'... Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone
while he talked with Him.'--EXODUS xxxiv. 29.
'... And Samson wist not that the Lord had departed
from him.'--JUDGES xvi. 20.
The recurrence of the same phrase in two such opposite connections is
very striking. Moses, fresh from the mountain of vision, where he had
gazed on as much of the glory of God as was accessible to man, caught
some gleam of the light which he adoringly beheld; and a strange
radiance sat on his face, unseen by himself, but visible to all others.
So, supreme beauty of character comes from beholding God and talking
with Him; and the bearer of it is unconscious of it.
Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the locks which he
had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, and tries his former
feats; but his strength has left him because the Lord has left him; and
the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, he has left
the Lord. Like, but most unlike, Moses, he knows not his weakness. So
strength, like beauty, is dependent upon contact with God, and may ebb
away when that is broken, and the man may be all unaware of his
weakness till he tries his power, and ignominiously fails.
These two contrasted pictures, the one so mysteriously grand and the
other so tragic, may well help to illustrate for us truths that should
be burned into our minds and our memories.
I. Note, then, the first thought which they both teach us, that beauty
and strength come from communion with God.
In both the cases with which we are dealing these were of a merely
material sort. The light on Moses' face and the strength in Samson's
arm were, at the highest, but types of something far higher and nobler
than themselves. But still, the presence of the one and the departure
of the other alike teach us the conditions on which we may possess both
in nobler form, and the certainty of losing them if we lose hold of God.
Moses' experience teaches us that the loftiest beauty of character
comes from communion with God. That is the use that the Apostle makes
of this remarkable incident in 2 Cor. iii, where he takes the light
that shone from Moses' face as being the symbol of the better lustre
that gleams from all those who 'behold (or reflect) the glory of the
Lord' with unveiled faces, and, by beholding, are 'changed into the
likeness' of that on which they gaze with adoration and longing. The
great law to which, almost exclusively, Christianity commits the
perfecting of individual character is this: Look at Him till you become
like Him, and in beholding, be changed. 'Tell me the company a man
keeps, and I will tell you his character,' says the old proverb. And
what is true on the lower levels of daily life, that most men become
assimilated to the complexion of those around them, especially if they
admire or love them, is the great principle whereby worship, which is
desire and longing and admiration in the superlative degree, stamps the
image of the worshipped upon the character of the worshipper. 'They
followed after vanity, and have become vain,' says one of the prophets,
gathering up into a sentence the whole philosophy of the degradation of
humanity by reason of idolatry and the worship of false gods. 'They
that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in
them.' The law works upwards as well as downwards, for whom we worship
we declare to be infinitely good; whom we worship we long to be like;
whom we worship we shall certainly imitate.
Thus, brethren, the practical, plain lesson that comes from this
thought is simply this: If you want to be pure and good, noble and
gentle, sweet and tender; if you desire to be delivered from your own
weaknesses and selfish, sinful idiosyncrasies, the way to secure your
desire is, 'Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.'
Contemplation, which is love and longing, is the parent of all effort
that succeeds. Contemplation of God in Christ is the master-key that
opens this door, and makes it possible for the lowliest and the foulest
amongst us to cherish unpresumptuous hopes of being like Him' if we see
Him as He is revealed here, and perfectly like Him when yonder we see
Him 'as He _is_.'
There have been in the past, and there are today, thousands of simple
souls, shut out by lowliness of position and other circumstances from
all the refining and ennobling influences of which the world makes so
much, who yet in character and bearing, ay, and sometimes in the very
look of their meek faces, are living witnesses how mighty to transform
a nature is the power of loving gazing upon Jesus Christ. All of us who
have had much to do with Christians of the humbler classes know that.
There is no influence to refine and beautify men like that of living
near Jesus Christ, and walking in the light of that Beauty which is
'the effulgence of the divine glory and the express image of His
Person.'
And in like manner as beauty so strength comes from communion with God
and laying hold on Him. We can only think of Samson as a 'saint' in a
very modified fashion, and present him as an example in a very limited
degree. His dependence upon divine power was rude, and divorced from
elevation of character and morality, but howsoever imperfect,
fragmentary, and I might almost say to our more trained eyes,
grotesque, it looks, yet there was a reality in it; and when the man
was faithless to his vow, and allowed the crafty harlot's scissors to
shear from his head the token of his consecration, it was because the
reality of the consecration, rude and external as that consecration
was, both in itself and in its consequences, had passed away from him.
And so we may learn the lesson, taught at once by the flashing face of
the lawgiver and the enfeebled force of the hero, that the two poles of
perfectness in humanity, so often divorced from one another--beauty and
strength--have one common source, and depend for their loftiest
position upon the same thing. God possesses both in supremest degree,
being the Almighty and the All-fair; and we possess them in limited,
but yet possibly progressive, measure, through dependence upon Him. The
true force of character, and the true power for work, and every real
strength which is not disguised weakness, 'a lath painted to look like
iron,' come on condition of our keeping close by God. The Fountain is
open for you all; see to it that you resort thither.
II. And now the second thought of my text is that the bearer of the
radiance is unconscious of it.
'Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.' In all regions of
life, the consummate apex and crowning charm of excellence is
unconsciousness of excellence. Whenever a man begins to imagine that he
is good, he begins to be bad; and every virtue and beauty of character
is robbed of some portion of its attractive fairness when the man who
bears it knows, or fancies, that he possesses it. The charm of
childhood is its perfect unconsciousness, and the man has to win back
the child's heritage, and become 'as a little child,' if he would enter
into and dwell in the 'Kingdom of Heaven.' And so in the loftiest
region of all, that of the religious life, you may be sure that the
more a man is like Christ, the less he knows it; and the better he is,
the less he suspects it. The reasons why that is so, point, at the same
time, to the ways by which we may attain to this blessed self-oblivion.
So let me put just in a word or two some simple, practical thoughts.
Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of
self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power. It is safe for
us to leave all thoughts of our miserable selves behind us, if instead
of them we have the thought of that great, sweet, dear Lord, filling
mind and heart. A man walking on a tight-rope will be far more likely
to fall, if he is looking at his toes, than if he is looking at the
point to which he is going. If we fix our eyes on Jesus, then we can
safely look, neither to our feet nor to the gulfs; but straight at Him
gazing, we shall straight to Him advance. 'Looking off' from ourselves
'unto Jesus' is safe; looking off anywhere else is peril. Seek that
self-oblivion which comes from self being swallowed up in the thought
of the Lord.
And again, I would say, think constantly and longingly of the
unattained. 'Brethren! I count not myself to have apprehended.' Endless
aspiration and a stinging consciousness of present imperfection are the
loftiest states of man here below. The beholders down in the valley,
when they look up, may see our figures against the skyline, and fancy
us at the summit, but our loftier elevation reveals untrodden heights
beyond; and we have only risen so high in order to discern more clearly
how much higher we have to rise. Dissatisfaction with the present is
the condition of excellence in all pursuits of life, and in the
Christian life even more eminently than in all others, because the goal
to be attained is in its very nature infinite; and therefore ensures
the blessed certainty of continual progress, accompanied here, indeed,
with the sting and bite of a sense of imperfection, but one day to be
only sweetness, as we think of how much there is yet to be won in
addition to the perfection of the present.
So, dear friends, the best way to keep ourselves unconscious of present
attainments is to set our faces forward, and to make 'all experience'
as 'an arch wherethro' gleams that untraveiled world to which we move.'
'Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.'
The third practical suggestion that I would make is, cultivate a clear
sense of your own imperfections. We do not need to try to learn our
goodness. That will suggest itself to us only too clearly; but what we
do need is to have a very clear sense of our shortcomings and failures,
our faults of temper, our faults of desire, our faults in our relations
to our fellows, and all the other evils that still buzz and sting and
poison our blood. Has not the best of us enough of these to knock all
the conceit out of us? A true man will never be so much ashamed of
himself as when he is praised, for it will always send him to look into
the deep places of his heart, and there will be a swarm of ugly,
creeping things under the stones there, if he will only turn them up
and look beneath. So let us lose ourselves in Christ, let us set our
faces to the unattained future, let us clearly understand our own
faults and sins.