day under the 
 mighty hand of God, and another day cut off in 
 fierce conflict with Jehovah, stands forth to all 
 time a glaring example. It tells how resolute and 
 resilient is the stout heart of the sinner, — how, like 
 a deceitful bow, when the pressure is withdrawn, it 
 will bound back again. And it tells how guilty is 
 the war and how bootless will be the battle with 
 
THE PLAGUES. 151 
 
 Omnipotence. Oh, brethren, may there be found 
 amongst us no self-hardening Pharaoh, — none quit- 
 ting the parental roof, or Sabbath after Sabbath 
 retiring from the sanctuary with a heart still joined 
 to his idols, and determined not yet to forsake his 
 sins. What will you do in the day when God con- 
 tends with you ? It is a fearful thing to fall into 
 His hands, and who ever hardened himself against 
 Jehovah and prospered ? 
 
IX. 
 
 '• Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinlding of blood, 
 lest he that destroyed the first-bom should touch them." — Heb. 
 XI. 28. 
 
 The ninth plague of Egypt was a deluge of dark- 
 ness. Neither an eclipse of the sun, nor like 
 anything to which the people were accustomed, it 
 lasted three days, and was so dense that not only 
 was labour arrested but men could not venture 
 forth from their dwellings. A " thick darkness," a 
 " darkness that might be felt," coming over a land 
 so serene and so sunny, it was an ominous and 
 appalling visitation, and might almost make them 
 think that the end of the world had arrived. 
 Whatsoever might be the secondary causes em- 
 ployed for its production, the language would 
 imply that artificial lights were of little avail, and 
 that social intercourse and ordinary occupation 
 were generally arrested beneath the murky inunda- 
 tion. And beyond many of its predecessors this 
 judgment seems to have shaken Pharaoh and his 
 subjects. Their god, the sun, was frowning — or, in 
 
 152 
 
THE PASSOVEE. 153 
 
 the grasp of some mightier divinity, he was over- 
 powered and unable to help his worshippers. 
 Goshen excepted, all Egypt was under a funeral 
 pall, and, over and above its actual discomfort, it 
 filled superstitious minds with dread as foreshadow- 
 ing some dismal catastrophe. 
 
 Pharaoh was effectually frightened, but there was 
 no change in his feelings towards either Israel or 
 Israel's God ; and therefore as soon as the murky 
 flood subsided, as soon as the darkness palpable 
 had rolled away, his spirits rose again, and he pro- 
 posed a compromise. The original demand had 
 been, " Let my people go, that they may hold a 
 feast unto me in the wilderness,"-^ and now he 
 offered to let the people go, but as a pledge for 
 their return they must leave in Egypt their posses- 
 sions. Terms like these could not for a moment be 
 entertained, and finding Moses still insist on an 
 absolute and unconditional outgoing, Pharaoh flew 
 into a passion. " Begone ! Take care that I never 
 see thy face again : for in the day that thou seest 
 my face again thou shalt die." 
 
 Terror may be a powerful taskmaster, but some- 
 thing else is needful to renew the heart and 
 transform the affections. As he lay in his palace 
 during those days of darkness Pharaoh got time for 
 reflection ; and even if he refused to think of 
 
 1 Exodus V. 2. 
 
154 THE PASSOVEE. 
 
 Israel's rights and of the cruelties inflicted on them 
 by himself and his predecessors, there could be no 
 question that there had come to their rescue a 
 powerful protector. This Jehovah was mighty in 
 battle, and in nine successive encounters he had 
 discomfited Thoth and Phrah, Isis and Osiris, the 
 time-honoured guardians of Egypt, and had put 
 shame on those great idols the sun and the river 
 Mle. Pharaoh for the instant felt powerless in the 
 hand of this unknown God, so awful and irresis- 
 tible, and inwardly vowed that as soon as the pre- 
 sent visitation ended he would make peace with 
 Him by giving up the point at issue. But the 
 visitation ceased, and along with it much of his 
 consternation vanished. Here, on the fourth morn- 
 ing, the sun shone out so clear, and through the 
 translucent margin the water-lilies looked up into 
 the sky which reflected its unclouded mirror under 
 them. Of such a pitchy night it was wonderful that 
 no trace remained : the river was not ink, the 
 blossoms were not black, and as the tramp of foot- 
 guards crushed the open court, as barges went 
 flashing up the stream, and the gay life of Memphis 
 fluttered forth like the phantoms of a dream, the 
 fears and vows of the monarch fled away, and he 
 had courage to put Moses off with a poor and pitiful 
 concession. 
 
 Who knows it not ? On the stormy lake, pale 
 
THE PASSOVER. 155 
 
 as ashes, Volney drops on his knees and cries, 
 " Christ, save me ! Christ, have mercy upon 
 me ! " and when the storm is over and they are safe 
 on shore, he begs his friends not to reveal his 
 weakness. Detected in a deed of dishonesty which 
 he declares to be his very first — for there never was 
 a thief who was not a liar also — the purloiner calls 
 Heaven to witness that if you will only let him off 
 this once, he will hereafter rather starve than 
 steal ; and six months afterwards he is at the bar 
 of the Old Bailey. Laid on a bed of sickness the 
 toper is plainly told how urgent is his case, and how 
 many are the chances against him, "Oh, dear 
 doctor, if you will only set me on my feet this 
 once, I give you my solemn word, I never taste 
 another drop," and the vow is kept till he is pro- 
 nounced past danger. In imminent alarm — with 
 lying refuges swept away — like Pharaoh in the 
 dark left all alone with Israel's God, you have seen 
 the folly of a godless life and the terribleness of 
 unprepared death, and have promised and protested 
 that as soon as this crisis was over you would 
 make God's friendship your first effort and His 
 service your chief concern. But if it be a yew- 
 tree staff, as soon as the pressure is taken off it will 
 start up straight as ever; and if it be the same 
 proud, self-sufficient, self-indulgent nature as before, 
 it may bend for a moment beneath the mighty 
 
156 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 hand of God, but like a deceitful bow rebounding 
 is sure to turn back erect and stiff as ever. 
 
 The milder warning was thrown away, and now 
 the great woe was coming. God's ambassador had 
 been dismissed. Under pain of death Moses had 
 been ordered from the presence-chamber; and to 
 the rude rebuff, " Let me see thy face no more," with 
 the ominous dignity of one who knew his Master's 
 might, Moses answered, " Thou hast spoken well : 
 I will see thy face no more." And returning to 
 his Master, the Lord said unto Moses, " Yet will I 
 bring one plague more upon Pharaoh and upon 
 Egjrpt : after that he shall not only let you go, but 
 shall thrust you out altogether." 
 
 This plague was so terrible that even at this 
 distance it is awful to survey. By making men 
 courageous the gospel makes them less cruel, and 
 whilst it has braced up men's energies it has also 
 softened their spirits, so that much as we may enjoy 
 feats of prowess, the excitement of conflict, the 
 exultation of victory, we turn away from the de- 
 vastation and carnage with which they are pur- 
 chased. The naked announcement that in a single 
 night a whole nation was plunged into mourning, 
 every family bewailing its eldest son, looked at 
 alone and dissevered from the facts might well 
 afflict our feelings. But we must remember the 
 actual facts. " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, 
 
THE PASSOVER. -157 
 
 I will repay." Towards the Israelites the Egyptians 
 had for long behaved so cruelly that, if suffering 
 could be weighed or measured, we might safely aver 
 that Israel's slow centuries of endurance were feebly 
 countervailed by Egypt's night of anguish. Who 
 can tell the protracted misery — the misery of a 
 high-spirited free-roaming people who had been 
 entrapped into sudden slavery ? and what bottle 
 but God's own could contain the tears of the 
 broken-hearted bondmen, the tears of families 
 torn asunder, the tears of hapless mothers entreat- 
 ing the stony-hearted rufi&ans not to hurl into the 
 stream the babe snatched from their bosom, the 
 tears of trampled abjects who saw their dearest 
 kindred faint beneath their burdens or knocked 
 down by savage overseers, and who dared not 
 remonstrate or complain ? And every one must be 
 addressed in the language he understands. The 
 tiger which has grasped your child — 'tis no use to 
 coax or flatter — it is only the flaming fagot you 
 thrust into his face which makes him howl and 
 drop his victim in the shock of sudden pain. 
 " Israel is my first-born," said God — " let Israel my 
 people go." But the lion only snarled, and even 
 blow after blow made him only bite the firmer and 
 make the bondage sorer : till an arm of fire gleamed 
 through the night and " a great cry " confessed the 
 burning blow, as the victim dropped from his gory 
 
iUb THE PASSOVER. 
 
 jaws bruised and palpitating, but still alive and 
 
 FREE. 
 
 It was destined to prove " a niglit much to be 
 remembered;" and, with a deliberateness and fore- 
 thought truly divine, means were taken to engraft 
 upon it a lesson of primary importance, and a cele- 
 bration which should never be forgotten. This was 
 to be the birth -night of Hebrew nationality, and it 
 was to be further distinguished by a notable addition 
 to the existing stock of revealed religion. Just as 
 on the eve of the great event in human history, the 
 Lord Jesus, in the fulness of His foreknowledge, 
 instituted a Feast which should be at once comme- 
 morative and symbolic, so on the eve of the great 
 event in Hebrew history, the Most High instituted 
 a rite, at once a record of that fact and a revelation 
 of God's great scheme of mercy. In each the fact 
 and the practical lesson are indissolubly intertwined. 
 In the Feast of the Passover, the Hebrew could not 
 recall the outstanding incident in his nation's history 
 without at the same time rehearsing, as in a sacred 
 pantomime, those outstanding facts — a danger to be 
 dreaded, and the blood of God's appointed sacrifice, 
 as the sole protection from that danger. In the 
 Feast of the Eucharist, the Christian cannot recall 
 the overmastering incident in the annals of our 
 world — the sacrifice for its sins which love incarnate 
 offered — without also exhibiting in a brief but affect- 
 
THE PASSOVER. 159 
 
 ing drama the life wliich comes through that death, 
 and the close and friendly relation which exists 
 between every believer and that immortal " lover 
 of our unworthy race." 
 
 When the other plagues swept over Egypt, the 
 land of Goshen was specially exempted ; but now 
 that this final judgment was about to fall, the pre- 
 servation of the Israelites, whether in Goshen or else- 
 where, was specially provided for ; and the safety of 
 every one was guaranteed who obeyed the Divine 
 appointment and took advantage of God's own ordi- 
 nance. For the time, every head of a household 
 was exalted into a priest, and was directed to take 
 a lamb and keep it up from the tenth day of the 
 month till the fourteenth. On the fourteenth, in the 
 evening, the lamb was to be slain, and its blood was 
 to be sprinkled on the side-posts and lintel of the 
 dwelling : " For I will pass through the land of 
 Egypt that night, and will smite all the first-born 
 in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and 
 against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judg- 
 ment : I am the Lord. And the blood shall be to 
 you for a token upon the houses where ye are : and 
 when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the 
 plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when 
 I smite the land of Egypt." 
 
 Now, what was the principle in this procedure ? 
 Death was to be abroad that night, but death is the 
 
160 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 satellite or pursuivant of sin ; and on the ground of 
 their personal worth, their actual innocence, the 
 Hebrews could count on exemption no more than 
 the Egyptians. But if sin's wages be death, with 
 God there is also forgiveness — forgiveness founded 
 on sacrifice ; and so to Israel God sent a message. 
 He told them that the Destroyer would take his 
 flight over all the land, but if they would only do 
 as He directed they need fear no evil, for the plague 
 would not come nigh their dwellings. 
 
 And so " by faith they kept the passover." They 
 did not speculate nor argue ; they did not say, " If 
 a plague is coming it will be far more sensible to 
 lay in a store of medicine ; we should fumigate our 
 houses ; we should provide the most approved speci- 
 fics ; or, if an actual angel is to inflict the stroke, he 
 will be able to distinguish us without so much ado. 
 A few Hebrew letters on the door — a dash of red 
 paint on the Lintel, might answer all the purpose ; 
 but why insist on sacrifice ? Why lay such strees 
 on the blood of the slain lamb ?" We do not read 
 that any were so foolish. When Moses told the 
 impending plague, and announced the means of 
 preservation, *' the people bowed the head and wor- 
 shipped." They believed that a vial of vengeance 
 was about to burst upon a sinful land, and they not 
 only entered into their chambers, but shed the blood 
 of the expiating victim, and hung out over every 
 
THE TASSOVER. 161 
 
 threshold the symbol at once of confession and de- 
 precation, — the crimson sign which betokened their 
 faith in God's mercy and their compliance with 
 God's command. 
 
 So " Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." 
 He is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation 
 of the world — the Divine and prospective victim 
 who gave to all lesser sacrifices their meaning and 
 their value. Little is the pleasure which God has 
 in inflicting pain. Small is His delight in the death 
 of him that dieth ; but where there is evil there 
 must be pain — where there is transgression there 
 must be penalty — where sin exists death must fol- 
 low. But so marvellous is God's mercy, He himself 
 comes in between sin and its consequences. Eather 
 than that the sinner should perish, He has HimseK 
 encountered the penalty, and in order to become the 
 pain-bearer, the death-endurer, the mystery of godli- 
 ness was consummated, and God manifest in flesh 
 offered Himself a sacrifice for sin, and was then 
 received up into glory again. 
 
 The blood shed on that great occasion is of in- 
 finite value and of ever- during eflicacy ; for it is the 
 blood of God's own Son — that Lamb or Sacrifice of 
 God which taketh away the sin of the world, and 
 which speaketh better things than the blood of 
 Abel, for it cries not for vengeance but for mercy ; 
 it proclaims not a crime committed but a penalty 
 
 L 
 
162 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 exhausted, and shows its power not in hounding the 
 perpetrator from land to land, but in pacifying his 
 conscience and giving it a good answer towards 
 God. 
 
 Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, and the 
 case of Israel may help us to understand how we 
 are to derive the benefit. They had faith in God, 
 and did as God directed. Though it seemed a bold 
 thing to do, each head of a household for the time 
 being became a priest. It did not matter what a 
 clown he might be, what a coarse, what a sinful 
 life up to that period he had been leading ; it was 
 now an affair of life or death, and if he did not 
 wish death to enter his dwelling, on the head of the 
 unblemished lamb he must lay his unused hands, 
 and as a priest must present the offering. And all 
 the rather because our hands are so impure, we 
 need to lay them on the Lamb of God, and over the 
 head of that great propitiation confess our sin and 
 our death-worthiness ; and although a priestly act, 
 it is not presumptuous ; for He himself hath made 
 us kings and priests to His Father, entitled to pre- 
 sent as ours His one oblation, and to ask the bless- 
 ings which it bought. And although there is no 
 literal refuge into which we can retire, and there 
 hide us till this night of danger end, and the morn- 
 ing of the great deliverance dawn, " the name of the 
 Lord is a strong tower : the righteous runneth into it 
 
THE PASSOVER. 163 
 
 and is safe ;" the promises of God, the perfections of 
 the infinite and immutable I AM, are a secure retreat 
 to those who know and trust them. And although 
 there is no literal blood which we can sprinkle, 
 we know the fact that precious blood was once 
 shed for the sins of many ; and if we are satisfied 
 with this divinely- appointed method of escape ; if 
 for protection from coming wrath our sole depend- 
 ence is the blood of Christ, the doom threatening a 
 Christless world will pass over us, and emerging to 
 that joyful awful morrow where on the one side 
 all is gladness, on the other all is weeping and 
 wailing, we shall join the ransomed of the Lord 
 in that final exodus — in the escape of the redeemed 
 from earth's darkness and the bondage of corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 The p^'inciple on which the Passover was grounded 
 we have endeavoured to explain ; but I ought to 
 add that the preservation of any given Israelite 
 depended not so much on his understanding the 
 principle as on his actually employing the divinely- 
 appointed expedient. And so I am bound to add, 
 in the still more momentous matter of personal 
 salvation, it is not the extent of our knowledge that 
 will save us, but the simplicity with which we 
 receive what God reveals, and do what God desires. 
 We might fancy some intelligent Israelite saying, 
 after hearing the message of Moses, " AVell, it is an 
 
IG-i THE PASSOVER. 
 
 admirable provision. The observance prescribed is 
 deeply significant, and it is in wonderful congruity 
 with the whole course of the Divine procedure ;" 
 but if he neglected to adopt it for himself, his 
 theology would not save him. Whereas we could 
 equally imagine some plain unlettered labourer, 
 some guileless Israelite, who, listening to the mes- 
 sage, understood no more than what merely met the 
 ear, saying, " A great desolation is to sweep the land 
 this night, and if you wish to escape, you will sacrifice 
 a lamb and sprinkle on your posts and lintel its 
 blood," we could imagine him comprehending little 
 more than the plain warning and equally plain pre- 
 scription ; but believing what was spoken, his faith 
 would save him. " By faith, keeping the passover 
 and sprinkling the blood, he that destroyed the first- 
 born would not so much as touch him." 
 
 And so it is very important for us to remember 
 that it is neither the extent of our erudition, nor 
 the vividness of our fancy, nor the grasp of our 
 philosophy, that 'svill save us, but the readiness with 
 which we fall in with God's requirement and do 
 as He directs us. And happily for us His direc- 
 tions are exceedingly plain. Christ is set forth as 
 a propitiation for sin, and all receive remission who 
 have faith in His blood. Wherever there is a child 
 of Adam there is guilt, and there the sword of the 
 Destroyer should come down ; but wherever the 
 
THE passoyi-:e. 165 
 
 blood of Christ is put forward as the piaciilum or 
 plea, there is pardon, there is protection, there the 
 destroying angel passes by. And it is neither be- 
 cause he is a saint who hangs out the crimson sign, 
 nor because it is a strong tower or a stately palace 
 in which he dwells, but because God recognises the 
 appointed token that He passes over, and says to 
 the believer " Live." 
 
 My friends, suffer me to ask how it stands with 
 you ? I can quite imagine that some are a little 
 tired of frequent iteration, and would be glad if we 
 went on from these first rudiments ; and perhaps 
 in a stated pastorate we should. But yet what 
 should be better news to those who are sinning 
 every week than the gospel of forgiveness ? or with 
 all the wrath which God has revealed against un- 
 righteousness, what hint can be more opportune, 
 what exhortation should be more urgent than, " Get 
 within, keep within, your blood-protected refuge" ? 
 My hearer, are you there ? It is only on such that 
 the morning of eternity will arise bright and glad- 
 some, and it is only there that you can even now 
 dwell with any reasonable sense of security. What 
 right have you to be clieerful whose sins are not 
 yet forgiven, and who have not yet got your sen- 
 tence of condemnation cancelled ? How can you 
 be merry who, like an Egyptian, like a mere infidel, 
 are going to lie down this night, and going to lie 
 
166 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 down ere long in your last sleep perhaps, with no 
 pardon entreated in a Mediator's name, and with 
 no protection provided against the second death and 
 the wrath to come ? 
 
 Nor can a word by way of remembrance come 
 amiss to any. The only serious evil is sin. The 
 sight of it filled the Son of God with such concern, 
 that in order to save some, — probably the whole of 
 Adam's infant progeny and a large number of the 
 up-grown and responsible, — He assumed the body 
 which the Father prepared for Him, and as the 
 Lamb of God He offered up Himself a sacrifice. 
 
 " tliou hideous monster, Sin, 
 
 What a curse hast thou brought in ! 
 All creation groans through thee, 
 Only cause of misery ! 
 Thou hast ruin'd wretched man 
 Ever since the world began ; 
 Thou hast God afflicted too ; 
 Nothing less than that would do. 
 
 Christ relieves us from thy guilt ; 
 But we think whose blood was sjjilt. 
 All we feel or hear or see 
 Serves to raise our hate of thee. 
 Dearly are we bought, for God 
 Bought us with His own heart's blood. 
 Boundless depths of love divine ! 
 Jesus, what a love was thine ! " ^ 
 
 And if you want to have done with sin, — if you 
 would not go on carrying its guilt to the grave, and 
 
 iHart, Hymn 41. 
 
THE PASSOVER. 167 
 
 its germs of immeasurable, illimitable evil into 
 eternity, — cast yourself on the Saviour's proffered 
 mercy, and take refuge beneath the protecting 
 covert of His most precious blood. In so doing you 
 comply with God's command, and cast yourself, not 
 only on His pity, but on His truth and faithfulness. 
 In so doing you honour the finished work of His 
 beloved Son. In so doing you at once confess sin's 
 enormity and proclaim the atonement's efficacy, and 
 surrender the two main points of dispute between 
 God and the gospel-rejecting mass of mankind. 
 Like Israel on the night of danger, you put forth the 
 crimson sign of confession, the red flag of depreca- 
 tion, and in return Heaven waves the white flag of 
 truce, the Saviour plants over the spot the banner 
 of His love. 'Ev tovtcm arjfieia) — under this stan- 
 dard you are safe. The penal consequences of sin 
 are intercepted, for the sin is forgiven ; and its pro- 
 longation beyond the present life is made impossible 
 by that most merciful arrangement which in the case 
 of Christ's redeemed leaves all their besettino: sins on 
 this side, — all their corruption in that house of 
 bondage from which death delivers. 
 
X. 
 
 " Throngli faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, 
 lest he that destroyed the first-born should touch them."— Heb. 
 XI. 28. 
 
 " Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." — 1 CoK. v. 7. 
 
 The night before any decisive conflict is a solemn 
 and anxious season. On the niglit before the battle 
 of Ivry, which was to decide whether he should lose 
 his life or gain a second crown, as he sat pondering 
 a map of the battle-field the hair on one side of 
 King Henry's head turned grey; and we like to 
 know how the commanders felt on the night which 
 raised the siege of Ley den, on the night before 
 Pharsalia, on the eve of Blenheim or Waterloo. 
 
 Moses has not told us how he felt on the night 
 before the Exodus ; but he has given us some inter- 
 esting glimpses of the scene, or rather the data for 
 reproducing it. It w^as April, and it w^as the night 
 of the full moon. The soft and silvery light fell on 
 the white backs of the African mountains far away, 
 and it streamed almost perpendicular on the mighty 
 Pyramids which rose like silent symbols of eternity 
 
 168. 
 
THE PASSOVEE. 1G9 
 
 straight above his head. In the royal streets of 
 Memphis all was silent, and all was silent in the 
 wide green plain around it, — so silent that if you 
 had taken a quiet stroll by the river brink you 
 might have heard the plunge of the night- feeding 
 fishes and the pants of behemoth as he slept 
 among the bulrushes. But although all was so 
 silent, all was not locked in slumber. These lowly 
 cottages, — they are Hebrew huts, — the hovels of 
 slaves, and they have lights still burning. Peep 
 through the chink and see what the inmates are 
 doing. They are all of them astir ; I declare not 
 one of them has lain down, and they look like 
 people preparing for a journey. On the table are 
 traces of a finished repast, the house-mother is 
 packing up her kneading-trough, with his staff in his 
 hand the goodman is ready for the road, and the 
 very children are excited and watching. But what 's 
 this red mark on the door ? What means this 
 blood on the lintel ? Did you hear that cry ? 'Tis 
 the moment of midnight, and some tragedy is 
 enacted in that Egyptian dwelling, for such an 
 unearthly shriek ! and it is repeated and re-echoed, 
 as doors burst open and frantic women rush into 
 the street, and, as the houses of priests and physi- 
 cians are beset, they only shake their heads in 
 speechless agony, and point to the death- sealed 
 features of their own first-born. Lights are flashing 
 
170 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 at tlie palace gates, and flitting tlirougli the royal 
 chambers ; and as king's messengers hasten through 
 the town inquiring where the two venerable Hebrew 
 brothers dwell, the whisper flies, " The prince-royal 
 is dead ! " Be off, ye sons of Jacob ! Speed from 
 our house of bondage, ye oppressed and injured 
 Israelites ! And in their eagerness to " thrust forth " 
 the terrible because Heaven-protected race, they 
 press upon them gold and jewels, and bribe them 
 to be gone. 
 
 It was a night mucli to be remembered, for '' a 
 nation was born " in that niojht. During^ those four 
 hundred years Jacob's family had expanded into a 
 multitude, the threescore and fifteen souls had grown 
 to at least a million. But it was a mere inorganic 
 multitude, a horde without a head, with no laws or 
 rulers of its own, — a helpless, down- trampled tribe, 
 held together by common hardships, and a common 
 mother-tongue. This night, hovrever, they sprang 
 to their feet an exceeding great army. In the sur- 
 prise of their sudden emancipation, their mouth was 
 filled with laughter and their tongue with melody. 
 Scarcely credible, it still was true. Jehovah had 
 made bare His mighty arm, and Pharaoh, crushed and 
 humbled, was entreating them to fly. With no king 
 over them but God, with no bonds save those of 
 mutual brotherhood, they were now their own 
 masters, and moving towards the Promised Land. 
 
THE PASSOVER. 171 
 
 'No wonder that the night when as a nation they 
 were born became a night ever memorable ; a night 
 much to be observed nnto the Lord for bringing 
 them out from the land of Egypt ; a night of Jehovah, 
 to be observed of all the children of Israel in their 
 generations. No wonder if the 15th of Abib, if the 
 night of this glorious revolution, the return of their 
 national independence, the recurrence of the exodus, 
 became a joyful anniversary, and if, even without 
 Divine direction, they had agreed to keep it as a 
 joyful feast for ever. 
 
 But of such an event the memorial was not left 
 to mere chance or good feeling, and we have here 
 the rules laid down which secured its continued 
 celebration. And we know that in point of fact the 
 celebration lasted as long as the Hebrew nation had 
 a home, and in some of its features it is still kept 
 up by that peculiar people. Everything was done 
 to make it a joyful and suggestive jubilee, and if 
 you had lived in the days of the Lord Jesus you 
 would have seen it kept somewhat after this fashion : 
 — First of all, the little capital would fill up with 
 people from all ends of Palestine, would fill up and 
 brim over like a great bee-hive, every house as full 
 as it could hold, and thousands lodging anywhere, 
 all bright and cheerful, hospitable, and open-handed, 
 for the maxim was, " This day is holy unto the Lord 
 your God, go your way, eat the fat and drink tlie 
 
172 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 sweet ; neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord 
 is your strength." Four days beforehand, the father 
 of the family brought home a lamb, gentle and 
 beautiful, sure to take the hearts of the children ; 
 but in this instance a short-lived favourite, for in 
 four days the lamb must die. Then came the day 
 of preparation, with its hunt through all the house 
 in search of that leavened bread which they were 
 commanded to put away, when every drawer and 
 cupboard was opened, and every corner carefully 
 explored, and if the smallest morsel was found it was 
 brushed into a basin, and carried out to a bonfire 
 kindled on purpose, and burnt with a j)rayer for its 
 annihilation. Then came the high day, the killing 
 of the passover, followed by the paschal feast, — a 
 feast with specialties sure to strike the younger 
 spectators. Instead of putting off their shoes at the 
 door of the apartment, as usual, the guests walked 
 in in their sandals, loins girded and staff in hand, 
 and, not unfrequently, instead of reclining they 
 simply stood round the table, like pilgrims or 
 passers-by, who could hardly wait to snatch a hasty 
 morsel. Then on the table, besides the all-important 
 lamb, roasted, and with bitter herbs sprinkled over 
 it, stood one great goblet of wine; and for bread, 
 instead of the ordinary loaves, were thin airy cakes 
 of the finest whitest flour, and a solid cake of figs 
 and almonds, shaped like a brick, and with cinnamon 
 
THE PASSOVER. 173 
 
 strewed over it in imitation of straw. Whilst the 
 feast was going on, at a signal from his mother, the 
 yonngest child in the party asked — " What mean ye 
 by this service ?" and then the grandfather, or oldest 
 guest, made answer : " Long ago our fathers lived 
 in Egypt, and the Egyptians made them slaves. The 
 Egyptians used them very cruelly, and our fathers 
 cried to God. God said to the king of Egypt, ' Let my 
 people Israel go ;' but the heart of the king was very 
 hard, and for all the plagues which God sent on 
 Egypt the king would not let Israel go. At last 
 God said to our fathers, ' Take every family of you 
 a lamb, and kill it to-night, and sprinkle its blood 
 upon your door, and stand ready to start, for this 
 night Egypt will be glad when you go.' And that 
 night into all except the blood- sprinkled houses 
 went the angel of death, and smote the first-born, 
 whilst he passed over our fathers, whom, from that 
 house of bondac^e, and that niojht much to be ob- 
 served, with a high hand and an outstretched arm, 
 God carried to this goodly land. So we, the sons 
 of Israel, come together to keep the gTeat feast of 
 the Hebrew family. We eat the unleavened bread 
 and the lamb with bitter herbs as our fathers ate 
 that night. This day is holy unto the Lord, and as 
 we keep our joyful feast we sing the Great Hallel." ^ 
 The night of that great exodus was the birth - 
 
 1 See Helen's Pilgrimage. 
 
174* THE PASSOVER. 
 
 night of the Hebrew nationality. If we want to 
 find the second birth-day of the world, or rather the 
 true birth-day of God's redeemed, the period from 
 which our human family dates its new life, its new 
 hope and happiness, we must put two together — the 
 one which saw the Advent effected, and that other 
 which saw the Atonement accomplished; the one 
 when to sinful men it was said, " To you a Saviour 
 is born," and that other when, in the hearing of earth 
 and heaven, this Saviour said, " It is finished." The 
 two dates, with their intervening lifetime of thirty 
 years, crush up into one great demiurgic day, a great 
 divine day, with its morning softly spread on the 
 hills of Bethlehem, with its sun going down amidst 
 sombre clouds on Calvary ; and it will depend a 
 little on temperament, and still more on personal 
 experience, whether it is on the morning or evening 
 of Christ's "day" that the spirit mainly dwells: 
 whether it be at the cradle of Incarnate Deity or at 
 the cross of Atoning Omnipotence that it finds the 
 wished-for consolation, and is prepared to depart in 
 peace. 
 
 Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed for 
 us. It is a sacrifice which needs not to be repeated, 
 but surely it deserves to be commemorated ; and if 
 we are loyal to our Divine Benefactor and true to 
 our own interest, we shall not fail to do thus much 
 in remembrance of Him. 
 
THE PASSOVER. 175 
 
 " But what mean ye by this service ?" asks your 
 son or asks the attentive spectator. And you make 
 answer, " It was a night much to be remembered. 
 Our wdiole family liad fallen into captivity and 
 servitude. We had become the thralls of Satan, — 
 the world itself one vast house of bondage, and its 
 different inhabitants the slaves of divers lusts and 
 passions. But at last there came into our house of 
 bondage one who did not originally belong to it. 
 He was God's own Son. In His spirit there was 
 nothing servile. The largest slave- ow^ners tried to 
 have Him, — Gold, Ambition, Appetite, ApoUyon 
 himself, all came np to Him, each hiding a chain 
 behind his back, and in the other hand holding ont 
 the lures which had hardly ever been know^n to fail. 
 But there was no danger of their succeeding, — He 
 despised their image and looked them through and 
 through — looked them through and through — saw 
 the foul purpose in their heart, saw the noose 
 behind their back, and finding nothing in Him, dis- 
 comfited they went their way. And then as if in 
 this prophet like unto Moses a Joseph also had 
 come again, He went and harangued His brethren. 
 He sought to inspire them with those high thoughts 
 which were familiar to His own free-born spirit, 
 and on some — sons of Zebedee and others — His 
 words so wrought that their abject eyes looked up 
 and they leaped as if they had already lost their 
 
176 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 chains. And had it been with a mere taskmaster 
 and tyrant that He had to deal — a Pharaoh or 
 Apollyon who had no hold of right — He soon had 
 set them free. But over all there hung a heavy 
 sentence in sad and sinful earnest incurred, and 
 which could not be lightly repealed. Yes, before 
 He could give life to them — to say nothing of 
 liberty — a life free from forfeiture, He must give a 
 life for them. Those immediately around Him 
 were amazed. They could not understand it. 
 They remonstrated, they begged that He would 
 never think of it. They little knew the exigency. 
 But He knew it well, and in awful far-seeing self- 
 sacrifice went forward to the hour, for the sake of 
 which He had come into the world. It was the 
 fulness of time, and the cup of man's wretchedness 
 and sin ran over — the signal for redemption. That 
 same April month had come — that same full moon 
 was hanging over Olivet which fifteen centuries 
 before had lighted the ransomed of the Lord from 
 Goshen to Succoth, and the feast of Israel's Ee- 
 demption was about to be kept in the stirring 
 streets of Jerusalem. He kept it Himself, and 
 saying to the Father, " Father, the hour is come — 
 the hour for whose sake I came into the world," 
 He explained to His friends as far as they were 
 able to bear it what was about to transpire. He 
 hinted that for the protection of sinners a life more 
 
THE PASSOVER. 177 
 
 precious was needful than the life of this paschal 
 lamb. " Eat this bread, and think of my body 
 about to be broken— drink this cup, and remember 
 my blood about to be shed for the remission of 
 sins," and lo, he that betrayed Him was at hand ; 
 before another evening Christ the Lamb of God, our 
 passover, was sacrificed for us. The price was paid, 
 even that price which frees from second death and 
 present condemnation, and with the penalty re- 
 pealed and the sin-thraldom broken, those are free 
 indeed whom the Son of God makes free. 
 
 Woful is the slavery where the higher nature is 
 in thraldom to the lower : as happened not un- 
 frequently in days scarcely yet forgotten. A 
 scholar, a traveller, a high-born gentleman, fell into 
 the hands of pirates, and was carried off to some 
 robber -nest on the Barbary shore, and there for the 
 rest of life was he left to languish — rowing the 
 galley, grooming the charger, tending the cattle of 
 his Moslem master. Could aught be more bitter 
 and heart-breaking ? — to have tastes and aspirations 
 which he could no lonc^er cultivate, friends and 
 kindred whom he could no longer see, a faith 
 which he could only confess to incur taunts and 
 mockery ? It was not the drudgery — hateful as 
 that might be, — but it was this horrible frustration 
 of existence — this subjection of high capacities to a 
 thraldom coarse and cruel. And man was free- 
 M 
 
178 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 born. Adam was the son of God, and if yon are 
 the servant of sin — if you are the slave of appetite 
 or passion — if any sin has dominion over you, — you 
 are in a state most unnatural — altogether unlike 
 man's original, and most unworthy of a nature once 
 free and strong for good. Perhaps you are not 
 content ; perhaps you are conscious of an occasional 
 struggle. Eeminiscences of the first estate come 
 over you, like the sight of his country's flag, like 
 the scent of some familiar flower which grew in 
 the garden of his youth, and which fills with tears 
 the exile's eyes — visitations come across your 
 spirit of compunction and regret, and you exclaim, 
 " that I were free ! that I were strong for good ! 
 that I were able to bring under the body and 
 keep it in subjection ! that I could break these 
 chains of evil habit, and claim the glorious liberty 
 of the sons of God ! I detest my tyrant, I despise 
 myself for so long enduring his odious despotism ; 
 but oh ! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
 me?" Are you indeed in earnest? Are you sick 
 of sin's slavery and anxious to escape from Egypt ? 
 Then give yourself to Christ. If He claims you 
 none can keep you, and if you cast yourself on Him 
 He will not refuse you. Eedeemed by His most 
 precious blood, Divine justice has no desire to 
 detain you, and Sin and Satan have no right. Ee- 
 joicing to succour those who seek to follow right- 
 
THE PASSOVER. 179 
 
 eousness, but who confess that their strength is 
 small, to your help will come the Holy Spirit, and, 
 fostering the good desires which He himself 
 enkindles, He will carry you from strength still 
 forward unto strength, till you appear before God in 
 Zion a redeemed and ransomed spirit — free from 
 condemnation ever since the first step was taken, 
 and now free from the body of death, free from 
 besetting sins, free from temptation and all further 
 risk of falling. 
 
XL 
 
 ' And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to 
 lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them 
 light, to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of 
 the clond by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the 
 people."— Ex. xiii. 21, 22. 
 
 In the campaigns of Alexander the Great, we are 
 told that over his tent he caused a lofty pole to be 
 set up, and on its summit was a brazier filled with 
 combustible materials kept constantly burning. In 
 this way, if any one wanted to find the commander's 
 head-quarters he could never be at any loss, for 
 over them floated the cloudy banner by day, the 
 flaming beacon by night. This usage he borrowed 
 from the Persians, but whence they derived it we 
 do not know. 
 
 It was a good contrivance ; but here we find it 
 anticipated after a fashion so august, that except as 
 an illustration it is of no use mentioning the expe- 
 dient of the Macedonian conqueror. 
 
 On the night of their destined deliverance, when 
 at Succoth the Israelites reached the appointed 
 
 180 
 
THE FIEEY-CLOUDY PILLAR. 181 
 
 rendezvous unorganized, and of late unaccustomed 
 to martial movements, the inquiry of tlie more 
 thoughtful would be as to their future progress and 
 the plan of march. But Moses claimed no king- 
 ship. He had been God's messenger to Pharaoh, 
 and he had spoken God's messages to themselves ; 
 but except that reluctant prominence to which he 
 had been forced by the absolute command of God, 
 Moses had assumed no personal responsibility. He 
 did not so much as profess to know the route, and 
 as possibly there was no one there who had per- 
 formed the journey across the desert to Canaan, 
 they might soon have found themselves a helpless 
 mass, a weltering crowd huddled together as sheep 
 without a shepherd, had they not espied betimes a 
 banner in the sky, the standard of their unseen leader, 
 and gathered reassumnce from its saving sign. 
 
 The word Shekinah is a Hebrew term. It denotes 
 *' dwelling as in a tent or tabernacle." And although 
 the infinite Jehovah is nowhere excluded, although 
 there is no spot in immensity where God is absent, 
 to our limited and place-loving minds locality is a 
 helpful element, and — especially in the ruder and 
 more infantile ages of our race — the Most High has 
 condescended and met this localizing propensity. 
 He has selected a place, and in that place has made 
 His presence manifest or palpable. Such a place 
 was Horeb and its burning bush, when Moses took. 
 
182 THE FIERY- CLOUDY PILLAK. 
 
 off his shoes ; for there, on His servant's view, in 
 visible glory, had flamed out a token of His pre- 
 sence, who is the heaven- filling, space-pervading 
 I AM. Such a place for a thousand years w^as the 
 Temple on Moriah ; for although in His essential 
 presence Jehovah had still His path on the waters 
 and in regions where the wings of the morning could 
 not penetrate, it was still with perfect truth that the 
 worshipper recognised in that beautiful house a per- 
 manent Bethel, and feeling, " How dreadful is this 
 place ! this is none other than the house of God, the 
 gate of heaven," prayed withal, " thou that sittest 
 between the cherubim, shine forth !" And during 
 the desert journey such a place was this aerial pillar. 
 So far like the flag alternately smoking and flaming, 
 which a general would have suspended over his 
 tent — a waving pendant by day and a torch by 
 night, — so far like this as at once to suggest the 
 head- quarters of their camp and the presence of 
 their leader, it was so entirely miraculous as at 
 once to lift their minds above Moses, and suggest 
 to the dullest in their midst that they were under 
 the protection of heavenly power, that the Captain 
 of their host was Divine. 
 
 As far as the purposes of the Israelites were con- 
 cerned, that cloudy-fiery pillar was the throne of 
 the Eternal ; it was the Shekinah or dwelling-place 
 of Israel's God ; it , was the manifestation of His 
 
THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAR. 183 
 
 friendly protecting presence in their midst ; and 
 often as the Israelite looked up and saw the ma- 
 jestic symbol, he felt assured, " And God is with 
 us;" as in the well-known words, — 
 
 " When Israel, of the Lord beloved, 
 
 Out from the laud of boudage came, 
 Their fathers' God before them moved. 
 An awful guide, in cloud and flame ! 
 
 By day, along the astonished lands, 
 
 The cloudy pillar glided slow ; 
 By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands 
 
 Returned the fiery column's glow." 
 
 There was sure guidance in its goings — a pledge of 
 safety in its presence ; by day a welcome awning in 
 its shadow, and by night an illumination no less 
 welcome in its forth-flowing effulgence. That pillar 
 was Israel's pioneer. When the cloud journeyed 
 they journeyed, and when the cloud rested the 
 people rested. It was Israel's protector. When 
 Pharaoh gave chase, the cloudy pillar passed from 
 the front of the camp to the rear, and became to the 
 one a lamp, and to the other a " horror of thick 
 darkness," so that the Egyptians could not get near 
 the Israelites all the night ; and the only time that 
 they fled before their enemies, was when the cloud 
 refused to advance, and yet they wilfully rushed 
 into battle. The cloud was Israel's angel and oracle. 
 On one occasion it shot devouring flame, and it was 
 by a flash from its consuming fire that, in the act of 
 
1S4 THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAR. 
 
 rebellion, Nadab and Abihu fell dead ; but usually, 
 its presence was friendly and propitious. " They 
 called upon tlie Lord and he answered them : He 
 spake unto them in the cloudy pillar" (Ps. xcix.) ; 
 and all the allusions show what a loved and wel- 
 come sign had that Shekinah been, and how sacred 
 was its memory. " In the daytime he led them 
 with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire" 
 (Ps. Ixxviii. 14); and "He spread that cloud for a 
 covering" (Ps. cv. 39) ; — to all which elements of 
 protection, guidance, comfort, the prophet refers, in 
 describing the millennial Church : " The Lord will 
 create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, 
 and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, 
 and the shining of a flaming fire by night : for upon 
 all the glory shall be a defence " (Isa. iv. 5). 
 
 This is our Etham. Let us look at the pillar of 
 cloud and of fire which offers to guide and to guard 
 us in our journey from *Egypt to Canaan — in our 
 journey from the new starting-point of this morning 
 to the mansions which Jesus has prepared for those 
 who seek a better country. 
 
 Christ is our Captain. If you are a Christian, 
 the Lord Jesus is your Leader. He is beside you, 
 before you ; for He has said, " Lo, I am with you 
 alway." You have declared your confidence in 
 Him, and your affection for Him. Whither He con- 
 ducts you wish to proceed ; where He goes before it 
 
THE riEEY-CLOUDY PILLAE. 185 
 
 is your desire to follow. But where is your guiding 
 star, your oriflamme, your precursor pillar, your 
 fiery- cloudy column ? 
 
 On this point there can be little difficulty. The 
 Bible is the Word of Christ. Into that brief but 
 abounding record He has put all His mind concern- 
 ing us. Like the angel of His presence (Ex. xiv. 1 9), 
 we have it ever with us, the tangible token of His 
 friendliness, the abiding exponent of His will. If 
 we are at any loss we have only to consult its 
 lively oracle, and if we are in any fear we have 
 only to look up to the great and precious promise 
 in its quenchless ray. The ultimate and true She- 
 kinali was Immanuel. In Him dwelt all the fulness 
 of the Godhead bodily; and when Jesus dwelt 
 amongst us, the Godhead did, in a way most mani- 
 fest and marvellous, in very deed dweU with man 
 upon earth. 'Nov has He ceased to do so. In the 
 Christ unseen but present still, earth is still God's 
 dwelling ; but if we want something palpable, local, 
 tangible, we have it in the written Word. The 
 mind that was in Christ was the mind that is still 
 in the Bible ; and should the Holy Spirit make a 
 transfusion of that mind into our own, we should 
 want no more. We should want no argument to 
 prove that there is a heaven, for we should have 
 the earnest already in ourselves. We should not 
 need to go up to older disciples and more ex- 
 
186 THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAR. 
 
 perienced believers, saying, " Sir, we would see 
 Jesns," for Christ would live in ns, the lidit of 
 all our seeing, the life of all our living, without 
 whom the universe were dark to us and desolate. 
 We should not need to say continually — 
 
 " 'Tis a point I long to know, 
 Do I love the Lord or not ? " 
 
 for with such an Alpha and Omega to our faith and 
 affections, we should be raised above sinful doubts 
 and selfish solicitudes, and should have only one 
 answer to the question, " Lovest thou me ?" 
 
 Christ is our Captain, and the Bible is His banner, 
 which He bids us eye and follow. It is the fiery- 
 cloudy pillar, regarding which He says, " Behold, I 
 send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, 
 and to bring thee into the place which I have pre- 
 pared. Beware of him and obey his voice, for 
 my name is in him." Christ himself, the Incarnate 
 Word of God, still speaks to us in the written Word ; 
 and if you ask, " Where is the Shekinah now ? " 
 We answer, " In the volume of this book. Here it 
 is that the mind of God still maintains its resid- 
 ence ; and here it is that He who sits between the 
 cherubim still speaks to us. This is the enduring 
 Bethel where the golden stair from earth to heaven 
 can still be found — the ladder not yet drawn up 
 and taken in, on which the shortest step and 
 feeblest faith may find a footing ; the moving 
 
THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAK. 187 
 
 shrine, the perennial Shekinah which, whosoever 
 follows, will find himself guided by God's counsel 
 and at last received to His glory." 
 
 1. The Bible is a sure and certain guide. The 
 Bible comes from God, and so it is the only book 
 by following which we can be sure of getting back 
 to God. Possibly enough the fiery- cloudy pillar 
 was not at first sight particularly specious or im- 
 posing. On the banks of the Nile the Israelites 
 may have seen a bigger bonfire, some magical and 
 many- coloured illumination, fitted to make as great 
 an impression for the moment, or even in the desert 
 a sudden meteor may have launched into the sky 
 and swift as thought along its line of light may have 
 darted towards the promised land ; but who would 
 take for his guide an ignis fatuiis or a shooting-star ? 
 And this sultry afternoon, wafted from the sea, a 
 great cloud has overspread the firmament. It is 
 broader than the cloudy column, and all the camp 
 is grateful for its canopy. And now that the sun 
 is setting, how poor and tame the familiar pillar 
 looks beneath its molten chrysolite and purpled 
 majesty ! But before the first watch is over, its 
 bosom throbs with fire, and coming down in 
 noise and tempest, before the morrow it is utterly 
 evanished, and as a shadow from the heat the 
 pillar remains the only awning in all that weary 
 land. 
 
188 THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAR. 
 
 A poet throws out a brilliant flash, a day- 
 dreamer gets hold of a beautiful kind-looking 
 thought, and teases and teds it, and tosses it out 
 into a cloud fine and filmy, and avers that it covers 
 more space, that it is more comprehensive and more 
 fitted to the case of mankind than Bible philan- 
 thropy; but even the spark of a neighbour's fire 
 makes it up like gossamer, and nobody waits to see 
 where the ashes come down ; whilst theories more 
 laboured and specious, ideal philosophies and god- 
 less philanthropies, systems exhaled from the great 
 gulf of opinion, spread over the sky, and for a 
 moment have it all to themselves ; but at last in 
 some Eobespierrian revolution the thunder bursts, 
 the storm comes down, and the sky is bare. But 
 for the persistent pillar — the Word of the Lord 
 which endureth for ever — there would be no com- 
 forter nor covert from all the sultry noon. 
 
 Says Jesus, " I am the Light of the world ; he 
 that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but 
 shall have the light of life." You want pardon, and 
 the word of Christ conducts you to the cross. You 
 want a sense of God's friendship, you want to know 
 that the great God does not despise you, nor the 
 holy God dislike you ; and this Word leads you 
 to the throne of grace, and teaches you to cry, Abba, 
 Father. You want wisdom, zeal, and prudence, 
 serenity, and self-possession, a firm and noble con- 
 
THE FIERY-CLOUDY PILLAE. 189 
 
 stancy, with a bright and engaging winsomeness ; 
 and this Word tells you of the Holy Spirit, tells you 
 that if you entreat the aid of that great Comforter 
 He will come to you, and replacing nature's gloom 
 with heavenly gladness, will also give you the germs 
 and earnests of those gracious dispositions of which 
 a better world is full. 
 
 2. The Bible is a guide adapted to every circum- 
 stance and every season. Its shade made the pillar 
 welcome by day, its brightness made it still more 
 welcome by night. To any susceptible spirit it must 
 have been a striking scene which at the noon of 
 night opened from the outskirts of the camp ; for you 
 know that night is a great revealer. As soon as the 
 veil of sunshine is withdrawn new worlds come 
 forth : the azure canopy retires, heaven opens, and, 
 as the starry vistas boundlessly withdraw, space 
 growls infinite ; and yet, what is very strange, whilst 
 man grows little God draws near. Nor are they the 
 great lights only, Sirius, Arcturus, and sucli mighty 
 suns which burst upon our eye now that the glamour 
 of the day is gone, but such lesser lights as the 
 glow-worm on this bank, as the lantern flies that 
 rain beneath the tamarisk covert. And yonder is 
 the forefront of the camp. Brother pilgrims are 
 locked in slumber, but He that keepeth Israel, He 
 slumbers not. Behold the sign — that tall and 
 silvery column which sheds down on all the tents 
 
190 THE FIERY -CLOUDY PILLAR. 
 
 a softer day-spring, meet emblem of that Eye divine 
 which never wearies, and which is beaming over His 
 beloved even in their sleep. 
 
 So the Bible is the worker's book. " Work while 
 it is day." To the toiling pilgrim there is direction 
 in its pillared way-mark ; there is comfort in its 
 cool and shado\vy covert. In Christ, within the 
 camp, under His guidance, it is delightful to press 
 on, working in faith, labouring in love, always 
 abounding in that service so fruitful and blessed. 
 "But the night Cometh when no man can work;" 
 the night of suffering or sadness, when all that you 
 can do is to weep and be silent, is to sit still and 
 wait. But if you "suffer as a Christian," your 
 nocturnal experiences will be not a little instructive 
 and remarkable. For one thing, now that the 
 garish day is gone, now that the near-hand glitter 
 has passed away, the things unseen and eternal will 
 shine forth, — 
 
 " Just as we see by night 
 Worlds never seen by day." 
 
 But not stars alone, not the everlasting glories over- 
 head, but little joys and blessings all around, the 
 glow-worms of our path, whose tiny tapers had no 
 chance till "now ; those lesser joys and blessings 
 which are in almost every lot, but which no one 
 says, " How good they are ! how beautiful ! ' till the 
 sun has set, and God's lesser lamps get leave to 
 
THE FIERY- CLOUDY PILLAR. 191 
 
 shine, till the homely neighbour, till the wife or 
 daughter comes in to cheer the poor man or the 
 invalid. And then it is that the cloudy pillar of 
 the working day becomes the brightening Pharos 
 and soothing guardian of the wakeful night. To the 
 sturdy thinker or practical worker, a proverb of 
 Solomon was a motto for a whole day's direction, an 
 argument of Paul was a problem for a long winter's 
 discussion. But now that it is dark all over the 
 desert, now that the watcher lies musing in his tent, 
 and pushes aside a handbreadth of curtain, he is 
 glad to see through the encompassing cloud coming 
 forth a body of brightness ; and as he wistfully gazes 
 the form grows more definite, the features more 
 divine, till on the great white throne of that radiant 
 cloud he sees none other than the Son of Man. So 
 move on, thou dim and mysterious column, or stand 
 still, thou bright and transparent pillar, I follow thee. 
 Jesus is in thee, and over green pastures, over rough 
 deserts, through the Eed Sea, through Jordan, along 
 streets populous with friendship and resounding with 
 life, and adown the lone valley of death, Word of 
 God, I follow thee. 
 
 When the Israelites were at Etham they did not 
 Ivuow all that lay before them. On the one hand, 
 they had no notion what a waste howling wilderness 
 it was, nor what a terrible time was to be spent 
 passing through it. On the other hand, they could 
 
192 TPIE FIERY -CLOUDY PILLAR. 
 
 as little foresee the wonders which they were destined 
 to witness, the miraculous meals, the fountain opened 
 in the flinty rock, and above all that great episode 
 when the voice of the Eternal broke the silence of 
 ages, and from the pulpit of Sinai spake the Ten 
 Commandments. All their future was hidden in 
 the cloud of God's unsearchable wisdom, and yet in 
 the movements of that visible pillar their own course 
 was perfectly clear. 
 
 And so, my friends, a day like this is our Etham. 
 We are so far on " the edge of the wilderness." A 
 tract of untraversed time spreads before us, and 
 although we shall not call it " a wretched land, which 
 yields us no supplies," it is so far like the desert, 
 inasmuch as it is a land unknown. Of one thing we 
 may be very sure, it won't be all like Elim ; it won't 
 be all rest and relaxation, a protracted holiday, a 
 perpetual paradise with ripe dates overhead and soft 
 grass under foot ; but there will be a good deal of 
 toilsome marching, perhaps some fighting, a good 
 deal of hard and hungry work, a good deal of self- 
 denial. But let us also hope that, as in the past so 
 still, there will be goodness and mercy. Let us hope 
 that if an Amalek come forth against us, a face to 
 the foe with hands uplifted to heaven may prevail 
 If arrested in our path, if a sudden voice exclaims 
 " Stand still ! " let us hope that it may be in order to 
 see some great salvation. And above all let us hope 
 
THE FIERY- CLOUDY PILLAR. 193 
 
 and be sure that the bread of life will not fail, nor 
 the brook which runneth by the way, that Eock 
 which followeth all the pilgrimage; and if any 
 special manifestation of mercy or power be vouch- 
 safed, let us pray that it may be a means of grace, — 
 that like the sermon from Horeb it may write God's 
 law deeper on our hearts, and impress His own 
 perfections more profoundly on our awe -struck 
 minds. 
 
 Up into this year may the angel of God's pre- 
 sence attend us, and make it a year of proficiency 
 and progress, — a year of cheerful industry and 
 patient endurance. May it add many to the Church 
 of the saved, and in the case of God's people may it 
 add grace to grace. Over every dwelling-place of 
 Mount Zion, over all your habitations and all your 
 assemblies, may the Lord create a cloud and smoke 
 by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night ; 
 and upon all the glory may He be Himself the 
 defence. 
 
XII. 
 
 -1h£ |Reii S^a. 
 
 *' And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me ? 
 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward."— Ex. 
 XIV. 15. 
 
 Following their fiery-cloucly pillar, the Israelites 
 set forth on their journey, and the first stage or two 
 would be sufficiently exulting and sanguine. They 
 had no conception of what lay before them, and they 
 might very well imagine that from the house of 
 bondage to the land of promise would be a short 
 and pleasant promenade. As the crow flies it was 
 little more than a hundred miles, and a week's march 
 might bring them thither. They might be excused 
 if they already in imagination scented the milk and 
 honey from its fragrant hills, and if, betwixt sport 
 and earnest, they pictured their future homes and 
 planned about their beehives and gardens, their 
 dairies and their farms, and felt impatient to get a 
 glimpse of the land which would be sure to look so 
 goodly in this most pleasant month of all the year. 
 
 But here was a surprise. It was no goodly land 
 but a watery gulf which stretched before them, and 
 
THE RED SEA. 195 
 
 although by retracing their steps they might round 
 the head of it — and this itself a sufficiently tiresome 
 detour, — behold a new horror ! A cloud of dust is 
 rising in the rear, and it can no longer be disguised 
 that the squadrons of Egypt are in pursuit, fierce 
 and headlong. The sea before and that serried host 
 behind, it was a miserable alternative to men who 
 could neither fight nor swim, and in the panic of the 
 moment a great wail went up to heaven, whilst 
 burning taunts were hurled at the head of Moses. 
 " Were there no graves in Egypt ? Bondage had 
 been better than this butchery." And only knowing 
 that God purposed to work a great deliverance, but 
 still ignorant of the means, Moses could only answer, 
 " Stand still and see God's salvation. The Egyptians 
 whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again 
 no more for ever." 
 
 The wondrous sequel we have read. Whatsoever 
 be the point of the Eed Sea which we select as the 
 scene of the occurrence, and whatsoever incidental 
 agencies of wind or tide we may call in as accessories, 
 the substantial miracle remains ; and amongst the 
 marvellous things which Jehovah did in the land 
 of Egypt and the field of Zoan, none stands forth 
 more conspicuous than this dividing of the sea. As 
 we have it in the vivid verse of Bishop Heber : — 
 
 " He coraes — their leader comes ! the man of God 
 O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod, 
 
196 THE EED SEA. 
 
 And onward treads ; the circling waves retreat, 
 In hoarse deep murnaurs, from his holy feet ; 
 And the chased surges, inly roaring, show 
 The hard wet sand and coral hills below. 
 With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell, 
 Down, down they pass, a steep and slippery dell ; 
 Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurl'd, 
 The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world ; 
 And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green. 
 And caves, the sea-calves' low-roofed haunt, are seen. 
 Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread ; 
 The beetling waters bulge ^ above their head : 
 While far behind retires the sinking day 
 And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray." 
 
 The same gulf which opened a triumphal path to 
 Israel closed over the Egyptians and whelmed them 
 in a watery grave, fulfilling the word of the Lord by 
 Moses, " The Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, 
 ye shall see them no more for ever.'' And in the 
 progress of our narrative we ourselves shall see 
 Pharaoh no more — a character which, after the 
 manner of Cain and Herod, stands up from the 
 sacred page awful and ominous, a seared and blasted 
 peak without any redeeming verdure, and visited by 
 no shower of blessing. A hard man, God left him 
 to himself, so that he grew harder still. Proud, 
 imperious, selfish, like the second James of England, 
 at once a bigot and a despot, he got gradually com- 
 mitted to the unequal strife, and, by a succession of 
 steps as false as they were natural, was hurried 
 forward to the fatal issue. 
 
 1 storm.— Heber. 
 
THE RED SEA. 197 
 
 We say that Pharaoh's course was natural. A 
 selfish man and supremely arrogant, it would have 
 been surprising if he had listened a single moment 
 to the demand, " Let Israel my people go." As serfs 
 and bondagers they were invaluable, and to let them 
 go would be to annihilate the half of Egypt's in- 
 dustry. ]N"or was his a mind with whicli considera- 
 tions of equity or humanity had any weight. It 
 would not be of the smallest use to urge how long 
 Israel had already served for nothing, and how 
 unkind it was to keep in odious captivity men who 
 had done nothing to forfeit freedom. He looked 
 simply at his own interest, and scouted the monstrous 
 proposition to give up a million of his people, and 
 rather than be so soft he would buckle on his panoply 
 and defy the consequences. These consequences 
 were terrible ; but once involved in the contest, 
 Pharaoh's w^as not the nature to succumb ; and 
 although he could not hide it from himself that a 
 mighty and mysterious power had risen up to rescue 
 Israel, it became a point of honour to persist, and, 
 assured by the magicians that the gods of Egypt 
 were mightier than the God of Israel, he doubtless 
 cherished the hope that they would yet arise to the 
 succour of their champion. 
 
 But whilst all this was entirely natural, alongside 
 of it and underneath it was a great deal which was 
 immensely wicked. Pharaoh was a proud and heart- 
 less autocrat. Like another Lucifer, he set himself 
 
198 THE EED SEA. 
 
 on high, in haughty self-sufficiency, looking on all 
 beneath him and around as created for his own 
 aggrandizement, and this made him at once defiant 
 of a higher power and disdainful of his fellows. In 
 all the distress which his obstinacy entailed, we never 
 detect one spark of compassion for his people ; no 
 royal granaries thrown open, no grants from the 
 privy purse to mitigate the tremendous misery ; and 
 in keeping with this sullen apathy towards his own 
 Egyptians is his savage bearing towards the Israelites. 
 He is told that they are fainting beneath their 
 burdens, and he is entreated to grant a holiday. In- 
 stead of at once consenting, as a good-natured prince 
 might have done, — " Well, a week's play after four 
 centuries' work is no great matter ; " instead of in- 
 stituting some inquiry, as a temperate though cold- 
 hearted ruler might have done, Pharaoh sends that 
 very day for the taskmasters, and bids them lay more 
 work upon the people, and as a punishment for 
 complaining, they are after this to find the straw 
 with which the bricks were toughened. And in 
 keeping with the cruelty of the tyrant is the arro- 
 gance of the autocrat : " Who is the Lord, that I 
 should obey his voice ? I know not the Lord, neither 
 will I let Israel go." Pharaoh was a polytheist, and 
 on his own principle of "gods many and lords 
 many," although he had had no reason to believe 
 that Jehovah was pre-eminent or supreme, he had 
 
THE RED SEA. 199 
 
 every reason to believe that Jehovah was divine. 
 On his own principles as a Pagan, the Hebrews had 
 a God as well as he, and there was gross impiety in 
 his answer, its tone of supercilious irreverence plainly 
 showing that if the demand had been made in the 
 name of Thoth or Phrah it would hardly have pros- 
 pered better. " Who is Jehovah, that I should obey 
 his voice ? " not obscurely intimating that in his own 
 eyes Pharaoh was himself a deity, and throwing him 
 open to the answers which came so awfully on behalf 
 of the Powers Unseen, as well as on behalf of Israel's 
 omnipotent Protector, when the river rolling down 
 in blood, when hail and locust-rain and darkness 
 palpable, and at last the Eed Sea's closing billows 
 made reply to the self- idolater, " I am Jehovah." 
 
 A course of conduct may be very wrong, and yet 
 all its steps may seem quite natural. The man him- 
 self may see no alternative, and if we grant that he 
 was right in the outset, it will be difficult to show 
 that the particular act of robbery or bloodshed was 
 so very far wrong. If Judas was right in his first 
 principle, that money is the one thing needful, it was 
 very natural that he should try to get it by selling 
 his Master. And if Pharaoh was right in his first 
 principle, that all things existed for the sake of the 
 king of Egypt, and that no one in heaven or earth 
 had any right to resist his will, it is not wonderful 
 that he should have gone to war with Jehovah. 
 
200 THE RED SEA. 
 
 You say he was not right. You say that in his 
 starting-point he was monstrously wrong ; that in 
 his first principle of proud self-idolatry he was dia- 
 bolically wicked. But alas ! ray friends, it does not 
 need that a man should be a monarch in order to 
 repeat the career of Pharaoh. " Who is Jehovah ? " 
 says the voluptuary when urged to give up his sinful 
 pleasures ; " who is the Lord, that I should let my 
 enjoyments go?" "Who is the Lord, and who is 
 Israel ? " says the worldling hastening to be rich, and 
 who in his all-absorbing avarice has no bowels for 
 his bondmen, no consideration for their souls or 
 bodies, who without straw are baking his bricks, 
 and who without a Sabbath are building his pyramid. 
 "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice?" 
 says the hardened gospel-hearer, who has long 
 listened to the claims of God, and yet, entrenched 
 in apathy, holds out, preferring to be his own all- 
 in-all, and somehow hoping that he shall be the 
 exception to the rule, and if the worst comes to the 
 worst, that he shall be the sinner saved who yet 
 never had a Saviour. In every stout and resistfal 
 spirit, in every proud, self-indulgent nature, there 
 is a certain root of Pharaohism; and unless you 
 humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, 
 you will find, like Pharaoh when at last he sank 
 like lead in the mighty waters, that it is " woe to 
 the man who strives with his Maker." 
 
THE RED SEA. 201 
 
 A great word is that word of God to Israel. 
 There they were, a sea before them far wider than 
 their familiar Nile, and with the wild tumult of its 
 waters very terrible ; a sea before them, and on their 
 rear, with his jingling chargers and his sounding 
 chariots, an angry, ruthless king. Unarmed and 
 unused to conflict, to face round and fight was for 
 a flock of sheep to charge a pack of wolves or lions, 
 and across that gulf they had neither wings to fly 
 nor boats to ferry; but although still invisible, it 
 was across that gulf that the path of the ransomed 
 stretched, and from God's " Forward" the veiling 
 waters fled away, and revealed the road which no 
 created eye had seen till then. 
 
 And so whenever the fiery pillar conducts to 
 the water's edge, and God says, " Go forward," the 
 waves open and the weakest pilgrim passes through. 
 Luther, you are a fine, genial fellow ; you are made 
 to enjoy tliis wonderful world ; don't leave it by a 
 heroic suicide. You are a father, and the solace of a 
 thousand friends. Not a rootless stick or a rigid 
 palisade, like these heartless, homeless, dehumanized 
 monks, you are a green tree with roots in all our 
 hearts ; by wilful self-destruction don't dash to the 
 earth so many nests and wound us all. But he is 
 resolute. " Here I stand ; I cannot retract, so help 
 me God." It is the edge of the Eed Sea, the very 
 point to which the guiding pillar has brought him, 
 
202 THE EED SEA. 
 
 and, like the pursuing Egyptians, the Eomish myr- 
 midons have closed upon him, and ramp and ravin 
 for his blood. But just as they are about to clutch 
 their prey the sea sunders, their host is troubled, and 
 as the waters stand up a wall on either hand, with 
 conscience clean, with honour saved, with the gospel 
 uncompromised, the Eeformer passes through. 
 
 The like does not happen to every one, yet some- 
 thing of the sort may chance to you. Following 
 your guide, shut up by the events of Providence, 
 and actmg under the dictates of religious principle, 
 you have reached the edge of your Eed Sea. The 
 compliance pressed upon you would hurt your con- 
 science ; the match which they wish you to make 
 has every advantage, — wealth, position, prospects; 
 the only drawback is, the man 's a profligate. The 
 situation you are about to lose is lucrative, and it 
 would be entirely to your liking, but the condition 
 affixed to your retaining it is immoral : you must 
 act, or utter fraud and falsehood. The trial is very 
 terrible, but right above the flood hangs the un- 
 changing oracle, " What shall it profit ? Be not un- 
 equally yoked," and you must forward, for behind 
 you hear a voice, which, pointing to that flood, 
 says, " This is the way, walk ye in it." 
 
 However, there is one crisis in every history when 
 faith is tried, and when all the courage is needed 
 which can be derived from God's " Go forward." 
 
THE RED SEA. 203 
 
 The sea I speak of we have all to cross. Some try 
 to forget it, and to some, through grace, it has ceased 
 to be formidable, whilst to others still it has a pain- 
 ful fascination. You cannot forget what lies before 
 you, and you have not ceased to fear it ; you cannot 
 help going down to the water's brink from time to 
 time, and taking along the strand a pensive medita- 
 tive stroll, and almost pitying yourself because you 
 must some day pass over. " thou flood of sorrow ! 
 wherefore is it that thou still dost flow betwixt 
 myself and Immanuel's land ? Dark waters ! I do 
 not like your look. I shudder at the thought that 
 I must one day face round and turn my footsteps 
 towards your tide. I wonder whether there will be 
 a swell on your surface, or a great calm that day. 
 I wonder what all I shall see in your mysterious 
 unreported caverns ; and, above all, I wonder if I 
 shall make good my landing on the farther side. I 
 sometimes fear that my faith shall fail." But 
 although it is appointed to all men once to die, we 
 doubt if such rehearsals of a dying hour are needful. 
 We are inclined to think that the best preparation 
 for that Eed Sea passage is to follow, on these un- 
 flooded plains of life — on the terra firma of daily 
 duty, the fiery- cloudy pillar. In order to lose the 
 dread of death, do you learn to place confidence in 
 Christ ? learn to think of Him trustfully and affec- 
 tionately now, for, as the Angel of God's presence, 
 
204 THE RED SEA. 
 
 as tlie very soul of the Bible, as the bright eye ever- 
 beaming from the cloud of witnesses, the expressed 
 mind of Christ is ever with you in the volume of 
 the Book ; His power and love are around your path 
 in His ubiquitous never-absent Godhead. Depend 
 upon it, if thus in frequent recollection and daily 
 prayer you press up into Christ's friendship, these 
 remoter anxieties will dwindle or disappear. That 
 same Saviour of whose mediation you feel the need 
 when you bend the knee to confess your sin and 
 ask forgiveness, will not be more remote when you 
 bow the head and give up the ghost, and with as 
 little sense of effort then as now He will tell you, 
 " I am the way : no man cometh to the Father but 
 by me." This is the way, walk in it. And although 
 it is already the once- dreaded passage, you will 
 hardly be aware, for to you it is as much dry land 
 as ever, although on either side " the waters great 
 do swell up to the brim ;" and although from the 
 verge tearful eyes follow you as you pass down into 
 the dim and mysterious valley, these waters shall 
 not overwhelm your soul, and you will only know 
 that it is the Eed Sea you have crossed by seeing no 
 more of your old enemies, temptations, infirmities, 
 and strongly besetting sins. Those Egyptians whom 
 you see to-day, take a good look of them, for after 
 that you will see them no more for ever. 
 
 At which rate it is no tame application of the 
 text, it is no degradation of the Divine watchword, 
 
THE RED SEA. 205 
 
 if, on tliis thanksgiving Sabbath after the Com- 
 munion, we pass it round as our motto, and say to 
 one another, Go forward ! Go forward in faith and 
 holiness, in activity and zeal ; go forward in brotherly 
 kindness and charity, in devotion and self-denial; 
 go forward in the self-knowledge which destroys 
 confidence in the flesh ; go forward in the courage 
 which waxes strong in Christ Jesus ; go forward in 
 the humility which, conscious of unworthiness, still 
 high -hearted and hopeful, seeks the things above ; 
 and forward in that seriousness which, taking truer 
 views of life and its outgoings, has also joys and 
 consolations unguessed by carnal levity. Go for- 
 ward ! for in the van are the bravest and the best ; 
 go forward, for the guiding pillar is far before, so 
 far before that the Bible is sometimes like to get 
 out of our sight altogether ; go forward, for the Fore- 
 runner has passed ahead, and they are the happiest 
 pilgrims who so far can overtake as to pursue their 
 course " looking unto Jesus." Go forward ! for the 
 best accommodations and refreshments await those 
 who are farthest in advance ; and " from strength 
 still onward unto strength," their burdens are the 
 lightest and their difiiculties the fewest, who, " for- 
 getting the things that are behind," evermore "press 
 forward," — forward on the way where the guiding 
 pillar precedes, " to the prize of our high calling," 
 even the place which Christ has prepared. 
 
XIII. 
 
 *' Moses cried unto the Lord, and the Lord shewed him a tree, which 
 when he had cast into the waters [of Marah], the waters were 
 made sweet."— Ex. xv. 25. 
 
 The Red Sea is crossed, the Egyptians are 
 drowned, and that most ancient as well as most 
 magnificent song of triumph has been sung, — a 
 song so sublime that we purposely postpone expo- 
 sition ; in its spirit and its circumstances so sublime 
 that even Revelation offers no other entirely par- 
 allel, and its companion and counterpart is only 
 known to those who along with "the Song of 
 Moses the servant of God" sing also "the Song of 
 the Lamb." 
 
 It was a great deliverance, and the people felt it 
 deeply. Perhaps there never was a gush of purer 
 gratitude than poured from the lips of all that 
 million as Miriam's timbrel led the dance ; and as 
 one after another the swell bore helpless to their 
 feet the steed in gorgeous housings or his stiff and 
 stalwart master, the exultation leaped up anew, and 
 the shout, " Sing to the Lord, for he hath triumphed 
 
MAEAH. 207 
 
 gloriously : the horse and his rider hath he thrown 
 into the sea." They were a people near to God. 
 They felt as if they were entirely in His hand, — 
 the people whom He had purchased, and whom He 
 designed to plant in the mountain of His holiness. 
 And if it could have been put to them, '' After this 
 will you ever doubt God's power or providence ? — 
 will you ever wish that you had another God or 
 were your own masters ? " — they would have replied 
 in one unanimous outburst, "The Lord is my 
 strength and my salvation : He is my God, and 
 shall reign for ever and ever." 
 
 But a little week is hardly past, they have only 
 gone three days into the desert when the Eed Sea 
 minstrels are changed into mutineers and mur- 
 murers; and as soon as their first grievance is 
 remedied they find a new hardship and a fresh 
 occasion for despair, and for charging God and His 
 servant foolishly. It is no longer, " The Lord is my 
 strength," but " What shall we drink ? " It is no 
 longer, " Thou, Lord, in thy mercy hast led forth 
 the people which thou hast redeemed," but " Would 
 God we had died when we sat by the flesh-pots ! 
 for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to 
 kill us with hunger." 
 
 At first sight this looks fearfully ungrateful and 
 monstrously fickle, and we are apt to praise our- 
 selves obliquely, — we are apt to get up a little sly 
 
208 MAR AH. 
 
 self-complacency by bearing hard on the perversity 
 of Israel. But if we would judge righteous judg- 
 ment, we must advert to the actual facts of the case. 
 To begin with, was there not a real hardship ? 
 Few of us can enter into it, for few of us in health 
 have gone without food for so much as four-and- 
 twenty hours together, and the sensation we call 
 thirst is no more like the mad and raging fever of 
 the desert than our cool and verdant plains are like 
 the baked and blistering rocks of that burning 
 wilderness. This was their predicament. After 
 marching three days through dust and fiery drought 
 they came on wells clear and limpid-looking ; but the 
 moment they put the water to their lips it was 
 poison. What wonder if they uttered a great cry 
 of disappointment and horror ! After a month's 
 absence from Egypt they were no nearer the land 
 of their hope than when they first set forth, and to 
 aggravate the trial their provisions were spent. 
 The supplies which seemed so ample on the 15th 
 of Abib were exhausted by the 15th of Zif ; and 
 was it no hardship to be obliged to slaughter the 
 flocks and herds with which they had intended to 
 stock their expected farms ? — was it no hardship 
 to feel their own strength decaying, and to see their 
 children coming round them with sunken eyes and 
 liollow cheeks, and crying for that bread which they 
 no longer had to give ? 
 
MAEAH. 209 
 
 It is easy to swim on dry land ; it is easy to be a 
 Samson as long as the Philistines are only phantoms 
 in the air; but " judge not that ye be not judged." 
 Have you ever tried to go through your daily task 
 with a throbbing, bursting brain, or even with an 
 aching tooth ? Have you tried against all- comers to 
 keep your temper? When worn with successive 
 nights of wakefulness or watching, have you tried 
 to stay your soul on God, and hold forth a sunny 
 face all day ? Or, when the balance hung betwixt a 
 loved one's life and death, have you tried to say, 
 " Thy will be done?" If so, you will judge in the 
 spirit of meekness even the poor mourning Israelites, 
 lest thou also be tempted. 
 
 Another consideration is, they were new to it. 
 True, their life in Egypt was hard enough; but it 
 was not the* best preparative for this kind of ex- 
 perience. As slaves, they were abject, resourceless, 
 spiritless ; they had no long look forward ; they 
 lived within the day. If the flesh-pot was full they 
 had no further wants, because no higher hopes, or at 
 least they found it better to have none. And you 
 know very weU. the worth of a mainspring, the 
 value of some motive sufficiently persistent and 
 powerful. Hence it is that, accustomed to refined 
 society and elevated pursuits, a Park or a Clapper- 
 ton does not grudge to spend years in dreary wastes 
 and among treacherous savages, for the solution of 
 
 
 
210 MAKAH. 
 
 scientific problems and the extension of the bounds 
 of knowledge, is the hope set before him ; hence it 
 is that, in the heroism of humanity, a Kane or a 
 M'Clintock braves the rigours of a hyperborean 
 winter, and, sustained by the hope of bringing suc- 
 cour to those that are ready to perish, takes joyfully 
 the blast which, without this hope, would freeze 
 within the bones the marrow ; hence it is that, in 
 the dreary trench, amidst the drifting snow, the 
 high-bred noble and the peasant soldier alike bear 
 up, remembering that God and England expect from 
 them their duty ; and hence it is that an Eliot, a 
 Zinzendorf, a Jadson, constrained by the love of 
 Christ, and striving to speed the day when His 
 saving name shall be everywhere renowned, can 
 face without a fear the heathen clamouring for their 
 blood, and can sing psalms in the death-prison. 
 
 But although the Hebrews had a hope set before 
 them, it was new to them, and they had not learned 
 to live upon it. Although they had found a God, 
 even He was new to them, and they could only trust 
 Him when His eye was visibly upon them, and His 
 arm sensibly around them. I^escued at a rush, carried 
 through the Eed Sea in a mass, all saved at the self- 
 same moment, they were a nation born in one night ; 
 and whilst this made them so far the more signal 
 trophies of God's goodness, it also conspired with 
 outward influences to give to their moods of mind a 
 
MARAH. 211 
 
 peculiar sympathy or simultaneousness. They were 
 twins a million times repeated, and in the close 
 contiguity of their camp their feelings flowed and 
 ebbed together ; and although a Caleb or a Joshua, 
 or some rare spirit, might retain his steadfastness, it 
 was difficult to resist the contagious ardour or de- 
 pression, and the narrative proceeds as if all mur- 
 mured or rejoiced together. " The people murmur- 
 ed," " the children of Israel murmured," " the whole 
 congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron." 
 
 There is another remark which we would here 
 interpose, and it applies to several of the miracles 
 here recorded. A frequent attempt has been made 
 to reduce them to incidents, which, although sur- 
 prising, were not supernatural. For instance : there 
 is still found in the midsummer months in that 
 peninsula of Sinai a substance now called manna. 
 It is a sweet, gummy exudation from the Alhagi, the 
 tarfah or tamarisk, and other plants, produced by 
 the puncture of an insect ; and it is either scraped 
 from the leaves, or gathered up where its drops have 
 trickled down to the ground ; and many travellers 
 and interpreters have pronounced this to be the 
 manna or " bread from heaven" on which the 
 Israelites subsisted for forty years in the desert. 
 If so, the miracle is not much diminished, for the 
 entire crop of tree-manna in the Sinai peninsula 
 amounts only to six or seven hundred pounds weight 
 
212 MARAH. 
 
 each year, which to the Israelites would have been 
 at the rate of the hundredth part of a grain to each 
 person per day. But the tree-manna has none of 
 the properties mentioned by Moses except the size 
 and the sweetness. It is not perennial. It is not 
 found at all seasons, but is restricted to the mid- 
 summer months ; and far from being available for 
 forty years successive, there are years when there 
 is none of it. It does not on the sixth day exude 
 in double quantity, and entirely intermit on the 
 seventh, and far from having any propensity to 
 putrefy, if kept all right, few things keep better. 
 Nor do we suppose that any straightforward un- 
 sophisticated reader would draw any other conclu- 
 sion from the narrative of Moses, and the allusions 
 to that narrative in the Psalms and New Testament, 
 than that it was a miraculous table which was 
 spread for Israel in the desert, and that they were 
 fed in a way unwonted from God's own garner. 
 
 At the same time, there is a principle applicable 
 to many miracles on which we would gladly dwell 
 if an occasion like this permitted. Miracles are no 
 violations of the laws of nature — thereby meaning 
 the laws of God — the principles on which the Most 
 High conducts His own procedure. Although to 
 our experience they are rare and exceptional, they 
 are neither efforts to Omnipotence, nor are they 
 episodes and interruptions in the scheme of the 
 
MAEAH. 2 1 3 
 
 ■unchanging I am. They are the evolutions of a 
 higher law, which for the moment seems to set 
 aside or supersede the common law, the ordinary 
 course of Providence ; but, as we might expect from 
 their majestic Author, these miracles are no mere 
 whimsies or vagaries, no monstrous portents or idle 
 prodigies such as Eastern imagination has delighted 
 to invent, but the signs and wonders of One who is 
 wise in counsel and excellent in working — signs 
 which in a moment transport us into the presence- 
 chamber of Omnipotence, but wonders which are 
 wonderfully marked by the same wisdom, goodness, 
 holiness, of which we have examples in His familiar 
 well-known ongoings. 
 
 Hence in miany miracles we are not surprised to 
 find the reappearance on a scale of sudden expansion 
 or enlargement of facts or principles with which we 
 have long been conversant. The letters are on a 
 gigantic scale, or as they run along the wall they 
 float and flicker with a dazzling light ; and yet in 
 a moment we recognise the self-same handwriting, 
 — the autograph inimitable, unmistakable, which 
 we have all along beheld growing in the grass or 
 projecting its revelations on pages of the Bible. 
 
 In virtue of this Divine self- consistency there is 
 often what we would call a natural element in the 
 most supernatural interposition ; and so far from 
 lessening the value of the miracle, does it not 
 
214 MARAH. 
 
 impart to it new beauty and significance ? Not to 
 say that there is no waste of the wonderful, is it not 
 worthy of the Most High that by accelerating His 
 own processes, or making new uses of His own 
 creatures, He should exhibit effects which in any 
 hand but His, these processes, these creatures, 
 would be powerless to display ? and in that bound- 
 less diversity which marks His manifestations, 
 whether ordinary or extraordinary, who shall say 
 which is the most Divine, the miracle where the 
 whole springs forth direct, startling and stupendous, 
 from a simple fiat ; or the other, where there exists 
 a germ already in some familiar phenomenon, — a 
 phenomenon, however, which by virtue coming fortli 
 from God suddenly expands into dimensions con- 
 fessedly Divine? Was it not a miracle, when to 
 the whelming billows Jesus said, " Peace, be still ! " 
 and by that word, creating an instant calm, He 
 saved the drowning mariners ? But when just at 
 the moment an angry king was about to grasp the 
 fugitives, — when just at that moment God made an 
 east wind to blow, and split a passage through the 
 flood, walling it up on either hand, was there 
 nothing supernatural in the opportuneness of the 
 breeze, nothing supernatural in its unprecedented 
 power ? When to the barren fig-tree Jesus said, 
 " Henceforth no fruit grow on thee for ever," no 
 hail-storm fell, no caterpillar came, but feeling at 
 
MAEAH. 215 
 
 its heart the awful word, instantly withered away, 
 the conscious cumber-ground. But is it less than 
 supernatural and divine wdien to the tyrant it is 
 said, "Let my people go, or to-morrow about this 
 time expect a grievous hail," and to-morrow at that 
 time the icy shrapnell — the hurtling hail- shower 
 — pounds into the earth the sprouting corn, and 
 shatters every tree? That hail, is it not the hand of 
 God ? that east wind, is it not His breath ? and in 
 wielding either at the moment, and for the special 
 end, was there not the same omnipotence as went 
 forth in the word, the mere will expressed of Jesus ? 
 Coming to the case in hand, we are extremely 
 interested to learn that a pearly- looking substance, 
 suggestive of honey, is still found in that Arabian 
 wilderness ; for although it cannot account for the 
 miracle, it accounts for the key-note on wdiich that 
 "miracle was pitched. I^ow that He was about to 
 feed His famished children with supplies straight 
 from His own storehouse, the Most High selected a 
 substance congruous to the place and in keeping 
 with their circumstances. In the bare and burning 
 desert He did not cause to spring such rice- crops as 
 they had left in the deep inundated soil of Egypt, 
 nor did He perplex them by raining all around 
 them what they would not have understood, — the 
 ready-made loaves, the bread-fruits of the then 
 unknown Southern Isles ; but selecting a palatable 
 
216 MAE AH. 
 
 product of the place, or a substance near akin, to 
 these pensioners at Heaven's gate, the Great Almoner 
 gave what was none the less Heaven's bread, because 
 a sample somewhat like it was indigenous, — all the 
 more truly Heaven's bread, because the existence of 
 that other showed how well adapted it was for desert 
 pilgrims. And just as the Lord Jesus, when about 
 to feed five thousand hungry guests, as He did not 
 fling away the five loaves which were actually forth- 
 coming, but used them as the starting-point or key- 
 note of His miracle, multiplying them a thousandfold, 
 — so when about to feed His million guests for forty 
 years, Jehovah did not ignore the handful of meal 
 already in the barrel, the few drops which already 
 trickled from the tarfah-trees, but multiplying the 
 supply a hundred-thousandfold; instead of a mere 
 taste of honey-dew ; instead of a few tiny and 
 tantalizing particles, with Divine profusion He 
 emptied a whole garner over them every night, and 
 scattered it round their tents thick as snow on 
 Salmon. 
 
 These little links are valuable. Eightly regarded 
 they do not make the supernatural less wonderful, 
 but they make it more instructive and more inter- 
 esting. They afford a revelation of God's character 
 whilst letting forth a coruscation of His power ; and 
 they are gentle inclines by which from the level of 
 every day we may ascend towards the throne of an 
 
MARAH. 217 
 
 ever-wakeful, ever-working Omnipotence, — gang- 
 ways or bridges by which our feeble steps may 
 cross over from the frail barque of our own exist- 
 ence — circumscribed, mist-bounded — to the ever- 
 adjacent mainland of the infinite and the eternal. 
 
 This principle we have little hesitation in ex- 
 tending to Marah and the sweetening of its waters. 
 It is quite true, as Professor Johnston and others 
 have shown, that some kinds of water, brackish or 
 bitter, may be rendered drinkable by steeping in 
 them certain woods or berries; and there is a legend 
 that the waters of China were so bad that the 
 people could not drink till a certain sage pointed 
 out a little tree whose well-known leaves many of 
 us consider an improvement to even the best of 
 water. But we cannot help feeling that in a con- 
 text like this we must rise higher than any such 
 rationalistic rendering of the incident ; for even if 
 any plant efficacious for such purposes had grown 
 in the region — as several recent travellers strenu- 
 ously deny, — its virtues were unknown to Moses till 
 the Lord revealed them, and even after that they 
 must have been singularly enhanced in order to 
 supply to such a multitude a pure and potable 
 beverage. " The Lord showed unto Moses a tree, 
 which when he had cast into the waters, the waters 
 were made sweet ;" and the supernatural character 
 of the occurrence comes out more strikingly in that 
 
218 MARAH. 
 
 standing promise, that "statute and ordinance" by 
 which it was followed : " If thou wilt diligently 
 hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and w^ilt 
 do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give 
 ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, 
 I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I 
 have brought upon the Egyptians : for I am the 
 Lord that healeth thee." As much as to say, " My 
 dealings with Israel shall be the converse of My 
 dealings with Egypt. They were resistful and 
 rebellious, and I sent them punishments and 
 plagues : but if you be diligent and docile, I will 
 heal and comfort you. And accept the earnest : 
 behold the sign. As my wonders in the field of 
 Zoan began by turning into blood the delicious 
 waters of the Nile, so my wonders in the wilderness 
 begin by turning into sweetness the bitter springs 
 of Marah. Jehovah Eophi : I am the Lord who 
 healeth you. 
 
 Surely there was a lesson w^hich, running to these 
 waters, Israel read, and which it would be a pity if 
 it were lost on us. 
 
 In itself water is one of the best of things. Pure, 
 cool, pellucid, it is the good gift of God, — a cup of 
 cold water the very emblem of unmingled blessing. 
 And as it comes from heaven, it is always clear 
 and uncontaminated ; it is only in earth's reservoirs 
 that it sometimes gets muddied, and sometimes even 
 
MAEAH. 219 
 
 poisoned. There are salts of copper in the soil 
 through which the current percolates ; the man- 
 chineel has shed its deadly fruits into the fountain, 
 or an enemy has passed this way and drugged the 
 wells. 
 
 Books, leisure, learning, friends, and children, — 
 wealth, accommodations, — the beautiful in nature, the 
 exquisite in art, are all the gift of God, and as they 
 come from God they are all pure and unalloyed : If 
 the cup which catches the morning dew itself were 
 clear as crystal, — if the pool that receives the rain 
 had nothing miry or deleterious in it, good and pure 
 would the gifts remain. But alas ! too often it is a 
 bad and bitter soil, — a proud and selfish spirit, a 
 morose and murmuring heart, a godless, and so a 
 hopeless, joyless mind, into which the mercy comes, 
 and when the moment arrives that the happy pos- 
 sessor should drink and be refreshed, he turns away 
 disgusted. "What 's the matter with the well ? It 
 looks clear enough. What's the matter with the 
 man ? He has a good house, an ample income, a 
 fine family ; but the curl of contempt, the wrinkles 
 of unrest on his countenance, the 'vanitas vani- 
 tatum' in his tones, proclaim dissatisfaction and 
 discontent. What 's the matter ? Don't you know ? 
 The water was good enough till once it came there : 
 but here the soil is Marah. It is the bitter soil 
 that makes the bitter fountain ; and you must give 
 
220 MARAH. 
 
 the man a better heart, — more humble, more thank- 
 ful, more genial, more devout, — in order that he 
 may get the full enjoyment of the good and perfect 
 gifts which God bestows." It must, however, be 
 admitted that besides the Marah within there are 
 bitter fountains to which God in His providence 
 sometimes conducts His people. That is to say, in 
 their way to the better country, God sometimes 
 sends His people trials where they looked for bless- 
 ings. A child dearly loved and doated upon is 
 taken away. Another is spared to turn out neither 
 a credit nor a comfort. A beloved relative is laid 
 aside by lingering sickness, or is banished to the 
 ends of the earth, or is still more mournfully 
 secluded from your society by the great gulf of an 
 imagined Avrong, a wounded spirit, or a mind 
 diseased. Or after a toilsome tramp through the 
 desert you have attained the oasis : you have made 
 your modest competence, and in this rosy little 
 hermitage you hope to spend life's evening quietly 
 and not uselessly, when, lo and behold ! your sight 
 is failing, or the power of locomotion is withdrawn, 
 or some incipient malady gives warning that to 
 suffer will henceforth be a main part of your voca- 
 tion. 
 
 What ever shall you do ? Whom shall you 
 imitate ? the multitude or Moses ? Moses was as 
 much disappointed as the people, for he was as 
 
MARAH. 221 
 
 parched and faint as they ; but whilst they mur- 
 mured, he cried to God. And so, if wise, will you. 
 Cry to God. There is a remedy ! There is that at 
 hand which, if you knew it, would make all right 
 again, and the Lord can easily show you what it is. 
 Perhaps he may bid you move forward another 
 stage, for at Elim there are palm-trees and pure 
 water in plenty. But most likely He will put you 
 on a plan for sweetening those mercies which are 
 for the present embittered. His name is the Lord 
 the Healer. If you be diligent and docile, if you 
 hearken to His voice, and do that which is right in 
 His sight. He will make all things work together 
 for your good; and by the tender sympathy He 
 raises up, by the timely help He sends, by the 
 gentle sustaining of His own spirit inwardly, He 
 can work such a change on Marah that where 
 once you stood aghast in horrible surprise, you 
 can now stoop down and as you drink abund- 
 antly shall wonder to find that it is no longer 
 bitter. 
 
 " For there's a wonder --workiog wood, 
 I've heard believers say, 
 Can make these bitter waters good 
 And take the curse away. 
 
 The Cross on which the Saviour died 
 
 And conquer'd for His saints, 
 This is the tree, by faith api)lied, 
 
 Which sweetens all complaints. 
 
222 MAUAH. 
 
 Thousands have found the bless'd efifect, 
 Nor longer mourn their lot ; 
 
 While on His sorrows they reflect 
 Their own are all forgot. 
 
 When they by faith behold the cross, 
 Though many griefs they meet, 
 
 They draw a gain from every loss 
 And find the bitter sweet." 
 
XIV. 
 
 MnxmxxvB. 
 
 " And Moses and Aaron said unto all tlie children of Israel, At even, 
 then ye shall know that the Lord hath brought yon out from the. 
 land of Egypt : and in the morning, then ;^e shall see the glory 
 of the Lord ; for that he heareth your murmurings against the 
 Lord : and what are we, that ye murmur against us ? And 
 Moses said, This shall be, when the Lord shall give you in the 
 evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full ; for 
 that the Lord heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against 
 him : and what are we ? your murmurings are not against us, 
 but against the Lord."— Ex, xvi. 6-8. 
 
 Murmuring ! It must have been a malady 
 characteristic of the Hebrew people, or a disease 
 peculiar to that desert. As we proceed with this 
 narrative we are constantly meeting it, creaking 
 along: in discord harsh and chronic, or amazing 
 earth and heaven by its shrill, ear-piercing par- 
 oxysms. They lift up their eyes, and as the Egyp- 
 tians pursue, the people murmur. They come to a 
 fountain, the water is bitter, and once more they 
 murmur. Then there is no water at all, and of 
 course they murmur. Then no bread, murmur- 
 ings renewed. Next bread without flesh ; mur- 
 murings redoubled. Moses is long in the Mount ; 
 
 223 
 
224 MURMUKS. 
 
 murmurs. He takes too mucli upon him ; more 
 murmurs. When shall we reach that promised 
 land ? — murmurs extraordinary, loud miu^murs. We 
 are close to the land, but its inhabitants are giants, 
 and their towns walled up to heaven. Oh, what a 
 take-in ! and the last breath of the last survivors of 
 that querulous race goes forth in a hurricane of 
 reproach and remonstrance— a perfect storm of 
 murmurs. 
 
 What a good thing that the race is exterminated ! 
 Was it not fortunate that all their carcases fell in 
 the wilderness ? Would it not have been a great 
 pity if any of that root of bitterness had found its 
 way into the goodly land, so as to infest with its 
 cleaving burrs and envenomed spines the pleasant 
 fields of Palestine ? 
 
 But are you sure ? This weed so noxious, has it 
 really gone into the fossil flora ? — this vice so hate- 
 ful, is it utterly extinct and only known amongst 
 the crimes of history? Then why last week, 
 " What a pity that I am not beautiful ! Why did 
 not God give me a fine voice or handsome features 
 — something that would have made me be followed 
 after and admired?" Why yesterday, "Is that a 
 dinner for a Christian V [Under one cover there 
 was nothing but manna, and the other was only 
 quails.] Why this morning such fuss and fury 
 because a chimney smoked, or because in some 
 
MURMUES. 225 
 
 well-meant arrangement of your papers a tract had 
 been mislaid which you wished to read? Wliy 
 that monotone of peevishness, discontent, fault- 
 finding which runs through the lives of many, and 
 which, if noticed, unhinges and makes unhappy 
 those around them, and which, if no notice be 
 taken of it, renders their own rage still fiercer? 
 You call it climate, weather, a flaw in the peptic 
 processes, the Englishman's privilege of grumbling. 
 But we fear that if the truth were known, it would 
 turn out an old disease with a new name. It does 
 not need much Hebrew to ascertain that it is 
 nothing more nor less than murmurings. 
 
 But what 's the harm of it ? Why, this harm : 
 God was good to Israel. He had done for them 
 what He never did for any nation. He had chosen 
 them for Himself as His peculiar treasure. Stoop- 
 ing down upon them. He had snatched them from 
 chains and tyranny, and at that very instant, as on 
 eagle's wings, was bearing them to a good land and 
 a large. And they should have been thankful and 
 trustful, and remembering that they were in the 
 arms of Omnipotence — those arms which had 
 snatched them from under the scythed chariots of 
 Pharaoh, and which, flying over the Eed Sea 
 billows, did not let them drop into its weltering 
 waters, — would it have been too much if, in any 
 emergency, they had calmly stood still to see God's 
 
 p 
 
226 MUEMURS. 
 
 salvation, and if in their daily marcli they had 
 made the passes re-echo with their songs of rejoic- 
 ing? God was good to Israel, and, as praise is 
 comely, He would have delighted in aught that 
 betokened consciousness of His benefits and trust 
 in His care. Instead of this they soon forgot His 
 mighty works, and from over the graves of these 
 grumblers the Lord proclaims to His people in all 
 time, " Harden not your hearts as in the provoca- 
 tion, as in the day of temptation in the wilderness : 
 when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw 
 my works. Forty years long was I grieved with 
 that generation, and said, It is a people that do err 
 in their heart, and they have not known my ways. 
 Unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should 
 not enter into my rest."-^ 
 
 Am I wrong in surmising that this is peculiarly 
 a sin of God's people ? not that they are more apt 
 than others to indulge in complaints and despond- 
 ency ; but do they not tolerate in themselves a 
 peevish, foreboding, murmuring spirit to a degree to 
 which they would be terrified to indulge almost any 
 other sin ? 
 
 And is it not wicked ? Are you not under the 
 cloud — the guiding pillar ? Have you not the hope 
 that God for Christ's sake will take you to heaven ? 
 Have you not been baptized into Christ ? Do you 
 
 1 Ps. xcv. 8-11. See also 1 Cor. x. 1-12. 
 
MUEMUKS. 227 
 
 not profess to be His disciples, and in Him have 
 you not often found as often as you sought it 
 refreshment for your soul — spiritual meat and 
 spiritual drink? And should not the thought of 
 your high distinction fill you with habitual grati- 
 tude, and so with habitual happiness ? 
 
 And is it not unwise? This creating of your 
 own crosses, this embittering of your own mercies, 
 this chiding with your lot, this quarrelling with the 
 Most High, this falling- out with fellow -pilgrims, is 
 it not foolish and unwise? What advantageth it 
 you that God is good, if you neglect His gifts or 
 push them from you ? What the better will you be 
 of the Saviour's grace and power, if you cannot 
 trust Him? What the better are you of all the 
 blessings which God sends you in providence and 
 in the gospel, if you won't allow that they are 
 meant for you — if instead of closing over them the 
 warm and thankful hand of faith, you nibble at 
 them with the long metallic pincers of a technical 
 theology — if, instead of taking home that great 
 cargo of blessings which Christ sends you in His 
 word, and living on them day by day, you leave 
 them miles off in the bonded warehouse of your 
 creed ? 
 
 Oh, my friends, far be from us the heartless- 
 ness which would make light of real afflictions, or 
 which would speak as if there were no such thing 
 
228 MURMURS. 
 
 as pain and sorrow. But the sorest sufferers are 
 seldom the loudest complainers, and by bringing 
 God near, a real affliction usually drives murmurs 
 far away. " I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, 
 because Thou didst it." " For this shall every one 
 that is godly pray unto Thee. Surely in the floods 
 of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. 
 Thou art my hiding-place ; thou shalt preserve me 
 from trouble ; thou shalt compass me about with 
 songs of deliverance." We have seldom found a true 
 mourner who murmured. The struggle might be 
 hard but the strength was imparted, and we have so 
 often seen the peace which passeth understanding 
 keeping the heart from which a great joy had de- 
 parted, that — like the blind man when asked, 
 "What shall we do to make this man happy?" and 
 who answered, " Put out his eyes " — we have some- 
 times felt that for causeless complaints and fanciful 
 grievances there is a remedy real though dreadful in 
 an actual bereavement. And this suggests that the 
 true relief under little and every- day trials must 
 be found where we seek for support under great 
 tribulations. 
 
 And what is that ? Like the Israelites we have 
 our Shekinah — our cloud of glory and of guidance 
 in which God hath put His Name, — only more arti- 
 culate and nearer hand, in the Volume of the Book. 
 The very sight of it should be reassuring. In its 
 
MURMURS. 229 
 
 mere presence there is a source of hope ; in its 
 great and precious promises there is everlasting 
 consolation. 
 
 But when we consult it more particularly, we 
 find that to bring our own spirits into the right state, 
 they need to be under the direct influence of God's 
 Spirit. How it is that He reaches our minds and 
 works upon them we hardly know, but that He can 
 do it we are told, and that if sincerely asked He 
 will. If we are selfish. He is benevolent: if we 
 have faint love to Christ, He loves Him and delights 
 to glorify Him ; if we are slow to believe. He is the 
 author of faith and can make us trustful ; if we are 
 complainers, He is the comforter. And if we being 
 evil know to give good gifts to our children, our 
 heavenly Father will give His Holy Spirit to them 
 who ask Him. 
 
 And let us remember our mercies. If you had 
 seen the chosen people on the Eed Sea shore, — with 
 that returnless rubicon between themselves and 
 the house of bondage, and their persecutors still as 
 a stone beneath its molten sepulchre, — you would 
 have said, " Israel, who is like unto thee, a people 
 saved of the Lord? The deliverance of this day 
 will never depart from your memory, and all the 
 rest of your pilgrimage you will continue singing to 
 the Lord who hath triumphed so gloriously." And 
 yet one little week destroyed the tune, and changed 
 
230 MURMURS. 
 
 hosannahs into murmurs. And we shall mncli mis- 
 take if we imagine that any single mercy, however 
 surpassing, can of itself awaken life-long thankful- 
 ness or even secure habitual happiness. I have 
 known people surprised into enormous fortunes, and 
 after the first rapture was over they relapsed into their 
 wonted suUenness, and wandered about amidst their 
 wealth with the old verjuice in their tempers and 
 the old scowl on their faces. And I have seen men 
 rejoicing on the Eed Sea shore, — tears in their eyes 
 and rapture in their looks, — because they had 
 escaped from Satan's bondage, and feeling as if they 
 could never lose this blessedness ; and even these I 
 have lived to see dwindle down into "murmurers, 
 complainers, and spots in the feast of charity." 
 And this mainly because they had forgotten God 
 their Saviour, and the wondrous things He had done 
 for them.-^ And whilst this confirms what we have 
 already said, — that in order to keep up the memory 
 of a mercy we need a Eemembrancer, one constant 
 as is God Himself, and who can come near our 
 spirits as God's Spirit can ; it also shows that we 
 ought to stir up our own minds by way of remem- 
 brance. That great deliverance, — the salvation 
 wrought by Christ, and Christ Himself. Sabbaths 
 are invaluable mementos, and so are sacraments, 
 and all high and hallowed seasons. But over and 
 
 iPs. cvi.21, 22. 
 
MURMURS. 231 
 
 above we must put forth an active effort. "We must 
 stir up our minds, we must look back, and look 
 around, and try to revive the feeling with which 
 first we stood on our Eed Sea shore, and shouted, 
 " The Lord is my strength and my song, and he is 
 become my salvation." 
 
 Then, suppose we try to invert the process. We 
 are ingenious in finding out desiderata : it may not 
 be the best Latin, but it would be an excellent habit 
 if we tried to find out the suppeditata, — the wants 
 that have been supplied and the blessings that have 
 been sent even without our asking. A mighty 
 inventory :— The Saviour — The Word of God — The 
 hope of glory — The pardon of sin— Eternal life, 
 even now begun — The Holy Spirit — Our British 
 bu'thright — Our nineteenth century — These books 
 — These friends — This family circle still in sight — 
 And other members in Heaven — This morning's 
 meal. 
 
XV. 
 
 ^Ixt BtctiloQXXZ,^ 
 
 "And God sjDake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, 
 which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
 house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me," 
 etc. — Exodus xx. 1-17. 
 
 If it takes some time to learii, it also takes some 
 time to forget. Before he fell away from God's 
 friendship, man had enjoyed a wonderful intimacy 
 with his Creator ; and as the Lord God used to talk 
 with Adam in the cool of the day, we can easily 
 believe that our first father made attainments in 
 Divine knowledge such as have been vouchsafed to 
 none of his descendants. And setting out of sight 
 those perfections of the Godhead which he had no 
 occasion to know, if asked to name the greatest 
 theologian who has ever lived, we doubt if we 
 should name Calvin or Aquinas, — nay, if we should 
 name even Paul or Moses. For clear and unclouded 
 knowledge, for child-like and familiar intimacy, we 
 are apt to think that no one has yet come near the 
 student and worshipper of Eden : we fancy that 
 
 ' Preached before the British Society for the Evangelisation of the 
 Jews. 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 233 
 
 before Lis fall Adam knew by intuition, and hs the 
 result of affectionate intercourse with Heaven, a 
 great deal which his descendants have not yet been 
 able to recover. 
 
 And what he thus learned we have no reason to 
 suppose that he ever afterwards forgot. The Fall 
 banished him from Paradise, but it did not annihilate 
 his memory ; and he lived on for nearly a thousand 
 years thereafter, we have every reason to believe, a 
 penitent and a preacher of righteousness. He lived 
 on — that old- world's Bible — able to tell all that he 
 had learned in the days of innocence, with the 
 addition of that Gospel which had been revealed to 
 him on the day of his mournful exile ; and to every 
 conscience-stricken Lamech, to every guileless God- 
 fearing Abel, to every devout and heavenly-minded 
 Enoch throughout successive centuries, he could 
 repeat the things which he had heard and seen, nor 
 need any have felt helplessly benighted who could 
 inquire at such an oracle. 
 
 And long after our first father fell asleep, the 
 light still lingered. It was no scanty nor corrupt 
 creed which issued from the Ark, and well had it 
 been for the world had the morning spread upon 
 Mount Ararat gone on, and brightened into perfect 
 day. But it soon began to fade. Men did not like 
 to retain the true God in their knowledge, and it 
 was not long before darkness covered all the earth. 
 
234 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 and gross darkness every people. Idolatry was all 
 but universal, and no less universal were the accom- 
 panying immoralities and crimes. 
 
 At this conjuncture, to save the scanty relics of 
 primeval truth, and to receive and preserve further 
 revelations, the Lord took this method. Water 
 spilt upon the ground cannot be gathered up again. 
 It sinks into the soil. There were tons of it yester- 
 day, but if you go out to fill your pitcher to-day, it 
 all is gone. If you want to preserve the precious 
 element you must prepare a tank or reservoir. You 
 dig a pool, and to prevent it from leaking you line 
 the sides with concrete or with marble closely fitting ; 
 and if carefully covered over or buried in the cool 
 heart of the mountain, in such a storehouse it may 
 be kept for years. Exotic flowers or foreign plants, 
 if seeded on the mountain-side or inserted in the 
 meadow amongst the promiscuous herbage growing 
 there, soon get choked and disappear. If you wish 
 to transmit from season to season, or from age to 
 age, the flaming glories of the Cape or the rich fruits 
 of the tropic, you must provide a garden enclosed — 
 you must keep out the weeds and the ruffian wea- 
 ther. And so to preserve trutlis and lessons for 
 which there was no predisposition in a fallen world, 
 — from which there was rather an aversion in the 
 mind of the promiscuous multitude, the Lord " took 
 in a little piece of holy ground." He fenced in the 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 235 
 
 Hebrew nationality, and fitted it for receiving His 
 successive revelations. Within the enclosure of 
 their mountains and the desert surrounding, and 
 within the enclosure still more effectual of their 
 peculiar institutions. He secluded them and walled 
 them in, and made them His own conservatory, — a 
 conservatory where such truths as the unity and 
 sjjirituality of God, mediation, atonement for sin, 
 the promise of Messiah, should survive uninjured, 
 and where should flourish institutions so humane 
 and so holy as the Sabbath and the synagogue, 
 sacrifice and a provision for the poor. The water of 
 life was in danger of being lost if it rained indis- 
 criminate on a besotted world ; and so the Most 
 High prepared a reservoir. He dug it deep and 
 lined it carefully. By terrible punishments He 
 weaned the nation from idolatry, and by laws 
 defining their very food, He made them a peculiar 
 people. That ritual was the asphalt or cement with 
 which He lined the reservoir, and then, to make 
 assurance doubly sure, into the inner tank, the iron 
 cistern of a written record pouring the full flood of 
 saving knowledge, He provided for the thirst of 
 all ages. He provided so that in all the coming 
 centuries when the poor and needy cried unto the 
 Lord, they should be able with joy to draw water 
 from the wells of salvation. 
 
 As the Lord said to Israel (Ex. xix. 5), "If ye 
 
236 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 will obey my voice and keep my covenant, ye shall 
 be a peculiar treasure to me above all people : ye 
 shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy 
 nation :" a sacred community, a sacerdotal society, 
 a kingdom of priests. And as "the priest's lips 
 should keep knowledge," it was to be Israel's func- 
 tion to receive and preserve the lively oracles ; — 
 they were to be in an attitude evermore to learn 
 God's will, and they were to be careful to maintain 
 in the midst of a forgetful world His worship and 
 His way. 
 
 In connexion with the Life and Times of Moses 
 we have so far traced the process by which the Most 
 High prepared the peculiar people. Amidst bond- 
 age and abuse we have seen the chosen family grow 
 into a mighty multitude ; and now, rescued by the 
 outstretched arm of Jehovah, torn from the grasp of 
 Pharaoh, and sped through the trough of the sun- 
 dered sea, we find that rescued multitude beginning 
 to realize its distinct and independent nationality. 
 Fifty days have passed since that night so memor- 
 able when the fiery piUar gave the sign and showed 
 the path to the marching million, and now con- 
 ducted into the very depths of the desert, and 
 prepared by such miracles as the manna and the 
 smitten rock, the people were ready to receive the 
 first, and, in its accompaniments, the most stupend- 
 ous of aU the revelations. 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 237 
 
 'No scene could be more suitable. Enclasped 
 between the two arms of the Erythrean Gulf is tliat 
 enormous labyrinth of dry valleys and desolate 
 mountains into the midst of which the wanderers 
 now had penetrated, — a region new to them, but 
 not unknown to their leader, for in that same Horeb 
 he had fed the flock of Jethro, and there at the 
 burning bush he had received his great commission. 
 And we can easily imagine what a strange and 
 solemn region it would be to Israel, — come away 
 from the Nile, broad and overbrimming, to these 
 ravines, down which nothing flowed but rivers of 
 hot air ; from the loud streets and stirring lanes of 
 Goshen and Memphis to that listening silence which 
 seemed to await the voice of the Eternal, and those 
 lofty peaks which, relieved by no verdure, and 
 interrupted by no life, carried the eye that rested on 
 them straight up to heaven. If it be the perfection 
 of a place of worship to have nothing to distract the 
 mind, there could be nothing more stern and still 
 than this inland solitude, with its granite pinnacles 
 soaring up nine thousand feet into the firmament, 
 — an Alpine skeleton, a Tyrol or Savoy, with its 
 forests and its snows torn off and its lakes dried wp, 
 — the ruins of a world. 
 
 So awful was the sanctuary, so sublime the pulpit 
 to which Jehovah led His people, that they might 
 hear His memorable sermon and receive the statute- 
 
238 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 book of heaven. After two days of solemn prepara- 
 tion, the tMrd morning dawned, and Sinai was lost 
 in clouds, and as from around the dark pavilion the 
 flame-like ministers went out and in, and an aerial 
 trumpet mingled with the crashing thunder, the 
 voice began, " I am the Lord thy God who have 
 brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
 house of bondage : Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me;" and proceeded till all the emphatic 
 words were spoken, which, afterwards graven on 
 stone by God's own finger, are still recognised by 
 Christian, Jew, and Moslem as the basis of all 
 religion and all morals — the great standard of right 
 and wrong, — the Ten Commandments. On this 
 code we have but a few remarks to offer. 
 
 1. The Decalogue is unique. God gave to the 
 Israelites many other statutes and ordinances, but 
 these others He gave by the hand of the lawgiver — 
 silently and in personal communion imparted them 
 to Moses, and by Moses they were conveyed to the 
 people. But when the ten commandments were 
 spoken, Moses himself was on the plain and on a 
 level with the rest of the congregation. And al- 
 though they were afterwards consigned to stone 
 tablets, so terrible was the voice of the Eternal — so 
 like to dissolve their quaking frames as thrill after 
 thrill it cut and hewed the fleshly tables of their 
 hearts — that they said to Moses, " Speak thou with 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 230 
 
 US, and we will hear ; but let not God speak with 
 us, lest we die." Both as spoken by God's own 
 voice, and as written on the rock by God's own 
 finger, these commands stand forth alone — their 
 supreme importance sufficiently betokened by their 
 prominence in the forefront of all the rest, and by 
 their promulgation so directly and entirely Di\dne. 
 
 2. Then the Decalogue is marked by wonderful 
 simplicity and brevity. The second, third, and 
 fourth commandments go into some detail, but like 
 the rest each of them can easily be condensed into 
 a single sentence ; so that they will merit the old 
 Talmudic name, The Ten Words, — Words so plain 
 that he who runs may read, so portable that he who 
 forgets everything besides may easily remember 
 them ; and thus a wonderful contrast to our human 
 legislation — to our British statute-book, for instance, 
 which it would need an elephant to carry and an 
 (Edipus to interpret, and which is so ingeniously 
 complicated that the most conscientious are con- 
 tinually transgressing it, and rogues are constantly 
 surprised by finding that they have unintentionally 
 fulfilled it. 
 
 3. These ten words are as comprehensive as they 
 are brief and authoritative. The first table is religi- 
 ous, and the second is moral. The first table fixes 
 the right object of worship — the one supreme, self- 
 existent Jehovah, — the right mode, direct and with- 
 
240 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 out the intervention of images, — the right spirit, 
 reverently and with godly fear. The second or 
 ethical table is the protector of life^ of person, of 
 property, of character, and as the rest sufficiently 
 cover the outward conduct, it closes the series with 
 one which reaches the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart, — Thou shalt not covet. 
 
 On the several precepts it is impossible to 
 expatiate; but a remark may be useful regarding 
 two or three points. 
 
 In the second commandment we have a reason 
 annexed : " Bow not to idols ; for I the Lord thy 
 God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the 
 fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 [generation] of them that hate me, and showing 
 mercy unto thousands [of generations] of them that 
 love me." To some this threatening sounds severe 
 and arbitrary ; but we fancy that their misgiving 
 arises mainly from a misconception. It is not 
 meant for a moment that the pious son of an 
 idolatrous father shall be punished for his father's 
 idolatry ; for in such a case (to use the language of 
 Plutarch^) " the punishment destined for the race 
 is cut off by the son passing over from the family 
 of vice to that of virtue." Thus Josiah, the devout 
 son of the idolatrous Amon, was not only exempted 
 from any punishment for his father's sin, but on the 
 
 ^ Quoted by Kaliscli. 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 241 
 
 ground of his individual piety the penalty hanging 
 over an idolatrous country was suspended until 
 Josiah should be safe beyond its reach : " Behold, I 
 will bring evil on this place (saith the Lord), be- 
 cause they have forsaken nie, and have burnt 
 incense unto other gods ; but because thine oivn 
 heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself 
 before the Lord, behold, therefore, I will gather thee 
 unto thy fathers in peace ; and thine eyes shall not 
 see the evil which I will bring upon this place." ^ 
 It is only if the third and fourth generations con- 
 tinue haters of God themselves that they will be 
 punished at once for their own sin and the sin of 
 their God-hating or idolatrous ancestor. 
 
 This is all that is said, but even if it had said a 
 little more could we not still understand it ? Can 
 we alter the constitution of human nature ? Dare 
 we complain of the course of Providence ? In that 
 constitution is not the parental or transmissive prin- 
 ciple so deeply embedded that we shall never get 
 it out ? and in the course of that Providence is not 
 good on the one hand and misery on the other 
 continually flowing through this parental channel ? 
 And do you not feel justified in continually making 
 appeals of this nature : — " My good friend, if you 
 have no regard for yourself, think of your family. 
 You are living without religion, and at this rate 
 
 1 2 Kings xxii. 16-20. 
 Q 
 
242 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 your children are likely to grow up reckless and 
 irreligious also ; your boy is already mimicking 
 your oaths. Your fierce passions are reappearing 
 in your child. Your tippling will be transmitted, 
 and with it the rags and wretchedness, even unto 
 the third and fourth generation of them who like 
 yourself love liquor and abuse themselves with 
 strong drink. And do not say that it is hard in 
 God to punish the poor innocents. If they are 
 innocents God will not punish them ; but it is you 
 who are doubly doing it. Now that they are com- 
 paratively innocent, you are punishing them by 
 throwing away your good name — a legacy better 
 than any gold you could have left them ; and you 
 are punishing them by squandering their comforts, 
 and you are doing infinitely worse. You are not 
 only a bad father yourself, but by ruining their 
 principles and corrupting their morals you are 
 doing all that you can to deprive them of the 
 fatherhood of God. By making them bad, you are 
 ruining their prospects for either world. Have you 
 no heart? have you no pity for your own? by 
 bringing them up in idolatry, in Sabbath-breaking 
 and dishonesty, will you put them out of the pale 
 of that mercy which is abundant enough for a 
 thousand generations? will you put them within 
 sweep of that law which, when the sin is inherited, 
 sends also the penalty, and thus have your own 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 243 
 
 crime perpetuated and your iniquity visited in 
 children like-minded to the third and fourth 
 generation ? " So that, rightly understood, we can 
 see in the words nothing harsh or unkind. The 
 fifth commandment concludes with a promise, — 
 that second commandment concludes with a warn- 
 ing, — not a mere threatening, but a warning which 
 includes both threatening and promise. " Honour 
 thy parents," says the one, " that thy days may be 
 long." "Be loyal to thy God," says the other, 
 " that it may be well not only with thyself, but 
 with thy children after thee :" and if there be any 
 difference, it is a purer and wider affection — a 
 more extended self-love to which the second com- 
 mandment addresses its appeal. 
 
 A wonderful code ! and a wonderful occasion ! — 
 
 " The terrors of that awful day, though past, 
 Have on the tide of time some glory cast ;" ^ 
 
 and it is impossible to calculate the impressions and 
 impulses wdiich date from that hour of awe and 
 wonder. As the people witnessed the thunderings 
 and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet, 
 and listened to the proclamation, " I am the Lord 
 thy God, who brought thee out of Egypt," there 
 remained no doubt in any mind. In every fibre of 
 their frame they felt and knew that Israel's God 
 was present, and all their bones could say, " Who 
 
 1 Joanna Baillie. 
 
244 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 is like unto tliee, Lord?" Thou art Lord of 
 heaven and earth, and there is none besides. And 
 all infirmities, all idolatrous backslidings notwith- 
 standing, of that great impression neither they nor 
 their children ever rid themselves entirely. A 
 sensation as of Sinai is in the heart of Israel still ; 
 and it has been a great thing for the world that 
 through all these three thousand years there has 
 existed in the midst of the nations — amidst pagan 
 polytheism and papal idolatry — a race of mono- 
 theists and spiritual worshippers — a race witnessing 
 for the unity and inconceivable majesty of the 
 Most High. 
 
 An occasion to which we, my friends, are parti- 
 cularly indebted ; for, as an eloquent Israelite has 
 remarked, " The life and property of England are 
 protected by the laws of Sinai. The hard-working 
 people of England are secured a day of rest in 
 every week by the laws of Sinai." -^ And more 
 than that : for all the rest of Eevelation, and all 
 the subsequent Hebrew history rotate round Sinai. 
 The heroine of Jewish warriors and the inspiration 
 of Jewish minstrels were equally animated by the 
 first and great command ; and as the same writer 
 adds, "As an exponent of the mysteries of the 
 human heart, as a soother of the troubled spirit, 
 to whose harp do the people of England fly for 
 
 1 Disraeli's Tancred. 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 245 
 
 sympathy and solace ? Is it to Byron or Wordsworth, 
 or even the myriad-minded Shakespeare ? No ; the 
 most popular poet in England is the sweet singer of 
 Israel, and by no other race except his own has his 
 odes been so often sung. It was ' the sword of the 
 liOrd and of Gideon' that w^on for England its 
 boasted liberties ; and the Scotch achieved their 
 religious freedom, chanting upon their hill-sides the 
 same canticles which cheered the heart of Judah 
 amid their glens." 
 
 Thus the commands were given, and thus on 
 adamantine tablets they survived — a standard of 
 righteousness universal and everlasting. But alas ! 
 though the Law is holy, man is w^eak and sinful, 
 and if a perpetual restraint to evil, that law has also 
 been to the most strenuous obedience among the 
 children of men a standing reproof, a perpetual 
 despair. With its concluding prohibition of evil 
 desires, and with that love to God and our neigh- 
 bour w^hich is confessedly its necessary pervading 
 spirit, no man has ever gone to God and said, " I 
 have kept it all. My case is complete. Are there 
 any more commands, for in thought, word, and deed 
 I have perfectly obeyed the Ten V But like David, 
 and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, in the saintliest men self- 
 knowledge has extorted the confession, " Woe is me, 
 for I am a man of unclean lips 1 My very righteous- 
 ness is filthy rags. God, enter not into judgment 
 
246 THE DECALOGUE, 
 
 with thy servant : for in thy sight shall no man 
 living be justified." 
 
 So stood the law for fifteen centuries — a monitor, 
 a reprover, a mirror, into which, on the great day of 
 atonement, pride might look and see the grey hairs 
 in its goodness, the blemishes in its best obedience. 
 There it stood for fifteen centuries a challenge to 
 mankind — a sword which none could wield, a trum- 
 pet which none could sound, armour which, if any 
 one could wear and walk in it, the gates of heaven 
 would open to him of their own accord. 
 
 There it stood, and there it would still be standing, 
 a mere protest and reproach, had not the Lawgiver 
 Himself become the Law-fulfiller. But at last that 
 Son was given to our human family, whose name is 
 AVonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God ! In the 
 guise of our mortality He brought to our extremity 
 the help of Heaven, and going up to the Decalogue 
 and brushing off the dust of ages, He read it all 
 anew. " Think not that I am come to destroy the 
 Law," He said ; " I am come not to destroy, but to 
 fulfil." And forthwith He began. To every precept 
 rendering heartfelt homage. He presented wdthal a 
 complete obedience : — in His own emphatic words, 
 fulfilling. Where others read only prohibition. He 
 read requirement, and their negative He relieved and 
 brought up into the positive. " Do no murder," was 
 with Him "Be meek, be merciful, be magnanimous ; " 
 and from the time that, in saving lives and healing 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 247 
 
 sickness, He struck the first note, till, in " Father, 
 forgive them," He breathed forth His spirit, respon- 
 sive to the sixth command ; He sounded the entire 
 diapason, and showed Himself a true law-fulfiUer. 
 " Keep holy the Sabbath," was with Him not merely 
 " Sit still and do nothing," but, in order to keep 
 holy the Sabbath, He filled it up with heaven, and 
 by healing broken hearts, by curing life -long lazars, 
 by filling sinful spirits with thoughts benign and 
 beautiful. He secured for the Lord of the Sabbath 
 new love, and for the day itself new sanctity. And 
 so all throughout, till over-against the two tables of 
 requirement arose a life of fulfilment — on the one 
 side a holy law, on the other a holy history — on the 
 one side a precept as perfect as the God from whom 
 it came, on the other side an obedience as perfect as 
 we could wish our own to have been. 
 
 And now, brethren of the House of Israel, we have 
 much for which to thank you. To you belong " the 
 giving of the law and the promises." In the hand 
 of God you have been the benefactors of the human 
 family. The substructures of our faith rest upon 
 your Bible. We sing your Psalms ; we believe your 
 Prophets ; as the rule of our conduct we recite your 
 Ten Commandments. The heaven to which we 
 aspire is the heaven of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 
 At the same time we frankly confess that we have 
 no hope of reaching it through our own holiness. 
 Do not twit us, as well you may, by saying, " So 
 
248 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 mncli the better for you, because you have none." 
 If it come to that, may it not go hard with the 
 strictest Jew ? Another scene awaits us more awful 
 than even that morning at Sinai, and as, before God's 
 nearing sanctity, dust and ashes feel like to die, the 
 least sinful might be thankful to say to some Moses, 
 " Speak thou for us," and might give the world for 
 some passport to heaven other than his personal 
 purity. 
 
 Such a passport we who are Christians believe 
 that we have found, and for it we own ourselves 
 indebted to One who was not the less a member of 
 your nation, because we believe Him to have been a 
 great deal more. According to our view, Messiah has 
 not only offered a sacrifice for sins, but He has magni- 
 fied the law and made it honourable. As the repre- 
 sentative of His people, and on their behalf. He has ful- 
 filled all righteousness, and with that righteousness 
 His Divine Father is well pleased. We owe much to 
 Moses, but we owe more to Messiah. Moses handed 
 down from God to your fathers a law right but rigid, 
 and said, Do this and live ; but Messiah handed up 
 to God, on behalf of His people, a perfect obedience, 
 and from God He hands down to His people in 
 return a pardon all complete, and says, Take this 
 and live. Moses led your fathers to the fenced and 
 flaming skirts of Sinai, but Messiah leads us to the 
 feet of His Father and our Father, and teaches us 
 to sav, " Our Father who art in heaven." Such 
 
THE DECALOGUE. 249 
 
 happiness as we have we owe it all to One whom, 
 according to the flesh, we owe to you. By a singular 
 combination of circumstances, the most of you have 
 been led to repudiate His claims, although to our 
 minds He is the glory of Israel, and that all- import- 
 ant Personage, for the sake of whom your nation has 
 received and still maintains its mysterious and un- 
 precedented existence. But, forgive me for saying 
 it, you are ^vrong ; your position is a false one ; for 
 the facts of history and the facts of consciousness 
 are both against you, We respectfully urge you to 
 examine for yourselves, and as the result of candid 
 inquiry we can only anticipate one conclusion. From 
 that conclusion your minds at this moment revolt ; 
 but if it should prove, as we predict, you will even- 
 tually wonder at your own repugnance. And amongst 
 other results, besides making the Bible a book true, 
 beautiful, and significant beyond all that it has ever 
 been before, one happy effect will be to give the 
 Decalogue a look no longer threatening and penal, 
 but friendly and propitious. Finding in the Law- 
 giver the Law-fulfiller, the commandment will ac- 
 quire a new character, and you will find accom- 
 plished that promise of the Lord by Ezekiel, " A 
 new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I 
 put wdthin you ; and I will cause you to walk in 
 my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and 
 do them." 
 
XVI. 
 
 ^Ite fato ixnh its Julfiller, 
 
 " And Moses called all Israel, and said unto tliem, Hear, Israel, 
 the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, 
 that ye may learn them, and keep and do them. The Lord our 
 God made a covenant with us in Horeh. The Lord made not 
 this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all 
 of us here alive this day. The Lord talked with you face to face 
 in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, (I stood between the 
 Lord and you at that time, to shew you the word of the Lord : 
 for ye were afraid by reason of the tire, and went not up into the 
 mount,) saying," etc.— Deut. v. 1-21. 
 
 Such are the Ten Commandments. Such is that 
 great code of religion and morals on which the 
 legislation of Great Britain is founded, and which 
 pervades the jurisprudence of Christendom. In many 
 sanctuaries it is read over every week, and to each 
 precept the w^orshipper responds with the prayer, 
 " Lord, incline our hearts to keep this law ;" and 
 even where it is not written on the wall or recited 
 from the altar, few are the memories to which it is 
 not familiar. Indeed, so omnipresent is it now in 
 the life, the ideas, and the language of our country, 
 that the difficulty is great to throw^ ourselves away 
 from it even in thought, so as to mark its features 
 
 250 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 251 
 
 and admire its symmetry. We cannot imagine a 
 world without it, and so we can hardly estimate the 
 service which has been rendered by its promulgation, 
 not that its details were new even at Mount Sinai, 
 but that then and there the rules of eternal riGjhte- 
 ousness, which had been lying about the world — 
 tossed along from age to age, vague, amorphous, and 
 unauthoritative — were handed forth from heaven 
 anew, and, clear beyond cavil, sufficiently compact 
 for the smallest memory, and comprehensible by the 
 feeblest understanding, became to mankind a statute- 
 book for ever — a statute-book direct from the pre- 
 sence of Infinite Majesty, and in the solemnities by 
 which it was sanctioned, suggestive of that awful 
 tribunal when it will reappear as the law by which 
 the righteous Judge shall render to every man 
 according to his deeds. 
 
 I. The Decalogue is the first statute-book which 
 has abolished idolatry and polytheism. " No God 
 but me," says the first commandment ; " No like- 
 ness or image," says the second ; and in thus learn- 
 ing the unity and spirituality of the Divine nature, 
 Israel was at once put in advance of the rest of the 
 world by at least fifteen hundred years. In the most 
 important of all knowledge, the little Samuel who 
 could repeat these two commands was wiser than 
 Socrates or Cicero adoring a statue. He was wiser 
 than Homer, or Hesiod with his lords many and 
 
252 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 gods many ; lie was wiser than Confucius, or Lucre- 
 tius without a god at all. 
 
 2. Another peculiarity of this statute-book is its 
 consecration of one day in seven to the service of 
 Jehovah. The temple was a sacred place, and in 
 the middle ages it was usual to claim for churches 
 the right of sanctuary, so that whosoever took re- 
 fuge within the hallowed precincts was safe from the 
 avenger. But it is not to a holy place but to a 
 holy day that God has given this protecting privilege. 
 Addressing a world to which He had said, " In the 
 sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread," and 
 addressing a community in which there was a great 
 deal of forced labour, many bondmen and many 
 bondmaids, the purport of it was — "Yes, labour. 
 You require labour from your servants, and I require 
 labour from you. Toil is the taskmaster, entitled 
 to seize you and to take it out of you wherever he 
 finds you ; but there is a sanctuary. There is one 
 asylum into which I invite you, and into which I 
 forbid my taskmaster to follow you. Every seventh 
 day shall be an absolute cesspttion. It is the Sabbath 
 of the Lord your God, when you are to do no work 
 yourself, nor are you to ask your man-servant or 
 maid-servant to do any." The blessing which this>- 
 weekly respite brought to Israel was unspeakable, 
 and of all the boons which from Palestine have over- 
 flowed the surrounding world, there is not one which 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLEE. 253 
 
 has been more widely shared, or which ought to be 
 more gratefully guarded ; none which the sons of 
 industry should so resolutely refuse to sell, or which 
 they should so scorn to steal from one another. To 
 quote the words of one whose testimony is not the 
 less valuable that he despised all religions and hated 
 Christianity. Says Humboldt, — ''The selection of 
 the seventh day is certainly the wisest that could 
 have been made. To some extent it may be optional 
 to shorten or lengthen labour on other days, but in 
 regard to men's physical power and for perseverance 
 in a monotonous emj)loyment, I am convinced that 
 six days is just the true measure. There is likewise 
 something humane in this, that the beasts which aid 
 man in his labour share the rest. To lengthen the 
 interval would be as inhuman as foolish. When, in 
 the time of the Eevolution, I spent several years in 
 Paris, I saw this institution, despite its Divine origin, 
 superseded by the dry and wooden decimal system. 
 Only the tenth day was a day of rest, and all cus- 
 tomary work was continued for nine long days. This 
 being evidently too long, Sunday was kept by several 
 as far as the police permitted, and the result was too 
 much idleness." 
 
 3. A third peculiarity of this legislation is that it 
 extends to the thoughts and intents of the heart. 
 "Thou shalt not covet." Thou shalt not cherish 
 wrong desires. Thou shalt not only forbear from 
 
254 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLEll. 
 
 doing the sinful deed, but slialt forbear from thinking 
 it. In all human legislation there is no such require- 
 ment. If there were, who could enforce it ? If the 
 tongue is silent, if the face is blank, if the hands are 
 motionless, who can read his neighbour's heart ? who 
 can go and testify against him, " I saw him imagining 
 the king's death. I saw a great greedy thought of 
 liis devouring a widow's house, traced the chimneys 
 going down as you trace the horns of a kid down the 
 throat of a constrictor. I saw him in a fearful fit of 
 inward passion, shaking his spirit's fist, foaming mth 
 revenge and rancour, and pouring forth unuttered 
 imprecations?" Man looketh on the outward ap- 
 pearance, and as long as our neighbour's outward 
 conduct is correct we accept him as a good citizen. 
 But the Lord looketh on the heart. God is a Spirit, 
 and our truest self is a spirit also ; and unless that 
 hidden man of the heart be right, all outside accuracy 
 profiteth nothing. And so in this its solemn and 
 heart- searching close, as well as in its august com- 
 mencement, the Decalogue reminds us of Him with 
 whom we have to do. And although a command- 
 ment which to many occasions small concern, there 
 is no one more fitted to arouse and quicken con- 
 science. The Pharisee who has fancied that he was 
 advancing straight up to heaven's gate, along the 
 avenue of ample and well-observed commands, has 
 come to a standstill on reaching this one. High arch- 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 255 
 
 ing above, with room on either side, a gateway for a 
 camel, rises the first command, and, with head erect 
 and broad phylactery, he marches on, full sail, " God, 
 I thank thee that I am not as other men, — no 
 idolater, no blasphemer, no murderer, no extor- 
 tioner," — when suddenly he strikes his head a hard 
 blow on the lintel, for the vista ends in " Thou shalt 
 not covet ;" and although he stoops and tries to 
 wriggle through, the effort is in vain. It is the 
 needle's eye, too strait for anything which does not 
 yield the point, and cry, " God be merciful to me a 
 sinner." 
 
 4. A fourth peculiarity is the place here given to 
 parental authority, and consequently to filial piety. 
 It has been much debated whether the fifth com- 
 mandment closes the first table or commences the 
 second ; and we deem it more interesting that such 
 a controversy should exist, than important to have 
 it decided. It shows how well the precept would 
 suit for either purpose, — to shut up our duties to 
 our Father in heaven, or to preface our duties to 
 one another. Like that remarkable architecture still 
 found in the land of Bashan, where a door will be 
 hewn out of the solid rock, and door, rock, and hinge 
 are all a single stone, the two tables make but one 
 law, and the fifth commandment is the axis or hinge 
 on which they open and close — the connecting point 
 where you pass from the one to the other. "Ee- 
 
256 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 vere thy God," says the first table, and "Honour 
 thy father and mother," says this first command- 
 ment with promise : "Be a virtuous citizen," says 
 the said table, but in order to this be first an 
 obedient child." " God teaches us reverence for 
 Himself through the blessed name of ' Father,' and 
 inspires love for what is holy by the boundless 
 heart of ' mother.' He spreads His smile over the 
 face of duty by the socialities of home, and gives us 
 foretastes of heaven in the domesticities of the 
 Church on earth : so that if parental love be trifled 
 with, and those domestic influences in which is so 
 much of God's own Spirit set at nought, the hold of 
 man upon God is all but snapped."-^ So, children, 
 obey your parents in the Lord, for it is right, and it 
 is requisite to your highest welfare. God will not 
 accept you as His dear and duteous child unless 
 you be affectionate and deferential to those parents 
 whom in life's first outset He has made so much 
 His own vicegerents, and whose names you uttered, 
 and with whose faces you grew familiar before you 
 learned His own. And likewise, ye fathers, provoke 
 them not by anger and caprice. Be so affectionate 
 that they needs must love you, but withal so firm, 
 so fair, so consistent that they still must " honour" 
 you. As far as possible let your rule be a copy 
 from God's own government, — kind without blind- 
 
 1 Yes or No, 1. 105, slightly altered. 
 
THE LA.W AND ITS FULFILLER. 257 
 
 ness ; merciful and gracious, forgiving transgression 
 yet not clearing the guilty; not spoiling by soft 
 indulgence, and yet withholding no good thing 
 when there is no good reason ; insisting on obedi- 
 ence, yet always open to that cry of the repentant 
 prodigal, "Father, I have sinned against thee." 
 Where there go hand in hand a mother's love, 
 tender, self-denying, inextinguishable, and a father's, 
 wise, firm, and far-seeing, the best natural founda- 
 tion is laid for piety ; and he who has learned to 
 honour such a father and mother has many helps 
 and advantages for loving, trusting, and revering 
 the God whom he has not seen. 
 
 So there it stood, this law so holy, just, and good, 
 so brief, so plain, so self-commending in its require- 
 ments, so majestic in its origin, — there it remained 
 by Jehovah's finger written on the tablets of stone ; 
 by Moses transcribed in the Book of the Covenant ; 
 engraven on the minds of the people by the solem- 
 nities of so august a promulgation. There that law 
 remained, a revelation of its Author's holiness, a 
 preacher of righteousness, a protest against the sins 
 of men, and furnishing a text of tremendous import 
 to every Elijah or Malachi or John the Baptist who 
 came enforcing the claims of God, and appealing to 
 the conscience of his countrymen. There it stood, 
 a challenge to the world, — a moral dynamometer 
 asking which of the sons of Adam could -raise it to 
 
258 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 the tenth or topmost mark, and thus earn eternal 
 life — a brazen gate, with a new Eclen on the other 
 side, but closed with a ward-lock of ten letters, 
 which could not be wrenched open, and of which no 
 man possessed the password. 
 
 There it stood for fifteen centuries, when at last 
 Christ came. Entering on His mission, one of the 
 first things He did was to resuscitate this law and 
 expound it all anew. The grand old pillar had dis- 
 appeared. A jungle of weeds and worthless creepers 
 had sprung up around it ; and instead of insisting 
 on the pure heart and the holy life, the school- 
 divines of Palestine, the ritualists and word- splitters 
 and tradition-mongers, laid down rules about the 
 shape of scarves and the breadth of hems, and 
 preached about the washing of pots and tables and 
 the paying tithe of mint and cumin. With the 
 sharp sword of indignant rebuke the Lord Jesus 
 cleared away this noisome tangle, and whilst the 
 newts and blind worms wriggled off from the 
 unwelcome light, the Foundation of God, that 
 memorial column inscribed with man's duty and his 
 Maker's will, stood forth to view, and beholders 
 were astonished at its majesty. The Sermon on the 
 Mount was (so to speak) a sequel and a supplement 
 to Sinai; but, as befitted the dawn of a more spiritual 
 era, there was no cloud nor voice of trumpet to stun 
 the soul and overwhelm the sense ; but it was the 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 259 
 
 simple force of truth, the tremendous power of 
 heart- searching words, — words penetrating as Omni- 
 science, and weighty as unchanging righteousness. 
 Then, as in many others of His sermons, the Lord 
 Jesus expounded the Decalogue. From its negative 
 He printed off the positive, and showed how beauti- 
 ful is the resultant holiness, how blessed is the soul 
 thus brought to harmony with God ; and by some- 
 thing more divine than any rhetoric, by the autho- 
 rity with which He spake, and by His own sublime 
 separateness from sin. He awakened in His hearers 
 at once a wonder and a wistfulness : " N'ever man 
 spake as this man. Oh that I were like Him !" 
 
 More especially did the Lord Jesus fill out the 
 law, and bring its sayings into relief, by laying 
 stress on its pervading principle. Of that law the 
 epitome and essence is, "Thou shalt love the Lord 
 with all thy soul, and thy neighbour as thyself" 
 As we saw a little while ago, in thus grasping the 
 springs of action, in claiming dominion over the 
 thoughts and intents of the heart, this code differs 
 from all human legislations, and, we may add, from 
 all human religions ; but it differs still more glori- 
 ously in the same direction in this master-principle, 
 in thus dictating holy love as the mainspring of all 
 goodness, the one sufficient but essential motive of 
 all duty to God and those around. This epitome 
 was not unknown to Israel. It occurs repeatedly 
 
260 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 in the Pentateuch, and it was recited by the young 
 ruler in his interview with Christ. But the Lord 
 Jesus continually returned to it. It was the motive 
 with Himself, and He delighted to dwell on it. In 
 morals and religion love is the supreme philosophy. 
 " If men loved God supremely, there would be no 
 idolatry upon earth, nor any of its attendant abomi- 
 nations ; no profaning of the name of God, nor 
 making a gain of godliness ; no perjuries nor hypo- 
 crisies, no pride nor self-complacency under the 
 smiles of Providence ; no murmuring, sullenness, 
 nor suicide under its frowns. Love would render 
 it men's meat and drink to obey God, and it would 
 take everything well at His hands. And if they 
 loved their fellow-creatures as themselves, there 
 would be no wars between nations ; no strifes 
 between neighbours ; no intolerance nor persecuting 
 bitterness in religion ; no deceit nor overreaching in 
 trade : there would be no murders, thefts, nor rob- 
 beries ; no cruelty in parents or masters ; no in- 
 gratitude nor disobedience in children or servants; 
 no unkindness nor treachery between friends ; no 
 jealousies nor bitter contentions in families ; in 
 short, none of those streams of death, one or more 
 of which flow through every vein of society, and 
 poison its enjoyments."'^ 
 
 But the Lord Jesus was not content with ex- 
 
 1 See Andrew Fuller's Gosjoel its own Witness, ch. iii . 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 261 
 
 pounding the law of God : He exemplified His own 
 exposition. All that the law required He did ; all 
 that enters into our idea of perfect goodness He 
 was. If love be the fulfilling of the laAV, love was 
 but another name for Jesus Christ. And so, con- 
 fronting the precept in all its breadth, fathoming it 
 in all its depth, He met it with a corresponding 
 compliance — an obedience in which nothing was 
 exaggerated, nothing was omitted. Going up to the 
 adamantine gate with its lock of the tenfold ward, 
 it opened to the word " Fulfilment," and entering in, 
 the Fulfiller of all Eic^hteousness walked with God — 
 in that presence where there is fulness of joy, and 
 in the enjoyment of that ineffable complacency 
 wherewith the Father regarded that well-beloved 
 Son wlio always did the things that pleased Him. 
 
 Viewed as a covenant — as the condition of life 
 everlasting — the Lord Jesus has fulfilled the law. 
 To all its requirements, on behalf of His people He 
 has presented an obedience spotless as His own 
 perfection and as magnifying to that law as may be 
 imagined from His own intrinsic glory. " Your work 
 He hath done, your debt He hath paid," and in 
 quitting the scene of His sojourn He hath left an 
 open door through which the weakest and least 
 worthy may enter in, and through the merits of the 
 great Forerunner find acceptance and the smile of 
 God. 
 
262 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 Christ has done more. To Israel rescued from 
 Egypt the Decalogue was not merely a code of laws 
 or rule of conduct, but it formed the basis or 
 condition of a national covenant. On the side of 
 Israel that covenant was perpetually broken and its 
 conditions never were fulfilled ; but looking for- 
 ward to a happier time, by the mouth of Jeremiah 
 Jehovah promised, " Behold, the days come, saith 
 the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the 
 house of Israel, and with the house of Judah ; not 
 according to the covenant that I made with their 
 fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to 
 bring them out of the land of Egypt ; (which my 
 covenant they brake, although I was an husband 
 unto them, saith the Lord ;) but this shall be the 
 covenant that I will make with the house of Israel ; 
 After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law 
 in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; 
 and will be their God, and they shall be my 
 people."^ 
 
 These days have come. The first of them was 
 Pentecost. Ten days after Christ's return to heaven 
 — remarkably enough, it was the anniversary of 
 Sinai, the day when the law was given, the fiftieth 
 day after the Feast of Passover : but instead of 
 thunder and the voice of a trumpet there was a 
 noise as of a rushing mighty wind, and instead 
 
 1 Jer. xxxi. 31-33. 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 263 
 
 of forked lightnings on the distant mountain- 
 top, on the heads of every one of them were 
 flaming mitres, — tongues of bright but unconsum- 
 ing fire. It was no second giving of the law; it 
 was the inauguration of the gospel. There were 
 no stone tables in their hands, but heaven was in 
 their hearts, for the Holy Spirit was there. Effec- 
 tually set free from the old legal spirit, they were 
 full of the mind that was in Christ, and so full of 
 might and power on behalf of Jesus ; and they not 
 only spake with tongues as the Holy Spirit gave 
 them utterance, but began to lead such lives and 
 entered on such a career as the world could little 
 have expected from the men of Galilee. 
 
 And, brethren, this is our dispensation. The 
 Holy Spirit has been given. ISTot as in the mani- 
 festations which made Pentecost so marvellous, but 
 in mild, assuring, strengthening power, God's Spirit 
 will be with you if you ask His aid. He will 
 awaken in you a hunger after righteousness, — a 
 hunger which in the Father's house shall be abun- 
 dantly filled. He will teach you to know the Lord, 
 so that you shall not need to ask your neighbour. 
 He will show you God's covenant — that new and 
 better one of which the terms have been fulfilled 
 by the Divine Surety, so that you have only to take 
 the benefit. And freeing you from the law's con- 
 demning, threatening power, He will write it in 
 
264 THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 
 
 your heart, endearing it as the rule of your own 
 conduct and the revelation of God's righteousness. 
 
 Nor will you like this law the less because its 
 opening sentence is the gospel : " I am the Lord 
 thy God : thou shalt have no other gods before 
 me." ' Thou shalt have no god but me.' Addressing 
 every sinful child of Adam, the Possessor of heaven 
 and earth says, ' For thy own God take me.' Now 
 that in the person of Jesus his Son, now that in 
 the person of Him Avho says, " I am Jesus your 
 Brother," God has drawn near to our guilty family ; 
 His overture to each is, "I am the Lord thy God," 
 and the right reciprocation is, " My Lord and my 
 God." " my soul, thou hast said unto Jehovah, 
 Thou art my Lord." Is it not wonderful ? Is not 
 this to "bow the heavens and come down"? Is 
 not this a condescension truly divine, that address- 
 ing dust and ashes the Eternal should say — that 
 addressing a weak empty worm the All-sufficient 
 should say — that addressing sin and impurity 
 Infinite Holiness should say, " I am thy God " ? 
 But He says it. To put an end to all cavil He 
 puts the gospel into the form of a precept, and 
 from the top of Sinai and in the forefront of the 
 Decalogue He preaches that gospel, and to every 
 hearer says — what is the end and essence of the 
 gospel, — " For thy own God take me." Some 
 think it presumption to appropriate a gift unspeak- 
 
THE LAW AND ITS FULFILLER. 265 
 
 able or to accept too kind an invitation ; but surely 
 it is no presumption to obey a precept — it is great 
 presumption to refuse compliance with God's com- 
 mand. And God commands you to be happy. He 
 commands you to be saved. He commands you, 
 as your very first act of obedience, to become His 
 subject and His son. Will you not reply, " Lord, 
 thoLi art my God. Other gods have had dominion 
 over me ; but now their bands are loosed, and I am 
 thy servant. Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? 
 and there is none upon earth that I desire beside 
 Thee, My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is 
 the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." 
 
XYIL 
 
 ^h^ i:hc0j:ratii: l^ing anb the 
 (Dath of MhquntL 
 
 (SINAT COVENANT.) 
 
 '" And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto liim out of 
 the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, 
 and tell the children of Israel ; Ye have seen what I did unto the 
 Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you 
 unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, 
 and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto 
 me above all people ; for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be 
 unto me a kingdom of jDriests, and an holy nation. These are 
 the words Avhich thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." — 
 Ex. XIX. 3-6. 
 
 " And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and 
 all the judgments : and all the people answered with one voice, 
 and said. All the words which the Lord hath said will we do. 
 And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in 
 the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve 
 pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent 
 young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt- 
 offerings, and sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the Lord. 
 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons ; and 
 half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the 
 book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people : 
 and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obe- 
 dient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, 
 and said. Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath 
 made with you concerning all these words." — Ex. xxiv. 3-8. 
 
 Flavius Josephus was a learned Jew who flour- 
 islied in the latter half of the first century, and w^ho 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 267 
 
 wrote two admirable works on Hebrew history. 
 Besides these he published a tract, still extant, and 
 known as Joseplius against Apion. Of this tract 
 one object is to explain to Gentile readers Hebrew 
 peculiarities, and to vindicate as facts what many of 
 them deemed mere Jewish fables. In the course 
 of it, having occasion to explain the Hebrew polity, 
 he uses the following language : — " Some legislators 
 have placed their people under a monarchy, others 
 under an oligarchy, and others have resolved them 
 into a republic. But our legislator took no account 
 of these modes of government, but instituted what 
 we may call a Theocracy^ — ascribing all power and 
 authority to God, and persuading them to have 
 regard to Him as the author of all their privileges. 
 He taught them that it was impossible to escape 
 God's observation in any of their outward actions or 
 even in any of their inward thoughts ; and his legis- 
 lation had this advantage over other legislations, that- 
 whereas they made religion a part of virtue Moses 
 made all virtues a part of religion. As so many 
 ingredients in piety towards God, he included 
 justice, and fortitude, and temperance, and the 
 loyalty to one another of the different members of 
 the commonwealth." ^ 
 
 As far as I know, it is in the passage that the 
 
 ^ Tis diroi iSiaaafiepos tov Xoyov ^eoKpariav. 
 2 Jos. c. Apion, ii. 17. 
 
268 THE THEOCEATIC KING AND 
 
 word " Theocracy " first occurs — a word so con- 
 venient and so constantly used, and which is so 
 admirably descriptive of Hebrew polity, as distin- 
 guished from every other. Commonwealths like 
 Athens and republican Eome were self-governed ; 
 monarchies like Persia and Egypt were king- 
 goveriiccl ; but Israel, rescued from Egypt, and as 
 God designed to plant it in Palestine, was Gocl- 
 governecl. JSTeither Moses, nor Aaron, nor Joshua 
 claimed to be king or first consul or president of 
 the republic ; but the Lord was the king, the Lord 
 was the lawgiver, and Moses and all the rest were 
 only His ministers or servants — the channels or 
 internuncios through whom He published His edicts 
 and made known His will. 
 
 Although eventually modified, although con- 
 ceding to the foreseen desire of the people to have 
 a visible head of their commonwealth, Jehovah 
 Himself gave directions as to the regal office, yet 
 the true and original type was, in the word coined 
 by Josephus, a theocracy, or government by God. 
 And had the people but been worthy, no position 
 could be nobler. Here they were just rescued from 
 thraldom — clean sundered from Egypt and its 
 abominable idolatries, baptized in the Eed Sea, 
 on the eagle wings of Omnipotence transported into 
 this large place with its sabbatic silence and its 
 impregnable seclusion, and Jehovah draws near, 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 269 
 
 and if they themselves are inclined and feel eqnal 
 to it, He offers to be Himself their captain and 
 their king. " Let it be a compact. Make a cove- 
 nant and keep it, and ye shall be all my own — from 
 all earth's peoples selected as my own peculiar 
 treasure, — a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." 
 Had the people but been equal to it here was an 
 occasion unprecedented, an opportunity given to a 
 new and virgin nation to start on a career the like 
 of which had never been exhibited, receiving their 
 laws from God and from Him deriving their pro- 
 tection, — God dwelling amongst them palpably, 
 fighting their battles, brightening their abodes, pre- 
 serving their going out and coming in, and with 
 His approving presence glorifying their entire 
 existence. 
 
 The ideal was imperfectly realized. Except to a 
 very partial extent, and for brief intervals, the 
 nation never rose to its high calling, and seldom 
 was it that either the camp of the pilgrimage or the 
 land of the promise suggested the heaven on earth 
 which it ought to have been. But no knowledge 
 of Israel's frailty, no foresight of human failure, 
 hindered the Most High from propounding His own 
 gracious plan, and showing Moses in the mount its 
 pattern — a pattern suggestive of higher things else- 
 where — for if God was so kind and condescending 
 as to come down and offer to be their sovereign, 
 
270 THE THEOCRATIC KING AND 
 
 how could earthly life more nearly approximate the 
 life of the celestials, what earthly citizenship 
 could come nearer the citizenship in heaven, than 
 that nationality which recognised the Holy One of 
 Israel as its almighty and its only King ? 
 
 "When in the history of a nation any great epoch 
 arrives, it is usual to emphasize it by some solemn 
 celebration. A great deliverance has taken place, 
 a new dynasty has acceded, a new prince begins to 
 reign ; and on the one side a constitution is pro- 
 claimed or a code is promulgated — on the other the 
 oath of allegiance is taken, and the people vow to 
 be faithful to the sovereign. 
 
 In one sense Jehovah had all along been the head 
 of the Hebrew race, and as far back as the days of 
 Abraham He had sworn, " I will be a God to thee 
 and to thy seed after thee." But now that seed 
 had become a mighty nation, a separate and self- 
 contained community, and, released from slavery, it 
 was in a position to judge and act for itself; and 
 therefore the opportunity was given to the nation 
 by a distinct and deliberate act to accept or reject 
 Jehovah as its king. 
 
 On Jehovah's side a constitution had already 
 been proclaimed, and a code promulgated : " If ye 
 will obey my voice and keep my covenant, ye shall 
 be my peculiar treasure, a kingdom of priests, a 
 holy nation ; " and mounting His theocratic throne 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 2 7 1 
 
 amidst thunder and lightning and the pomp of 
 flaming ""seraphim, the Eternal had proclaimed, as 
 the essence of His code and the basis of all further 
 legislation, the Ten Commands. And now the 
 time was come that the people should plight their 
 faith, and vow allegiance to their mighty but con- 
 descending Monarch. And with a view to this they 
 all were mustered, and by some suitable arrange- 
 ment Moses orally communicated " all the words of 
 the Lord, and all the judgments." They were good 
 precepts and gracious promises, and the people could 
 only answer with one voice, " All the words which 
 the Lord hath said will we do." This preliminary 
 assent received, Moses retired and consigned to 
 writing the various provisions — the Decalogue, and 
 most probably those regulations contained in the 
 intervening chapters ; and next morning early he 
 came forth with the written document, and met the 
 assembled people. 
 
 That day was a high day, — the swearing-in of an 
 assembled people to their Eedeemer- Sovereign, — 
 and with much work to do, Moses rose betimes. 
 Beneath the mountain, and at God's footstool, he 
 reared an altar, and facing it, to denote the twelve 
 tribes of Israel, he set up twelve pillars ; and as 
 soon as the young men appointed for the purpose 
 had slain the calves and bullocks, and half the blood 
 had been poured upon the altar, and whilst the 
 
272 THE THEOCllATIC KING AND 
 
 smoke of the oblation began to ascend into the 
 serene summer sky, Moses produced the roll of the 
 covenant, and from the volume of that book read all 
 the words which God Himself had dictated ; and 
 when to the august recital from over all the plain 
 a multitudinous murmur answered, " All that the 
 Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient," to 
 ratify the deed Moses took a hyssop- sprinkler, and, 
 dipping it in mingled blood and water, he showered 
 the crimson rain over the swarming throng, and by 
 way of signature and seal, with a few drops of the 
 self- same blood he bedew^ed the all-important docu- 
 ment, and set it aside till that sacred shrine was 
 ready, soon after known as the casket of the cove- 
 nant, the Ark of the Testimony. And from this 
 great swearing-in at the foot of the mount which 
 might not be touched, the people passed away with 
 a sublime and awful consciousness that God had 
 spoken and so had they. " I wdll be your God," had 
 Jehovah said, '' And all that Thou hast spoken will 
 we do," had they replied, and, registered in heaven, 
 it seemed as if the vow were written on the floor 
 and roof at once of that great desert sanctuary. 
 Gone into God's memory, if from their own it ever 
 faded, the stones of that altar and these twelve 
 pillars would cry aloud and condemn the covenant- 
 breakers ; and even although the volume of the 
 book should perish, and no blood of confirmation 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 273 
 
 blush again to confront the false swearers, the words 
 of that great vow had burned deep into every con- 
 science, and rather than that God should be without 
 a witness Sinai would once more break silence, and 
 that "faithful witness in heaven," the sun, which 
 that morning shone over the grey wilderness of 
 Paran, would publish to the universe the treason. 
 
 It was a great event, the transaction of that day, 
 which on the separate and self-contained nationality 
 of Israel placed a crown of glory, by superadding 
 Jehovah's sovereignty. Every devout and believing 
 soul through that populous camp, looking at the 
 fiery-cloudy column, as it moved ahead, at once a 
 royal standard and an aerial fortress, could say to 
 himself with thrilling assurance, " The Lord is our 
 defence ; the Holy One of Israel is our King." 
 And although in later centuries between the people 
 and their King immortal and invisible a monarch 
 was interposed, both visible and mortal, faith and 
 affection always ascended to Jehovah as the true 
 king in Jeshurun, and under pious princes like 
 Hezekiah and Josiah, when the covenant was re- 
 newed, overlooking, or at least overleaping the 
 earthly ruler, the people swore again the oath of 
 allegiance to the Sovereign Supreme, the Divine 
 and undying Head of the Hebrew commonwealth. 
 
 This theocratic element accounts for many things 
 in Hebrew institutions and Old Testament history. 
 
 s 
 
274 THE THEOCEATIC KING AN^D 
 
 For instance, it explains the severity with which 
 idolatry was punished. It was not only a sin, but 
 a treason. Amalek was not more truly the king of 
 Moab, Pharaoh was not more exclusively king of 
 Egypt, than Jehovah was king of Israel ; and the 
 Israelite who bowed the knee to Bel or Moloch, who 
 adored the golden calf or Apis, he not only com- 
 mitted a gross and disgraceful sin, but a capital 
 offence, and for revolting against his Liege, his Lord 
 and Sovereign, he was liable to be cut off from 
 among his people. And although there were good 
 reasons over and above why such outrages as the 
 golden calf should be visited by signal retribution, 
 it must not be forgotten as an important element 
 that the thousands who were cut down on that 
 occasion were mutineers against their Captain, — 
 rebels caught red-handed in revolt against their 
 King. And so, although in a somewhat different 
 way, the same principle explains other incidents in 
 which our first feeling may be a sense of extreme 
 severity. For instance, soon after Jericho was 
 taken, the Israelites were mysteriously repulsed in 
 an assault on Ai. Inquiring at the Lord, the 
 answer was, " Israel hath sinned, and they have 
 transgressed my covenant : for they have even taken 
 of the accursed thing, and they have also stolen, 
 yea and dissembled also, and have put it among 
 their own stuff." As Josephus says, " The Israel- 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 275 
 
 ites were taught that nothing could escape the 
 observation of their Divine King, either in their 
 outward actions or their inward thoughts." But 
 this was a lesson hard to learn, and needed to be 
 enforced by some startling instances. And here 
 was one. Flushed with an easy and surprising suc- 
 cess at Jericho, they were all the rather chagrined 
 by their defeat at Ai. It seemed utterly inexpli- 
 cable, but, though burning to revenge the disaster, 
 they were told it would be vain to resume the 
 battle till a secret fault was confessed and put 
 away. So all pleading ignorance, it was referred 
 back to God's omniscience, and when amongst the 
 assembled million His finger was firmly placed on 
 the son of Carmi, " My son," said Joshua, " give 
 glory to the God of Israel, and confess what thou 
 hast done ;" and as the golden wedge and Baby- 
 lonish garment came to light, the troubler of Israel 
 paid the forfeit not more of his covetousness than 
 of his atheism, and as the smoke of Achan's funeral 
 pile ascended in the vale of Achor, spectators slowly 
 turned away musing on the painful lesson, but 
 penetrated with the conviction, — " Yea, darkness 
 hideth not from Thee." 
 
 Need I say how, under the new dispensation, the 
 theocratic principle has been perfected ! It is no 
 longer national but personal. The Most High does 
 not now lay hold of a captive nation, and, wrenching 
 
276 THE THEOCRATIC KIXG AND 
 
 it from the jaws of the oppressor, carry it on eagle 
 wings into some desert sanctuary ; but He lays hold 
 on an individual. Some slave of Satan He singles. 
 out, and, rescuing him from his cruel taskmaster. 
 He brings him to Himself and says, " I will be thy 
 God ; take hold of my covenant and thou shalt be 
 my peculiar treasure;" and thenceforward made a 
 king and a priest himself, he becomes a God-governed 
 man. 
 
 And indeed the only way to be truly free is to be 
 God-governed ; the only man who walks at liberty 
 is the man who is " under law to Christ." During 
 the days of the Saviour's sojourn there w^ere men 
 possessed by the deviL As if to impersonate and 
 make palpable those evil propensities by which bad 
 men are borne along, and in order to make more 
 personal the contest between the devil and Him 
 who came to destroy the works of the devil, in some 
 instances it was permitted to demons to take per- 
 sonal possession of bad men ; that is to say, when a 
 bad man had sold himself to some course of wicked- 
 ness, an evil spirit took possession of him and urged 
 him on to yet wilder extremes of the self- same 
 wickedness ; and even although lucid moments might 
 intervene during which the man grew sick of his 
 foul familiar, and would fain have turned him out, 
 the unclean spirit was sure to come back again and 
 carry his unhappy victim captive at his will; and 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 277 
 
 it was not till Jesus spoke that mighty word, which 
 " devils fear and fly," that the foul fiend absconded 
 to his own place and left the vacated house open to 
 a worthier occupancy. If that vacated sanctuary 
 received the Saviour — if into his thankful heart the 
 man received his mighty Deliverer, by becoming the 
 servant of Christ he became master of himself. He 
 who had been fiend-possessed became self-possessed 
 by becoming God-possessed, — Christ's servant, and 
 so his own master. 
 
 And so, if you have not given yourself to God 
 you are still the servant of sin ; his servant you are 
 whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of 
 obedience unto righteousness. If you have not 
 given yourself to God, you are still in the bond of 
 iniquity ; you carry your Pharaoh within — a tyrant 
 in the shape of some master-sin, or "many masters" 
 — so many petty tyrants, so many domineering task- 
 masters in the shape of divers lusts and passions — 
 foul desires, fantastic follies, lawless affections, to 
 which you yield by turns — sometimes cursing your 
 infatuation, and sometimes drowning remorse in the 
 delirium of a new excitement, till, your strength and 
 substance wasted, youth gone, strength and beauty 
 gone, money gone, health gone, life going, eternity 
 coming, you exclaim, " 1 have played the fool ; I 
 have erred exceedingly." 
 
 Do you desire deliverance ? Would you be free 
 
278 THE THEOCRATIC KING AND 
 
 from this hateful dominion, this horrible lust, this 
 frantic possession ? Then give yourself to God. In 
 the lucid interval fall at Christ's feet, and, like the 
 dispossessed demoniac, beg that He would not leave 
 you, nor suffer you to leave Him ; and as Christ's 
 Spirit takes possession of your mind, as in answer to 
 prayer the Comforter comes, in the peace and the 
 purity which He sheds abroad, unruly emotions will 
 subside, angry passions will obey the voice, " Peace, 
 be still ! " and a stronger than Satan having entered 
 in and expelled the usui3)er, you will taste the 
 blessings of a renovated heart and a heavenly rule, 
 and will find that you have returned to your right 
 mind in returning to your rightful Master. 
 
 In the gospel, God invites each of us to take 
 Himself for our God, and He offers to take each of 
 us as His ]Deculiar treasure ; and it is well that, like 
 Israel at Sinai, this kind offer of His should be met 
 by an act of our own, express and explicit. Personal 
 covenanting and solemn self- dedications were not 
 unusual among our godly ancestors, and documents 
 like the following still are extant : — 
 
 " Oct 20, 1686.— I take God the Father to be my 
 chiefest good and highest end. I take God the Son 
 to be my Prince and Saviour. I take God the Holy 
 Ghost to be my Sanctifier, Teacher, Guide, and Com- 
 forter. I take the Word of God to be my rule in 
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 279 
 
 all my actions, and the people of God to be my 
 people in all conditions. And this I do deliber- 
 ately, sincerely, freely, and for ever. 
 
 (Signed) " Matthew Henry." 
 
 And as a date, as a definitive landmark and start- 
 ing-point, there may be an advantage in a form thus 
 written and subscribed ; but if made too minute, 
 above all, if in any way it assume the form of an 
 oath or vow, it will become a snare and a source of 
 subsequent distress and embarrassment, for, after 
 every declension and failure, you will feel that you 
 have been unfaithful in your covenant, and that you 
 have sworn deceitfully. Happily for us, God's voice 
 has been obeyed, and His covenant has been kept 
 on our behalf by our glorious Eepresentative, and 
 it only remains for us, by a meek and thankful 
 assent, to enter into all the blessings thus bought 
 for us, whilst, with a voice more subduing than the 
 trumpet of Sinai, Christ's sacrifice calls for our sur- 
 render. Ye are not your own ; ye are bought with 
 a price ; tell the Saviour how thankful you are, and 
 how willing ; and whilst you deeply feel that for all 
 your future constancy you are dependent on His own 
 good Spirit in the competition for your heart's supre- 
 macy, do you decide for that King who reigns in 
 righteousness, and who makes His subjects kings 
 and priests unto God His Father. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 ''And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, On the first day of the 
 first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the con- 
 gregation ; and thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony," 
 etc.— Ex. XL. 1-38. 
 
 Israel had escaped from Egypt ; the Moral Law- 
 had been given from Mount Sinai ; the Most High 
 had revealed Himself as the self-existent and eternal 
 I AM, to the exclusion of the lords many and gods 
 many which Egypt and other nations adored, and a 
 very solemn transaction had just been completed, 
 on which, as on a nail fastened in a sure place, 
 hung the whole future of the peculiar people. To 
 the nation whom He had so signally rescued, whom 
 through the Eed Sea and across the burning sands 
 He had borne on wings of His own omnipotence 
 into the heart of Horeb, to the nation resting in 
 this safe asylum on the way to its promised land, 
 Jehovah drew near, and, claiming to be their God, 
 He at the same time offered to be their King. He 
 
 280 
 
THE TABERNACLE. 281 
 
 offered to bring them into a relation to Himself 
 such as no other nation had ever occupied : — " If 
 ye will obey my voice and keep my covenant, ye 
 shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all 
 people ; . ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests 
 and a holy nation." And God's gracious overture 
 the people joyfully reciprocated. On a set day and 
 a solemn, they took the oath of allegiance to their 
 Heavenly King, " All that the Lord hath said will 
 we do, and be obedient;" and thenceforward the 
 Head of their nation was neither Pharaoh nor 
 Moses nor any mortal man ; they had a Sovereign 
 who was deathless and invincible : their only and 
 immediate Monarch was God ; the Holy One of 
 Israel was their King. 
 
 This theocracy or government by God was the 
 great distinction of the Hebrew people ; and the 
 day when it was ratified by covenant maybe deemed 
 the main hinge of Hebrew history. That great 
 transaction, the National Covenant, we have already 
 considered, and we must now turn our thoughts to 
 some of those details which necessarily followed. 
 
 And in considering these, we must not forget 
 that Israel's King was also Israel's God, and that in 
 the peculiar politico-religious organization which the 
 arrangement involved, it was needful to provide at 
 once for the worship of God and for the social wel- 
 fare of the people. 
 
282 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 The Most High — the heaven of heavens cannot 
 contain Him ; but linked to matter as we are, living 
 in these bodies and limited to a certain space, 
 locality enters into our thoughts when we think of 
 God ; and ever since we were banished from the 
 bowers of Eden, the longing of all earnest spirits 
 has been after something palpable and near, a long- 
 ing after God manifest and God in the midst of us 
 as well as after God propitious and reconciled. 
 
 This longing of devout and earnest spirits was 
 most graciously met in the camp of Israel. From 
 the memorable night of the exodus there had always 
 moved before the camp or hovered over it a mystic 
 symbol, cloud by day and fire by night, the sign and 
 cognisance of their celestial Leader. And now 
 Jehovah said, "Let them make me a sanctuary, 
 that I may dwell among them ;"^ and to the invi- 
 tation the people replied so willingly that gold and 
 silver came in to the amount of a quarter of a million 
 sterling.^ With this large offering, acting under 
 Divine direction, and carrying out the work with 
 the aid of Aholiab and Bezaleel, Moses reared and 
 furnished forth the tabernacle. 
 
 It was a great day, that New -Year's day when 
 the tabernacle was at last erected. It was twelve 
 months after their departure from Egypt, and the 
 first New-Year's day which they had spent in the 
 
 1 Ex. XXV. 8. 2 Ex. xxxviii. 24-31 ; see Kitto's Pictorial Bible. 
 
THE TABEENACLE. 283 
 
 wilderness. Everything was ready. At measured 
 intervals were placed sockets or pediments of silver, 
 and on these were set up columns of acacia-wood so 
 thickly overlaid that they stood up like eight-and- 
 forty golden pillars, joined together by transverse 
 beams, similarly resplendent. Inside of these pillars 
 were suspended gorgeous tapestries, with cherubim 
 wrought into a ground alternately blue, purple, and 
 scarlet ; and outside the walls were covered suc- 
 cessively by hair- cloth, by a sort of morocco leather, 
 and on the top of all, as a protection from the weather, 
 by a stout pall of badgers' skins ; and the roof 
 resembled the sides, so that if any one could have 
 entered, he would have found himself in an oblong 
 apartment, about fifty feet in length and one-third 
 as broad, roofed over and hung round with curtains 
 of delicate texture, all wimpling with the golden 
 wings of cherubim. But inside the full length was 
 never seen, for at the end ten cubits were cut off to 
 form the Holy of Holies. This inner shrine was 
 divided from the rest of the tabernacle by a veil or 
 beautiful curtain of byssus, and contained the Ark of 
 the Covenant. That ark was a golden chest, into 
 which Moses put the two tables of the Law, Aaron's 
 blossoming staff, an urn full of manna, and the book 
 of the Covenant;^ and it was surmounted by a 
 
 1 Kalisch {Exochis, p. 479) says that the two tables alone were in 
 the ark, the other objects before or beside it. 
 
284 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 throne entirely golden, backed and over-canopied 
 by two clierubs with outspread wings — a mercy- 
 seat or throne of grace reserved for the Shekinah, 
 for Him who, marching in the cloudy pillar, also sat 
 between the cherubim. This inner shrine — the 
 throne -room and presence-chamber of the Eternal — 
 was trod by mortal foot but once a year, on that 
 great day of atonement when, protected by sacri- 
 ficial blood, the High Priest entered — entered to 
 present the propitiation for the people, and returned 
 to show that God was still good to Israel ; but inside 
 the tabernacle the more spacious anteroom called '"'the 
 Holy Place" was accessible to all the priesthood. 
 By night and day it derived its illumination from 
 a massive candelabrum of seven branches, with 
 lamps of oil-olive, softly burning; and this apart- 
 ment had an atmosphere exquisite with odour : for 
 another prominent object in it was a golden altar 
 on which no victim was ever laid, but on which 
 Aaron burned incense twice each day. The other 
 remarkable object in the furniture of this Holy 
 Place was a golden table on which every Sabbath 
 twelve loaves of unleavened bread were placed — the 
 shew-bread or loaves of presentation — on behalf of 
 the twelve tribes, a recognition or remembrance to 
 Him who day by day was giving them their daily 
 bread. All round the tabernacle ran a spacious 
 enclosure, open overhead, but fenced round by cur- 
 
THE TABERNACLE. 285 
 
 tains, with an entrance from the east, and open to 
 every Israelite. The most striking objects within 
 this court of the congregation were a large altar and 
 a basin- fountain of brass. This fountain or laver 
 was intended for the priests, who there washed their 
 hands and feet before engaging in any sacred ser- 
 vice ; and it was interesting as a memorial of female 
 piety. Brass was scarce in the camp of Israel, but 
 the ladies surrendered their burnished mirrors in 
 number sufficient to construct this ornamental tank, 
 a free-will offering.^ 
 
 The tabernacle was a peripatetic shrine, — a cathe- 
 dral that could be carried about, — a temple of canvas 
 and tapestry which accompanied Israel in their 
 wanderings, and which sufficed as a visible centre of 
 worship, till such time as the waving tapestry 
 solidified into carvings of cedar, and the badger- 
 skins were replaced by tall arcades of marble, and 
 the tent had grown to a temple. And that New- 
 Year's day, when Aaron and his sons came forth in 
 the gorgeous garments which they now for the first 
 time put on, and when over the dedicated shrine 
 the cloud descended, and such a glory filled the 
 tabernacle that Moses and the attendant ministers 
 were forced to withdraw, devotion must have felt 
 something like what, on a similar occasion, Solomon 
 expressed, " Will God in very deed dwell with man 
 
 1 Ex. xl. 17-33. 
 
2 86 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 upon earth ? " and as all through that New- Year's 
 night and the many nights succeeding, above the 
 the tent of the testimony there was seen " the 
 appearance of fire until the morning," ^ each believ- 
 ing Israelite laid him down and took his quiet 
 sleep, fearing no evil, for He that keepeth Israel 
 would neither slumber nor sleep. 
 
 It was a fine ending to that first year in the wil- 
 derness, and it is a fine ending to the book of Exodus 
 (xl. 34-38). " At the beginning of the book we 
 found the descendants of Jacob a multitude of iU- 
 treated and idolatrous slaves ; we leave them a free 
 nation, the guardians of eternal truth, the witnesses 
 of overwhelming miracles. Eeleased from the vain 
 and busy worldliness of Egjrpt, they encamp in the 
 silent desert, in isolated and solemn solitude, hold- 
 ing converse only with their thoughts and with 
 their God. Before them stood the visible habitation 
 of Him whom they acknowledged and adored as 
 their rescuer from Egyptian thraldom ; the mysteri- 
 ous structure disclosed to them many profound 
 ideas of their new religion ; and they respected the 
 priests as their representatives and their mediators. 
 Between God and His people communion was 
 opened ; life had its aim, and virtue its guide." ^ 
 
 In order to complete our view of the Hebrew 
 religion and worship, we ought to examine its 
 
 1 Numb. ix. 15. ^ Kalisch on Exodus, p. 621. 
 
THE TABERNACLE. 287 
 
 various sacrifices and ceremonies ; the sin-offerings, 
 the trespass- offerings, the thank-offerings ; the 
 festivals, the passover, the feast of tabernacles, 
 the great day of atonement ; the law of the leper, 
 the laws about priests and Levites. But to do this 
 would need many lectures. Those who would like 
 to examine the subject fully will find abundant 
 information in Bonar on Leviticus, in Principal 
 Fairbairn's Tyj^ology of Scri2Jture, and in Dr. 
 Gordon's Christ in the Old Testament. Of the 
 entire subject there is an excellent epitome in 
 Cowper's hymn on the " Old Testament Gospel," 
 which even those who are most familiar with it will 
 forgive me for reading over : — 
 
 ** Israel, in ancient days, 
 
 Not only had a view 
 Of Sinai in a blaze, 
 
 But learn'd the Gospel too ; 
 The types and figures were a glass 
 In which they saw a Saviour's face. 
 
 The Paschal sacrifice, 
 
 And blood-besprinkled door, 
 Seen with enlighten'd eyes 
 And once applied with power. 
 Would teach the need of other blood 
 To reconcile an angry God. 
 
 The Lamb, the Dove, set forth 
 
 His perfect innocence. 
 Whose blood of matchless worth 
 
 Should be the soul's defence ; 
 
288 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 For He who can for sin atone, 
 Must have no failings of his own. 
 
 The scape-goat on his head 
 
 The people's trespass bore, 
 And to the desert led, 
 Was to be seen no more : 
 In him our Surety seem'd to say, 
 'Behold, I bear your sins away.' " 
 
 Dipt in his fellow's blood, 
 
 The living bird went free ; 
 The type, well understood, 
 Expressed the sinner's plea ; 
 Described a guilty soul enlarged. 
 And by a Saviour's death discharged. 
 
 Jesus, I love to trace, 
 
 Throughout the sacred page. 
 The footsteps of Thy grace, — 
 The same in every age ! 
 Oh ! grant that I may faithful be 
 To clearer light vouchsafed to me ! " 
 
 Eeverting to the Tabernacle : It served its pur- 
 pose. At the time it was set up the worship of the 
 one living and true God had become almost extinct ; 
 but the Tabernacle, with its successor the Temple, 
 was a perpetual protest against idolatry, — a centre 
 and rallying-point to monotheistic worship. And 
 the doctrine of the Divine unity and spirituality has 
 triumphed. Monotheists, or believers in one God, 
 supreme, self- existent, and distinct from the uni- 
 verse He has created, are not only counted by hun- 
 
THE TABERNACLE. 289 
 
 dreds of millions, but they include all that is worth 
 naming of the world's intelligence and civilisation. 
 All the inhabitants of Europe are Monotheists. 
 Every Christian is a Monotheist, so is every Jew, so 
 is every Mussulman. 
 
 But the tabernacle had a purpose still more pre- 
 cise, more practical and home-coming. So to speak, 
 it brought God again into the midst of men. He 
 who in the bowers of Eden had been so friendly and 
 familia,r, but who at man's sin withdrew, and who 
 from that time had rarely broken the silence, this 
 God it again brought into our midst, and recording 
 His name in His appointed place. He declared it to 
 be His fixed abode and chosen dwelling. 
 
 And yet condescending, close-coming as w^as this 
 sojourn of Deity in the Tabernacle of the Testimony 
 — assuring as it was to see in the midst of the camp 
 those symbols of propitious and protecting Omni- 
 potence, and in cases of emergency delightful as it 
 was to be able to inquire at the oracle, and from 
 the Urim and Thummim receive a decisive response, 
 there was still in the midst of the manifestation 
 something withheld, and notwithstanding the local 
 proximity there remained on many a mind a certain 
 sense of remoteness. The symbols were there, and 
 Omnipotence was there ; but the cloud was not 
 God, the fire was not God, the tabernacle was not 
 God ; and there still was room for the prayer, " 
 
 T 
 
290 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 Thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine 
 forth/' and in sight of the Shekinah, and his own 
 face shining with insufferable lustre, Moses still 
 could pray, " Lord, I beseech Thee, show me Thy 
 glory." But as soon as a body was prepared for 
 God's beloved Son, as soon as the Word came and 
 tabernacled amongst us, the glory was beheld for 
 which an expectant Church had sighed and waited, 
 — the glory of the only- begotten, the express image 
 of the Father, full of grace and truth. His name 
 was called Immanuel, God-with-Us; and so express, 
 so complete, so conclusive was the manifestation, 
 above all, so fitted to our frame, so personal, so 
 human, so brotherly, that neither heart nor intellect 
 should ask for more, and none need now repeat the 
 behest of Philip, " Lord, show us the Father, and it 
 sufficeth us," for he that seeth Jesus seeth God. 
 
 "Destroy this temple;" it was no longer a tent 
 but a temple, — " Destroy it," said Jesus, alluding to 
 the tent or temple of His body, " and in three days 
 I will build it up again." Yes, this was the true 
 tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man ! 
 the body that was born of the Virgin Mary, and 
 about to be crucified by Pontius Pilate, — the holy 
 and beautiful house in which the Godhead had 
 dwelt for years, and in whose "moving tent" He 
 had perambulated the towns and villages of that 
 Holy Land, giving forth oracles, attracting to Him- 
 
THE TABERNACLE. 291 
 
 self the guilty, the sin-laden, and such as were out 
 of the way, and finishing off by that great oblation 
 in which the Priest Supreme offered up the Victim 
 Divine, — in which the series ended and the symbols 
 were fulfilled, for the Son of God had offered up 
 Himself. 
 
 That temple they destroyed, but in three days 
 the Divine inhabitant had built it up again — this 
 time a body more beautiful than ever, indestruc- 
 tible, immortal, death- defying, a norm or pattern of 
 that glorious body which the Saviour designs to 
 give to each disciple. And there is in the thought 
 something truly animating. Of the true tabernacle 
 which the Lord pitched, and not man, there is now 
 a restoration unspeakably glorious and absolutely 
 indestructible. Over that celestial body in which 
 Christ hath ascended death hath no dominion ; and 
 in due season each ransomed spirit shall be the 
 tenant of such another temple. The holy and beau- 
 tiful house on the heights of Zion was not a greater 
 advance on the tabernacle, with its ropes and its 
 poles and its canvas, than will be the improvement 
 on the present imperfect and disordered materialism 
 of your house from heaven. It will be a glorious 
 body, one which pain cannot prostrate, which acci- 
 dent cannot damage, which advancing years cannot 
 render less efficient, and one which has for ever 
 done with dying. It will be a body exquisitely 
 
292 THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 organized, where the mind shall have no volitions 
 for which the members shall not find the instru- 
 ment or the vehicle ; where the heart, the under- 
 standing shall have no thoughts nor feelings for 
 which the lips, the eyes, shall not find language. 
 And although looking at some countenance, vener- 
 able or lovely, behind whose translucent veil some- 
 thing of Heaven's glory was enshrined, we may 
 have felt for the moment, " How amiable are Thy 
 tabernacles, Lord of hosts !" could we draw 
 nearer and listen to the language of the actual 
 inmate, we should sometimes find him complaining 
 of straitened space and inappropriate accommoda- 
 tion. " For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, 
 being burdened ; for we know that if our earthly 
 house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a 
 building of God, a house not made with hands, 
 
 eternal in the heavens 'Now he that hath 
 
 wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also 
 hath given to us the earnest of the Spirit." 
 
XIX. 
 
 " I beseech tliee, show me thy glory."— Ex. xxxiii. 18. 
 
 When the funeral of Da Costa took place last 
 month at Amsterdam, when the church was filled 
 with mourners and the grand organ had played a 
 soft and muflded tune, the music grew articulate 
 and the assembly melted into tears as they sang, — 
 
 " Like as the hart for water-brooks 
 In thirst doth pant and bray ; 
 So pants my longing soid, God, 
 That come to thee I may. 
 
 My soul for God, the living God, 
 
 Doth thirst : when shall T near 
 Unto thy countenance approach, 
 
 And in God's sight appear?" 
 
 They felt that the words were true. They were 
 descriptive of the brother departed. As philosopher 
 and historian, as jurist and divine, above all as the 
 sweet singer of the Netherlands, his had been a life 
 of achievement ; but still more conspicuous than all 
 achievement was a certain air of unrest — a certain 
 pressing forward and looking upward — in one word, 
 
294 THE DIVINE GLOEY. 
 
 a certain aspect of continual aspiration. The goal 
 of his spirit was God. It was neither to the temple 
 of fame nor to the chair of science that his ambition 
 had pointed ; but he had showed plainly that the 
 magnet which drew him — which, in the mean- 
 while, made him touch the earth so lightly, and 
 which, by and bye, would draw the very soul forth 
 from the body, — he showed that this mighty attrac- 
 tion was infinite excellence. And now he had 
 reached it. He had reached the livingr God, and 
 was drinking from that river of pleasures for which 
 he had all his life been panting, and tears of trium- 
 phant sympathy mingled with their tenderness. 
 And no doubt it deepened the feeling to remember 
 that the same funeral hymn had sounded over the 
 grave of a still mightier minstrel, Bilderdijk, thirty 
 years before, whose life, like Da Costa's, had been 
 marked by high genius and exalted goodness, but 
 still more by longings after a greatness and good- 
 ness which earth has not got to offer, and which it 
 is needful to put off these bodies in order to attain. 
 AVhere intellectual elevation and deep devotion 
 exist together there is sure to be somewhat of this 
 feeling. Moses is an instance. Through eighteen 
 lectures we have traced his history and his services 
 — as scholar, warrior, patriot, as leader of the 
 Exodus, as mediator between the people and their 
 celestial Monarch; and we have had occasion to 
 
THE DIVINE GLOKY. 295 
 
 admire liim as the man of genius, as tlie man of 
 culture, and above all as the man of God. But 
 nowhere do we get a more vivid glimpse into the 
 depths of his being than just in the words of our 
 text, and, taken in connection with the man and 
 with all the attendant circumstances, they teach us 
 many a lesson. 
 
 1. They teach us that it is GocTs glory which an 
 enhghtened spirit longs to see. There are sights 
 which we are accustomed to speak of as " glorious ; " 
 and of these Moses had seen many. He had seen 
 Pharaoh in all his glory, and as a resident in the 
 court and as a military captain he had seen his 
 own share of martial pomps and ovations. He had 
 seen glorious landscapes — the Xile brimming over 
 with bounty, sunrise from behind the Pyramids, and 
 the majestic mountains of this great wilderness ; 
 and the ninetieth Psalm and all the poems in the 
 Pentateuch show how alive he was to the spectacles 
 of beauty. But the glory after which he panted 
 was God's own : " For Thee, God— O living God ! 
 -T-for Thee." And so, my friends, it is well if you 
 belong to that little company who inherit the earth, 
 for on the most of men this glorious universe is 
 wasted. At sight of ocean, earth, or sky their eye 
 never tingles, their bosom never heaves, the tear 
 never runs over. But if you be not only susceptible 
 but devout, mingling with your emotion, and often 
 
296 THE DIVINE GLORY. 
 
 overmastering it, will be the feeling of God's own 
 presence, and in a sense not pantheistic but truly 
 scriptural you will see Him ride past on the 
 wings of the wind, and will feel His rest-giving 
 nearness in the sabbath of the silent hills ; the eye 
 that never closes will look down on you from 
 amongst the twinkling stars ; suspended a solitary 
 waif in the centre of that round-rimmed sea, 
 infinitude above and mysterious miles below, the 
 everlasting arm will enclasp and uphold you ; and 
 like the Hebrew priest in the holy place, viewing the 
 brightness which emanated from within the Holy of 
 Holies, as from under the edges of the veiling night 
 an opalescent splendour begins to issue into the 
 eastern sky, you will welcome the coming day with 
 something like the prayer, " O Thou that sittest 
 between the cherubim, shine forth." 
 
 And yet, although there is far more truth in such 
 feelings than in their absence — although a universe 
 blank and silent, with no God living and moving 
 in it, is a universe with the glory blotted out, — the 
 mind which sees the most of such glory will long 
 for something more, and even amidst the sublimest 
 scenes of nature will wistfully repeat the prayer, 
 " I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory." 
 
 2. And if we pass to revelations more articulate 
 and explicit, we shall find the principle still obtain, 
 and he who has seen the most is the likeliest to ask 
 
THE DIVINE GLOKY. 297 
 
 for more. In this respect no one liacl been more 
 favoured than Moses. The " God of glory " had 
 appeared to him at the bash, and had spoken to 
 him the incommunicable name. He had seen the 
 glory of God on that night, so much to be remem- 
 bered, when Jehovah's royal ensign fired the firma- 
 ment, and nnder Heaven's immediate guidance the 
 glorious march began. And but a few days were past 
 since this Sinai smoked, and whilst the glory of the 
 Lord like devouring fire encircled the mountain-top, 
 the voice of the Eternal filled the surrounding soli- 
 tudes with words which echo still and shall never pass 
 away. But all this did not suffice, and in the mind 
 of Moses there was only enkindled a longing for some 
 manifestation more intimate and soul-contenting. 
 Jehovah's answ^er shows in what direction the heart 
 of Moses pointed. " I beseech Thee, show me Thy 
 glory," says Moses. " Yes," answers Jehovah, "I will ; 
 I will show thee my goodness, my kindness, and my 
 grace." Of majesty and grandeur he had already 
 seen as much as heart could wish, as much as the 
 frail body could endure. The personality, the 
 might, the holiness of the Most High were never 
 likely to be effaced from his awe-struck spirit as 
 long as he had any being ; but still amidst all its 
 condescension, what w^onder if the terrible majesty 
 still left an impression of something far-off and 
 formidable? But just at this very instant in the 
 
208 THE DIVINE GLORY. 
 
 devouring fire had opened an inlet mild and merci- 
 ful, and Israel's intercessor glimpsed a glory still 
 interior — the heart of Jehovah, rich in forgiveness 
 and radiating forth its ceaseless loving-kindness. 
 Not only had He pardoned a most scandalous 
 insult to His supremacy, and in answer to Moses' 
 bold entreaty consented still to abide by the un- 
 grateful people — " ^ly presence shall go with thee, 
 and I will give thee rest," — but with overflowing 
 tenderness He had spoken most friendly words to 
 the intercessor himself, " I will do as thou hast 
 spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and 
 I know thee by name," and grasping at that 
 gracious word — pressing up into the exalted in- 
 timacy of which he had obtained an earnest so 
 encouraging, Moses replied, " I beseech Thee, show 
 me Thy glory." " Let me still nearer. Prolong this 
 blessed moment, and admit me still further into 
 Thy presence." 
 
 And so of every soul di^dnely enlightened, or 
 rather, I should say, of every soul divinely enkindled. 
 God is its chief est joy. Whether it knows it or not, 
 God has come to be its supreme felicity, and nothing 
 can make it profoundly and abidingly glad except 
 the sense of His friendship and a certain nearness 
 to Himself Nor is this a desire which a single 
 vouchsafement can appease, or which can live con- 
 tentedly on even the most marvellous and trans- 
 
THE DIVINE GLOEY. 299 
 
 porting memories. " God, Thou art my God ; 
 early will I seek Thee : my soul thirsteth for Thee, 
 to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have seen 
 Thee in the sanctuary." And the believer goes back 
 to the Bible, he hails the return of the Sabbath, he 
 welcomes another Communion as a possible occasion 
 of new insight to the Divine perfection, and as a 
 likely means for enabling him to realize more bliss- 
 fully the friendship of All-sufficiency. " One thing 
 liave I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; 
 that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the 
 days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, 
 and to inquire in His temple." And when to the 
 entreaty, " I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," is 
 answered, " No man can see Me and live," faith and 
 affection will sometimes venture to reply, with St. 
 Augustine, "Then that I may see Thee, Lord, let 
 me die." 
 
 The prayer of Moses was answered. Another 
 morning came, so different from that other and 
 august occasion when a quaking multitude sur- 
 rounded a thundering mount ; this time there was 
 neither blackness nor tempest nor sound as of a 
 trumpet, but, with his two stone tables under his 
 arm, the lawgiver ascended in the clear cool day- 
 spring. He ascended and sought the appointed 
 place, and as there in the cleft of the rock he waited, 
 a cloud drew nidi — a cloud like that which floated 
 
300 THE DIVINE GLORY. 
 
 above the tabernacle, and as the Lord passed by a 
 voice, still and small perhaps, but kind and clear, 
 proclaimed — " The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and 
 gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness 
 and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 
 iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by 
 no means clear the guilty." It was enough. The Lord 
 had answered the prayer of His servant, and had 
 showed to Moses His glory, the glory of His good- 
 ness. Moses bowed his head and worshipped, and, 
 during the protracted interview of the forty follow- 
 ing days, a perfect love cast out fear, and from the 
 pavilion of this friendly presence and its rapt 
 communion Moses came down with that shining 
 face, which only re-appeared on the Mount of Trans- 
 figuration. 
 
 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
 God. I incline to think that piety of the highest 
 pitch, piety of the pattern nearest Heaven, is that 
 which, with David, pants after the living God, — is 
 that which, with Moses, cries, " I beseech Thee, show 
 me Thy glory." But it is not common now. It 
 was more common when they dwelt in dens and in 
 dungeons, in caves of the earth and in clefts of the 
 rock. The insulated cloud which from its lonely 
 bosom could launch a bolt big enough to rend the 
 mountain or make the welkin ring again, if touched 
 at every point by its trailing neighbours, if stranded 
 
THE DIVINE GLORY. 301 
 
 on the tree tops or the mountain side, soon loses 
 all its lightning, drawn off in inconspicuous spark- 
 lets, and subsides into a feeble feathery innocent, a 
 thin pale ghost of vapour. And so from isolated 
 spirits, from those who, like Elijah, dwelt apart, or 
 who, like Moses and David, lived alone amidst the 
 multitude, from such vast self-contained, secluded 
 spirits, men with whom their fellows could hold no 
 converse, and who were thus shut up to exclusive 
 fellowship with the Friend ever present and supreme ; 
 from such concentrated souls great bolts of prayer 
 went up, or, like the fire of heaven, in some flashing 
 word the long-gathered thought came down. But, 
 and let us not be too severe on circumstances not 
 absolutely evil, in days of much amenity, in a time 
 like this when Christian companionship is no rarity, 
 and when countless objects of beneficence give outlet 
 to those better feelings which in severer or less busy 
 times went back to God ; in such a time devotional 
 feeling is hardly permitted to accumulate sufficiently ; 
 the sacred fire is drawn off in driblets, and after our 
 friends have got their share, and our neighbours 
 theirs, and the public theirs, alas ! there is little 
 left, and instead of the whole soul going up to God 
 in some heaven-rending ejaculation, it is all that our 
 spent and diluted piety can do to appreciate, for we 
 can hardly venture to repeat, the behest, " I beseech 
 Thee, show me Thy glory." 
 
302 THE DIVINE GLORY. 
 
 Yet how it helps us, that is to say, how it at once 
 exalts and humbles when w^e meet with genuine 
 instances. I venture on a specimen. The author is 
 hardly known, but he lived in the same parsonage 
 once tenanted by the holy Herbert, and beneath the 
 spire of Salisbury, and on those wide Wiltshire 
 plains he walked with God, unnoticed and unknown. 
 It is in words like these that the hidden life of 
 JSTorris of Bemerton wells over : " My God, my 
 happiness, who art as well the End as the Author 
 of my being ; who hast more perfection than I have 
 desire, and who art truly willing to quench my great 
 thirst in the ocean of Thy perfection ; ' I beseech 
 Thee, show me Thy glory/ Withdraw Thy hand 
 from the cleft of the rock, and remove the bounds 
 from the mount of Thy presence, that I may see Thee 
 as Thou art, face to face, and dwell for ever in the 
 light of Thy beauty. I have long dwelt with vanity 
 and emptiness, and have made myself weary in the 
 pursuit of rest. let me be taken up into the only 
 Ark of repose and security, and let me see enough 
 of Thyself to love Thee infinitely, to depend on Thee 
 for my happiness entirely, and to bear up my spirit 
 under the greatest aridities and dejections, with the 
 delightful prospect of Thy glories. let me sit 
 down under this Thy shadow with great delight, till 
 the fruit of the Tree of Life shall be sweet to my 
 taste. Let me stay and entertain my longing soul 
 
THE DIVINE GLO£Y. 303 
 
 with tlie contemplation of Thy beauty, till Thou shalt 
 bring me into Thy banqueting-house, where vision 
 shall be the support of my spirit, and Thy banner 
 over me shall be love. Grant this, my God, for 
 the sake of Thy great love, and of the Son of Thy 
 love, Christ Jesus. Amen."^ Words like these, 
 who does not perceive that they are wings of a 
 dove, and that the soul which sincerely can utter 
 them is being w^afted upon them by God's own 
 Spirit to God's own heaven ? 
 
 But who again, reverting to this context, can fail 
 to see that God's glory is His goodness ? Amongst 
 astronomers it is a favourite speculation that the 
 sun himself is something else than a mere ball of 
 fire, and that inside of his burning atmosphere there 
 may be a mighty globe with cool meadows, with 
 seas of glass, and rivers clear as crystal, and with 
 every conceivable provision for a vast and rejoicing 
 population, the possible home of even the just made 
 perfect. And even so, when forced near to God the 
 guilty conscience feels as if it were forced forward 
 towards a consuming fire — towards a holiness which 
 hurts its love of sin, — towards a righteousness rec- 
 torial and retributive, which on all its evil radiates 
 condemnation. And it is right, for " He will by no 
 means clear the guilty." But within this light inac- 
 cessible, within this refulgent atmosphere of truth 
 
 1 Norris's Essays, etc., p. 226. 
 
304 THE DIVINE GLORY. 
 
 and sanctity, is a glory more intimate and essential 
 still, the inmost perfection and divinest beauty of 
 the Godhead. Coming from within that light inac- 
 cessible, the only-begotten Son from the bosom of 
 the Father declared what was there, and He de- 
 clared that it is love, — a love which had sent Him- 
 self and which invited up into its blissful asylum 
 every weary and sin-laden spirit. And so on this 
 occasion, to the meek and wistful Moses preaching 
 the gospel, Jehovah expanded that one word of love 
 into the name, " The Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin." 
 
 And those who know that name will put their 
 trust in God, especially now when the saving clause 
 or reservation has lost its ominous look, and lost it 
 not by being spirited away, but by being signally 
 fulfilled, — more signally fulfilled than if all the 
 guilty had paid each and individually the personal 
 penalty. And now that the Divine Eepresentative 
 has submitted to take your place, and be treated 
 exactly as if tlie guilt were His, not yours, — and 
 now that, in virtue of ample satisfaction rendered, 
 that great Substitute is cleared, — now that Christ 
 offers to include you in His full quittance, you may 
 let the refracted rays return and unite again, — you 
 may let this name proclaimed to Moses condense 
 again into that name revealed by Jesus, — you may 
 surrender to the joyful assurance that God is love, 
 
THE DIVINE GLORY. 305 
 
 that in Christ He is your Father and your God. 
 The prayer is answered not to Moses only but to all 
 of us, on whom these ends of the earth have come. 
 God has showed His glory. Nay, the very " bright- 
 ness of that glory " has come forth and dwelt among 
 us. Bow the head and worship. Adore the Incarnate 
 Mystery, and as you continue to commune with 
 God manifest, your face will begin to shine. The 
 gladness in your heart will illuminate your counten- 
 ance, and both from reflected beauty and inward 
 assimilation you will be changed into the same 
 image, glorious as first it dawns and more glorious 
 as it still proceeds. 
 
XX. 
 
 " And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments 
 so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day ?" — 
 Deut. IV. 8. 
 
 A MODEEN jurist, a rrenchman and an infidel, 
 observes, " Good right had Moses to challenge his 
 Israelites, And what nation hath statutes like yours ? 
 a worshi]3 so exalted, laws so equitable, a code so 
 complete ? Compared with all the legislations of 
 antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the prin- 
 ciples of everlasting and universal righteousness. 
 Lycurgus WTote not for a people but for an army : 
 it was a barrack which he erected, not a common- 
 wealth ; and sacrificing everything to the military 
 spirit, he mutilated human nature in order to crush 
 it into armour. Solon, on the contrary, could not 
 resist the effeminate and relaxing influences of his 
 Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find a regard 
 for the right, austere and incorruptible, — a morality 
 distinct from policy, and rising above regard for 
 times and peoples. The trumpet of Sinai still finds 
 
 306 
 
THE LAWGIVER. 307 
 
 an echo in the conscience of mankind, — the Deca- 
 logue still binds us all." ^ 
 
 Did the merit belong to Moses, in the annals of 
 legislation his would be the proudest of names, for 
 never before nor since did a code spring into such 
 sudden existence or conquer such tremendous diffi- 
 culties. As it is, that name stands out in serene 
 and saintly pre-eminence, as the meek self-merging 
 medium through which Heaven conveyed to earth 
 the choicest of mercies. " Behold, I have taught you 
 statutes and jiidgments, even as the Lord my God 
 commanded me. For what nation is there so great, 
 who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our 
 God is in all things that we call upon Him for ? 
 And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes 
 and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I 
 set before you this day?" — Where it is beautiful to 
 see how God gets all the glory, and Israel all the 
 good ; how, on the one hand, mingling himself with 
 the mass of the nation, the man Moses, so very 
 meek, he speaks of Jehovah as '' our God," — their. 
 God as much as his ; and how, on the other hand, 
 he tries to lift their hearts from the midst of their 
 mercies to that God who gave them this mercy 
 surpassing, statutes and judgments so righteous. 
 Like a magnificent Alp, whose green skirts are the 
 nest of a nation, and whose top white and glisten- 
 
 i Legislation Fran^aise, par Heunequin, torn, i. 609. 
 
308 THE LAWGIVER. 
 
 ing, if terrestrial at all, is something transfigured, 
 our lawgiver stands up in the horizon of history, 
 not proud but pre-eminent — a halo round his head, 
 and an emancipated people at his feet — claiming to 
 himself no credit, but rejoicing in their happiness, 
 and pointing to that high source from which it all 
 comes down. 
 
 In order to understand the Mosaic legislation 
 rightly, we must remember a distinction. The 
 Israelites were to be a peculiar people. They ex- 
 isted not for themselves, but they had a function to 
 fulfil towards all mankind, and, in order to fulfil 
 this function, it was needful that they should be for 
 a time a people separate and self-contained, singular 
 in their usages and sequestered in their dwelling. 
 In order to fix them down to one spot they had 
 their local worship. It was a law that all the men 
 amongst them should rendezvous at the central 
 shrine three times a year, and thus foreign settle- 
 ments or distant journeys were made impossible. 
 The Hebrew home must be within a short and easy 
 radius round the Temple, and if he went abroad he 
 carried this tether, and was pulled back again by 
 the Passover or some other pilgrimage. Then again 
 to keep Israel distinct and immiscible, there were 
 imposed upon him many rules and restrictions. If 
 a stranger wished to settle in the Holy Land he 
 must submit to circumcision ; he must keep the 
 
THE LAWGIVER. 309 
 
 Sabbath ; he must not bring with him, on pain of 
 death, his idols or his own religious observances ; 
 and, on the other hand, if a Hebrew wished to roam, 
 if on business or pleasure he went abroad, he must 
 not adopt the usages of the people round him. He 
 must not adopt their garb ; he must not even wear 
 his hair as they wore theirs ; above all, he must not 
 join them in their feasts or share their usual food, 
 so that what with his peculiar garb and flowing 
 beard, with his horror of things strangled, and with 
 his long catalogue of unclean beasts, if the stranger 
 found the Hebrew in the Holy Land a stiff and 
 unaccommodating host, the Hebrew on his travels 
 made himself a grotesque and inconvenient guest. 
 And this was exactly what his law designed. It was 
 intended to preserve him a personage peculiar in his 
 own self- consciousness, and conspicuous in the eyes 
 of others — the world's prophet and its priest till 
 once his function was fulfilled — till that Divine 
 personage had arrived who was " the end of the 
 law," and, emancipated from meats and drinks and 
 divers washings, men like Paul and Peter merged 
 the Jew in the Christian and the Catholic, and, no 
 longer calling anything common or unclean, found 
 in every clime a country and in every saint a living 
 temple. 
 
 Whilst some laws were designed on purpose to 
 make the Jew peculiar, in reading others we must 
 
310 THE LAWGIVER. 
 
 bear in mind how imperfect were the people to 
 whom they were originally addressed. There might 
 have been better laws, as we are apt to imagine, 
 throwing backward our New Testament light, but 
 they were the best that the people could bear. A 
 wise lawgiver has regard to the powers and to the 
 prejudices of the people for whom he is legislating, 
 and will not lay on them burdens greater than they 
 have strength to carry. He will take into account 
 their climate, their prevailing pursuits and callings, 
 their previous training, the present state of rehgion 
 and morals, and whilst it will be his object to help 
 them up to a higher level, he will not make the 
 steps of the ascent so cyclopean that none but giants 
 can climb. Thus the law of Moses allowed certain 
 forms of slavery, and it forbade the taking interest 
 for money. It allowed a man, in certain cases, to 
 have more wives than one, and it gave facilities for 
 divorcement, which, in the words of the Saviour, 
 showed great " hardness of heart," — a bluntness of 
 feeling and coarseness of sentiment such as could 
 not have been " in the beginning," and such as can- 
 not well exist under the refining influence of the 
 gospel. 
 
 At the same time, there are in this Mosaic code 
 many traits and touches which anticipate the higher 
 tone and tenderness of a later dispensation. "If 
 thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, 
 
THE LAWGIVER. 311 
 
 thou shall surely bring it back to him again. If 
 thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under 
 his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him; thou 
 shalt surely help with him."^ What could be more 
 disarming, what more likely to electrify an enemy 
 into sudden subjugation ! what finer conquest over 
 one's -self, for the first impulse is to glory over the 
 perplexity of an opponent ; but although revenge 
 would fain "forbear to help," religion says, Thou 
 shalt surely succour. "Eise up before the hoary 
 head."^ A ruffian race, mere warriors and free- 
 booters, despise and dislike the old, for they can 
 fight no longer ; but it needs some sentiment and 
 some homage to worth and wisdom to recognise in 
 the hoary head a crown of glory. Then again, how 
 many of these laws are marked by a considerate 
 humanity ! " If thou at all take thy neighbour's 
 raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by 
 that tlie sun goeth down. It is his only covering ; 
 wherein shall he sleep ? " ^ " And when ye reap the 
 harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the 
 corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the 
 gleanings of thy harvest. Neither shalt thou glean 
 every grape of thy vineyard : thou shalt leave them 
 for the poor and stranger : I am the Lord."* And 
 the same kindness which thinks of the poor and 
 
 1 Ex. xxiii. 4, 5. « Ex. xxii. 26. 
 
 2 Lev. xix. 32. * Lev. xix. 9, 10. 
 
312 THE LAWGIVER. 
 
 provides for thera from the superabundance of the 
 rich, extends its regards to the lower forms of life. 
 " Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that 
 treadeth out the corn." " If a bird's nest chance to 
 be before thee in the way, in any tree or on the 
 ground, and the dam sitting upon the eggs or upon 
 the young, thou shalt not take the mother-bird 
 with the young : thou shalt in any wise let the 
 dam go free, and take the young to thee."^ 
 
 On the laws of Moses we shall not enter further ; 
 but they will repay the study of those who have 
 taste and leisure for such investigations. They will 
 repay the historian, for they will introduce him to 
 a civilisation compared with which the Grecian 
 culture and the Eoman commonwealth are but of 
 yesterday. They will repay the scholar, for in 
 Moses, with his monotheism, — in Moses, with his 
 sublime cosmogony, — in Moses, with his laws so 
 protective to the poor and so equitable towards 
 every citizen, he will find some of the sublimest 
 things in Plato's philosophy, and some of the wisest, 
 human est things in Plato's imaginary Eepublic. 
 They will repay the jurist, for in the deodands and 
 compensations, the doctrine of trespass and damage 
 and malice prepense laid down by the Hebrew 
 lawgiver, he will find the origin or earnest of much 
 iin our own British statute-book. And they will 
 
 * Deut, xxii. 6. ; 
 
THE LAWGIVER. 313 
 
 repay every student of morals and of mankind, for, 
 as has been truly remarked, " Thoughts colonize as 
 well as races. Ideas, like families, have a genealogy 
 and a propagation ;"^ and in tracing the migrations 
 of thought from land to land, in following up these 
 spiritual migrations, there is many a great idea of 
 which we do not find the birthplace till we reach 
 the Books of Moses, many a notion which has 
 widely influenced mankind, and which is still 
 wielding over the world a powerful sway, of which 
 w^e shall not find the germ or principle till we reach 
 this cradle of all codes, — this book of all beginnings. 
 
 1 Wines' Commentaries, p. 103. 
 
XXL 
 
 ^h^ Mati^r of iHi^ribah. 
 
 " Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into 
 the desert of Zin in the first month : and the people abode in 
 Kadesh ; and Miriam died there, and was buried there," etc. — 
 Numb. xx. 1-12. 
 
 For the first two years after leaving Egypt the 
 career of Israel, and consequently of Moses, was full 
 of incidents. The Eed Sea was crossed, Sinai was 
 reached, the Law was given, the Tabernacle was set 
 up, and that economy was established by which for 
 the next three thousand years a peculiar people 
 was destined to be known and distinsruished. And 
 there was at one time every appearance as if, before 
 the second year had expired, the favoured and 
 Heaven-protected nation would be comfortably 
 settled in their promised land. They were already 
 near it, so near that a few days more might have 
 carried them into the midst of it, had they not been 
 arrested by their own incapacity and unworthiness. 
 A deputation of their number had been sent to 
 explore the country. They came back with a 
 
 314 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 315 
 
 glowing account of its climate and its produce, "it 
 flowed with milk and honey, and here is a cluster of 
 its grapes ;" but like the golden apples guarded by 
 the dragon, it was a treasure which could not be 
 touched ; the people were such giants and their 
 garrisons so impregnable that it was mere madness 
 to attempt an invasion. It was to no purpose that 
 Joshua and Caleb protested. They did not deny 
 that the Canaanites were tall, and their castles 
 strong ; but " the Lord is ^Yith. us," and " if He 
 delight in us, it is an exceeding good land, and He 
 will give it us." The contagion of dismay had 
 overspread the multitude ; a cry was raised to 
 choose a new commander, and hasten back to 
 Egypt ; and Joshua and Caleb were warned that 
 it was as much as their lives were worth if they 
 spoke another word. 
 
 It was a sad outburst of cowardice and childish- 
 ness — a whole army blubbering at the prospect of a 
 battle : " All the congregation lifted up their voice 
 and cried ; and the people wept that night." To 
 men of mettle like Joshua, to men of sense and 
 spirit, it was mortifying to hear them like babies, 
 crying, "Take us back to Egypt," forgetful of all 
 the horrors of the house of bondage. And to men 
 of God, like Aaron and his brother, it was stiU 
 more distressing to see how, at each new danger, 
 they lost all memory of past deliverance, and could 
 
316 THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 
 
 only believe in God for the moment when His arm 
 of might was actually made manifest. Altogether, 
 it was a discouraging revelation, and it seemed to 
 indicate that an abject, servile spirit on the one 
 hand, and a great perversity on the other, were too 
 deeply engrained to be ever pounded out, seeing 
 that they had survived thirty- eight years of dis- 
 cipline and training in the heart of that desert, and 
 seeing that on the very first trial the new race 
 broke down in the same way with their fathers ; 
 and in view of all the provocation, we who are but 
 flesh and blood are apt to say that Moses did well 
 to be angry. 
 
 Angry he certainly was ; and when, reverting to 
 a former miracle, the Most High directed him to 
 take the wonder-staff — his rod of many miracles — 
 and at the head of the congregation " speak to the 
 rock," and it w^ould "give forth its w^ater," in the 
 heat and agitation of his spirit he failed to imple- 
 ment implicitly the Divine command. Instead of 
 speaking to the rock he spoke to the people, and 
 his harangue was no longer in the language calm 
 and dignified of the lawgiver, but had a certain tone 
 of petulance and egotism : " Here now, ye rebels ; 
 must we" — must I and Aaron, not must Jehovah 
 — " fetch you water out of this rock ?" And instead 
 of simply speaking to it, he raised the rod and dealt 
 it two successive strokes, just as if the rock were 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 317 
 
 sharing the general perversity, and would no more 
 tlian the people obey its Creator's bidding. He was 
 angry and he sinned. He sinned and was severely 
 punished. Water flowed sufficient for the whole 
 camp and the cattle, clear, cool, and eagerly gush- 
 ing, enough for all the million; but at the same 
 moment that its unmerited bounty burst on you, ye 
 rebels, " a cup of wrath was put into the hand of 
 Moses." -^ To you, ye murmurers, there came forth 
 living water ; to your venerable leaders the cup of 
 God's anger. " The Lord spake unto Moses and 
 unto Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify 
 me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore 
 ye shall not bring this congregation into the land 
 which I have given them." 
 
 How severe the sentence ! and how inclined we 
 are to sympathize with those good and much-endur- 
 ing men who, at the very end of their task, and on 
 the very edge of the Promised Land, saw vanish 
 from their grasp the blessing which they had never 
 once forfeited all these forty years ! But the Judge 
 of all the earth must do right, and we cannot help 
 inquiring, " What was the precise offence which was 
 so instantly and inexorably punished ?" 
 
 The usual answer and the most obvious is, 
 that Moses lost his temper. And the fact cannot 
 be controverted. As we read in Psalm cvi., 
 
 1 Van Oosterzee, p. 213. 
 
318 THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 
 
 " They provoked tlie spirit of Moses, so that he 
 spake unadvisedly with his lips." And on the face 
 of the narrative we see abundant signs of wrath and 
 perturbation. But was Moses the only person then 
 present whose frame of mind was not what it ought 
 to be ? Was not the whole multitude in a buzz of 
 hot and angry murmuring ? Had they not passed 
 the night in petulant complaints and infantile 
 lamentations ? and, the day before, had they not 
 threatened to stone Caleb with stones? We fear 
 that there were few good tempers that morning ; 
 and if every man had borne his own iniquity, we 
 fear that few of that company would have gone 
 forward from Meribah, or even survived to drink 
 its living water. What was it then ? Alongj with 
 his temper what else had Moses lost ? or what was 
 there in an act outwardly so trivial which made it 
 " a great transgression"? 
 
 In order to arrive at a reply we must revert to 
 the words of Jehovah : " The Lord spake unto 
 Moses and Aaron, Because ye helieved me not, to 
 sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, 
 therefore," etc. Here there is nothing expressly 
 directed against their temper or spirit ; but they are 
 charged with unbelief. If their temper had failed, 
 the saddest effect was that their faith had also 
 failed ; and, allowing their mind to be thrown off 
 the balance, their faith shared the general unhinge- 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 3 1 i) 
 
 ment. In the dust and smoke of combat, men nob 
 only get dim and distorted views of their fellows, 
 but the serene sky overhead grows darkened ; and 
 this unexpected outbreak of the Israelites, whilst it 
 took Moses and Aaron by surprise, for the instant 
 went far to make even these good men faithless or 
 forgetful. " Has Jehovah's purpose been defeated ? 
 Has all this weariful detention failed of its design 
 in weeding out the murmurers and preparing the 
 people for the promised rest ? And owing to this 
 miserable outbreak must Aaron and I make up our 
 minds to forty more years in the desert ?" And 
 just as happened with Jonah, who let out his spite 
 upon the gourd, but wlio was really angry with 
 Nineveh for repenting, and angry with God for 
 sparing it ; and just as happens with most people 
 when they get into a passion, Moses wreaked his 
 anger on the people and on the rock, but he was 
 not altogether pleased with God Himself. For once 
 he disobeyed his ^Master's orders, and instead of 
 doing exactly as the Lord commanded, he did what he 
 thought should do as well, and instead of the simple 
 and sublime instructions he had received, he sub- 
 stituted an unwarranted and undignified procedure 
 of his own. For the moment he himself was un- 
 mindful of the Eock of his salvation, and from not 
 believing made too much haste. 
 
 To use the words of one who thought profoundly 
 
320 THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 
 
 and whose every word was weighty, — Dr. Eobert 
 Gordon, — " Perhaps Moses and Aaron doubted 
 whether it were enough simply to speak to the 
 rock, and whether it would not be necessary not 
 only to smite it, as on a former occasion Moses had 
 been instructed to do, but to smite it twice. If so, 
 then it was a distrust of God's power — a doubt 
 whether the rock would give forth water at the 
 Divine bidding unaccompanied with the smiting of 
 Moses, which formed no part of his present com- 
 mission. If so, the rebuke which followed is full 
 of instruction to all subsequent times. That rock 
 was one of the most significant types of Christ with 
 which the Old Testament church was supplied. 
 As that rock was once smitten with the rod of 
 Moses, Israel's lawgiver, so it behoved Christ the 
 antitype to be smitten once, but only once, with the 
 rod of the great Lawgiver, that He might vindicate 
 the law and make it honourable. When Moses 
 therefore smote the rock again, and twice too, not 
 only without authority, but in opposition to the 
 Divine command, — for he was commanded to speak 
 to it, — he marred the beauty of that type whereby 
 the perfection of Christ's one sacrifice was so clearly 
 set forth; and the rebuke which he and Aaron 
 incurred does most emphatically condemn the pre- 
 sumption of those who would add to Christ's one 
 offering of Himself, either by works of self-right- 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 321 
 
 eousness, or by the frequent offering of what they 
 call His body and blood in the idolatrous sacrifice 
 of the mass. The divine influence which Christ by 
 His Spirit imparts to His Church may, for the 
 chastisement of the Church, appear for a season to 
 be dried up, as the rock in the wilderness did for a 
 time withhold its water from the thirsty Israelites. 
 But in order to give forth to His people the water 
 of life Christ needs not to be smitten again either 
 in reality or in figure. He has only to be ' spoken 
 to ' in the prayer of faith, founded on the warrant 
 of God's Word; and whether such prayer proceed 
 from the individual believer in his humble cottage, 
 or from a united Church in her collective capacity, 
 it will not fail to draw down those communications 
 of His grace, even the quickening influences of His 
 Spirit, whereby He refreshes His inheritance when 
 it is weary." ^ 
 
 May we not go a little further? What was 
 Moses, what was Aaron ? You reply. The one was 
 the prince and prophet, the leader and lawgiver of 
 Israel ; the other was Israel's priest. True ; but on 
 whose behalf — by whom appointed, whom repre- 
 senting ? You answer, God. That is to say, each 
 was in a certain sense a mediator. Each stood there 
 so far representing God and communicating with 
 Him and with Israel — the one mainly as prophet or 
 
 1 Gordon's Christ in the Old Testament, vol. ii. pp. 95, 96. 
 X 
 
322 THE WATER OF MEEIBAH. 
 
 revealer of His mind, — the other mainly as priest 
 or reconciler for the sins of the people. For such a 
 function the first essential was unison with God ; 
 the next, and hardly the next, for included in the 
 former, compassion on the ignorant and wayward. 
 In a dispensation itself mainly gracious, and fore- 
 shadowing one which would be grace altogether, it 
 was of prime importance that the mediating men 
 should be men merciful and gracious, long-suffering 
 and slow to anger. And such they were in marvel- 
 lous measure. The man Moses was exceeding 
 meek, and if for patience and a sweet submissive- 
 ness the palm had been assigned to any one besides, 
 it would have been to Aaron his brother. But after 
 all they were human. Their endurance was wonder- 
 ful, but it was not inexhaustible ; and on this 
 occasion, instead of hastening in betwixt an in- 
 fatuated people and the God against whom they 
 murmured, and crying, " Pardon the iniquity of this 
 people, according to the greatness of Thy mercy," 
 when it turned out that God had this time pardoned 
 already, and was about to give them good for their 
 evil, — instead of faithfully exhibiting the Divine 
 munificence and calmly asking the rock for its 
 water, they (so to speak) defeated the Divine gener- 
 osity, and failing to sympathize with God's forgiv- 
 ingness, He was not " sanctified in the eyes of the 
 children of Israel." The final start for Canaan was 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 323 
 
 marked, like every previous stage, by murmurs ; 
 but remembering that tbey were but flesh, the Lord 
 vrould not deal with them after their sins, nor 
 reward them according to their iniquities. No fire 
 came forth, no chasm opened ; but " all was mercy, 
 all was mild," and, condoning their complaints, the 
 gift they needed was about to be conferred on the 
 rebellious. But to this effort of long-suffering and 
 loving-kindness the chafed spirit of Moses and 
 Aaron was unequal. By the way they managed it 
 they spoiled the moral glory of the miracle, and 
 wbat on God's side was a gift of pure grace, under 
 their hard blows and hot words assumed the aspect 
 of an angry gospel. They believed Him not, to 
 sanctify Him in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
 
 Brimming over with instruction as is this passage, 
 we must leave it with a few remarks. 
 
 1. How careful preachers of the gospel and ex- 
 pounders of Scripture should be not to give an 
 erroneous impression of God's mind or message. 
 The mental acumen is rare, but the right spirit is 
 rarer. But what is the right spirit ? — A loving 
 spirit, a gentle spirit, a faithful spirit, a meek and 
 weaned spirit, a spirit which says, " Speak, Lord, for 
 Thy servant heareth," and a spirit which adds, " All 
 that the Lord giveth me, that will I speak," that 
 excellent spirit which is only imparted by the good 
 Spirit of God. For if He withdraw, even a Moses 
 
324 THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 
 
 ceases to be meek, and ceasing to be meek even 
 a Moses becomes a bad divine and an erroneous 
 teacher, striking the rock that has been already 
 stricken once for all, and preaching glad tidings 
 gruffly. He who gives the living water does not 
 grudge it ; but sometimes, instead of " Ho ! every one 
 that thirsteth," the preacher says, " Hear now, ye 
 rebels ; must we fetch you water out of this rock ? " 
 and makes the very invitation repulsive. 
 
 2. When any one has run long and run well, how 
 sad it is to stumble within a few steps of the goal 1 
 If Moses had an earthly wish, it was to see Israel 
 safe in their inheritance. And his wish was all but 
 consummated. Faith and patience had held out 
 well-nigh forty years, and in a few months more the 
 Jordan would be crossed and the work would be 
 finished. And who can tell but this very nearness 
 of the prize helped to create something of a pre- 
 sumptuous confidence ? The blood of Moses was hot 
 to begin with, and he was not the meekest of men 
 when he smote the Egyptian and hid him in the 
 sand. But he had got a good lesson in ruling his 
 spirit, and betwixt the long sojourn with Jethro and 
 the self-discipline needful in the charge of this 
 multitude, he might fancy that he had now his foot 
 on the neck of this enemy : when lo ! the sin re- 
 vives and Moses dies. 
 
 Blessed is the man that feareth alway ! Blessed 
 
THE WATER OF MERIBAH. 325 
 
 is the man who, although years have passed without 
 an attempt at burglary, still bars his doors and sees 
 his windows fastened! Blessed is the man who, 
 although a generation has gone since the last erup- 
 tion, forbears to build on the volcanic soil, and 
 dreads fires which have smouldered for fourscore 
 years ! Blessed is the man who, even when the 
 high seas are crossed and the land is made, still 
 keeps an outlook ! Blessed is the man who, even 
 on the confines of Canaan, takes heed of the evil 
 heart, lest, with a promise of entering in, he should 
 come short through unbelief ! 
 
 3. Elevation of mind and sweetness of spirit are 
 pearls of great price, and if we wish to preserve 
 them we had better intrust them to God's own 
 keeping. If Moses lost his faith, it was by first 
 losing self-command ; and if a man lose this, it is 
 hard to say what next he may lose : like the mad 
 warrior who makes a missile of his shield and hurls 
 it at the head of an enemy, he is henceforward open 
 to every fiery dart, to the cut and thrust of every 
 assailant. But, as John Newton remarks, " the 
 grace of God is as necessary to create a right temper 
 in a Christian on the breaking of a china plate as on 
 the death of an only son ; " and as no man can tell 
 on any dawning day but what that may be the most 
 trying day in all his life, how wise to pray without 
 ceasing, " Uphold me according unto Thy word. 
 
526 THE WATEK OF MERIBAH. 
 
 Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." " Set a 
 watch, Lord, before my mouth : keep the door of 
 my lips." " Who can understand his errors ? cleanse 
 Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy ser- 
 vant also from presumptuous sins ; let them not have 
 dominion over me : then shall I be upright, and I 
 shall be innocent from the great transgression." 
 
XXIT. 
 
 *' For from tlie top of tlie rocks I see Mm, and from the hills I behold 
 him : lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned 
 among the nations." — Numb, xxiii, 9. 
 
 As long as its channel is rock there is no fear for 
 the river. There is no risk that its volume will 
 lessen, or that it will fail to reach its terminus, 
 although the ocean should be a thousand miles dis- 
 tant. But if in its progress it is met by a sandy 
 desert, what is it to do ? This Sahara will engulf 
 it, and although it were another Nile, this sultry 
 monster is able to devour it every drop, and cheat 
 the thirsty regions beyond. 
 
 The first ages of the world had no lack of revela- 
 tion. For a thousand years they retained Adam, 
 rich in the recollections of Paradise, and from time 
 to time men rose up like Enoch the prophet and 
 Noah the preacher of righteousness — men who re- 
 vived forgotten truth or faded piety, and who added 
 new elements to the pre-existing knowledge; and 
 
 327 
 
328 THE HEKMIT NATION. 
 
 from all the probabilities of the case, we do not 
 doubt that not only was there communion with God 
 and with one another among the members of the 
 little church which survived in the ark, but there is 
 every evidence that it was a pure and ample creed 
 which emerged from that floating tabernacle — a 
 creed which recognised the unity, the spirituality, 
 the truth and holiness of God ; which kept sacred 
 one day in seven ; which looked for a seed of the 
 woman who should be deliverer and restorer of 
 humanity ; and which retained the practice and the 
 doctrine of sacrifice. 
 
 In all likelihood Noah's creed was much more 
 minute and comprehensive than this, but it is a 
 great matter to know that all this was included. 
 It is a great matter to know that four thousand 
 years ago there was a church catholic — a church 
 within which there were no schismatics, as there 
 were no separatists without — a church unanimous 
 in worshipping, without any idolatrous intermedium, 
 the King eternal, immortal, and invisible — a church 
 which lived in the hope of redemption — a church 
 which kept holy the Sabbath, and which solemnized 
 its signal deliverance and sanctified its new abode 
 by that great holocaust of Ararat. 
 
 But it is sad to see how soon this primeval and 
 catholic creed got corrupted. Men did not lose it 
 entirely, but they so depraved and distorted it that 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 329 
 
 its features coiild scarcely be identified. Instead 
 of worshipping the unseen all-seeing Creator, they 
 chose His brightest creature, and, like the ancient 
 Persians, became worshippers of the fire or the sun ; 
 or they put together rude emblems of wisdom, swift- 
 ness, and strength, — the head of a man, the wings of 
 an eagle, the legs of an ox or a lion, and, like the 
 old Assyrians, at last bowed down and worshipped 
 their carved or molten symbol. The Sabbath faintly 
 survived in the traditions of all lands, and the 
 coming Eedeemer was travestied in the incarnations 
 of Bramah and Vishnu, whilst a device of His ad- 
 vent may be perceived, more or less faintly, in the 
 musings of Plato, in the sighs of Socrates, and in 
 Virgil's beautiful vision. But the true doctrine of 
 sacrifice soon got divorced from the practice, and, 
 losing sight of the Lamb of God who should take 
 away the sin of the world, the descendants of Noah 
 found poor consolation in that blood of bulls and 
 goats w^hich can never cancel transgression. With 
 most of them the offering became a mere bribe to 
 the Deity, the price of some favour which they 
 wished to procure ; and those who retained the idea 
 of a vicarious atonement, like the earlier Greeks, 
 and like the Phoenicians, the predecessors of the 
 Jews in Palestine, by way of adding value to the 
 victim, and rendering it actually life for life, they 
 outraged Heaven's Majesty by the slaughter of a 
 
330 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 human sacrifice, and by giving the fruit of their 
 body for the sin of their soul. 
 
 Dark and dreadful as some of these systems were, 
 it must not be forgotten that they were perversions 
 of an original truth. When that coin came from 
 the mint its milled edges were sharp, its image and 
 inscription stood out, and its lustre was spotless. 
 But now that it has passed through ten thousand 
 hands, wantonly defaced by some and inevitably 
 worn by others, it has thinned down into a mere 
 glittering scale, a blank unmeaning counter ; or you 
 drop it into the sea, and years afterwards, at the 
 same spot, you dredge up a curious conglomerate, a 
 mass of pebbles, shells, and sand, all aggregated 
 round a black and rusty nucleus ; and it is only by 
 dint of assiduous polishing, or by the use of some 
 chemical re-agent, that you recognise your lost piece 
 of silver. As the world's second father received 
 the truth from God, it was all in Heaven's own cur- 
 rency, full weight and without a flaw, and what 
 would have been accepted in the Great King's assay. 
 But as soon as it began to circulate it began to 
 deteriorate. Some truths simply wore out. The 
 Sabbath, for example, soon ceasing to be a day of 
 rest and religion, thinned off into a mere nonentity ; 
 and although most nations deemed seven a sacred 
 number, and counted time by weeks of seven days, 
 they could give no right reason for the usage. But 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 331 
 
 most truths get tarnished and corroded. Consigned 
 to no written record, when intrusted to the memory 
 of man, with all his prejudices and bad propensities, 
 they were like shillings dropt into the tide. When 
 next you see them you can hardly recognise them, 
 crusted over with such uncouth or monstrous addi- 
 tions, and changed into a substance so remote from 
 the bright original. This black mass, slippery with 
 weeds and crawling with sea- worms, who could con- 
 ceive that it was hiding in its heart a shekel of the 
 sanctuary ? And even when you get at the nucleus, 
 it is so damaged and decomposed that you feel it is 
 now good for nothing; it must be cast into the 
 furnace and melted anew before it will be accepted 
 as precious metal again. And just so, when we 
 dredge into the sea of ancient history, or when we 
 dive into the dark places of the present day, and 
 bring up some ugly superstition, it is hard to believe, 
 and yet it is often true, that its core is one of these 
 old Noachian coins ; and although man's tradition 
 has so corrupted God's saying as to give it the 
 aspect and effect of an impious falsehood, even under 
 that falsehood may be detected a trace of the primi- 
 tive truth. " When they knew God, they glorified 
 him not as God, but became vain in their imagina- 
 tions, and their foolish heart was darkened. Pro- 
 fessing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 
 and, making corruptible images of the incorruptible 
 
332 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 God, tliey changed his truth into a lie, and wor- 
 shipped and served the creature rather than the 
 Creator. And as they did not like to retain God in 
 their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate 
 mind." When, as in the days of the post-diluvian 
 patriarchs, they possessed the knowledge, they lacked 
 the piety, and for want of the piety they soon lost 
 the knowledge. " Their foolish heart was darkened." 
 But still, for all their first germs of knowledge they 
 were indebted to God's own teaching. Their most 
 horrible superstition was a truth of God, which they 
 had " changed into a lie;" and as the beginning of 
 idolatry we recognise the abuse of symbols and the 
 depravation of a theology originally true ; and at the 
 basis of every sacrifice, however mercenary in its 
 spirit, and however offensive in its mode, we recog- 
 nise a reminiscence, distant and distorted no doubt, 
 but still a reminiscence, of what was in the beginning 
 a Divine institution. In other words, the fragments 
 of truth which have come down in the heathen 
 religions are relics of the primeval and universal 
 religion which issued from the ark with Noah, and 
 with that Church of which Noah was the pastor 
 and the priest ; and just as we call Popery a cor- 
 ruption of Christianity, so may we call Paganism 
 a corruption of Patriarchism — a perversion of the 
 primitive and catholic religion. 
 
 Or, to revert to the comparison which we made at 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 333 
 
 the beginning : from Ararat there flowed a stream 
 of revelation fresh and pure, and had the channel 
 been retentive, had men's hearts been honest, and 
 had they liked to retain God's truth in their know- 
 ledge, that stream might have come down to the 
 era of the Advent pellucid and ample, and making 
 wise unto salvation the successive ages as it passed. 
 But as its course extended it was soon perceived 
 that its volume was lessening and its contents were 
 corrupting. It was not merely as if it had come to 
 a sultry desert where it was likely to disappear in 
 the burning sand ; but it had reached a swampy 
 wilderness, where it was sure to merge in the brack - 
 ishness and noisomeness of the festering ooze, and 
 retain no token of that gladsome river which took 
 its rise at Noah's altar and beneath the rainbow of 
 God's covenant. It pleased the Most High to 
 obviate this disaster. By narrowing the channel 
 He saved the stream. He no longer left the con- 
 servation of His truth to the world at large ; but 
 He selected a people and set up a system which 
 should place the great saving doctrines beyond the 
 casualties of time and the caprice of changing gene- 
 rations. He segregated from all the families of the 
 earth the line of faithful Abraham, and He set up 
 that peculiar institution which is known as the 
 Levitical Economy, or Mosaic Dispensation. 
 
 Precisely as before the flood, all flesh were again 
 
334 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 corrupting tlieir way, and there was every danger 
 that true religion would utterly expire. If left any 
 longer to the memory of mankind at large, it was plain 
 that the promise of a Saviour and the true doctrine 
 of sacrifice, and Sabbath-keeping, and the know- 
 ledge of God's perfections, would soon be extinct. 
 And whilst there was still a godly remnant, the 
 Most High chose out a specific' depository for the 
 all-important revelation. So to speak. He formed 
 a canal or aqueduct along which the stream might 
 be conducted safe from the irruption of the bitter 
 and offensive fen on either side. And although, 
 with its straight and monotonous banks and un- 
 varying width, the canal is not so picturesque as the 
 free meandering river, in such a case it is the only 
 security. He not only took the new method of 
 confiding His precepts and promises to a written 
 record — the tables of stone and the book of the 
 covenant, but He had recourse to an additional 
 precaution, and these lively oracles thus written 
 down He intrusted to a 2^eculiar people. The very 
 existence of that people as a nation he bound up 
 with the preservation of these records, and thus 
 secured in His wisdom a twofold guarantee for their 
 unimpaired transmission. It was as if the engineer 
 of our artificial river had intrusted its embankments 
 to some special clan whom he appointed its guar- 
 dians, so contriving it that if through their fault any 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 335 
 
 breach were committed their own supply should be 
 cut off or their own fields should be flooded. Or 
 perhaps it w^ould be niore correct to say, that for His 
 revelation God provided a twofold receptacle : writ- 
 ing it in letters of ink on the Hebrew Bible, and in 
 indelible usages and unaltering ideas inscribing it on 
 the Hebrew people. It was a concentric channel : 
 within, the tables of stone compactly joined together ; 
 without, the concrete, almost as impervious, of a 
 nationality the most tenacious and cohesive which 
 our world has ever witnessed, — the living network 
 of willows by the water- courses, whose fond 
 branches skim the glassy current, whilst their 
 wattled rootlets guard and cradle the bed in w^hich 
 that current flows. 
 
 With their precious deposit of a revelation at once 
 written and ritual, it was the purpose of God that 
 the people should " dwell alone," and not be mingled 
 with the nations ; and with this design He made it 
 difficult for them to go far from home, and at the 
 same time inconvenient and distasteful to associate 
 with strangers. It was not only by depriving them 
 of horses and giving them no instinct for the ocean, 
 that the Divine Lawgiver confined them to their own 
 country ; but, by appointing festivals which required 
 their attendance in the capital three times a year. 
 He rendered long journeys all but impossible. On 
 the other hand, by prescribing rules as to their daily 
 
336 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 life, — rules of singular minuteness as to things which 
 they must not taste, nor touch, nor handle, — He 
 made it a problem full of anxiety and peril to travel 
 among their heathen neighbours or to have their 
 heathen neighbours sojourning with them. And 
 altogether, betwixt that short cable which kept them 
 moored to the Temple, and that regimen which made 
 them and the rest of the world so ungainly if not 
 odious to one another. He secured for this singular 
 people a seclusion almost as absolute as if they had 
 been transported to some island in a distant sea. 
 
 Thus isolated, shut up in the calm enclosure of 
 their Holy Land, the Most High commenced that 
 series of lessons by which He educated the pupil 
 nation up to the proper point for appreciating 
 Messiah when He came, and on the strength of 
 which her more proficient scholars were destined to 
 become the recipients of the final revelation and the 
 first heralds of God's mercies to mankind. But 
 without stretching away into a theme so vast as is 
 that anomalous Hebrew history, our present object 
 is to see the precise relation which that Hebrew 
 system bears to its patriarchal predecessor. And if 
 we do not greatly err, it may, as already hinted, be 
 described as a reservoir or artificial channel, in 
 which the remains of patriarchal theology were 
 conserved, and in which provision was made for the 
 reception and transmission of all the intermediate 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 337 
 
 revelation which Jehovah might vouchsafe till the 
 Word should be made flesh, and grace and truth 
 should come in Jesus Christ. 
 
 What all remained of the patriarchal or primeval 
 theology, it is vain to conjecture : but all that re- 
 mained, we may safely assert, was absorbed into the 
 new dispensation. For if we found a Sabbath in 
 Paradise, and signs of a Sabbath in the Ark, and if 
 we find in the readiness with which it was recog- 
 nised in the wilderness that it had not been abso- 
 lutely forgotten in the brick-kilns of Egypt, this 
 patriarchal Sabbath was adopted and sanctioned as 
 one of the most prominent features in the Hebrew 
 economy. If we found graciously given to the exiles 
 of Eden the promise of a Saviour, under the name 
 of Shiloh, and the prophet like unto Moses, and the 
 root and offspring of David, we find the promise 
 repeated and restricted till the Desire of the World 
 became the hope and the proud prospect of Israel. 
 If our first father knew the Father of Spirits in the 
 awe of His justice as well as the endearment of His 
 mercy, and if the world's second father saw the 
 Divine perfections diffracted, as in yonder symbolic 
 bow, in the various tints of vengeance, patience, 
 pity, the founder of that new dispensation saw the 
 scattered rays again united in the white focus of the 
 burning bush, and in the name, "The Lord God, 
 merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, yet by no 
 
 Y 
 
338 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 means clearing tlie guilty," received a presentiment 
 of the great gospel announcement, "God is love." 
 And if substitution and expiation by sacrifice are as 
 ancient as the world before the flood, we find the 
 principle assumed and the practice systematized, 
 codified, reduced to a rubric, in the statute-book of 
 Israel, and the precedents of Abel, Noah, and 
 Melchisedec, carried out in the priesthood of Levi, 
 and in those altars which did not cease to smoke 
 for fifteen centuries. 
 
 And yet, although so much of the old patriarchal 
 revelation was restored or preserved in the Hebrew 
 economy, the knowledge of God, access to Him 
 through mediation, the hope of a Eedeemer, sacrifice, 
 and Sabbath-keeping, — in other words, although 
 Judaism was in one respect a reform from Pa- 
 ganism and a return to the pure and primitive 
 Patriarchism (as Protestantism is a reform from 
 Popery, and a return to pure and primitive apo- 
 stolism), it must not be forgotten that in all its out- 
 ward form and figure it was a very different system ; 
 and could an Abel or an Enoch have made the 
 direct transition from the palmy days of the patriar- 
 chal piety to the era of the Aaronic priesthood, he 
 might have felt it a change from liberty to bondage, 
 and from sunshine to clouds and shadows. And 
 even although the actual transition was from an old 
 dispensation's twilight to a new one's dawn, and 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 339 
 
 from the vagueness and uncertainty of decaying 
 tradition to the precision and permanence of a 
 written revelation, so narrow was the range, so 
 strict the rubric, and so stern the threatenings 
 of the new economy, that, looking back to that 
 incident in the childhood of the Church of God, we 
 feel as if it then had quitted the lap of a nursing 
 mother to be under the bondage of a schoolmaster. 
 Its first salutation, — one which the wild and way- 
 ward scholar greatly needed, but still a salutation 
 harsh and startling, — was in the hoarse thunder of 
 Sinai, and its first lesson a severer ordeal than 
 Pythagoras imposed on his pupils, a novitiate of 
 forty years' silence, a probation not of forty days 
 but of forty years, in which one murmuring word 
 would be fatal. And the task which was prescribed, 
 and which it took a thousand years to learn, was 
 enforced by so many pains and penalties, and truant 
 moments were visited by corrections so severe, that 
 after ages of so strict a monitor we do not wonder 
 that it was felt a joyful emancipation when Jesus 
 stretched out His hands and said, " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest ;" we do not wonder that in exchang- 
 ing Moses for Messiah those who made the trial 
 declared His yoke to be easy and His burden light. 
 
XXIIL 
 
 ^h^ 3|ermit Ration. 
 
 " For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold 
 him : lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not he reckoned 
 among the nations." — Numb, xxiii. 9. 
 
 In last Lecture we saw liow the Patriarchal passed 
 into the Hebrew dispensation. It was needful to 
 narrow the channel in order to save the stream. For 
 our present purpose we do not require to ask, What 
 became of the residue ? What became of those little 
 rills which were not included in the great artificial 
 canal, but w^hich were allowed to run off into the 
 great expanse of humanity? It is an interesting 
 inquiry, and justice has hardly been done it. Too 
 frequently, and in forgetfulness of what the Bible 
 tells, it has been assumed that the whole of that 
 primeval revelation evaporated and left no trace. 
 But although the trace may be minute or the stream 
 may be muddy, there is nevertheless an appreciable 
 tincture of primeval truth in almost all the religions 
 of Paganism. It may not be sufficient to make men 
 better; nay, like that pure element which carries 
 
 340 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 341 
 
 health and exhilaration in its free and open current, 
 but whicli in its stagnant overflow converts into a 
 pestilent swamp what before was but a barren 
 wilderness, the corruption of a truth may be more 
 offensive and more deadly than simple ignorance, 
 yet still they are not without significance, those 
 vestiges of primeval verity. What means this 
 tradition, so prevailing, of a golden age that w^as, 
 this longing, so universal, for a better time not seen 
 as yet ? Whence this dark discomfort, this con- 
 science of sin, this dreary feeling that God and 
 man are disagreed, and whence this general effort 
 to get anew into a right relation? those peace- 
 offerings and vows and sacrifices which confess 
 transgTCSsion, and plead for pardon and for mercies 
 otherwise unmerited ? Are they not the relics of a 
 better religion that once existed ? a few fragments, 
 rusty and corroded perhaps, of that earlier truth 
 which in ISToah's ark was transported from the old 
 w^orld to the new ? — so many little pools or runnels 
 which in their choked and struggling course are still 
 derived from the fountain which started so clear and 
 strong on Ararat ? 
 
 But for the present we take leave of this primeval 
 and catholic revelation, with its fast-disappearing and 
 corrupting remains. We need not even discuss the 
 question how far it was possible for the Gentiles to 
 come to the saving knowledge of God with the light 
 
342 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 that in some places lingered after the Mosaic dis- 
 pensation was established. Our business now lies 
 with that little country which, for fifteen centuries, 
 was the Goshen of the earth ; the one illumined 
 region in a world whose spiritual gloom was deepen- 
 ing age by age, till at last it had become a darkness 
 that might be felt. We are to contemplate that 
 system which at first sight is to many of us cumbrous 
 and uncouth, but which, on nearer inspection, we 
 shall find, like the other works of Jehovah, a master- 
 piece of wisdom wonderful. 
 
 And looking at Judaism, the first thing that strikes 
 us is its local limitation. Here is a little spot of 
 10,000 square miles,^ about one five-thousandth part 
 of the globe's terrestrial surface, or a fifth of ^England's 
 area ; and in this little nook we find locked up the 
 peculiar people, the privileged possessors of the only 
 authentic religion, the exclusive guardians of the one 
 Divine revelation. The people dwell alone, and are 
 not reckoned among the nations. And it is not only 
 that their territory is small, for, like the eagle whose 
 home is a crag, but whose hunting field is the entire 
 domain of ocean, earth, and air, Macedonia, Carthage, 
 and Eome nestled on a narrow ledge, but made the 
 flap of their pinions heard afar ; but, with the fire of 
 ambition blazing in his eye, Israel is an eagle whose 
 
 1 The area of the Holy Land was about 10,000 square miles. The 
 terrestrial area of the globe is upwards of 48,000,000 of square miles. 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 343 
 
 wings have been shorn. Without horses, without a 
 navy, without the talent for conquest or command, 
 he is forced to tarry at home ; and religion requires 
 what Providence indicates: for he must not lose 
 sight of the Temple, he must not mingle among 
 strangers, whose very touch is defilement, he must 
 not lodge in their tainted dwellings nor sit down at 
 their idolatrous boards. And therefore, only known 
 to his neighbours for his strange unsocial ways, 
 he dwells apart, like the cony of his own over- 
 shadowing Lebanon, a hermit nation, a mysterious 
 recluse, a sequestered and separate community, 
 building his houses on the rock, and chiefly protected 
 by his isolation. Of purpose. Such was the design 
 of the Most High. He desired to isolate the peo- 
 ple. To intrust the forthcoming revelation to the 
 world at large would have been to lose it, but to 
 secure its conservation He prepared a place and a 
 people. That revelation should not again be water 
 spilt upon the ground, but, collected into this reser- 
 voir, it should be guarded with religious care by a 
 race who knew that their national existence was 
 bound up with its integrity, and who, instead of 
 courting foreign alliances or aspiring to imperial 
 dominion, felt that they had a mission still more 
 august, and that, as custodiers of God's oracles, and 
 guardians of His temple, they had a distinction above 
 all the peoples tliat dwell on the face of the earth. 
 
344 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 Hence everything was done to keep them at home, 
 and to keep them separate. Hence was it that a 
 dietary was prescribed which made the Hebrew a 
 tronblesome guest and an uneasy traveller in the 
 land of the Gentiles. Hence was it that his means 
 of locomotion were taken away, and that a few days' 
 radius from the Temple became the necessary limit 
 of Hebrew horn es. Hence was it that the heart of the 
 Jew was taught to cling with a tremendous tenacity 
 to his Holy Land, till exile became the sorest of 
 judgments, and a grave in the sacred soil was deemed 
 almost essential to a joyful resurrection. 
 
 But looking again at Judaism, we are struck 
 with the minuteness of its rubric and the rigidity of 
 its ritual. Not only was the isolation of the peculiar 
 people a great contrast to the catholic patriarchism 
 which went before, and to the world-embracing 
 gospel which followed ; but their singular system 
 was a striking antithesis to the law of liberty which 
 marked primeval and apostolic times. With the 
 Jew, religion was itself a business. Almost every 
 movement was fettered by certain rules and pre- 
 scriptions, and it required much circumspection to 
 pass unscathed through a single day. To take the 
 most obvious example : Our Lord has taught Chris- 
 tians to eat whatever is set before them, thanking 
 God, and asking no questions ; and the meal is now 
 religious if he who partakes it eats and drinks to 
 
THE HEEMIT NATION. 345 
 
 the glory of God. But in order to be a safe meal to 
 the Hebrew, it was needful that the viands should 
 be of a certain description, and that they should be 
 prepared according to a certain formula. On par- 
 ticular days it would have been a trespass to eat 
 bread with leaven, and on any day it would have 
 been a serious offence to partake of delicacies much 
 prized among the neighbouring nations : so that 
 the Shadrachs and Meshachs, the truly conscien- 
 tious, were sometimes constrained to send away 
 uutasted dainties from a royal feast, and appease 
 their hunger with pulse and lentils. And even 
 after every precaution had been observed, although 
 it was known that the viands were all authorized and 
 properly prepared, various accidents might mar the 
 meal and disperse the famished group from around 
 the polluted table. And then if, all his circumspection 
 notwithstanding, the Israelite were betrayed into 
 some transgression, it was both a laborious and 
 expensive ordeal to expiate the offence and elimi- 
 nate its consequences. There was the bathing, and 
 there was the costly sacrifice, and there was the 
 exclusion from the society of one's friends, so irk- 
 some, and often so inopportune. And in order to 
 have some idea of the Hebrew's trammelled life, w^e 
 have only to read their great directory, Leviticus, 
 which, with its meats and drinks and divers wash- 
 ings and carnal ordinances, still stands upon the 
 
346 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 record to teacli us, among other lessons, from what a 
 yoke of bondage the Saviour has set His people free. 
 It was a burdensome institute ; but there was a 
 meaning in its very burdensomeness. ^o doubt, to 
 many its very chains grew golden, and its yoke 
 became a proud badge of distinction ; and as if its 
 fetters were not sufficiently felt, the later Jews 
 busied themselves in contriving new prohibitions 
 and in multiplying ritual minutiae. Still, to the freer 
 spirits of that legal economy, especially when it was 
 waxing old and ready to vanish aw^ay, there was 
 an irksome restraint in its ceremonial routine and 
 punctilious regulations ; and, like the winged crea- 
 ture developing within the crust of the creeping 
 thing, they panted for larger fields and a higher 
 flight. They groaned and travailed till the Son of 
 God was manifest ; and when at the resurrection - 
 word, " Loose him and let him go," the cerements 
 burst and the grave-clothes fell off, it was with an 
 exulting shout that Pauline spirits hailed the liberty 
 wherewith Christ had made His people free, and 
 refused to be again entangled w^ith the yoke of 
 bondage. 
 
 In its limited locality, and in its punctilious 
 ritual, Judaism differed from both the Patriarchism 
 which preceded it and the Christianity which fol- 
 lowed. For fifteen centuries Jerusalem was the 
 focus of all light, the magnet of all piety, the one 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 347 
 
 place for acceptable worship. Arid during all that 
 period the Levitical code was binding, — a code so 
 difficult that few could observe it except those born 
 and brought up under it, and who had for its details 
 something of a hereditary instinct. 
 
 But if in these respects Judaism was unique, 
 when we look at it again we observe one feature in 
 which it closely resembled the dispensation that 
 followed, and that is, in the possession of a written 
 revelation. It had now been ascertained that the 
 true faith could not be kept alive by tradition. 
 Man's memory was too treacherous to be intrusted 
 with a matter so distasteful to his fallen spirit as 
 the true character of God ; and even where there 
 was a traditional theology, like the stream wdiich 
 flows through many soils, and which takes a bitter 
 taste from one and a dusky tint from another, in its 
 transmission from race to race it was found that the 
 oral revelation grcAV dark and offensive. In this 
 stagnant swamp, weltering with reptiles and fuming 
 with pestilence, who can recognise the stream which 
 bounded from the Alpine crag, pure as the melted 
 snow and salubrious as Heaven's own precipitate ? 
 And in these Gentile religions, all alive with hideous 
 pagods and deadly with abominable idolatries, who 
 could believe that this is what man has made of 
 that Revelation which started on its course from 
 Ararat so clear and peUucid ? But by consigning it 
 
348 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 to a written record, the Most High took care that, 
 uncorrupted and undiminished, His oracles should 
 continue lively to the last ; and He made it at once 
 the duty and the distinction of the Jews that to 
 them these oracles were committed : their distinc- 
 tion to have a treasure so unique confided to their 
 keeping, their duty to preserve it unimpaired. Ages 
 of ignorance or error might intervene ; but here in 
 the volume of the Book was the well of wisdom 
 undefiled, and though a thousand years might have 
 passed away since the thunders of Sinai fell silent, 
 here evermore the worshipper who prays, " I 
 beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," sees God's 
 stately goings and hears that very Name which was 
 proclaimed unto Moses ; and although it has wan- 
 dered many a sultry mile since it left the heights of 
 Zion, though to reach these Avillows of Babylon 
 it has had to cross a weary desert, this is the very 
 brook from which the panting Psalmist drank, at 
 which the soul, thirsting for God, the living God, 
 now drinks and is refreshed. 
 
 The pre-eminence of a written revelation is un- 
 speakable. It is a permanent provision not only 
 for the satisfying of every longing soul, but for the 
 constant reviving of the Church. When, like 
 Patriarchism, a traditional revelation has once 
 grown turbid, man possesses no filter which can 
 clarify it again ; but written down, however bad the 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 349 
 
 times may grow, the book preserves it pure and 
 limpid to the last. And like the Wycliffes and 
 Luthers of the Christian time, when the Church was 
 dead and faith almost extinct, the Josiahs and the 
 Ezras of the Hebrew time had only to bring out the 
 Book of the Law, and Jehovah spake once more, 
 and the people trembled before Him. 
 
 But if, in its written records, its documentary 
 and enduring revelation, Judaism anticipated the 
 Christian dispensation, it was a prolongation of 
 Patriarchism in its continued use of ty2:)es and 
 emllems. There were types in Paradise : for the 
 tree of life was an emblem of Him who grows in 
 the midst of God's garden, and of whom partaking 
 the soul lives for ever. There were types before 
 the Flood : for the Sabbath is a type of the rest 
 which remains for the people of God ; and Sacrifice 
 was a foreshadowing of that Lamb of God whose 
 one offering should for ever take away sin. And 
 if the Flood itself w^as not a type, assuredly the Ark 
 was one, in which " the church of the saved " was 
 rescued from a doomed world, and deposited in 
 safety beneath the bow of God's covenant. But 
 in the Mosaic dispensation these types grew so 
 numerous that time would fail should we reckon 
 the whole ; those objects and observances and in- 
 cidents which all had a shadow of good things to 
 come : the High Priest, the Tabernacle, the Temple, 
 
350 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 the Veil, the Ark of the Covenant, the Table of 
 Shewbread, the Cities of Eefuge, the Morning and 
 Evening Sacrifice, the Day of Atonement, the Pass- 
 over, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Law of the Leper, 
 the Healing of Marah, the Descent of the Manna, 
 the Smitten Eock, the Guiding Pillar, the Passage of 
 Jordan, the Destruction of Jericho. And without 
 descanting at present on all the advantages or 
 drawbacks of this mode of instruction, it will be 
 conceded that it was one well adapted to the early- 
 state of society. If it was not so precise or ex- 
 pository as writing, it was more arresting, and in an 
 age when few could read it was a universal lan- 
 guage. In fact their system of types gave the Jews 
 the benefit of a twofold Bible. They had a written 
 Bible and they had a pictorial Bible. They had 
 a Bible, written on the parchment rolls, which the 
 scribes and the scholars could read ; and they had 
 another blazing on Aaron's breastplate, and curling 
 up in the smoke of the altar, and hovering over the 
 mercy-seat, a Bible which the runner could read, 
 and which the infant and peasant could spell ; 
 whilst to the Master in Israel both Bibles were 
 patent, and the one expounded the other. For in- 
 stance, if a Hebrew believer had been looking at 
 his pictorial Bible, and the question had arisen. 
 What mean these endless washings ? what means 
 this laver in the Temple, and this constant resorting 
 
THE HERMIT NATION. 351 
 
 of the ceremonially unclean to tlie running river ? 
 lie had only to open his written Bible and read, 
 " In that day there shall be a fountain opened to 
 the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem, for sin and for uncleanness." " Wash you, 
 make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings 
 from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to 
 do well. Come now, and let us reason together, 
 saith the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, 
 they shall be as white as snow ; though they be 
 red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Or if he 
 had been reading in his written Bible about Jeho- 
 vah's majesty or sin-excluding sanctity, " God is 
 greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints. 
 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle ? who shall 
 dwell in thy holy hill?" most likely the words 
 would make faint impression on his mind ; but 
 when he went up to the house of God, and joined 
 the adoring company, as afar off he descried the 
 mystic curtain and remembered that within that 
 Shekinah dwelt which on the intrusive foot would 
 flash instant and devouring flame, — as he marked 
 how anxiously these Levites observed each minute 
 prescription, and how careful was Aaron's successor 
 not to approach the awful shrine save with incense 
 and with blood, — he felt the force of the Psalmisfs 
 question, and his spirit was subdued to reverence. 
 Thus did the two Bibles illustrate and interpret 
 
352 THE HERMIT NATION. 
 
 one another. Thus what was dark in the type 
 was made clear in the text, and what failed to 
 impress in the written word struck the sense and 
 filled the imagination in the dramatic or pictorial 
 oracle. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their 
 children. And let the beauty of the LoED our God be upon us : 
 and establish thou the work of our hands upon us ; yea, the work 
 of our hands establish thou it." — Ps. xc. 16, 17. 
 
 Although some difficulties have been started, 
 there seems no reason to doubt that this Psalm is 
 the composition of Moses. From the remotest 
 period his name has been attached to it, and almost 
 every Biblical scholar, from Jerome down to Heng- 
 stenberg, has agreed to accept it as a prayer of that 
 " man of God " whose name it has always carried. 
 
 If so, it is one of the oldest poems in the world. 
 Compared with it Homer and Pindar are (so to 
 speak) modern, and even King David is of recent 
 date. That is to say, compared with this ancient 
 hymn the other psalms are as much more modern 
 as Tennyson and Longfellow are more modern than 
 Chaucer. In either case there are nearly five cen- 
 turies between. 
 
 The occasion on which it was written can only be 
 z 
 
354 "A PKAYER OF MOSES, 
 
 conjectured ; but from internal evidence we should 
 say that it must have been either towards the end 
 of the wilderness sojourn, or after that calamitous 
 outburst which was punished by a lengthened de- 
 tention in the desert, and from which it resulted 
 that of those who were forty years old on leaving 
 Egypt only two made out the fourscore and arrived 
 in the land of promise (7-11). 
 
 This is enough to account for the tone of the 
 Psalm, so pensive and plaintive. Moses himself 
 was an exception. He had nearly made out the 
 sixscore years, but this made him only the more 
 lonely — the greater contrast to the youthful race 
 which had started up around him. It gave him 
 the feeling described by a poet of our own (Dr. 
 Young),— 
 
 " One world deceased, another born, 
 Like Noali they behold, 
 O'er whose white hair and furrow'd brows 
 Too many suns have roU'd. 
 
 Happy the patriarch ! he rejoiced 
 
 His second world to see ; 
 My second world, though gay the scene, 
 
 Can boast no charms for me. 
 
 To me this brilliant age appears 
 
 With desolation spread ; 
 Near all with whom I lived and smiled, 
 
 Whilst life was life, are dead." 
 
 And although there is every reason to believe that 
 the new generation was an immense improvement 
 
THE MAN OF GOD." 355 
 
 on its predecessor, it had the drawback of being 
 dreadfully new. It contained no one with whom 
 in the days of his youth the Psalmist had been 
 acquainted. As if a flood had swept over the 
 scene, that race had been carried completely away ; 
 and now he was left at once a spectator and a 
 spectacle, — in the midst of a race none of whom had 
 known him when young, — like the primeval oak or 
 elm looking down on a whole upstart forest, and 
 himself the venerable monument of a generation 
 which had utterly vanished. 
 
 Nothing can be more pathetic than the middle 
 portion — verses 3-10 ; nor can anything be more 
 expressive than the imagery under which the short- 
 ness of our earthly existence is described. Com- 
 pared with the years of the Eternal it is nothing. 
 Even although the original millennium were con- 
 tinued — even although the thousand years of Adam 
 and Methusaleh were still vouchsafed,— they would 
 pass, and after they were past, — " before God's sight," 
 compared with the years of the Eternal, they would 
 look no more than a rapid and returnless " yester- 
 day." Life, he says, is like " a watch in the night." 
 The weary warrior lays him down, and he fancies 
 that he has hardly closed his eyes — it does not look 
 like forty winks — when he is roused to take his 
 turn in the trenches or relieve the sentinel on the 
 battlements, or join the forlorn-hope — the storming 
 
356 "A PKAYER OF MOSES, 
 
 party in the escalade. And like such a short " sleep" 
 is our mortal history. We have had some pleasant 
 dreams, and others rather frightful : when we 
 wake up and see a ghastly apparition bending over 
 us. " What, O Death ! is that you already ? It 
 cannot possibly be time." And he answers, " Yes, 
 indeed. The tale is told ; the night is spent ; and 
 now you must turn out into the morning. Nor is it 
 so short as you imagine. Look at the clock, and 
 you will see that it has come to threescore and ten. 
 Look into the mirror, and you will see that there are 
 snows upon your head, that there are furrows on 
 your brow, that there are crows'-feet in the corners 
 of your eyes." 
 
 From man's mortality the Psalmist seeks refuge 
 in God's eternity. As the first and foremost thought 
 it begins the Psalm ; and there evidently underlies 
 it the assumption that man's immortality is involved 
 in the immortality of God. " Lord, Thou hast been 
 our dwelling-place in all generations," and as at the 
 bush Jehovah proclaimed, " I am the God of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob," — showing that these godly 
 patriarchs stiU were extant, and stiU had a life in 
 the great I AM, so from the wreck and desolation 
 all around him, the Psalmist lifts his eyes to that 
 true and only Potentate, who alone hath immorta- 
 lity. Of all the godly generations God is the eternal 
 home. Nothing which He once blesses with His 
 
THE MAN OF GOD." 357 
 
 friendship is ever blotted out of being, or is dis- 
 appointed of that exceeding great reward to which 
 He Himself has taught it to aspire. The tent is 
 gone, but the pilgrim lives. The tent is torn and 
 scattered amongst the elements ; but the pilgrim 
 has exchanged its frail and flimsy shelter for a house 
 eternal. He has got better than any building 
 made with hands, for He has passed in beneath the 
 covert of the Almighty, and will henceforth have 
 that home which God had for Himself before the 
 mountains were brought forth, or ever He had 
 formed the earth and the world. 
 
 If man he ephemeral, God is eternal. Such is the 
 first consideration. But a second thought strikes 
 the Psalmist. After he has depicted life's shortness 
 he seems startled by his own description. Is it 
 so? Is it really a dream — a sleep — a yesterday? 
 Then how astounding is the universal delusion ! 
 what a mad mistake is this general hope that to- 
 morrow will be as this day and much more abun- 
 dant ! " Lord, teach us so to number our days, that 
 we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." On which 
 Calvin remarks, " Children learn numbers as soon 
 as they begin to prattle, and we do not need an 
 arithmetical tutor to enable us to count a hundred 
 on our fingers. So much the more shameful is our 
 stupidity in never comprehending the short term of 
 our life. Even the most accomplished accountant 
 
358 "A PRAYEE OF MOSES, 
 
 is unable to calculate the fourscore years of his own 
 existence. Surely it is monstrous that men can 
 measure all distances outside of themselves. They 
 can tell how far asunder are the several planets, and 
 how many miles it is from the centre of the moon 
 to the centre of the earth, but they cannot measure 
 the threescore years and ten which divide their 
 cradle from their grave. To do this no one is wise 
 enough till God shines into His understanding by 
 the Holy Spirit, and for this rare wisdom Moses 
 now sets himself to prayer." 
 
 That prayer passes on to other points. He en- 
 treats that the period of rebuke and chastisement 
 may now be succeeded by a season of revival and 
 renovation. " Eeturn, O Lord, how long [wilt Thou 
 be angry?] and let it repent thee concerning thy 
 servants. Oh satisfy us early with thy mercy ; that 
 we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make 
 us glad according to the days wherein thou hast 
 afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen 
 evil." And more especially he prays that the pre- 
 sent juncture may be signalized by more of God's 
 power and presence, so that before the departing 
 generation entirely left the stage, it might have the 
 comfort of seeing that its work was done, and that a 
 better race was coming on. " Let thy work appear 
 unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. 
 And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; 
 
THE MAN OF GOD." 359 
 
 and establish thou the work of our hands upon us ; 
 yea, the work of our hands establish thou it;" — a 
 prayer in which is involved the principle that the 
 shorter the individual existence is, it becomes all 
 the more urgent to exert a beneficial influence on 
 others, so as to transmit to posterity a portion of 
 ourselves which shall thus become imperishable; 
 and a prayer w^hich in the instance before us was 
 abundantly answered ; for now that the murmurers 
 were dead, now that a new generation had learned 
 the dangers of disobedience, and been somewhat 
 weaned from idols, it is probable that the Hebrew 
 nation exhibited as much of the beauty of holiness as 
 at any period of their history. Referring to this time, 
 the Lord says, " I remember thee, the kindness of 
 thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou 
 wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that 
 was not sown. Israel was holiness unto the Lord" 
 (Jer. ii. 2, 3). And as this "beauty of Jehovah" 
 was on the rising race, Moses had reason to believe 
 that the Lord's work was appearing, and that his 
 own work would be established ; and — now that it 
 has assumed the form of prayer, and so from man's 
 sin and frailty has risen up into the region of Jeho- 
 vah's faithfulness and love — the meditation loses all 
 its mournfulness, and ends in a gleam of hope and 
 gladness. 
 
 This Psalm has already furnished us with two 
 
3G0 "A PRAYER OF MOSES, 
 
 discourses (vers. 12 and 14), and so we shall now 
 confine ourselves to the lesson of its closing verses. 
 
 1. You will observe a beautiful parallelism be- 
 tween two things which are sometimes confounded 
 and sometimes too jealously sundered : I mean God's 
 agency and marCs instmmentality, between man's 
 personal activity and that power of God which 
 actuates and animates, and gives it a vital efficacy. 
 For forty years it had been the business of Moses 
 to bring Israel into a right state politically, morally, 
 religiously : that had been his work. And yet, in 
 so far as it was to have any success or enduringness, 
 it must be God's work. " The work of our hands " 
 do Thou establish; and this God does when, in 
 answer to prayer. He adopts the work of His ser- 
 vants, and makes it His own "work," His own 
 " glory," His own " beauty." 
 
 And so if any of you are concerned for the good 
 of others, the secret of success and the best security 
 for permanence is prayer. To all your efforts bring 
 your best ; throw into them all the tact and all the 
 energy of which you are capable ; bring to them the 
 utmost of your affection, skill, and earnestness ; 
 and when you have done your best you will feel 
 most deeply that God Himself must do it all. Here 
 you stand seeking into the mind of this loved one 
 admission for the gospel and for the Son of God ; 
 but you stand before a door which cannot be forced, 
 
THE MAN OF GOD." 361 
 
 and it is only He that hath the key of David who 
 can open it, and who, introducing your message, can 
 withal enter Himself. Here is a history over whose 
 early and critical outset you are anxious. At 
 present it is like a rill rising on the watershed of a 
 far inland range, and although you make every 
 exertion to direct it into that quarter where it will 
 flow long and illustriously and usefully, it shows 
 a sad propensity towards those sour and swampy 
 levels where it must be engulfed and wasted, and 
 where it will ignobly disappear; but the heart of 
 the youth, the heart of the child, is in the hand of 
 the Lord, and, as a river of water, He can turn it 
 whichever way He will ; and if He will kindly 
 interpose, from this time forward its course will be 
 shaped aright, not perhaps so steady and so uniform 
 as you wish, not so straight as a conduit, not so 
 placid as the surface of a canal ; a little wriggling 
 at the first, a little noisy, a little redundant now 
 and then ; but by-and-bye gladdening the banks on 
 either hand, and to the right course too far com- 
 mitted to make you fearful of its deflecting towards 
 the desert or turning backward to the sea of death. 
 
 2. A man of piety is a man of public spirit. It 
 is not only in the great congregation, but in secret 
 and domestic devotion, that the man of God has at 
 heart the cause of God, and prays, "Let thy work 
 appear." Hitherto God has been working in the 
 
3G2 "A PRAYER OF MOSES, 
 
 world. His great work is that w^hich He carries 
 on in the souls of men, and there has never been a 
 time w^ien some did not experience His worh of 
 saving and transforming grace. But the time when 
 God works most apparently is the time when His 
 people pray most earnestly. This year opened 
 with much prayer, and every successive week has 
 brought instalments of the answer. In some of the 
 mission fields — amongst the Karens of Burmah and 
 the Hindus of Tinnevelly — the aw^aking has been 
 wonderful; and here at home — in Wales, to some 
 extent in London, still more in Dublin, in Glasgow, 
 Perth, and Aberdeen, and in the fishing villages 
 along the eastern coast, from Eyemouth to Peter- 
 head, great numbers have been added to the Church. 
 And with the patriotism of Moses, with the phil- 
 anthropy of Christians, it behoves us to urge the 
 prayer and with every corresponding effort empha- 
 size the Amen, till God's work " appear" throughout 
 these isles, till His way is known through all the 
 earth, till the name of His holy child Jesus is adored 
 by all the nations. 
 
 3. God is glorified and His work advances when 
 His church is beautiful. " The beauty of the Lord " 
 is the beauty of holiness, — that beauty which in the 
 Lord Jesus himself shone with lustre so resplendent, 
 and which ought to be repeated or reflected by every 
 disciple. And it is towards this that all amongst us 
 
THE MAN OF GOD.'' 363 
 
 who love the Saviour, and who long for the exten- 
 sion of His kingdom, should very mainly direct their 
 endeavours. Nothing can be sadder than when 
 preaching or personal effort is contradicted and 
 neutralized by the low or unlovely lives of those who 
 pass for Christians ; and nothing can go further to 
 insure success than when prayer is carried out and 
 preaching is seconded by the pure, holy, and 
 benevolent lives of those who seek to follow the 
 Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Dear brethren, be 
 this your effort. In loving meditation and affec- 
 tionate communion draw near to the Lord Jesus. 
 Draw so near that His glory will lighten upon you, 
 and that His lineaments of grace and truth will be 
 reflected by you. Draw so near that the beauty 
 which for a great way round encircles Him will 
 enclose and encompass you. And then the living 
 evidence, the palpable demonstration will go further 
 than a thousand arguments. The book may be shut 
 and flung into a corner; the sermon may be for- 
 gotten, or the lay figure which was left in the pew 
 whilst the inner man went back to the opera or took 
 a run through his ledger, — that lay figure may never 
 have listened to a single sentence : but when at last 
 the day-dream dissolves, when the man is come to 
 himself, he will say, " Yes, but it is real. There is 
 in religion something more than forms or phrases. 
 I have seen it. In the old disciple I have seen its 
 
364 "A PEAYER OF MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD." 
 
 mellow grandeur, — its meek, patient, unmurmuring 
 majesty; in the deathbed of the young believer I 
 have seen the love of life, the fear of death, absorbed 
 in the hope full of immortality. In that sincere 
 and solid comrade, so pestered and so persecuted, I 
 have seen the might of sterling principle; in that 
 helpmeet so rallied for her scruples, and often so 
 obstructed in her well-meant efforts, I have seen the 
 inexhaustible long-suffering and gentleness which 
 God bestows on those who pray for it. These are 
 saints ; for I have seen them, and they were very 
 beautiful. God, be merciful to me a sinner." 
 
XXV. 
 
 " So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there, in the land of Moab, 
 according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a 
 valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor : but no man 
 knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hun- 
 dred and twenty years old when he died : his eye was not dim, 
 nor his natui-al force abated." — Deut. xxxiv. 5-7. 
 
 Calm and colossal, not so mucli distinguished by 
 his individual features as by the mighty deeds with 
 which he is identified, stands out the figure of that 
 Hebrew lawgiver ; and betwixt the romantic inci- 
 dents of his birth and upbringing, his unparalleled 
 achievements as the conductor of a national exodus, 
 and his exalted function as the founder of the 
 Hebrew commonwealth and the father of a new 
 dispensation, no mere man has exerted a larger 
 or more enduring influence on human history. 
 
 The end was in keeping with such illustrious 
 antecedents. Lately we had occasion to consider 
 the solitary false step or stumble in his public 
 career, and nothing could more strikingly exhibit 
 the strictness of that " schoolmaster " economy than 
 the way in which this single offence was visited. 
 
 365 
 
366 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 The eating of the forbidden fruit was hardly more 
 fatal to Adam than was tlie smiting of the Eock to 
 Moses ; and even although we can see the rectitude 
 of the dispensation, our hearts will still revert to its 
 severity. It may be true that a significant type was 
 spoiled by his smiting on this second occasion a rock 
 which had been smitten once for all already, and 
 which now needed only to be spoken to ; it may be 
 true that his spirit was provoked, and that the im- 
 pression which he conveyed to the people was very 
 different from that divine munificence and mercy 
 which originated the miracle : yet remembering his 
 long services and his rare consistency, and conscious 
 as we are of our own infirmity, we are apt to share 
 the grief and disappointment of Meribah. The sen- 
 tence may be righteous, but still it is severe, and we 
 feel deeply concerned for the leader who, after forty 
 years of signal service, receives a rebuke so marked, 
 and who sees vanish from his grasp that crown for 
 which his hoary hairs so long had waited. 
 
 But if we behold the severity of God we also 
 behold His goodness ; and indeed, we may add, what 
 was in itself so great a humiliation only brought out 
 more strikingly the real grandeur of Moses. To err 
 is human, and Moses erred ; but to be rebuked, to be 
 punished, and show no resentment, is a rare noble- 
 ness. This nobleness the grace of God gave to 
 Moses, and hence it came to pass that in all his 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 367 
 
 career there is nothing grander than its ending. On 
 the one side, mercy triumphed over judgment, and 
 if the lawgiver had received a rebuke, that was more 
 than compensated by the peerless distinction attend- 
 ing his exit. On the other side, grace triumphed 
 over nature, and instead of wasting the time in a 
 murmuring remonstrance or unmanly lamentations, 
 warned by God that he was now to die, he who as a 
 servant had been so faithful in all God's house, now 
 bestirred himself in the final task, and for the last 
 time set that house in order. 
 
 1. He first of all addressed the people. In that 
 discourse, which^ fills the first thirty chapters of 
 Deuteronomy, he rehearsed their history, and recapi- 
 tulated those commandments and that covenant, by 
 adhesion to which they were to become a people 
 peculiar and Heaven-protected. In these thirty 
 chapters we have the essence of Exodus, Leviticus, 
 and Numbers; only conveyed in a tone of patri- 
 archal affection and personal tenderness, Deutero- 
 nomy is a speech rather than a book, full of that 
 anxious fidelity and fatherly desirousness which, 
 knowing that it is a last opportunity, can hardly 
 leave off, and which, after attempting to close, begin 
 again, in the spirit of the last sentences, Deut. xxx. 
 15-20. 
 
 2. Then he installed his successor. Joshua, so 
 gaUant and God-fearing, and found so faithful 
 
368 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 amidst the faithless many, in the presence of Jehovah 
 and the people he set apart to that conquest of 
 Canaan to which he himself had once aspired as his 
 dearest guerdon, and the fit close of his pilgrimage : 
 " Be strong, and of a good courage ; for thou must go 
 with this people unto the land which the Lord hath 
 sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou 
 shalt cause them to inherit it. The Lord will be 
 with thee ; he will not fail thee, neither forsake 
 thee : fear not, neither be dismayed." 
 
 3. Next into that most remarkable of all his pro- 
 ductions, the thirty-second chapter of this book, he 
 condensed the substance of all his warnings and 
 entreaties, and along with them poured his own soul. 
 Than "the song of Moses" Scripture recognises 
 nothing as more sublime except one other composi- 
 tion, and with that other they only are acquainted 
 who have received a harp of gold, and along with 
 " the song of Moses, the servant of God," sing " the 
 song of the Lamb." It has been well termed ^ " the 
 Magna Charta of prophecy," and in its historical 
 recollections and premonitory warnings, in its re- 
 monstrances and exhortations, its entreaties and 
 regrets, and, above all, in its loyalty to Jehovah, it 
 supplies the key-note, which we find constantly 
 recurring in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the prophets wha 
 come after. 
 
 1 By Eichhom. 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 3G9 
 
 4. And finally, as the Prophet like unto Moses 
 began with beatitudes, so, with a blessing broad 
 and comprehensive this type of a Mediator closed ; 
 and, with parting breath transferring them to " the 
 eternal God as their refuge," leaving "underneath 
 the everlasting arms," he handed to his successor 
 the rod of office, and laid down the task of all those 
 arduous years. 
 
 Thus much on the side of Moses. His life and 
 his work were well wound up, and in the manner of 
 it God was glorified. And in His gracious dealing 
 with His servant, God glorified Himself. 
 
 Although the sentence was not literally reversed, 
 its bitterness was greatly mitigated. Although not 
 permitted to pass over Jordan, Moses was allowed 
 to look over it, and, with his eye preternaturally 
 strengthened, he got such a sight of the goodly land 
 as days of actual exploration might have failed to 
 give. From JSTebo he looked down on the palm-trees 
 of Jericho, close under his feet, and from the deep 
 warm valley through which the Jordan was gleaming 
 far across to yon boundless sea ; from Jezreel, with 
 its waving corn, to Eshcol, with its luxuriant vines ; 
 from Bashan, with its kine, to Carmel, with its rocks 
 dropping honey ; from Lebanon, with its rampart of 
 snow, south again to the dim edge of the desert; 
 and as he feasted his eyes, as what had so long been 
 the land very far off, and what to the fretful host in 
 2a 
 
370 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 the wilderness had seemed no better than a myth or 
 mirage ; as the splendid domain spread out, hill and 
 valley, field and forest, in the bright garb of spring, 
 the Lord said, " This is the land !" " This is the 
 land which I sware unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 saying, I will give it to thy seed." But beautiful 
 and overwhelming as it was, just then there began 
 to rise on Moses' sight a still more wondrous scene. 
 It was no longer the Jordan with its palms, but a 
 river of water clear as crystal, and on either side of 
 it a tree of life o'ercanopying. It was no longer 
 Nebo's rocky summit, but a great white throne, 
 and round it light inaccessible. He had just heard 
 the name of Abraham, and if this is not Abraham's 
 seK ! and if he is not actually in Abraham's bosom ! 
 and in a better land than the land of promise ! 
 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see that 
 sight. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
 that better land. 
 
 " So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died." The 
 spirit was gone home. Behind that countenance, 
 still radiant with the beatific vision, no longer 
 worked the busy brain, no longer went and came 
 the mind, which so long had conversed with God, 
 and managed the affairs of a million people. Power- 
 less is the hand which had swayed Jehovah's rod, 
 and split the sea in sunder ; and cold in its uncon- 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 371 
 
 sciousness is that majestic presence before which 
 proud Pharaoh learned to tremble. A corpse is all 
 that now remains of the mighty lawgiver, and there 
 is no man there to bury him. 
 
 But the Lord is there, and in this moment of 
 nature's helplessness and humiliation the Lord con- 
 fers on His servant the crowning act of honour. As 
 it has been described — 
 
 •' By Nebo's lonely mountain, 
 
 On yon side Jordan's wave, 
 In a vale in the land of Moab 
 
 There lies a lonely grave. 
 And no man dug that sepulchre, 
 
 And no man saw it e'er ; 
 For the angels of God upturned the sod. 
 
 And laid the dead man there. 
 
 That was the grandest funeral 
 
 That ever passed on earth, 
 But no man heard the tramping. 
 
 Or saw the train go forth. 
 Noiselessly as the daylight 
 
 Comes when the night is done, 
 And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek 
 
 Grows into the great sun : 
 
 Noiselessly as the spring-time 
 
 Her crown of verdure weaves, 
 And aU the trees on all the hills 
 
 Open their thousand leaves : 
 So, without sound of music. 
 
 Or voice of them that wept, 
 Silently down from the mountain's crown 
 
 The great procession swept. 
 
372 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 Perchance the bald old eagle, 
 
 On grey Beth-peor's height, 
 Out of his rocky eyrie 
 
 Looked on the wondrous sight. 
 Perchance the lion stalking. 
 
 Still shuns that hallowed spot : 
 For beast and bird have seen and heard 
 
 That which man knoweth not. 
 
 But when the warrior dieth, 
 
 His comrades in the war, 
 With arms reversed and mufHed drum, 
 
 Follow the funeral car. 
 They show the banners taken, 
 
 They tell his battles won. 
 And after him lead his masterless steed, 
 
 While peals the minute-gun. 
 
 Amid the noblest of the land 
 
 Men lay the sage to rest. 
 And give the bard an honoured place 
 
 With costly marble drest, 
 In the great minster transept 
 
 Where lights like glories fall, 
 And the choir sings and the organ rings 
 
 Along the emblazoned wall. 
 
 This was the bravest warrior 
 
 That ever buckled sword ; 
 This the most gifted poet 
 
 That ever breathed a word ; 
 And never earth's philosopher 
 
 Traced with his golden pen 
 On the deathless page truth half so sage 
 
 As he wrote down for men. 
 
 And had he not high honour ? 
 
 The hill-side for his pall. 
 To lie in state while angels wait 
 
 With stars for tapers tall, 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 373 
 
 And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes 
 
 Over his bier to wave, 
 And God's own hand in that lonely land 
 
 To lay him in the grave : — 
 
 In that deep grave without a name, 
 
 Whence his uncofl&ned clay 
 Shall break again — most wondrous thought! — 
 
 Before the judgment-day ; 
 And stand with glory wrapped around 
 
 On the hills he never trod. 
 And speak of the strife that won our life 
 
 With the incarnate Son of God. 
 
 Oh lonely tomb in Moab's land ! 
 
 Oh dark Beth-peor's hill ! 
 Speak to these curious hearts of ours, 
 
 And teach them to be still. 
 God hath His mysteries of grace, 
 
 Ways that we cannot t 11 ; 
 He hides them deep like the secret sleep 
 
 Of him He loved so well." ^ 
 
 And so, my dear friends, we finish our sketcli of 
 the Life and Times of Moses. It has occupied five- 
 and-twenty lectures, and, by way of sequel or 
 supplement, I should like to give some day, in a 
 single lecture, a bird's-eye view of Hebrew History, 
 the fortunes and distinguishing features of that 
 people on whom, in the hand of God, Moses im- 
 pressed its religious and political characteristics, and 
 the function which they have fulfilled in the world 
 at large. In this way only can we appreciate how 
 great the work of Moses was, when we see its re- 
 
 ^ Mrs. Alexander. 
 
374 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 suits not only in Solomon and Daniel, in John and 
 Paul, but all down the ages in Ben Ezra and Maim- 
 onides, in Mendelssohn and Meierbeer, in Eothschild, 
 in Spinoza, in the minstrels who have held by the 
 ears enraptured capitals, in the millionnaires who 
 have carried in their pockets the peace of empires, 
 in the philosophers who have given new problems 
 for wit to solve, new realms for mind to conquer. 
 
 And the lessons of that life ! Yes, my friends, 
 every life has its lessons, and every good life has its 
 example and encouragement. Even the little house- 
 hold lamp which shone on your table through that 
 one short winter, now that it is out it leaves the 
 public street no darker, but oh ! so desolate as it 
 has left your dwelling ! But histories like this are 
 smis, and age after age myriads rejoice in their 
 light. 
 
 You are not a prophet nor a bard, nor the father 
 of a people, and yet the life of Moses has something 
 for you. As the honest carpenter said, " I like to 
 read about Moses. He carried a hard business well 
 through. A man must have courage to look at his 
 life and think what '11 come of it after he 's dead and 
 gone. A good solid bit of work lasts; if it 's only the 
 laying a floor down, somebody's the better for its 
 being well done, besides the man who does it." ^ It 
 was a hard business, but he carried it well through. 
 
 1 Adam, Bede, ii. 68. 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 375 
 
 You, poor widow, who have a large family to bring 
 up and to educate — you, householder, who have 
 many likings to consult, and many tempers to study 
 — you, manager of your own or another's business, 
 who have many casualties to provide for, and many 
 cares coming on you daily, cast yourself on Him 
 whom Moses in each emergency consulted, and de- 
 pend upon it He mil carry you through. The w^ork 
 of Moses was done in the presence of the fiery- 
 cloudy pillar, and as conscience was in it, so immor- 
 tality surrounds it ; and if your work be done for 
 God's sake, and under His eye, it will last long after 
 you are gone. 
 
 From Moses you should learn to despair of no 
 excellence. Many of the Bible worthies take their 
 peculiar tint or tone from one particular grace — Job 
 from his patience, Abraham from his faith, Nathanael 
 from his guilelessness ; but meekness is the attri- 
 bute assigned to Moses. But when did he get it ? 
 He was not meek to begin with. He was not meek 
 when he smote the Egyptian and hid him in the 
 sand ; nor would you have thought him meek when, 
 descending the mountain at sight of the people's 
 idolatry, he dashed in pieces the tables consecrated 
 by the holograph of Heaven, and for the moment 
 felt that it was no use taking further pains with 
 such a people ; and yet in order to subserve Jehovah's 
 purpose it was needful that the temper of the leader 
 
376 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 should become ductile as the beaten gold and elastic 
 as the tempered steel. Seldom has the triumph 
 been more complete. The man Moses became ex- 
 ceeding meek, and throughout all the sequel Meribah 
 is the one brief outburst which interrupts the sweet- 
 ness and self-control of nearly forty years. So you 
 need not despair. In a besieged town all pains are 
 taken to strengthen the weakest places, till at last 
 they are often the strongest ; so when the believer 
 knows his own weakness, it will make him unhappy. 
 This is the point against which Satan is sure to aim 
 a surprise or muster a fierce assault, and if the town 
 is taken the man may be lost. This sends him to 
 prayer, and the Spirit of God builds up and strengthens 
 where nature was weak,^ till at the point which is 
 the key of the entire position a tower of strength 
 uprises. What is your besetting sin ? Would it not 
 be glorious to have it replaced by some contrary 
 and conspicuous excellence ? — the love of luxury by 
 simplicity, self-indulgence by sobriety, cunning and 
 finesse by straightforwardness and sincerity, dulness 
 and earthly-mindedness by fervour and devotion ? 
 Would it not be an excellent test of the genuineness 
 of your profession if you could bring yourself to 
 search out the worst point and the weakest in your 
 character, and, whatever it might be, having found 
 it out and fixed upon it, will you go to the Eock of 
 
 1 Isaac Williams on Old Testament Characters, p. 86. 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 377 
 
 your salvation and say, " This sin is like to be my 
 ruin. This is the point at which the enemy will 
 come in like a flood, unless, Spirit of the Lord, 
 Thou lift up a standard and raise an embankment 
 against him. Here, where I am weak, make me 
 strong. Here, where I am defenceless, be Thou my 
 shield and my buckler" ? And would it not be to 
 yourself most comforting, to the name of Christ 
 and to the grace of the Spirit most honouring, if the 
 result of felt infirmity and consequent prayer, and 
 watchfulness consequent on that again, were, that 
 (the weakness of the disciple bringing out the power 
 of the Master) your natural gruffness became a 
 Heaven-nurtured gentleness, your natural self- 
 absorption a divinely-implanted kindness, your 
 natural wrath and precipitancy a meekness like 
 that which, if it cannot be learned from Moses, may 
 be acquired from that greater Master who says, 
 " Learn of Me, for I am meek, and you will find rest 
 to your soul," — that rest which Jesus never quitted, 
 and into which you also will with Moses enter the 
 moment true meekness begins. 
 
 We get one glimpse of Moses after death, and it 
 is important, for the light it throws on the world 
 unseen. There was one thing which Moses desired 
 of the Lord, and sought after, and that was an 
 entrance into the Land of Promise. But there was 
 another thing which he sought still more expressly, 
 
378 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 and his prayer for which also stands on record, " I 
 beseech Thee, show me thy glory." But during his 
 earthly existence neither desire was fully granted. 
 From the cleft of the rock he obtained a remote and 
 rearward view of God's glory, and from the top of 
 Pisgah he saw the goodly land, but with the Jordan 
 between. And then he died. He died ; and there 
 are embargos which death removes, just as there are 
 barriers it overleaps and penalties which it pays in 
 full. Moses died, and long ages afterwards was 
 seen on earth again ; and surely in both the time 
 and place there was a deep significance. It was on 
 the holy mount when the Lord Jesus was trans- 
 figured, and when He received from God the Father 
 honour and glory. The veil that shrouds the view- 
 less was for a moment sundered, and frail mortality 
 could not stand it ; but at home in the midst of it, 
 and familiar with it, Moses and Elijah appeared 
 amidst the glory, and, as if in their appropriate 
 element, "talked" with the glorified Eedeemer. And 
 where ? In the heart of that Holy Land, — on the 
 top of one of those hills which his mortal feet were 
 never to tread, but which may have been the fre- 
 quent resort of his ransomed spirit. To meet wdth 
 Moses and Elijah Jesus ascended that mountain 
 apart, knowing that He would find them there ; 
 and the glory which startled disciples was no sur- 
 prise to them, for they had been beholding the like 
 
THE DEATH OF MOSES. 379 
 
 tlirough all these intermediate centuries. "I be- 
 seech Thee, show me Thy glory," " I pray Thee, let 
 me go over and see the good land that is beyond 
 Jordan, that goodly mountain, even Lebanon." Such 
 are the two prayers of Moses, the man of God, and 
 he dies (you would be apt to say) with neither peti- 
 tion gTanted, with each earnest prayer unfulfilled. 
 
 But come along to Tabor, and say, what good 
 land is this which spreads around ? What goodly 
 mountain is that which into the northern firmament 
 rears its verdant sides and snowy pinnacle? Whose 
 glory is this that with rapt but not unaccustomed 
 gaze he is looking on ? 
 
 And would not the Lord thus teach us that " the 
 desire of the righteous shall be granted" ? With 
 Moses do you pray, " Show me thy glory" ? Well, 
 you shall see it. The Lord 'Jesus also prays, 
 "Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given me 
 be with me where I am, that they may behold my 
 glory," and you shall see it. " Woe is me, that I 
 sojourn in Meshech 1" Wearied with the dry and 
 monotonous desert, do you long for scenes fairer 
 and more fruitful ? God will show you a pure 
 river of water of life proceeding out of the throne of 
 God, and on either side of it the tree of life, with 
 twelve manner of fruits, and with leaves that heal 
 the nations. Dissatisfied with the tents of sin, do 
 you desire this one thing, — that all your days you 
 
380 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 may dwell in the house of the Lord ? Your desire 
 shall be granted ; for if you hold on, you shall 
 become a pillar in that temple, to go no more out. 
 Do you pant for knowledge, for broader views, 
 deeper insight, clearer apprehension? Then you 
 shall know even as you are known. Do you hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness ? Then " with the 
 fatness of God's house you 11 be well satisfied ; from 
 rivers of His pleasures He will drink for you pro- 
 vide." 
 
 EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS AND ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 

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