_THE FAITH OF MOSES._
"By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his
parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not
afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was grown
up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing
rather to be evil entreated with the people of God, than to enjoy
the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the
recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the
wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.
By faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that
the destroyer of the first-born should not touch them."--HEB. xi.
23-28 (R.V.).
One difference between the Old Testament and the New is the comparative
silence of the former respecting Moses and the frequent mention of him
in the latter. When he has brought the children of Israel through the
wilderness to the borders of the promised land, their great leader is
seldom mentioned by historian, psalmist, or prophet. We might be tempted
to imagine that the national life of Israel had outgrown his influence.
It would without question be in a measure true. We may state the same
thing on its religious side by saying that God hid the memory as well as
the body of his servant, in the spirit of John Wesley's words, happily
chosen for his and his brother's epitaph in Westminster Abbey, "God
buries His workmen and carries on His work." But in the New Testament it
is quite otherwise. No man is so frequently mentioned. Sometimes when he
is not named it is easy to see that the sacred writers have him in their
minds.
One reason for this remarkable difference between the two Testaments in
reference to Moses is to be sought in the contrast between the earlier
and later Judaism. During the ages of the old covenant Judaism was a
living moral force. It gave birth to a peculiar type of heroes and
saints. Speaking of Judaism in the widest possible meaning, David and
Isaiah, as well as Samuel and Elijah, are its children. These men were
such heroes of religion that the saints of the Christian Church have not
dwarfed their greatness. But it is one of the traits of a living
religion to forget the past, or rather to use it only as a
stepping-stone to better things. It forgets the past in the sense in
which St. Paul urges the Philippians to count what things were gain a
loss, and to press on, forgetting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward to the things which are before. Religion lives in its
conscious, exultant power to create spiritual heroes, not in looking
back to admire its own handiwork. The only religion among men that lives
in its founder is Christianity. Forget Christ, and Christianity ceases
to be. But the life of Mosaism was not bound up with the memory of
Moses. Otherwise we may well suppose that idolatry would have crept in,
even before Hezekiah found it necessary to destroy the brazen serpent.
When we come down to the times of John the Baptist and our Lord, Mosaism
is to all practical ends a dead religion. The great movers of men's
souls came down upon the age, and were not developed out of it. The
product of Judaism at this time was Pharisaism, which had quite as
little true faith as Sadduceeism. But when a religion has lost its power
to create saints, men turn their faces to the great ones of olden times.
They raise the fallen tombstones of the prophets, and religion is
identical with hero-worship. An instance of this very thing may be seen
in England to-day, where Atheists have discovered how to be devout, and
Agnostics go on a pilgrimage! "We are the disciples of Moses," cried the
Pharisees. Can any one conceive of David or Samuel calling himself a
disciple of Moses? The notion of discipleship to Moses does not occur in
the Old Testament. Men never thought of such a relation. But it is the
dominant idea of Judaism in the time of Christ. Hence it was brought
about that he who was the servant and friend appears in the New
Testament as the antagonist. "For the Law was given by Moses; grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ."[281] This is opposition and rivalry. Yet
"this is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A Prophet
shall God raise up unto you from among your brethren, _like unto
me_."[282]
The notable difference between the Moses of New Testament times and the
Moses delineated in the ancient narrative renders it especially
interesting to study a passage in which the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews takes us back to the living man, and describes the attitude of
Moses himself towards Jesus Christ. Stephen told his persecutors that
the founder of the Aaronic priesthood had spoken of a great Prophet to
come, and Christ said that Moses wrote of Him.[283] But it is with
joyous surprise we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the
legislator was a believer in the same sense in which Abraham was a
believer. The founder of the old covenant himself walked by faith in the
new covenant.
The references to Moses made by our Lord and by Stephen sufficiently
describe his mission. The special work of Moses in the history of
religion was to prepare the way of the Lord Jesus Christ and make His
paths straight. He was commissioned to familiarise men with the
wondrous, stupendous idea of the appearing of God in human nature,--a
conception almost too vast to grasp, too difficult to believe. To render
it not impossible for men to accept the truth, he was instructed to
create a historical type of the Incarnation. He called into being a
spiritual people. He realised the magnificent idea of a Divine nation.
If we may use the term, he showed to the world God appearing in the
life of a nation, in order to teach them the higher truth that the Word
would at the remote end of the ages appear in the flesh. The nation was
the Church; the Church was the State. The King would be God. The court
of the King would be the temple. The ministers of the court would be the
priests. The law of the State would have equal authority with the moral
requirements of God's nature. For Moses apparently knew nothing of the
distinction made by theologians between the civil, the ceremonial, and
the moral law.
But in the passage before us we have something quite different from
this. The Apostle says nothing about the creation of the covenant people
out of the abject slaves of the brick-kilns. He is silent concerning the
giving of the Law amid the fire and tempest of Sinai. It is plain that
he wishes to tell us about the man's inner life. He represents Moses as
a man of faith.
Even of his faith the apparently greatest achievements are passed over.
Nothing is said of his appearances before Pharaoh; nothing of the
wonderful faith that enabled him to pray with uplifted hands on the brow
of the hill whilst the people were fighting God's battle in the valley;
nothing of the faith with which, on the top of Pisgah, Moses died
without receiving the promise. Evidently it is not the Apostle's purpose
to write the panegyric of a hero.
Closer examination of the verses brings out the thought that the Apostle
is tracing the growth and formation of the man's spiritual character. He
means to show that faith has in it the making of a man of God. Moses
became the leader of the Lord's redeemed people, the founder of the
national covenant, the legislator and prophet, because he believed in
God, in the future of Israel, and in the coming of the Christ. The
subject of the passage is faith as the power that creates a great
spiritual leader. But what is true of leaders is true also of every
strong spiritual nature. No lesson can be more timely in our days. Not
learning, not culture, not even genius, makes a strong doer, but faith.
The contents of the verses may be classified under four remarks:--
1. Faith gropes at first in the dark for the work of life.
2. Faith chooses the work of life.
3. Faith is a discipline of the man for the work of life.
4. Faith renders the man's life and work sacramental.
1. The initial stage in forming the servant of God is always the
same,--a vague, restless, eager groping in the dark, a putting forth
feelers for the light of revelation. This is often a time of childish
mistakes and follies, of which he is afterwards keenly ashamed, and at
which he can sometimes afford to smile. It often happens, if the man of
God is to spring from a religious family, that his parents undergo, in a
measure, this first discipline for him. So it was in the case of Moses.
The child was hid three months of his parents. Why did they hide him?
Was it because they feared the king? It was because they did not fear
the king. They hid their child by faith. But what had faith to do with
the hiding of him? Had they received an announcement from an inspired
seer that their child would deliver Israel, or that he would stand with
God on the top of Sinai and receive the Law for the people, or that he
would lead the redeemed of the Lord to the borders of a rich land and
large? None of these sufficient grounds for defying the king's authority
are mentioned. The reason given in the narrative and as well by
Stephen[284] and the writer of this Epistle sounds quaint, if not
childish. They hid him because he was comely. Yet they hid him by faith.
The beauty of a sleeping babe was to them a revelation, as truly a
revelation as if they had heard the voice of the angel that spoke to
Manoah or to Zacharias. The _Scripture_ narrative contains no hint that
the child's beauty was miraculous, and, what is more to the purpose, we
are not told that God had given it as the token of His covenant. It is
an instance of faith making a sacrament of its own, and seeking in what
is natural its warrant for believing in the supernatural. Nothing is
easier, and perhaps nothing would be more rational, than to dismiss the
entire story with a contemptuous smile.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews must admit that Jochebed's
faith was unauthorised. But does not faith always begin in folly? Is it
not at first a blind instinct, fastening on what is nearest to hand? Has
not our belief in God sprung out of trust in human goodness or in
nature's loveliness? To many a father has not the birth of his
first-born been a revelation of Heaven? Is not such faith as Jochebed's
the true explanation of the instinctive rise and wonderful vitality of
infant baptism in the Christian Church? If Abraham's faith dared to look
for the city which hath the foundations when God had promised only the
wealth of a tented nomad, was not the mother of Moses justified, since
God had given her faith, in letting the heaven-born instinct entwine
with her earth-born love of her offspring? It grew with its growth, and
rejoiced with its joy; but it also endured and triumphed in its sore
distress, and justified its presence by saving the child. Faith is God's
gift, no less than the testimony which faith accepts. Sometimes the
faith is implanted when no fitting revelation is vouchsafed. But faith
will live on in the darkness, until the day dawn and the day-star arise
in the heart.
A wise teacher has warned us against phantom notions and bidden us
interpret rather than anticipate nature. But another great thinker
demonstrated that the clearest vision begins in mere groping.
Anticipations of God precede the interpretation of His message. The
immense space between instinct and genius is in religion traversed by
faith, which starts with _mera palpatio_, but at last attains to the
beatific vision of God.
2. Faith chooses the work of life. The Apostle has spoken of the faith
that induced the parents of Moses to hide their child three months. Some
theologians have set much value on what they term "an implicit faith."
The faith of Moses himself would be said by them to be "enwrapped" in
that of his parents. Whatever we may think of this doctrine, there can
be no question that the New Testament recognises the idea of
representation. The Church has always upheld the unity, the solidarity,
of the family. It sprang itself out of the family. Perhaps its
consummation on earth will be a return into the family relation. It
retains the likeness throughout its long history. It acknowledges that a
believing husband sanctifies the unbelieving wife, and a believing wife
sanctifies the unbelieving husband. In like manner, a believing parent
sanctifies the children, and no one but themselves can deprive them of
their privileges. But they can do it. The time comes when they must
choose for themselves. Hitherto led gently on by loving hands, they must
now think and act for themselves, or be content to lose the power of
independent action, and remain always children. The risk is sometimes
great. But it cannot be evaded. It oftentimes happens that the
irrevocable step is taken unobserved by others, almost unconsciously to
the man himself. The decision has been taken in silence; the even tenor
of life is not disturbed. The world little weens that a soul has
determined its own eternity in one strong resolve.
But in the case of a man destined to be a leader of his fellows, whether
in thought or in action, a crisis occurs. We use the word in its correct
meaning of judgment. It is more than a transition, more than a
conversion. He judges, and is conscious that as he judges he will be
judged. If God has any great work for the man to do, the command comes
sooner or later, as if it descended audibly from heaven, that he stand
alone and, in that first terrible solitariness, choose and reject. In an
educational age we may often be tempted to sneer at the doctrine of
immediate conversion. It is true, nevertheless. A man has come to the
parting of the two ways, and choice must be made, because they _are_ two
ways. To no living man is it given to walk the broad and the narrow
ways. Entrance is by different gates. The history of some of the most
saintly men presents an entire change of motive, of character even, and
of general life, as produced through one strong act of faith.
When the Apostle wrote to the Hebrew Christians, the time was critical.
The question of Christian or not Christian brooked no delay. The Son of
man was nigh, at the doors. Even after swift vengeance had overtaken the
doomed city of Jerusalem, the urgent cry was still the same. In the
so-called "Epistle of Barnabas," in the "Pastor of Hermas," and in the
priceless treasure recently brought to light, "The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles," the two ways are described: the way of life and the
way of death. Those who professed and called themselves Christians were
warned to make the right choice. It was no time for facing both ways,
and halting between two opinions.
Moses too refused and chose. This is the second scene in the history of
the man. Standing as he did at the fountain-head of nationalism, the
prominence assigned to his act of individual choice and rejection is
very significant. Before his days the heirs of the promise were in the
bond of God's covenant in virtue of their birth. They were members of
the elect family. After the days of Moses every Israelite enjoyed the
privileges of the covenant by right of national descent. They were the
elect nation. Moses stands at the turning point. The nation now absorbs
the family, which becomes henceforth part of the larger conception. In
the critical moment between the two, a great personality emerges above
the confusion. The patriarchal Church of the family comes to a
dispensational end in giving birth to a great man. That man's personal
act of refusing the broad and choosing the narrow way marks the birth of
the theocratic Church of nationalism. Before and after, personality is
of secondary importance. In Moses for a moment it is everything.
Do we seek the motives that determined his choice? The Apostle mentions
two, and they are really two sides of the same conception.
_First_, he chose to be evil-entreated with the people of God. The work
of his life was to create a spiritual nation. This idea had already been
presented to his mind before he refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter. "He was instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works."[285] But an idea
had taken possession of him. That idea had already invested the
miserable and despised bondsmen with glory. Truly no man will achieve
great things who does not pay homage to an idea, and is not ready to
sacrifice wealth and position for the sake of what is as yet only a
thought. He who sells the world for an idea is not far from the kingdom
of heaven. He will be prepared to forfeit all that the world can give
him for the sake of Him in Whom truth eternally dwells in fulness and
perfection. Such a man was Moses. Had not his parents often told him,
when his mother was nourishing the child for Pharaoh's daughter, of the
wonderful story of their hiding him by faith and afterwards putting him
in an ark of bulrushes by the river's brim? Did not his mother bring him
up to be at once the son of Pharaoh's daughter and the deliverer of
Israel? Was the boy not living a double life? He was gradually coming to
understand that he was to be the heir of the throne, and that he would
or might be the destroyer of that throne. May we not, with profoundest
reverence, liken it to the twofold inner life of the Child Jesus when at
Nazareth He came to know that He, the Child of Mary, was the Son of the
Highest?
Stephen continues the story: "When he was well-nigh forty years old, it
came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel." "He
went out unto his brethren," we are told in the narrative, "and looked
on their burdens."[286] But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
perceives in the act of Moses more than love of kindred. The slaves of
Pharaoh were, in the eyes of Moses, the people of God. The national
consecration had already taken place; he himself was already swayed by
the glorious hope of delivering his brethren, the covenant people of
God, from the hands of their oppressors. This is the explanation which
Stephen gives of his conduct in slaying the Egyptian. When he saw one of
the children of Israel suffer wrong, he defended him and smote the
Egyptian, supposing that his brethren understood how that God by his
hand was giving them deliverance. The deed was, in fact, intended to be
a call to united effort. He was throwing the gauntlet. He was
deliberately making it impossible for him to return to the former life
of pomp and courtly worship. He wished the Hebrews to understand his
decision, and accept at once his leadership. "But they understood not."
Our author pierces still deeper into the motives that swayed his spirit.
It was not a selfish ambition, nor merely a patriotic desire to put
himself at the head of a host of slaves bent on asserting their rights.
Simultaneous with the social movement there was a spiritual work
accomplished in the personal, inner life of Moses himself. All true,
heaven-inspired revolutions in society are accompanied by a personal
discipline and trial of the leaders. This is the infallible test of the
movement itself. If the men who control it do not become themselves more
profound, more pure, more spiritual, they are counterfeit leaders, and
the movement they advocate is not of God. The writer of the Epistle
argues from the decision of Moses to deliver his brethren that his own
spiritual life was become deeper and holier. When he refused to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he also rejected the pleasures of
sin. He took his stand resolutely on the side of goodness. The example
of Joseph was before him, of whom the same words are said: "he refused"
to sin against God.
As the crisis in his own spiritual life fitted him to be the leader of a
great national movement, so also his conception of that movement became
a help to him to overcome the sinful temptations of Egypt. He saw that
the pleasures of sin were but for a season. It is easy to supply the
other side of this thought. The joy of delivering his brethren would
never pass away. He welcomed the undying joy of self-sacrifice, and
repudiated the momentary pleasures of self-gratification.
_Second_, he accounted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures of Egypt. Not only the people of God, but also the Christ of
God, determined his choice. An idea is not enough. It must rest on a
person, and that person must be greater than the idea. He may be himself
but an idea. But, even when it is so, he is the glorious thought in
which all the other hopes and imaginations of faith centre and merge. If
he is more than an idea, if it is a living person that controls the
man's thoughts and becomes the motive of his life, a new quality will
then enter into that life. Conscience will awake. The question of doing
what is right will control ambition, if it will not quite absorb it.
Treachery to the idea of life will now be felt to be a sin, if
conscience has pronounced that the idea itself is not immoral, but good
and noble. For, when conscience permits, faith will not lag behind, and
will proclaim that the moral is also spiritual, that the spiritual is an
ever-abiding possession.
Many expositors strive hard to make the words mean something else than
the reproach which Christ Himself suffered. It is marvellous that the
great doctrine of Christ's personal activity in the Church before His
incarnation should have so entirely escaped the notice of the older
school of English theology. On this passage, for instance, such
commentators as Macknight, Whitby, Scott, explain the words to mean that
Moses esteemed the scoffs cast on the Israelites for expecting the
Christ to arise from among them greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt. The more profound exegesis of Germany has made the truth of
Christ's pre-existence essential to the theology of the New Testament.
Far from being an innovation, it has brought us back to the view of the
greater theologians in every age of the Church.
We cannot enter into the general question. Confining ourselves to the
subject in hand, the faith of Moses, why may we not suppose that he had
heard of the patriarch Jacob's blessing on Judah? It had been uttered in
the land of Egypt, where Moses was brought up. It spoke of a Lawgiver.
Did not the consciousness of his own mission lead Moses to apply the
reference to the long succession of leaders, whether judges or kings or
prophets, who would follow in his wake? If so, could he have altogether
misunderstood the promise of the Shiloh? Jacob had spoken of a personal
King, Whom the people would obey. But nowhere in the Old Testament, not
once in the history of Moses, is the coming of Messiah represented as
the goal of the national development. Christ is not the flowering of
Judaism. On the contrary, the Angel of the covenant established through
Moses is not a ministering servant, sent forth to minister on the chosen
people. He is the Lord Jehovah Himself. Christ was with Israel, and
Moses knew it. We may admit the vagueness of his conception, but we
cannot deny the conception. To Moses, as to the Psalmist, the reproaches
of them that reproached Israel fell on the Christ. Community in
suffering was enough to ensure community in the glory to be revealed.
Suffering with Christ, they would also be glorified with Christ. This
was the recompense of reward to which Moses looked.
The lesson taught to the Hebrew Christians by the decision of Moses is
loyalty to truth and loyalty to Jesus Christ.
3. Faith is a discipline for the work of life. Moses has made his final
choice. Conscience is thoroughly awake, and eager aspirations fill his
soul. But he is not yet strong. Men of large ideas are often found to be
lacking in courage. A cloistered is often a fugitive virtue. But, apart
from want of practical resolution to face the difficulties of the
situation, special training is needed for special work. Israel had come
into Egypt to endure chastening and be made fit for national
independence. But in Egypt Moses was a courtier, perhaps heir to the
throne. That he may be chastened and fitted for his share of the work
which God was about to accomplish towards His people, he must be driven
out of Egypt into the wilderness. Every servant of God is sent into the
wilderness. St. Paul was three years in Arabia between his conversion
and his entrance on the work of the ministry. Jesus Himself was led up
of the Spirit into the wilderness. He learned endurance in forty days,
Moses in forty years.
It will be seen that we accept the explanation of the twenty-seventh
verse given by all expositors down to the time of De Lyra and Calvin.
But in modern times it has been customary to say that the Apostle refers
to the final departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt with a
strong hand and outstretched arm. Our reasons for preferring the other
view are these. The departure of the Israelites through the Red Sea is
mentioned subsequently; an event that occurred before the people left
Egypt is mentioned in the next verse, and it is very improbable that the
writer would refer to their departure first, then to the events that
preceded, then once more speak of their departure. Further, the word
well rendered by the Old and the Revised Versions "forsook" expresses
precisely the notion of going out alone, in despondency, as if Moses had
abandoned the hope of being the deliverer of Israel. If we have
correctly understood the Apostle's purpose in the entire passage, this
is the very notion which we should expect him to introduce. Moses
forsakes Egypt, deserts his brethren, abandons his work. He flees from
the vengeance of Pharaoh. Yet all this fear, hopelessness, and unbelief
is only the partial aspect of what, taken as a whole, is the action of
faith. He still believes in his glorious idea, and is still willing to
bear the reproach of Christ. He will not return to the court and make
his submission to the king. But the time is not come, he thinks, or he
is not the man to deliver Israel. Forty years afterwards he is still
loath to be sent. He forsook Egypt because the people did not believe
him; after forty years he asks the Lord to send another for the very
same reason; "Behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my
voice." But we should be obtuse indeed if we failed to recognise the
faith that underlies his despondency. Doubt is oftentimes partial faith.
Let us place ourselves in his position. He refuses the selfish luxury
and worldly glory of Pharaoh's court, that he may rush to deliver his
brethren. He brings with him the consciousness of superiority, and at
once assumes the duty of composing their quarrels. Evidently he is a
believer in God, but a believer also in himself. Such men are not God's
instruments. He will have a man be the one thing or the other. If the
man is self-confident, conscious of his own prowess, oblivious of God or
a denier of Him, the Most High can use him to do His work, to his own
destruction. If the man has no confidence in the flesh, knows his utter
weakness and very nothingness, and yields himself to God's hand
entirely, with no by-ends to seek, him too God uses to do His work, to
the man's own salvation. But Moses strove to combine faith in God and in
himself. He was at once thwarted. His brethren taunted him, when he
expected to be trusted and honoured. Despondency takes possession of his
spirit. But his trepidation is on the surface. Beneath it is a great
deep of faith. What he now needs is discipline. God leads him to the
back of the wilderness. The courtier serves as a herdsman. Far removed
from the monumental literature of Egypt, he communes with himself, and
with nature's mighty visions. He gazes upon the dread and silent
mountain, hallowed of old as the habitation of God. He had already, in
Egypt, learned the faith of Joseph and of Jacob. Now, in Midian, he will
imbibe the faith of Isaac and of Abraham. Far from the busy haunts of
men, the din of cities, the stir of the market-place, he will learn how
to pray, how to divest himself of all confidence in the flesh, and how
to worship the Invisible alone. For "he endured as seeing Him Who is
invisible." Do not paraphrase it "the invisible _King_." That is too
narrow. It was not Pharaoh only that had vanished out of his sight and
out of his thoughts. Moses himself had disappeared. He had broken down
when he trusted himself. He now endures, because he sees nought but God.
Surely he was in the same blessed state of mind in which St. Paul was
when he said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." When Moses
and when Paul ceased to be anything, and God was to them everything,
they were strong to endure.[287]
4. Faith renders the work of life sacramental. The long period of
discipline has drawn to a close. The self-confidence of Moses has been
fully subdued. "He supposed that his brethren understood how that God
by his hand was giving them deliverance." These, says Stephen, were his
thoughts before he fled from Egypt. Very different is his language after
the probation of the wilderness: "Who am I, that I should go unto
Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of
Egypt?" Four times he pleads and deprecates. Not until the anger of the
Lord is kindled against him does he take heart to attempt the formidable
task.
The Hebrews had been more than two hundred years in the house of
bondage. So far as we know, the Lord had not once appeared or spoken to
men for six generations. No revelation was given between Jacob's vision
at Beersheba[288] and the vision of the burning bush. We may well
believe that there were in those days mockers, saying, The age of
miracles is past; the supernatural is played out. But Moses henceforth
lives in a veritable world of miracles. The supernatural came with a
rush, like the waking of a sleeping volcano. Signs and wonders encompass
him on every side. The bush burns unconsumed; the rod in his hand is
cast on the ground, and becomes a serpent; he takes the serpent in his
hand again, and it becomes a rod; he puts his hand into his bosom, and
it is leprous; he puts the leprous hand into his bosom, and it is as
his other flesh. When he returns into Egypt, signs vie with signs, God
with demons. Plague follows plague. Moses lifts up his rod over the sea,
and the children of Israel go on dry ground through the midst of the
sea. At last he stands once more on Horeb. But in the short interval
between the day when one poor thorn-bush of the desert glowed with flame
and the day on which Sinai was altogether on a smoke and the whole
mountain quaked, a religious revolution had occurred second only to one
in the history of the race. At the touch of their leader's wand a nation
was born in a day. The immense transition from the Church in a family to
a holy nation was brought about suddenly, but effectively, when the
people were hopeless outcasts and Moses himself had lost heart.
Such a revolution must be inaugurated with sacrifice and with sacrament.
The sins of the past must be expiated and forgiven, and the people,
cleansed from the guilt of their too frequent apostasy from the God of
their fathers, must be dedicated anew to the service of Jehovah. The
patriarchal dispensation expired in the birth of a holy nation. The
Passover was both a sacrifice and a sacrament, an expiation and a
consecration. It retained its sacrificial character till Christ, the
true Paschal Lamb, was slain. As a sacrifice it then ceased. But
sacrament continues, and will continue as long as the Church exists on
earth.
Moses had seen the invisible God. The burning bush had symbolized the
sacramental nature of the work which he had been called to do. God would
be in Israel as He was in the bush, and Israel would not be consumed. He
Who is to His foes a consuming fire dwells among His people, as the
vital heat and glow of their national life. The eye that can see Him is
faith. This is the power that can transform the whole life of man, and
make it sacramental. Too long has man's earthly existence been divided
into two separate spheres. On the one side and for a stated time he
lives to God; on the other side he relinquishes himself for a period to
the pursuits of the world. We seem to think that the secular cannot be
religious, and, consequently, that the religiousness of one day or of
one place will make amends for the irreligion of the rest of life. The
Passover consecrated a nation. Baptism and the Lord's Supper have, times
without number, consecrated the individual. The true Christian life
draws its vital sap from God. It is not cleverness and worldly success,
but unselfish loyalty to the supernatural, and incessant prayer, that
marks the man who lives by faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[281] John i. 17.
[282] Acts vii. 37.
[283] John v. 46.
[284] Exod. ii. 2; Acts vii. 20.
[285] Acts vii. 22.
[286] Exod. ii. 11.
[287] After penning the above the writer of these pages saw that, in his
view of the purpose of the sojourn in Midian, he had been anticipated by
Kurtz (_History of the Old Covenant_).
[288] Gen. xlvi. 2.