'Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying,
God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones
from hence.'--GENESIS l. 25.
This is the one act of Joseph's life which the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews selects as the sign that he too lived by faith. 'By faith
Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of
Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.'
It was at once a proof of how entirely he believed God's promise, and
of how earnestly he longed for its fulfilment. It was a sign too of how
little he felt himself at home in Egypt, though to outward appearance
he had become completely one of its people. The ancestral spirit was in
him true and strong though he was 'separate from his brethren.' He bore
an Egyptian name, a swelling title, he married an Egyptian woman, he
had an Egyptian priest for father-in-law, but he was an Israelite in
heart; and in the midst of official cares and a surfeit of honours, his
desires turned away from them all towards the land promised by God to
his fathers.
And when he lay dying, he could not bear to think that his bones should
moulder in the country where his life had been spent. 'I know that this
is not our land after all; swear to me that when the promise that has
tarried so long comes at last, you will take me, all that is left of
me, and carry it up, and lay it in some corner of the blessed soil,
that I too may somehow share in the inheritance of His people. God
shall surely visit you. Carry my bones up hence.'
Perhaps there is in this wish a trace of something besides faith in
God's promises. Of course, there is a natural sentiment which no
clearness of knowledge of a future state wholly dispels. We all feel as
if somehow our bodies remain a part of ourselves even after death, and
we have wishes where they shall lie. But perhaps Joseph had a more
definite belief on the matter than that. What theory of another life
does an Egyptian mummy express? Why all that sedulous care to preserve
the poor relics? Was it not a consequence of the belief that somehow or
other there could be no life without a body, and that in some
mysterious way the preservation of that contributed to the continuance
of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and put
into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought
prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the
land of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry _him_ thither. Be
that as it may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation
of flesh and spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too
possess, that our graves may not be among strangers, but beside our
father's and our mother's--that is not the main thing in this fact. The
main thing is that this dying man believed God's promise, and claimed
his share in it.
And on this the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was,
fastens. Neglecting the differences in knowledge between Joseph and the
Christians whom he addresses, and pointing back to the strong
confidence in God and longing for participation in the promises which
brightened the glazing eye and gave _him_ 'hope in his death,' he
declares that the principle of action which guided this man in the dim
twilight of early revelation, is that same faith which ought to guide
us who live in the full light of the unsetting sun.
Taking, then, this incident, with the New Testament commentary upon it,
it leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of, but which is
indispensable if we would understand the relations of the earlier and
later days.
1. _Faith is always the same, though knowledge varies._--There is a
vast difference between a man's creed and a man's faith. The one may
vary, does vary within very wide limits; the other remains the same.
The things believed have been growing from the beginning--the attitude
of mind and will by which they have been grasped has been the same from
the beginning, and will be the same to the end. And not only so, but it
will be substantially the same in heaven as it is on earth. For there
is but one bond which unites men to God; and that emotion of loving
trust is one and the same in the dim twilight of the world's morning,
and amid the blaze of the noonday of heaven. The contents of faith,
that on which it relies, the treasure it grasps, changes; the essence
of faith, the act of reliance, the grasp which holds the treasure, does
not change.
It is difficult to decide how much Joseph's gospel contained. From our
point of view it was very imperfect. The spiritual life was nourished
in him and in the rest of 'the world's grey fathers' on what looks to
us but like seven basketsful of fragments. They had promises, indeed,
in which we, looking at them with the light of fulfilment blazing upon
them, can see the broad outlines of the latest revelation, and can
trace the future flower all folded together and pale in the swelling
bud. But we shall err greatly if we suppose, as we are apt to do, that
those promises were to them anything like what they are to us. It
requires a very vigorous exercise of very rare gifts to throw ourselves
back to their position, and to gain any vivid and approximately
accurate notion of the theology of these ancient lovers of God.
This, at any rate, we may, perhaps, say: they had a sure and clear
knowledge of the living God, who had talked with them as with a friend;
they knew His inspiring, guiding presence; they knew the forgiveness of
sins; they knew, though they very dimly understood, the promise, 'In
thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' How far they
looked across the gulf of death and beheld anything--even cloudland--on
the other side, is a question very hard to answer, and about which
confident dogmatism, either affirmative or negative, is unwarranted.
But it is to be remembered that, whether they had any notion of a
future state or no, they had a promise which fulfilled for them
substantially the same office as that does for us. The promise of the
land of Canaan gleaming before them through the mists, bare and
'earthly' as it seems to us when compared with our hope of an
inheritance incorruptible in the heavens, is, by the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, identified with that hope of ours, for he
expressly says that, whilst they were looking for an earthly Canaan,
they were 'desiring a better country, that is an heavenly.' So that,
whether they definitely expected a life after death or not, the
anticipation of the land promised to them and to their fathers held the
same place in their creed, and as a moral agent in their lives, which
the rest that remains for the people of God ought to do in ours.
And it is to be taken into account also that fellowship with God has in
it the germ of the assurance of immortality. It seems almost impossible
to suppose a state of mind in which a man living in actual communion
with God shall believe that death is to end it all. Christ's proof that
immortal life was revealed in the Pentateuch, was the fact that God
there called Himself the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; by
which our Lord meant us to learn that men who are brought into personal
relations with God can never die, that it is impossible that a soul
which has looked up to the face of the unseen Father with filial love
should be left in the grave, or that those who are separated to be His,
as He is theirs, should see corruption. The relation once established
is eternal, and some more or less definite expectation of that eternity
seems inseparable from the consciousness of the relation.
But be that as it may, and even taking the widest possible view of the
contents of the patriarchal creed, what a rude outline it looks beside
ours! Can there be anything in common between us? Can they be in any
way a pattern for us? Yes; as I said, faith is one thing, creed is
another. Joseph and his ancestors were joined to God by the very same
bond which unites us to Him. There has never been but one path of life:
'They _trusted_ God and were lightened, and their faces were not
ashamed.' In that Old Covenant the one thing needful was trust in the
living Jehovah. In the New, the one thing needful is the very same
emotion, directed to the very same Lord, manifested now and incarnate
in the divine Son, our Saviour. In this exercise of loving confidence,
in which reason and will and affection blend in the highest energy and
holiest action, Joseph and we are one. Across the gulf of centuries we
clasp hands; and in despite of all superficial differences of culture
and civilisation, and all deeper differences in knowledge of God and
His loving will, Pharaoh's prime minister, and the English workman, and
the Hindoo ryot, may be alike in what is deepest--the faith which
grasps God. How all that mysterious Egyptian life fades away as we
think of the fundamental identity of religious emotion then and now! It
disguises our brother from us, as it did from the wandering Arabs who
came to buy corn, and could not recognise in the swarthy, imperious
Egyptian, with strange head-dress and unknown emblems hanging by chains
of gold about his neck, the fair boy whom they had sold to the
merchants. But beneath it all is the brother's heart, fed by the same
life-blood which feeds ours. He trusts in God, he expects a future
because God has promised it, and, therefore, he is separated from those
among whom he dwells, and knit to us in this far-off island of the sea,
who so many centuries after are partakers of like precious faith.
And incomplete as his creed was, Joseph may have been a better
Christian than some of us, and was so, if what he knew nourished his
spiritual life more than what we know nourishes ours, and if his heart
and will twined more tenaciously round the fragments of revelation
which he possessed, and drew from them more support and strength than
we do from the complete Gospel which we have.
Brethren, what makes us Christians is not the theology we have in our
heads, but the faith and love we have in our hearts. We must, indeed,
have a clear statement of truth in orderly propositions--that is, a
system of dogmas--to have anything to trust to at all. There can be no
saving faith in an unseen Person, except through the medium of thoughts
concerning Him, which thoughts put into words are a creed. The
antithesis which is often eagerly urged upon us--not doctrines, but
Christ--is a very incomplete and misleading one. 'Christ' is a mere
name, empty of all significance till it is filled with definite
statements of who and what Christ is. But whilst I, for my part,
believe that we must have doctrines to make Christ a reality and an
object of faith to grasp at all, I would urge all the more earnestly,
because I thus believe, that, when we have these doctrines, it is not
the creed that saves, but the faith. We are united to Christ, not by
the doctrine of His nature and work, needful as that is, but by
trusting in Him as that which the doctrine declares Him to
be--Redeemer, Friend, Sacrifice, Divine Lover of our souls. Let us
always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which
I have got, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious
position and character. Most of us have in our creeds principles that
have no influence upon our moral and active life; and, if so, it
matters not one whit how pure, how accurate, how comprehensive, how
consistent, how scriptural my conceptions of the Gospel may be. If they
are not powers in my soul, they only increase my responsibility and my
liability to condemnation. The dry light of the understanding is of no
use to anybody. You must turn your creed into a faith before it has
power to bless and save.
There are hosts of so-called Christians who get no more good out of the
most solemn articles of their orthodox belief than if they were
heathens. What in the use of your saying that you believe in God the
Father Almighty, when there is no child's love and happy confidence in
your heart? What the better are you for believing in Jesus Christ, His
divine nature, His death and glory, when you have no reliance on Him,
nor any least flutter of trembling love towards Him? Is your belief in
the Holy Ghost of the smallest consequence, if you do not yield to His
hallowing power? What does it matter that you believe in the
forgiveness of sins, so long as you do not care a rush whether yours
are pardoned or no? And is it anything to you or to God that you
believe in the life everlasting, if all your work, and hopes, and
longings are confined to 'this bank and shoal of time'? Are you any
more a Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these
solemn verities? Is not your life like some secularised monastic
chamber, with holy texts carved on the walls, and saintly images
looking down from glowing windows on revellers and hucksters who defile
its floor? Your faith, not your creed, determines your religion. Many a
'true believer' is a real 'infidel.'
Thank God that the soul may be wedded to Christ, even while a very
partial conception of Christ is in the understanding. The more complete
and adequate the creed, indeed, the mightier and more fruitful in
blessing will the faith naturally be; and every portion of the full orb
of the Sun of Righteousness which is eclipsed by the shadow of our
intellectual misconceptions, will diminish the light and warmth which
falls upon our souls. It is no part of our duty to pronounce what is
the minimum of a creed which faith needs for its object. For myself, I
confess that I do not understand how the spiritual life can be
sustained in its freshness and fervour, in its fulness and reality,
without a belief in the divinity and saving work of Jesus Christ. But
with that belief for the centre which faith grasps, the rest may vary
indefinitely. All who stand around that centre, some nearer, some
further off, some mazed in errors which others have cast behind them,
some of them seeing and understanding more, and some less of Him and of
His work--are His. He loves them, and will save them all. Knowledge
varies. The faith which unites to God remains the same.
2. We may gather from this incident another consideration, namely, that
_Faith has its noblest office in detaching from the present_.
All his life long, from the day of his captivity, Joseph was an
Egyptian in outward seeming. He filled his place at Pharaoh's court,
but his dying words open a window into his soul, and betray how little
he had felt that he belonged to the order of things in the midst of
which he had been content to live. This man, too, surrounded by an
ancient civilisation, and dwelling among granite temples and solid
pyramids and firm-based sphinxes, the very emblems of eternity,
confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come.
As truly as his ancestors who dwelt in tabernacles, like Abraham
journeying with his camels and herds, and pitching his tent outside the
walls of Hebron, like Isaac in the grassy plains of the South country,
like Jacob keeping himself apart from the families of the land, their
descendant, an heir with them of the same promise, showed that he too
regarded himself as a 'stranger and a sojourner.' Dying, he said,
'Carry my bones up from hence. Therefore we may be sure that, living,
the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden
light, and made him an alien everywhere but on its blessed soil.
And faith will always produce just such effects. In exact proportion to
its strength, that living trust in God will direct our thoughts and
desires to the 'King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.'
In proportion as our thoughts and desires are thus directed, they will
be averted from what is round about us; and the more longingly our eyes
are fixed on the furthest horizon, the less shall we see the flowers at
our feet. To behold God pales the otherwise dazzling lustre of created
brightness. They whose souls are fed with heavenly manna, and who have
learned that it is their necessary food, will scent no dainties in the
fleshpots of Egypt, for all their rank garlic and leeks. It is simply a
question as to which of two classes of ideas occupies the thoughts, and
which of two sets of affections engages the heart. If vulgar brawling
and rude merrymakers fill the inn, there will be no room for the
pilgrim thoughts which bear the Christ in their bosom, and have angels
for their guard; and if these holy wayfarers enter, their serene
presence will drive forth the noisy crowd, and turn the place into a
temple. Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the
solidity and definiteness which it must have, if it is to be a
breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and
thoughts.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men's lives, it must be through their
thoughts. It must become intelligible, clear, real. It must be brought
out of the flickering moonlight of fancy and surmises, into the
sunlight of certitude and knowledge. Dreams, and hopes, and
peradventures are too unsubstantial stuff to be a bulwark against the
very real, undeniable present. And such certitude is given through
faith which grasps the promises of God, and twines the soul round the
risen Saviour so closely that it sits with Him in heavenly places. Such
certitude is given by faith alone.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men's lives, it must become not only
an object for certain knowledge, but also for ardent wishes. The vague
sense of possible evils lurking in its mysteries must be taken out of
the soul, and there must come somehow an assurance that all it wraps in
its folds is joy and peace. It must cease to be doubtful, and must seem
infinitely desirable. Does anything but Christian faith engage the
heart to love, and all the longing wishes to set towards, the things
that are unseen and eternal? Where besides, then, can there be found a
counterpoise weighty enough to heave up the souls that are laden with
the material, and cleaving to the dust? Nowhere. The only possible
deliverance from the tyrannous pressure of the trifles amidst which we
live is in having the thoughts familiarised with Christ in heaven,
which will dwarf all that is on earth, and in having the affections
fixed on Him, which will emancipate them from the pains and sorrows
that ever wait upon love of the mutable and finite creatures.
Let us remember that such deliverance from the present is the condition
of all noble, joyous, pure life. It needs Christianity to effect it
indeed, but it does not need Christianity to see how desirable it is,
and how closely connected with whatever is lovely and of good report is
this detachment from the near and the visible. A man that is living for
remote objects is, in so far, a better man than one who is living for
the present. He will become thereby the subject of a mental and moral
discipline that will do him good. And, on the other hand, a life which
has no far-off light for its guiding star, has none of the unity, of
the self-restraint, of the tension, of the conscious power which makes
our days noble and strong. Whether he accomplish them or fail, whether
they be high or low, the man who lets future objects rule present
action is in advance of others. 'To scorn delights and live laborious
days,' which is the prerogative of the man with a future, is always
best. He is rather a beast than a man, who floats lazily on the warm,
sunny wavelets as they lift him in their roll, and does not raise his
head high enough above them to see and steer for the solid shore where
they break. But only he has found the full, controlling, blessing,
quickening power that lies in the thought of the future, and in life
directed by it, to whom that future is all summed in the name of his
Saviour. Whatever makes a man live in the past and in the future raises
him; but high above all others stand those to whom the past is an
apocalypse of God, with Calvary for its centre, and all the future is
fellowship with Christ, and joy in the heavens. Having these hopes, it
will be our own faults if we are not pure and gentle, calm in changes
and sorrows, armed against frowning dangers, and proof against smiling
temptations. They are our armour--'Put on the breastplate of faith ...
and for an helmet the hope of salvation.'
A very sharp test for us all lies in these thoughts. This change of the
centre of interest from earth to heaven is the uniform effect of faith.
What, then, of us? On Sundays we profess to seek for a city; but what
about the week, from Monday morning to Saturday night? What difference
does our faith make in the current of our lives? How far are they
unlike--I do not mean externally and in occupations, but in
principle--the lives of men who 'have no hope'? Are you living for
other objects than theirs? Are you nurturing other hopes in your
hearts, as a man may guard a little spark of fire with both his hands,
to light him amid the darkness and the howling storm? Do you care to
detach yourself from the world? or are you really 'men of this world,
which have their portion in this life,' even while Christians by
profession? A question which I have no right to ask, and no power to
answer but for myself; a question which it concerns your souls to ask
and to answer very definitely for yourselves. There is no need to
preach an exaggerated and impossible abstinence from work and enjoyment
in the world where God has put us, or to set up a standard 'too high
for mortal life beneath the sky.' Whatever call there may have
sometimes been to protest against a false asceticism, and withdrawing
from active life for the sake of one's personal salvation, times are
changed now. What we want to-day is: 'Come ye out and be ye separate,
and touch not the unclean thing.' In my conscience I believe that
multitudes are having the very heart of the Christian life eaten out by
absorption in earthly pursuits and loves, and by the effacing of all
distinction in outward life, in occupation, in recreation, in tastes
and habits, between people who call themselves Christians, and people
who do not care at all whether there is another world or not. There can
be but little strength in our faith if it does not compel us to
separation. If it has any power to do anything at all, it will
certainly do that. If we are naturalised as citizens there, we cannot
help being aliens here. 'Abraham,' says the New Testament, 'dwelt in
tabernacles, _for_ he looked for a city.' Just so! The tent life will
always be the natural one for those who feel that their mother-country
is beyond the stars. We should be like the wandering Swiss, who hear in
a strange land the rude, old melody that used to echo among the Alpine
pastures. The sweet, sad tones kindle home-sickness that will not let
them rest. No matter where they are, or what they are doing, no matter
what honour they have carved out for themselves with their swords, they
throw off the livery of the alien king which they have worn, and
turning their backs upon pomp and courts, seek the free air of the
mountains, and find home better than a place by a foreign throne. Let
us esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt, and go forth to Him without the camp, for here have we no
continuing city.
3. Again, we have here an instance that _Faith makes men energetic in
the duties of the present_.
The remarks which I have been making must be completed by that
consideration, or they become hurtful and one-sided. You know that
common sarcasm, that Christianity degrades this present life by making
it merely the portal to a better, and teaches men to think of it as
only evil, to be scrambled through anyhow. I confess that I wish the
sneer were a less striking contrast to what Christian people really
think. But it is almost as gross a caricature of the teaching of
Christianity as it is of the practice of Christians.
Take this story of Joseph as giving us a truer view of the effect on
present action of faith in, and longing for, God's future. He was, as I
said, a true Hebrew all his days. But that did not make him run away
from Pharaoh's service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better
worker in the passing moment, and kept him tugging away all his life at
the oar, administering the affairs of a kingdom.
Of course it is so. The one thing which saves this life from being
contemptible is the thought of another. The more profoundly we feel the
reality of the great eternity whither we are being drawn, the greater
do all things here become. They are made less in their power to absorb
or trouble, but they are made infinitely greater in importance as
preparations for what is beyond. When they are first they are small,
when they are second they are great. When the mist lifts, and shows the
snowy summits of the 'mountains of God,' the nearer lower ranges, which
we thought the highest, dwindle indeed, but gain in sublimity and
meaning by the loftier peaks to which they lead up. Unless men and
women live for eternity, they _are_ 'merely players,' and all their
busy days 'like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
_signifying nothing_.' How absurd, how monotonous, how trivial it all
is, all this fret and fume, all these dying joys and only less fleeting
pains, all this mill-horse round of work which we pace, unless we are,
mill-horse-like, driving a shaft that goes _through the wall_, and
grinds something that falls into 'bags that wax not old' on the other
side. The true Christian faith teaches us that this world is the
workshop where God makes men, and the next, the palace where He shows
them. All here is apprenticeship and training. It is of no more value
than the attitudes into which gymnasts throw themselves, but as a
discipline most precious. The end makes the means important; and if we
believe that God is preparing us for immortal life with Him by all our
work, then we shall do it with a will: otherwise we may well be languid
as we go on for thirty or forty years, some of us, doing the same
trivial things, and getting nothing out of them but food, occupation of
time, and a mechanical aptitude for doing what is not worth doing.
It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground. A picture
without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond
it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree-tops with
withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes
to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we
see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by
our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love,
the earthly shadows of the uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work.
Remember, too, that faith will energise us for any sort of work, seeing
that it raises all to one level and brings all under one sanction, and
shows all as cooperating to one end. Look at that muster-roll of heroes
of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and mark the variety of grades
of human life represented there--statesmen, soldiers, prophets,
shepherds, widow women, martyrs--all fitted for their tasks and
delivered from the snare that was in their calling, by that faith which
raised them above the world, and therefore fitted them to come down on
the world with stronger strokes of duty. This is the secret of doing
with our might whatsoever our hand finds to do-to trust Christ, to live
_with_ Him, and _by_ the hope of the inheritance.
Then, brethren, let us see that our clearer revelation bears fruit in a
faith in the great divine promises as calm and firm as this dying
patriarch had. Then the same power will work not only the same
detachment and energy in life, but the same calmness and solemn light
of hope in death. It is very beautiful to notice how Joseph dying
almost overleaps the thought of death as a very small matter. His
brethren who stood by his bedside might well fear what might be the
consequences to their people when the powerful protector, the prime
minister of the kingdom, was gone. But the dying man has firm hold of
God's promises, and he knows that these will be fulfilled, whether he
live or no. 'I die,' says he, 'but God shall surely visit you. _He_ is
not going to die; and though I stand no more before Pharaoh, you will
be safe.'
Thus we may contemplate our own going away, or the departure of the
dearest from our homes, and of the most powerful for good in human
affairs, and in the faith of God's true promises may feel that no one
is indispensable to our well-being or to the world's good. God's
chariot is self-moving. One after another, who lays his hand upon the
ropes, and hauls for a little space, drops out of the ranks. But it
will go on, and in His majesty He will ride prosperously.
And for himself, too, the dying man felt that death was a very small
matter. 'Whether I live or die I shall have a share in the promise.
Living, perhaps my feet would stand upon its soil; dying, my bones will
rest there.' And we, who know a resurrection, have in it that which
makes Joseph's fond fancy a reality, and reduces the importance of that
last enemy to nothing. Some will be alive and remain till the coming of
the Lord, some will be laid in the grave till His voice calls them
forth, and carries their bones up from hence to the land of the
inheritance. But whether we be of generations that fell on sleep
looking for the promise of His coming, or whether of the generation
that go forth to meet Him when He comes, it matters not. All who have
lived by faith will then be gathered at last. The brightest hopes of
the present will be forgotten. Then, when we too shall stand in the
latter day, wearing the likeness of His glory, and extricated wholly
from the bondage of corruption and the dust of death, we, perfected in
body, soul, and spirit, shall enter the calm home, where we shall
change the solitude of the desert and the transitoriness of the tent
and the dangers of the journey, for the society and the stability and
the security of the city which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God.