CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE VISION OF GOD.

To know is to desire to know. A fit season. The greater Name, 438.--The

covenant renewed. The tables. The skin of his face shone, 439.--Lessons,

440.

CHAPTERS XXXV.-XL. CONCLUSION.

The people obey, 441.--The forming of the nation: review, 441-3.

CHAPTER I.

_THE PROLOGUE._

EXODUS i. 1-6.

"And these are the names of the children of Israel which came into

Egypt."

Many books of the Old Testament begin with the conjunction And. This

fact, it has been often pointed out, is a silent indication of truth,

that each author was not recording certain isolated incidents, but parts

of one great drama, events which joined hands with the past and future,

looking before and after.

Thus the Book of the Kings took up the tale from Samuel, Samuel from

Judges, and Judges from Joshua, and all carried the sacred movement

forward towards a goal as yet unreached. Indeed, it was impossible,

remembering the first promise that the seed of the woman should bruise

the head of the serpent, and the later assurance that in the seed of

Abraham should be the universal blessing, for a faithful Jew to forget

that all the history of his race was the evolution of some grand hope, a

pilgrimage towards some goal unseen. Bearing in mind that there is now

revealed to us a world-wide tendency toward the supreme consummation,

the bringing all things under the headship of Christ, it is not to be

denied that this hope of the ancient Jew is given to all mankind. Each

new stage in universal history may be said to open with this same

conjunction. It links the history of England with that of Julius Cæsar

and of the Red Indian; nor is the chain composed of accidents: it is

forged by the hand of the God of providence. Thus, in the conjunction

which binds these Old Testament narratives together, is found the germ

of that instinctive and elevating phrase, the Philosophy of History. But

there is nowhere in Scripture the notion which too often degrades and

stiffens that Philosophy--the notion that history is urged forward by

blind forces, amid which the individual man is too puny to assert

himself. Without a Moses the Exodus is inconceivable, and God always

achieves His purpose through the providential man.

* * * * *

The Books of the Pentateuch are held together in a yet stronger unity

than the rest, being sections of one and the same narrative, and having

been accredited with a common authorship from the earliest mention of

them. Accordingly, the Book of Exodus not only begins with this

conjunction (which assumes the previous narrative), but also rehearses

the descent into Egypt. "And these are the names of the sons of Israel

which came into Egypt,"--names blotted with many a crime, rarely

suggesting any lovable or great association, yet the names of men with a

marvellous heritage, as being "the sons of Israel," the Prince who

prevailed with God. Moreover they are consecrated: their father's dying

words had conveyed to every one of them some expectation, some

mysterious import which the future should disclose. In the issue would

be revealed the awful influence of the past upon the future, of the

fathers upon the children even beyond the third and fourth

generation--an influence which is nearer to destiny, in its stern,

subtle and far-reaching strength, than any other recognised by religion.

Destiny, however, it is not, or how should the name of Dan have faded

out from the final list of "every tribe of the children of Israel" in

the Apocalypse (Rev. vii. 5-8), where Manasseh is reckoned separately

from Joseph to complete the twelve?

We read that with the twelve came their posterity, seventy souls in

direct descent from Jacob; but in this number he is himself included,

according to that well-known Orientalism which Milton strove to force

upon our language in the phrase--

"The fairest of her daughters Eve."

Joseph is also reckoned, although he "was in Egypt already." Now, it

must be observed that of these seventy, sixty-eight were males, and

therefore the people of the Exodus must not be reckoned to have sprung

in the interval from seventy, but (remembering polygamy) from more than

twice that number, even if we refuse to make any account of the

household which is mentioned as coming with every man. These households

were probably smaller in each case than that of Abraham, and the famine

in its early stages may have reduced the number of retainers; yet they

account for much of what is pronounced incredible in the rapid expansion

of the clan into a nation.[1] But when all allowance has been made, the

increase continues to be, such as the narrator clearly regards it,

abnormal, well-nigh preternatural, a fitting type of the expansion, amid

fiercer persecutions, of the later Church of God, the true circumcision,

who also sprang from the spiritual parentage of another Seventy and

another Twelve.

"And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." Thus

the connection with Canaan became a mere tradition, and the powerful

courtier who had nursed their interests disappeared. When they

remembered him, in the bitter time which lay before them, it was only to

reflect that all mortal help must perish. It is thus in the spiritual

world also. Paul reminds the Philippians that they can obey in his

absence and not in his presence only, working out their own salvation,

as no apostle can work it out on their behalf. And the reason is that

the one real support is ever present. Work out your own salvation, for

it is God (not any teacher) Who worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to

learn its need of Him, and in Him to recover its freedom. Moreover, the

influences which mould all men's characters, their surroundings and

mental atmosphere, were completely changed. These wanderers for pasture

were now in the presence of a compact and impressive social system, vast

cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual. They were infected as well

as educated there, and we find the men of the Exodus not only murmuring

for Egyptian comforts, but demanding visible gods to go before them.

Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a necessary part of their

development. They should return from Egypt relying upon no courtly

patron, no mortal might or wisdom, aware of a name of God more profound

than was spoken in the covenant of their fathers, with their narrow

family interests and rivalries and their family traditions expanded into

national hopes, national aspirations, a national religion.

Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has reminded us of the

vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race that multiplied

exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the truth, so miserably

perverted that it is discredited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by

modern science, that good breeding, in the strictest sense of the word,

is a powerful factor in the lives of men and nations. To be well born

does not of necessity require aristocratic parentage, nor does such

parentage involve it: but it implies a virtuous, temperate and pious

stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is palpable; for who can

doubt that the sins of dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and

short-lived children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not

only honour and a welcome in the world, "an open door," but also

immunity from many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving? If

the Hebrew race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an

unrivalled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has

been twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than

"natural selection" the dross was throughly purged out, and (as Isaiah

loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the

vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of that

amazing vitality which makes it, even in its overthrow, so powerful an

element in the best modern thought and action.

It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality for which God chose

Israel was probably toughness. Perhaps the saying would better be

inverted: it was among the most remarkable endowments, unto which Israel

was called, and called by virtue of qualities in which Goethe himself

was remarkably deficient.

Now, this principle is in full operation still, and ought to be solemnly

pondered by the young. Self-indulgence, the sowing of wild oats, the

seeing of life while one is young, the taking one's fling before one

settles down, the having one's day (like "every dog," for it is to be

observed that no person says, "every Christian"), these things seem

natural enough. And their unsuspected issues in the next generation,

dire and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more natural still,

being the operation of the laws of God.

On the other hand, there is no youth living in obedience alike to the

higher and humbler laws of our complex nature, in purity and gentleness

and healthful occupation, who may not contribute to the stock of

happiness in other lives beyond his own, to the future well-being of his

native land, and to the day when the sadly polluted stream of human

existence shall again flow clear and glad, a pure river of water of

life.

_GOD IN HISTORY._

i. 7.

With the seventh verse, the new narrative, the course of events treated

in the main body of this book, begins.

And we are at once conscious of this vital difference between Exodus and

Genesis,--that we have passed from the story of men and families to the

history of a nation. In the first book the Canaanites and Egyptians

concern us only as they affect Abraham or Joseph. In the second book,

even Moses himself concerns us only for the sake of Israel. He is in

some respects a more imposing and august character than any who preceded

him; but what we are told is no longer the story of a soul, nor are we

pointed so much to the development of his spiritual life as to the work

he did, the tyrant overthrown, the nation moulded, the law and the

ritual imposed on it.

For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in Bethel as well as in his

father's house. But now the Hebrew nation was to learn that He could

plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold, that His way was in the

sea, that Horeb in Arabia was the Mount of God, that He could lead them

like a horse through the wilderness.

When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and prevails, he wins for himself

a new name, expressive of the higher moral elevation which he has

attained. But when Moses meets God in the bush, it is to receive a

commission for the public benefit; and there is no new name for Moses,

but a fresh revelation of God for the nation to learn. And in all their

later history we feel that the national life which it unfolds was

nourished and sustained by these glorious early experiences, the most

unique as well as the most inspiriting on record.

Here, then, a question of great moment is suggested. Beyond the fact

that Abraham was the father of the Jewish race, can we discover any

closer connection between the lives of the patriarchs and the history of

Israel? Is there a truly spiritual coherence between them, or merely a

genealogical sequence? For if the Bible can make good its claim to be

vitalised throughout by the eternal Spirit of God, and leading forward

steadily to His final revelation in Christ, then its parts will be

symmetrical, proportionate and well designed. If it be a universal

book, there must be a better reason for the space devoted to preliminary

and half secular stories, which is a greater bulk than the whole of the

New Testament, than that these histories chance to belong to the nation

whence Christ came. If no such reason can be found, the failure may not

perhaps outweigh the great evidences of the faith, but it will score for

something on the side of infidelity. But if upon examination it becomes

plain that all has its part in one great movement, and that none can be

omitted without marring the design, and if moreover this design has

become visible only since the fulness of the time is come, the discovery

will go far to establish the claim of Scripture to reveal throughout a

purpose truly divine, dealing with man for ages, and consummated in the

gift of Christ.

Now, it is to St. Paul that we turn for light upon the connection

between the Old Testament and the New. And he distinctly lays down two

great principles. The first is that the Old Testament is meant to

educate men for the New; and especially that the sense of failure,

impressed upon men's consciences by the stern demands of the Law, was

necessary to make them accept the Gospel.

The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ: it entered that sin

might abound. And it is worth notice that this effect was actually

wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor by the menace of its

broken precepts, but even more perhaps upon the high-minded and pure, by

the creation in their breasts of an ideal, inaccessible in its

loftiness. He who says, All these things have I kept from my youth up,

is the same who feels the torturing misgiving, What good thing must I do

to attain life?... What lack I yet? He who was blameless as touching

the righteousness of the law, feels that such superficial innocence is

worthless, that the law is spiritual and he is carnal, sold under sin.

Now, this principle need by no means be restricted to the Mosaic

institutions. If this were the object of the law, it would probably

explain much more. And when we return to the Old Testament with this

clue, we find every condition in life examined, every social and

political experiment exhausted, a series of demonstrations made with

scientific precision, to refute the arch-heresy which underlies all

others--that in favourable circumstances man might save himself, that

for the evil of our lives our evil surroundings are more to be blamed

than we.

Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by evil habit, untainted

by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings, simple

innocence had its day in Paradise, a brief day with a shameful close.

God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions, until the flood

swept away the descendants of him who was made after the image of God.

Next we have a chosen family, called out from all the perilous

associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a new career in a

new land, in special covenant with the Most High, and with every

endowment for the present and every hope for the future which could help

to retain its loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the thirst of

Esau for his brother's blood, the treachery of Jacob, and the

distraction and guilt of his fierce and sensual family. It is when

individual and family life have thus proved ineffectual amid the

happiest circumstances, that the tribe and the nation essay the task.

Led up from the furnace of affliction, hardened and tempered in the

stern free life of the desert, impressed by every variety of fortune, by

slavery and escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe and by a

rescue visibly divine, awed finally by the sublime revelations of Sinai,

the nation is ready for the covenant (which is also a challenge)--The

man that doeth these things shall live by them: if thou diligently

hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God ... He shall set thee on high

above all nations.

Such is the connection between this narrative and what went before. And

the continuation of the same experiment, and the same failure, can be

traced through all the subsequent history. Whether in so loose an

organisation that every man does what is right in his own eyes, or under

the sceptre of a hero or a sage,--whether so hard pressed that

self-preservation ought to have driven them to their God, or so

marvellously delivered that gratitude should have brought them to their

knees,--whether engulfed a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or

restored and ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely

spiritual,--in every variety of circumstances the same melancholy

process repeats itself; and lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and

self-righteousness combine to stop every mouth, to make every man guilty

before God, to prove that a greater salvation is still needed, and thus

to pave the way for the Messiah.

The second great principle of St. Paul is that faith in a divine help,

in pardon, blessing and support, was the true spirit of the Old

Testament as well as of the New. The challenge of the law was meant to

produce self-despair, only that men might trust in God. Appeal was made

especially to the cases of Abraham and David, the founder of the race

and of the dynasty, clearly because the justification without works of

the patriarch and of the king were precedents to decide the general

question (Rom. iv. 1-8). Now, this is pre-eminently the distinction

between Jewish history and all others, that in it God is everything and

man is nothing. Every sceptical treatment of the story makes Moses to be

the deliverer from Egypt, and shows us the Jewish nation gradually

finding out God. But the nation itself believed nothing of the kind. It

confessed itself to have been from the beginning vagrant and rebellious

and unthankful: God had always found out Israel, never Israel God. The

history is an expansion of the parable of the good shepherd. And this

perfect harmony of a long record with itself and with abstract

principles is both instructive and reassuring.

As the history of Israel opens before us, a third principle claims

attention--one which the apostle quietly assumes, but which is forced on

our consideration by the unhappy state of religious thought in these

degenerate days.

"They are not to be heard," says the Seventh Article rightly, "which

feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises." But

certainly they also would be unworthy of a hearing who would feign that

the early Scriptures do not give a vast, a preponderating weight, to the

concerns of our life on earth. Only very slowly, and as the result of

long training, does the future begin to reveal its supremacy over the

present. It would startle many a devout reader out of his propriety to

discover the small proportion of Old Testament scriptures in which

eternity and its prospects are discussed, to reckon the passages,

habitually applied to spiritual thraldom and emancipation, which were

spoken at first of earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance, and to

observe, even in the pious aspirations of the Psalms, how much of the

gratitude and joy of the righteous comes from the sense that he is made

wiser than the ancient, and need not fear though a host rose up against

him, and can break a bow of steel, and has a table prepared for him, and

an overflowing cup. Especially is this true of the historical books. God

is here seen ruling states, judging in the earth, remembering Israel in

bondage, and setting him free, providing supernatural food and water,

guiding him by the fiery cloud. There is not a word about regeneration,

conversion, hell, or heaven. And yet there is a profound sense of God.

He is real, active, the most potent factor in the daily lives of men.

Now, this may teach us a lesson, highly important to us all, and

especially to those who must teach others. The difference between

spirituality and secularity is not the difference between the future

life and the present, but between a life that is aware of God and a

godless one. Perhaps, when we find our gospel a matter of indifference

and weariness to men who are absorbed in the bitter monotonous and

dreary struggle for existence, we ourselves are most to blame. Perhaps,

if Moses had approached the Hebrew drudges as we approach men equally

weary and oppressed, they would not have bowed their heads and

worshipped. And perhaps we should have better success, if we took care

to speak of God in this world, making life a noble struggle, charging

with new significance the dull and seemingly degraded lot of all who

remember Him, such a God as Jesus revealed when He cleansed the leper,

and gave sight to the blind, using one and the same word for the

"healing" of diseases and the "saving" of souls, and connecting faith

equally with both. Exodus will have little to teach us, unless we

believe in that God who knoweth that we have need of food and clothing.

And the higher spiritual truths which it expresses will only be found

there in dubious and questionable allegory, unless we firmly grasp the

great truth, that God is not the Saviour of souls, or of bodies, but of

living men in their entirety, and treats their higher and lower wants

upon much the same principle, because He is the same God, dealing with

the same men, through both.

Moreover, He treats us as the men of other ages. Instead of dealing with

Moses upon exceptional and strange lines, He made known His ways unto

Moses, His characteristic and habitual ways. And it is on this account

that whatsoever things were written aforetime are true admonition for us

also, being not violent interruptions but impressive revelations of the

steady silent methods of the judgment and the grace of God.

_THE OPPRESSION._

i. 7-22.

At the beginning of the history of Israel we find a prosperous race. It

was indeed their growing importance, and chiefly their vast numerical

increase, which excited the jealousy of their rulers, at the very time

when a change of dynasty removed the sense of obligation. It is a sound

lesson in political as well as personal godliness that prosperity itself

is dangerous, and needs special protection from on high.

Is it merely by chance again that we find in this first of histories

examples of the folly of relying upon political connections? As the

chief butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he succeed in escaping from

prison by securing influence at court, so is the influence of Joseph

himself now become vain, although he was the father of Pharaoh and lord

of all his house. His romantic history, his fidelity in temptation, and

the services by which he had at once cemented the royal power and saved

the people, could not keep his memory alive. The hollow wraith of dying

fame died wholly. There arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.

Such is the value of the highest and purest earthly fame, and such the

gratitude of the world to its benefactors. The nation which Joseph

rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh's hands, and persecutes

Israel at his bidding.

And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank and influence were only

entanglements through which he had to break.

Meanwhile, except among a few women, obedient to the woman's heart, we

find no trace of independent action, no revolt of conscience against the

absolute behest of the sovereign, until selfishness replaces virtue, and

despair wrings the cry from his servants, Knowest thou not yet that

Egypt is destroyed?

Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families, blessed in their father

Abraham, or cursed for the offence of Ham. For a family is a real

entity, and its members, like those of one body, rejoice and suffer

together. But the same is true of nations, and here we have reached the

national stage in the education of the world. Here is exhibited to us,

therefore, a nation suffering with its monarch to the uttermost, until

the cry of the maidservant behind the mill is as wild and bitter as the

cry of Pharaoh upon his throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of

despotism that unlimited calamity may be drawn down upon millions by the

caprice of one most unhappy man, himself blinded and half maddened by

adulation, by the absence of restraint, by unlimited sensual indulgence

if his tendencies be low and animal, and by the pride of power if he be

high-spirited and aspiring.

If we assume, what seems pretty well established, that the Pharaoh from

whom Moses fled was Rameses the Great, his spirit was of the nobler

kind, and he exhibits a terrible example of the unfitness even of

conquering genius for unbridled and irresponsible power. That lesson has

had to be repeated, even down to the days of the Great Napoleon.

Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the offence of its head be

questioned, let us ask first whether the nation accepts his despotism,

honours him, and is content to regard him as its chief and captain.

According to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a

tyrant enviable, has already himself tyrannised with him in his heart.

Do we ourselves, then, never sympathise with political audacity, bold

and unscrupulous "resource," success that is bought at the price of

strange compliances, and compromises, and wrongs to other men?

The great national lesson is now to be taught to Israel that the most

splendid imperial force will be brought to an account for its treatment

of the humblest--that there is a God Who judges in the earth. And they

were bidden to apply in their own land this experience of their own,

dealing kindly with the stranger in the midst of them, "for thou wast a

stranger in the land of Egypt." That lesson we have partly learned, who

have broken the chain of our slaves. But how much have we left undone!

The subject races were never given into our hands to supplant them, as

we have supplanted the Red Indian and the New Zealander, nor to

debauch, as men say we are corrupting the African and the Hindoo, but to

raise, instruct and Christianise. And if the subjects of a despotism are

accountable for the actions of rulers whom they tolerate, how much more

are we? What ought we to infer, from this old-world history, of the

profound responsibilities of all free citizens?

We attain a principle which reaches far into the spiritual world, when

we reflect that if evil deeds of a ruler can justly draw down vengeance

upon his people, the converse also must hold good. Reverse the case

before us. Let the kingdom be that of the noblest and purest virtue. Let

no subject ever be coerced to enter it, nor to remain one hour longer

than while his adoring loyalty consents. And shall not these subjects be

the better for the virtues of the Monarch whom they love? Is it mere

caprice to say that in choosing such a King they do, in a very real

sense, appropriate the goodness they crown? If it be natural that Egypt

be scourged for the sins of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that

Christ is made of God unto His people wisdom and righteousness and

sanctification and redemption? The doctrine of imputation can easily be

so stated as to become absurd. But the imputation of which St. Paul

speaks much can only be denied when we are prepared to assail the

principle on which all bodies of men are treated, families and nations

as well as the Church of God.

It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which drew down upon his country

the very perils he laboured to turn away. There was no ground for his

fear of any league with foreigners against him. Prosperous and

unambitious, the people would have remained well content beside the

flesh-pots of Egypt, for which they sighed even when emancipated from

heavy bondage and eating the bread of heaven. Or else, if they had gone

forth in peace, from a land whose hospitality had not failed, to their

inheritance in Canaan, they would have become an allied nation upon the

side where the heaviest blows were afterwards struck by the Asiatic

powers. Cruelty and cunning could not retain them, but it could decimate

a population and lose an army in the attempt. And this law prevails in

the modern world, England paid twenty millions to set her bondmen free.

Because America would not follow her example, she ultimately paid the

more terrible ransom of civil war. For the same God was in Jamaica and

in Florida as in the field of Zoan. Nor was there ever yet a crooked

policy which did not recoil either upon its author, or upon his

successors when he had passed away. In this case it fulfilled the plans

and the prophecies of God, and the wrath of man was made to praise Him.

There is independent reason for believing that at this period one-third

at least of the population of Egypt was of alien blood (Brugsch,

_History_, ii. 100). A politician might fairly be alarmed, especially if

this were the time when the Hittites were threatening the eastern

frontier, and had reduced Egypt to stand on the defensive, and erect

barrier fortresses. And the circumstances of the country made it very

easy to enslave the Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indifference to

the rights of the masses had mingled with the God-given insight of

Joseph, when he made his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the

Egyptian people were fully avenged upon him now. For this arrangement

laid his pastoral race helpless at their oppressor's feet. Forced

labour quickly degenerates into slavery, and men who find the story of

their misery hard to credit should consider the state of France before

the Revolution, and of the Russian serfs before their emancipation.

Their wretchedness was probably as bitter as that of the Hebrews at any

period but the last climax of their oppression. And they owed it to the

same cause--the absolute ownership of the land by others, too remote

from them to be sympathetic, to take due account of their feelings, to

remember that they were their fellow-men. This was enough to slay

compassion, even without the aggravation of dealing with an alien and

suspected race.

Now, it is instructive to observe these reappearances of wholesale

crime. They warn us that the utmost achievements of human wickedness are

human still; not wild and grotesque importations by a fiend, originated

in the abyss, foreign to the world we live in. Satan finds the material

for his master-strokes in the estrangement of class from class, in the

drying up of the fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the failure

of real, fresh, natural affection in our bosom for those who differ

widely from us in rank or circumstances. All cruelties are possible when

a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his woes really woeful. For

when the man has sunk into an animal it is only a step to his

vivisection.

Nor does anything tend to deepen such perilous estrangement, more than

the very education, culture and refinement, in which men seek a

substitute for religion and the sense of brotherhood in Christ. It is

quite conceivable that the tyrant who drowned the Hebrew infants was an

affectionate father, and pitied his nobles when their children died. But

his sympathies could not reach beyond the barriers of a caste. Do _our_

sympathies really overleap such barriers? Would God that even His Church

believed aright in the reality of a human nature like our own, soiled,

sorrowful, shamed, despairing, drugged into that apathetical

insensibility which lies even below despair, yet aching still, in ten

thousand bosoms, in every great city of Christendom, every day and every

night! Would to God that she understood what Jesus meant, when He called

one lost creature by the tender name which she had not yet forfeited,

saying, "Woman, where are thine accusers?" and when He asked Simon, who

scorned such another, "Seest thou this woman!" Would God that when she

prays for the Holy Spirit of Jesus she would really seek a mind like

His, not only in piety and prayerfulness, but also in tender and

heartfelt brotherhood with all, even the vilest of the weary and

heavy-laden!

Many great works of ancient architecture, the pyramids among the rest,

were due to the desire of crushing, by abject toil, the spirit of a

subject people. We cannot ascribe to Hebrew labour any of the more

splendid piles of Egyptian masonry, but the store cities or arsenals

which they built can be identified. They are composed of such crude

brick as the narrative describes; and the absence of straw in the later

portion of them can still be verified. Rameses was evidently named after

their oppressor, and this strengthens the conviction that we are reading

of events in the nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had

recently been driven out, leaving the eastern frontier so weak as to

demand additional fortresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour

to the exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, "the people are more and

mightier than we." It is by such exaggerations and alarms that all the

worst crimes of statesmen have been justified to consenting peoples. And

we, when we carry what seems to us a rightful object, by inflaming the

prejudice and misleading the judgment of other men, are moving on the

same treacherous and slippery inclines. Probably no evil is committed

without some amount of justification, which the passions exaggerate,

while they ignore the prohibitions of the law.

How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew blood, which was yet to boil

in the veins of the Maccabees, and to give battle, not unworthily, to

the Roman conquerors of the world, failed to resent the cruelties of

Pharaoh?

Partly, of course, because the Jewish people was only now becoming aware

of its national existence; but also because it had forsaken God. Its

religion, if not supplanted, was at least adulterated by the influence

of the mystic pantheism and the stately ritual which surrounded them.

Joshua bade his victorious followers to "put away the gods whom your

fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord"

(Josh. xxiv. 14). And in Ezekiel the Lord Himself complains, "They

rebelled against Me and would not hearken unto Me; they did not cast

away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols

of Egypt" (Ezek. xx. 8).

Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the spirit and breaks the courage

like religious dependence. A strong priesthood always means a feeble

people, most of all when they are of different blood. And Israel was now

dependent on Egypt alike for the highest and lowest needs--grass for the

cattle and religion for the soul. And when they had sunk so low, it is

evident that their emancipation had to be wrought for them entirely

without their help. From first to last they were passive, not only for

want of spirit to help themselves, but because the glory of any exploit

of theirs might have illuminated some false deity whom they adored.

Standing still, they saw the salvation of God, and it was not possible

to give His glory to another.

For this cause also, judgment had, first of all, to be wrought upon the

gods of Egypt.

In the meantime, without spirit enough to resist, they saw complete

destruction drawing nearer to them by successive strides. At first

Pharaoh "dealt wisely with them," and they found themselves entrapped

into a hard bondage almost unawares. But a strange power upheld them,

and the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied and spread

abroad. In this they ought to have discerned a divine support, and

remembered the promise to Abraham that God would multiply his seed as

the stars of heaven. It may have helped them presently to "cry unto the

Lord." And the Egyptians were not merely "grieved" because of them: they

felt as the Israelites afterwards felt towards that monotonous diet of

which they used the same word, and said, "our soul loatheth this light

bread." Here it expresses that fierce and contemptuous attitude which

the Californian and Australian are now assuming toward the swarms of

Chinamen whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion of whose

blood into the population is so hateful. Then the Egyptians make their

service rigorous, and their lives bitter.

And at last that happens which is a part of every downward course: the

veil is dropped; what men have done by stealth, and as if they would

deceive themselves, they soon do consciously, avowing to their

conscience what at first they could not face. Thus Pharaoh began by

striving to check a dangerous population; and ended by committing

wholesale murder. Thus men become drunkards through conviviality,

thieves through borrowing what they mean to restore, and hypocrites

through slightly overstating what they really feel. And, since there are

nice gradations in evil, down to the very last, Pharaoh will not yet

avow publicly the atrocity which he commands a few humble women to

perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often, the last substitute for

a conscience.

Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all full-grown wrongs, the

chief is the revolt of human nature, since, fallen though we know

ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced in us. The better

instincts of humanity are irrepressible--most so perhaps among the poor.

It is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the

very last that refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon

upon its agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves.

Above all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and

as Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the

sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the

disobedience of the midwives, themselves Hebrews, upon whom he reckoned.

Let us not fear to avow that these women, whom God rewarded, lied to the

king when he reproached them, since their answer, even if it were not

unfounded, was palpably a misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was

not for their falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the

notion of martyrdom for an avowal so easy to evade was utterly unknown.

Abraham lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David equivocated with Saul.

We have learned better things from the King of truth, Who was born and

came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We know that the

martyr's bold protest against unrighteousness is the highest vocation of

the Church, and is rewarded in the better country. But they knew nothing

of this, and their service was acceptable according as they had, not

according as they had not. As well might we blame the patriarchs for

having been slave-owners, and David for having invoked mischief upon his

enemies, as these women for having fallen short of the Christian ideal

of veracity. Let us beware lest we come short of it ourselves. And let

us remember that the way of the Church through time is the path of the

just, beset with mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more and more

unto the perfect day.

In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy Scripture celebrates, the

service of these obscure and lowly heroines. Nothing done for Him goes

unrewarded. To slaves it was written that "From the Lord ye shall

receive the reward of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ" (Col.

iii. 24). And what these women saved for others was what was recompensed

to themselves, domestic happiness, family life and its joys. God made

them houses.

The king is now driven to avow himself in a public command to drown all

the male infants of the Hebrews; and the people become his accomplices

by obeying him. For this they were yet to experience a terrible

retribution, when there was not a house in Egypt that had not one dead.

The features of the king to whom these atrocities are pretty certainly

brought home are still to be seen in the museum at Boulak. Seti I. is

the most beautiful of all the Egyptian monarchs whose faces lie bare to

the eyes of modern sightseers; and his refined features, intelligent,

high-bred and cheerful, resemble wonderfully, yet surpass, those of

Rameses II., his successor, from whom Moses fled. This is the builder of

the vast and exquisite temple of Amon at Thebes, the grandeur of which

is amazing even in its ruins; and his culture and artistic gifts are

visible, after all these centuries, upon his face. It is a strange

comment upon the modern doctrine that culture is to become a sufficient

substitute for religion. And his own record of his exploits is enough to

show that the sense of beauty is not that of pity: he is the jackal

leaping through the land of his enemies, the grim lion, the powerful

bull with sharpened horns, who has annihilated the peoples.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that artistic refinement can

either inspire morality or replace it. Have we quite forgotten Nero, and

Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de Medici?

Many civilisations have thought little of infant life. Ancient Rome

would have regarded this atrocity as lightly as modern China, as we may

see by the absolute silence of its literature concerning the murder of

the innocents--an event strangely parallel with this in its nature and

political motives, and in the escape of one mighty Infant.

Is it conceivable that the same indifference should return, if the

sanctions of religion lose their power? Every one remembers the

callousness of Rousseau. Strange things are being written by pessimistic

unbelief about the bringing of more sufferers into the world. And a

living writer in France has advocated the legalising of infanticide, and

denounced St. Vincent de Paul because, "thanks to his odious

precautions, this man deferred for years the death of creatures without

intelligence," etc.[2]

It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing by the light of eternity

the value of every soul, but also replenishing the fountains of human

tenderness that had well-nigh become exhausted, that we owe our modern

love of children. In the very helplessness which the ancient masters of

the world exposed to destruction without a pang, we see the type of what

we must ourselves become, if we would enter heaven. But we cannot afford

to forget either the source or the sanctions of the lesson.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Professor Curtiss quotes a volume of family memoirs which shows that

5,564 persons are known to be descended from Lieutenant John Hollister,

who emigrated to America in the year 1642 (_Expositor_, Nov. 1887, p.

329). This is probably equal in ratio to the increase of Israel in

Egypt.

[2] J. K. Huysmans--quoted in _Nineteenth Century_, May 1888, p. 673.

CHAPTER II.

_THE RESCUE OF MOSES._

ii. 1-10.

We have said that the Old Testament history teems with political wisdom,

lessons of permanent instruction for mankind, on the level of this life,

yet godly, as all true lessons must be, in a world of which Christ is

King. These our religion must learn to recognise and proclaim, if it is

ever to win the respect of men of affairs, and "leaven the whole lump"

of human life with sacred influence.

Such a lesson is the importance of the individual in the history of

nations. History, as read in Scripture, is indeed a long relation of

heroic resistance or of base compliance in the presence of influences

which are at work to debase modern peoples as well as those of old. The

holiness of Samuel, the gallant faith of David, the splendour and wisdom

of Solomon, the fervid zeal of Elijah, the self-respecting righteousness

of Nehemiah,--ignore these, and the whole course of affairs becomes

vague and unintelligible. Most of all this is true of Moses, whose

appearance is now related.

In profane history it is the same. Alexander, Mahomet, Luther, William

the Silent, Napoleon,--will any one pretend that Europe uninfluenced by

these personalities would have become the Europe that we know?

And this truth is not at all a speculative, unpractical theory: it is

vital. For now there is a fashion of speaking about the tendency of the

age, the time-spirit, as an irresistible force which moulds men like

potters' clay, crowning those who discern and help it, but grinding to

powder all who resist its course. In reality there are always a hundred

time-spirits and tendencies competing for the mastery--some of them

violent, selfish, atheistic, or luxurious (as we see with our own eyes

to-day)--and the shrewdest judges are continually at fault as to which

of them is to be victorious, and recognised hereafter as the spirit of

the age.

This modern pretence that men are nothing, and streams of tendency are

all, is plainly a gospel of capitulations, of falsehood to one's private

convictions, and of servile obedience to the majority and the popular

cry. For, if individual men are nothing, what am I? If we are all

bubbles floating down a stream, it is folly to strive to breast the

current. Much practical baseness and servility is due to this base and

servile creed. And the cure for it is belief in another spirit than that

of the present age, trust in an inspiring God, who rescued a herd of

slaves and their fading convictions from the greatest nation upon earth

by matching one man, shrinking and reluctant yet obedient to his

mission, against Pharaoh and all the tendencies of the age.

And it is always so. God turns the scale of events by the vast weight of

a man, faithful and true, and sufficiently aware of Him to refuse, to

universal clamour, the surrender of his liberty or his religion. In

small matters, as in great, there is no man, faithful to a lonely duty

or conviction, understanding that to have discerned it is a gift and a

vocation, but makes the world better and stronger, and works out part

of the answer to that great prayer "Thy will be done."

We have seen already that the religion of the Hebrews in Egypt was

corrupted and in danger of being lost. To this process, however, there

must have been bright exceptions; and the mother of Moses bore witness,

by her very name, to her fathers' God. The first syllable of Jochebed is

proof that the name of God, which became the keynote of the new

revelation, was not entirely new.

As yet the parents of Moses are not named; nor is there any allusion to

the close relationship which would have forbidden their union at a later

period (chap. vi. 20). And throughout all the story of his youth and

early manhood there is no mention whatever of God or of religion.

Elsewhere it is not so. The Epistle to the Hebrews declares that through

faith the babe was hidden, and through faith the man refused Egyptian

rank. Stephen tells us that he expected his brethren to know that God by

his hand was giving them deliverance. But the narrative in Exodus is

wholly untheological. If Moses were the author, we can see why he

avoided reflections which directly tended to glorify himself. But if the

story were a subsequent invention, why is the tone so cold, the light so

colourless?

Now, it is well that we are invited to look at all these things from

their human side, observing the play of human affection, innocent

subtlety, and pity. God commonly works through the heart and brain which

He has given us, and we do not glorify Him at all by ignoring these. If

in this case there were visible a desire to suppress the human agents,

in favour of the Divine Preserver, we might suppose that a different

historian would have given a less wonderful account of the plagues, the

crossing of the Sea, and the revelation from Sinai. But since full

weight is allowed to second causes in the early life of Moses, the story

is entitled to the greater credit when it tells of the burning bush and

the flaming mountain.

Let us, however, put together the various narratives and their lessons.

At the outset we read of a marriage celebrated between kinsfolk, when

the storm of persecution was rising. And hence we infer that courage or

strong affection made the parents worthy of him through whom God should

show mercy unto thousands. The first child was a girl, and therefore

safe; but we may suppose, although silence in Scripture proves little,

that Aaron, three years before the birth of Moses, had not come into

equal peril with him. Moses was therefore born just when the last

atrocity was devised, when trouble was at its height.

"At this time Moses was born," said Stephen. Edifying inferences have

been drawn from the statement in Exodus that "the woman ... hid him."

Perhaps the stronger man quailed, but the maternal instinct was not at

fault, and it was rewarded abundantly. From which we only learn, in

reality, not to overstrain the words of Scripture; since the Epistle to

the Hebrews distinctly says that he "was hid three months by his

parents"--both of them, while naturally the mother is the active agent.

All the accounts agree that he was thus hidden, "because they saw that

he was a goodly child" (Heb. xi. 23). It is a pathetic phrase. We see

them, before the crisis, vaguely submitting in theory to an unrealised

atrocity, ignorant how imperiously their nature would forbid the crime,

not planning disobedience in advance, nor led to it by any reasoning

process. All is changed when the little one gazes at them with that

marvellous appeal in its unconscious eyes, which is known to every

parent, and helps him to be a better man. There is a great difference

between one's thought about an infant, and one's feeling towards the

actual baby. He was their child, their beautiful child; and this it was

that turned the scale. For him they would now dare anything, "because

they saw he was a goodly child, and they were not afraid of the king's

commandment." Now, impulse is often a great power for evil, as when

appetite or fear, suddenly taking visible shape, overwhelms the judgment

and plunges men into guilt. But good impulses may be the very voice of

God, stirring whatever is noble and generous within us. Nor are they

accidental: loving and brave emotions belong to warm and courageous

hearts; they come of themselves, like song birds, but they come surely

where sunshine and still groves invite them, not into clamour and foul

air. Thus arose in their bosoms the sublime thought of God as an active

power to be reckoned upon. For as certainly as every bad passion that we

harbour preaches atheism, so does all goodness tend to sustain itself by

the consciousness of a supreme Goodness in reserve. God had sent them

their beautiful child, and who was Pharaoh to forbid the gift? And so

religion and natural pity joined hands, their supreme convictions and

their yearning for their infant. "By faith Moses was hid ... because

they saw he was a goodly child, and they were not afraid of the king's

commandment."

Such, if we desire a real and actual salvation, is always the faith

which saves. Postpone salvation to an indefinite future; make it no more

than the escape from vaguely realised penalties for sins which do not

seem very hateful; and you may suppose that faith in theories can obtain

this indulgence; an opinion may weigh against a misgiving. But feel that

sin is not only likely to entail damnation, but is really and in itself

damnable meanwhile, and then there will be no deliverance possible, but

from the hand of a divine Friend, strong to sustain and willing to guide

the life. We read that Amram lived a hundred and thirty and seven years,

and of all that period we only know that he helped to save the deliverer

of his race, by practical faith which made him not afraid, and did not

paralyse but stimulate his energies.

When the mother could no longer hide the child, she devised the plan

which has made her for ever famous. She placed him in a covered ark, or

casket,[3] plaited (after what we know to have been the Egyptian

fashion) of the papyrus reed, and rendered watertight with bitumen, and

this she laid among the rushes--a lower vegetation, which would not,

like the tall papyrus, hide her treasure--in the well-known and secluded

place where the daughter of Pharaoh used to bathe. Something in the

known character of the princess may have inspired this ingenious device

to move her pity; but it is more likely that the woman's heart, in her

extremity, prompted a simple appeal to the woman who could help her if

she would. For an Egyptian princess was an important personage, with an

establishment of her own, and often possessed of much political

influence. The most sanguinary agent of a tyrant would be likely to

respect the client of such a patron.

The heart of every woman was in a plot against the cruelty of Pharaoh.

Once already the midwives had defeated him; and now, when his own

daughter[4] unexpectedly found, in the water at her very feet, a

beautiful child sobbing silently (for she knew not what was there until

the ark was opened), her indignation is audible enough in the words,

"This is one of the Hebrews' children." She means to say "This is only

one specimen of the outrages that are going on."

This was the chance for his sister, who had been set in ambush, not

prepared with the exquisite device which follows, but simply "to know

what would be done to him." Clearly the mother had reckoned upon his

being found, and neglected nothing, although unable herself to endure

the agony of watching, or less easily hidden in that guarded spot. And

her prudence had a rich reward. Hitherto Miriam's duty had been to

remain passive--that hard task so often imposed upon the affection,

especially of women, by sick-beds, and also in many a more stirring

hazard, and many a spiritual crisis, where none can fight his brother's

battle. It is a trying time, when love can only hold its breath, and

pray. But let not love suppose that to watch is to do nothing. Often

there comes a moment when its word, made wise by the teaching of the

heart, is the all-important consideration in deciding mighty issues.

This girl sees the princess at once pitiful and embarrassed, for how can

she dispose of her strange charge? Let the moment pass, and the movement

of her heart subside, and all may be lost; but Miriam is prompt and

bold, and asks "Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,

that she may nurse the child for thee?" It is a daring stroke, for the

princess must have understood the position thoroughly, the moment the

eager Hebrew girl stepped forward. The disguise was very thin. And at

least the heart which pitied the infant must have known the mother when

she saw her face, pale with longing. It is therefore only as a form,

exacted by circumstances, but well enough though tacitly understood upon

both sides, that she bids her nurse the child for her, and promises

wages. What reward could equal that of clasping her child to her own

agitated bosom in safety, while the destroyers were around?

This incident teaches us that good is never to be despaired of, since

this kindly woman grew up in the family of the persecutor.

And the promptitude and success of Miriam suggest a reflection. Men do

pity, when it is brought home to them, the privation, suffering, and

wrong, which lie around. Magnificent sums are contributed yearly for

their relief by the generous instincts of the world. The misfortune is

that sentiment is evoked only by visible and pathetic griefs, and that

it will not labour as readily as it will subscribe. It is a harder task

to investigate, to devise appeals, to invent and work the machinery by

which misery may be relieved. Mere compassion will accomplish little,

unless painstaking affection supplement it. Who supplies that? Who

enables common humanity to relieve itself by simply paying "wages," and

confiding the wretched to a painstaking, laborious, loving guardian? The

streets would never have known Hospital Saturday, but for Hospital

Sunday in the churches. The orphanage is wholly a Christian institution.

And so is the lady nurse. The old-fashioned phrase has almost sunk into

a party cry, but in a large and noble sense it will continue to be true

to nature as long as bereavement, pain or penitence requires a tender

bosom and soothing touch, which speaks of Mother Church.

Thus did God fulfil His mysterious plans. And according to a sad but

noble law, which operates widely, what was best in Egypt worked with Him

for the punishment of its own evil race. The daughter of Pharaoh adopted

the perilous foundling, and educated him in the wisdom of Egypt.

_THE CHOICE OF MOSES._

ii. 11-15.

God works even His miracles by means. As He fed the multitude with

barley-loaves, so He would emancipate Israel by human agency. It was

therefore necessary to educate one of the trampled race "in all the

learning of Egypt," and Moses was planted in the court of Pharaoh, like

the German Arminius in Rome. Wonderful legends may be read in Josephus

of his heroism, his wisdom, and his victories; and these have some

foundation in reality, for Stephen tells us that he was mighty in his

words and works. Might in words need not mean the fluent utterance which

he so earnestly disclaimed (iv. 10), even if forty years' disuse of the

language were not enough to explain his later diffidence. It may have

meant such power of composition as appears in the hymn by the Red Sea,

and in the magnificent valediction to his people.

The point is that among a nation originally pastoral, and now sinking

fast into the degraded animalism of slaves, which afterwards betrayed

itself in their complaining greed, their sighs for the generous Egyptian

dietary, and their impure carouse under the mountain, one man should

possess the culture and mental grasp needed by a leader and lawgiver.

"Could not the grace of God have supplied the place of endowment and

attainment?" Yes, truly; and it was quite as likely to do this for one

who came down from His immediate presence with his face intolerably

bright, as for the last impudent enthusiast who declaims against the

need of education in sentences which at least prove that for him the

want has by no substitute been completely met. But the grace of God

chose to give the qualification, rather than replace it, alike to Moses

and St. Paul. Nor is there any conspicuous example among the saints of a

man being thrust into a rank for which he was not previously made fit.

The painful contrast between his own refined tastes and habits, and the

coarser manners of his nation, was no doubt one difficulty of the choice

of Moses, and a lifelong trial to him afterwards. He is an example not

only to those whom wealth and power would entangle, but to any who are

too fastidious and sensitive for the humble company of the people of

God.

While the intellect of Moses was developing, it is plain that his

connection with his family was not entirely broken. Such a tie as often

binds a foster-child to its nurse may have been permitted to associate

him with his real parents. Some means were evidently found to instruct

him in the history and messianic hopes of Israel, for he knew that their

reproach was that of "the Christ," greater riches than all the treasure

of Egypt, and fraught with a reward for which he looked in faith (Heb.

xi. 26). But what is meant by naming as part of his burden their

"reproach," as distinguished from their sufferings?

We shall understand, if we reflect, that his open rupture with Egypt was

unlikely to be the work of a moment. Like all the best workers, he was

led forward gradually, at first unconscious of his vocation. Many a

protest he must have made against the cruel and unjust policy that

steeped the land in innocent blood. Many a jealous councillor must have

known how to weaken his dangerous influence by some cautious taunt, some

insinuated "reproach" of his own Hebrew origin. The warnings put by

Josephus into the lips of the priests in his childhood, were likely

enough to have been spoken by some one before he was forty years old. At

last, when driven to make his choice, he "refused to be called the son

of Pharaoh's daughter," a phrase, especially in its reference to the

rejected title as distinguished from "the pleasures of sin," which seems

to imply a more formal rupture than Exodus records.

We saw that the piety of his parents was not unhelped by their emotions:

they hid him by faith when they saw that he was a goodly child. Such was

also the faith by which Moses broke with rank and fortune. He went out

unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian

smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. Twice the word of kinship is

repeated; and Stephen tells us that Moses himself used it in rebuking

the dissensions of his fellow-countrymen. Filled with yearning and pity

for his trampled brethren, and with the shame of generous natures who

are at ease while others suffer, he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew.

With that blended caution and vehemence which belong to his nation

still, he looked and saw that there was no man, and slew the Egyptian.

Like most acts of passion, this was at once an impulse of the moment,

and an outcome of long gathering forces--just as the lightning flash,

sudden though it seem, has been prepared by the accumulated electricity

of weeks.

And this is the reason why God allows the issues of a lifetime, perhaps

of an eternity, to be decided by a sudden word, a hasty blow. Men plead

that if time had been given, they would have stifled the impulse which

ruined them. But what gave the impulse such violent and dreadful force

that it overwhelmed them before they could reflect? The explosion in the

coal-mine is not caused by the sudden spark, without the accumulation of

dangerous gases, and the absence of such wholesome ventilation as would

carry them away. It is so in the breast where evil desires or tempers

are harboured, unsubdued by grace, until any accident puts them beyond

control. Thank God that such sudden movements do not belong to evil

only! A high soul is surprised into heroism, as often perhaps as a mean

one into theft or falsehood. In the case of Moses there was nothing

unworthy, but much that was unwarranted and presumptuous. The decision

it involved was on the right side, but the act was self-willed and

unwarranted, and it carried heavy penalties. "The trespass originated

not in inveterate cruelty," says St. Augustine, "but in a hasty zeal

which admitted of correction ... resentment against injury was

accompanied by love for a brother.... Here was evil to be rooted out,

but the heart with such capabilities, like good soil, needed only

cultivation to make it fruitful in virtue."

Stephen tells us, what is very natural, that Moses expected the people

to accept him as their heaven-born deliverer. From which it appears that

he cherished high expectations for himself, from Israel if not from

Egypt. When he interfered next day between two Hebrews, his question as

given in Exodus is somewhat magisterial: "Wherefore smitest thou thy

fellow?" In Stephen's version it dictates less, but it lectures a good

deal: "Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one to another?" And it

was natural enough that they should dispute his pretensions, for God had

not yet given him the rank he claimed. He still needed a discipline

almost as sharp as that of Joseph, who, by talking too boastfully of his

dreams, postponed their fulfilment until he was chastened by slavery and

a dungeon. Even Saul of Tarsus, when converted, needed three years of

close seclusion for the transformation of his fiery ardour into divine

zeal, as iron to be tempered must be chilled as well as heated. The

precipitate and violent zeal of Moses entailed upon him forty years of

exile.

And yet his was a noble patriotism. There is a false love of country,

born of pride, which blinds one to her faults; and there is a loftier

passion which will brave estrangement and denunciation to correct them.

Such was the patriotism of Moses, and of all whom God has ever truly

called to lead their fellows. Nevertheless he had to suffer for his

error.

His first act had been a kind of manifesto, a claim to lead, which he

supposed that they would have understood; and yet, when he found his

deed was known, he feared and fled. His false step told against him. One

cannot but infer also that he was conscious of having already forfeited

court favour--that he had before this not only made his choice, but

announced it, and knew that the blow was ready to fall on him at any

provocation. We read that he dwelt in the land of Midian, a name which

was applied to various tracts according to the nomadic wanderings of the

tribe, but which plainly included, at this time, some part of the

peninsula formed by the tongues of the Red Sea. For, as he fed his

flocks, he came to the Mount of God.

_MOSES IN MIDIAN._

ii. 16-22

The interference of Moses on behalf of the daughters of the priest of

Midian is a pleasant trait, courteous, and expressive of a refined

nature. With this remark, and reflecting that, like many courtesies, it

brought its reward, we are often content to pass it by. And yet it

deserves a closer examination.

1. For it expresses great energy of character. He might well have been

in a state of collapse. He had smitten the Egyptian for Israel's sake:

he had appealed to his own people to make common cause, like brethren,

against the common foe; and he had offered himself to them as their

destined leader in the struggle. But they had refused him the command,

and he was rudely awakened to the consciousness that his life was in

danger through the garrulous ingratitude of the man he rescued. Now he

was a ruined man and an exile, marked for destruction by the greatest of

earthly monarchs, with the habits and tastes of a great noble, but

homeless among wild races.

It was no common nature which was alert and energetic at such a time.

The greatest men have known a period of prostration in calamity: it was

enough for honour that they should rally and re-collect their forces.

Thinking of Frederick, after Kunersdorf, resigning the command ("I have

no resources more, and will not survive the destruction of my country"),

and of his subsequent despatch, "I am now recovered from my illness";

and of Napoleon, trembling and weeping on the road to Elba, one turns

with fresh admiration to the fallen prince, the baffled liberator,

sitting exhausted by the well, but as keen on behalf of liberty as when

Pharaoh trampled Israel, though now the oppressors are a group of rude

herdsmen, and the oppressed are Midianite women, driven from the troughs

which they have toiled to fill. One remembers Another, sitting also

exhausted by the well, defying social usage on behalf of a despised

woman, and thereby inspired and invigorated as with meat to eat which

His followers knew not of.

2. Moreover there is disinterested bravery in the act, since he hazards

the opposition of the men of the land, among whom he seeks refuge, on

behalf of a group from which he can have expected nothing. And here it

is worth while to notice the characteristic variations in three stories

which have certain points of contact. The servant of Abraham,

servant-like, was well content that Rebekah should draw for all his

camels, while he stood still. The prudent Jacob, anxious to introduce

himself to his cousin, rolled away the stone and watered her camels.

Moses sat by the well, but did not interfere while the troughs were

being filled: it was only the overt wrong which kindled him. But as in

great things, so it is in small: our actions never stand alone; having

once befriended them, he will do it thoroughly, "and moreover he drew

water for us, and watered the flock." Such details could hardly have

been thought out by a fabricator; a legend would not have allowed Moses

to be slower in courtesy than Jacob;[5] but the story fits the case

exactly: his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away, until the

injustice of the shepherds roused him.

And why was Moses thus energetic, fearless, and chivalrous? Because he

was sustained by the presence of the Unseen: he endured as seeing Him

who is invisible; and having, despite of panic, by faith forsaken Egypt,

he was free from the absorbing anxieties which prevent men from caring

for their fellows, free also from the cynical misgivings which suspect

that violence is more than justice, that to be righteous over-much is to

destroy oneself, and that perhaps, after all, one may see a good deal of

wrong without being called upon to interfere. It would be a different

world to-day, if all who claim to be "the salt of the earth" were as

eager to repress injustice in its smaller and meaner forms as to make

money or influential friends. If all petty and cowardly oppression were

sternly trodden down, we should soon have a state of public opinion in

which gross and large tyranny would be almost impossible. And it is very

doubtful whether the flagrant wrongs, which must be comparatively rare,

cause as much real mental suffering as the frequent small ones. Does

mankind suffer more from wild beasts than from insects? But how few that

aspire to emancipate oppressed nations would be content, in the hour of

their overthrow, to assert the rights of a handful of women against a

trifling fraud, to which indeed they were so well accustomed that its

omission surprised their father!

Is it only because we are reading a history, and not a biography, that

we find no touch of tenderness, like the love of Jacob for Rachel, in

the domestic relations of Moses?

Joseph also married in a strange land, yet he called the name of his

first son Manasseh, because God had made him to forget his sorrows: but

Moses remembered his. Neither wife nor child could charm away his home

sickness; he called his firstborn Gershom, because he was a sojourner in

a strange land. In truth, his whole life seems to have been a lonely

one. Miriam is called "the sister of Aaron" even when joining in the

song of Moses (xv. 20), and with Aaron she made common cause against

their greater brother (Num. xii. 1-2). Zipporah endangered his life

rather than obey the covenant of circumcision; she complied at last with

a taunt (iv. 24-6), and did not again join him until his victory over

Amalek raised his position to the utmost height (xviii. 2).

His children are of no account, and his grandson is the founder of a

dangerous and enduring schism (Judges xviii. 30, R.V.).

There is much reason to see here the earliest example of the sad rule

that a prophet is not without honour save in his own house; that the law

of compensations reaches farther into life than men suppose; and high

position and great powers are too often counterbalanced by the isolation

of the heart.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The same word is used for Noah's ark, but not elsewhere; not, for

example, of the ark in the Temple, the name of which occurs elsewhere in

Scripture only of the "coffin" of Joseph, and the "chest" for the Temple

revenues (Gen. 1. 26; 2 Chron. xxiv. 8, 10, 11.)

[4] Or his sister, the daughter of a former Pharaoh.

[5] Nor would it have made the women call their deliverer "an Egyptian,"

for the Hebrew cast of features is very dissimilar. But Moses wore

Egyptian dress, and the Egyptians worked mines in the peninsula, so that

he was naturally taken for one of them.

CHAPTER III.

_THE BURNING BUSH._

ii. 23-iii.

"In process of time the king of Egypt died," probably the great Raamses,

no other of whose dynasty had a reign which extended over the indicated

period of time. If so, he had while living every reason to expect an

immortal fame, as the greatest among Egyptian kings, a hero, a conqueror

on three continents, a builder of magnificent works. But he has only won

an immortal notoriety. "Every stone in his buildings was cemented in

human blood." The cause he persecuted has made deathless the banished

refugee, and has gibbeted the great monarch as a tyrant, whose

misplanned severities wrought the ruin of his successor and his army.

Such are the reversals of popular judgment: and such the vanity of fame.

For all the contemporary fame was his.

"The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they

cried." Another monarch had come at last, a change after sixty-seven

years, and yet no change for them! It filled up the measure of their

patience, and also of the iniquity of Egypt. We are not told that their

cry was addressed to the Lord; what we read is that it reached Him, Who

still overhears and pities many a sob, many a lament, which ought to

have been addressed to Him, and is not. Indeed, if His compassion were

not to reach men until they had remembered and prayed to Him, who among

us would ever have learned to pray to Him at all? Moreover He remembered

His covenant with their forefathers, for the fulfilment of which the

time had now arrived. "And God saw the children of Israel, and God took

knowledge of them."

These were not the cries of religious individuals, but of oppressed

masses. It is therefore a solemn question to ask How many such appeals

ascend from Christian England? Behold, the hire of labourers ... held

back by fraud crieth out. The half-paid slaves of our haste to be rich,

and the victims of our drinking institutions, and of hideous vices which

entangle and destroy the innocent and unconscious, what cries to heaven

are theirs! As surely as those which St. James records, these have

entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Of these sufferers every

one is His own by purchase, most of them by a covenant and sacrament

more solemn than bound Him to His ancient Israel. Surely He hears their

groaning. And all whose hearts are touched with compassion, yet who

hesitate whether to bestir themselves or to remain inert while evil is

masterful and cruel, should remember the anger of God when Moses said,

"Send, I pray Thee, by whom Thou wilt send." The Lord is not

indifferent. Much less than other sufferers should those who know God be

terrified by their afflictions. Cyprian encouraged the Church of his

time to endure even unto martyrdom, by the words recorded of ancient

Israel, that the more they afflicted them, so much the more they became

greater and waxed stronger. And he was right. For all these things

happened to them for ensamples, and were written for our admonition.

It is further to be observed that the people were quite unconscious,

until Moses announced it afterwards, that they were heard by God. Yet

their deliverer had now been prepared by a long process for his work. We

are not to despair because relief does not immediately appear: though He

tarry, we are to wait for Him.

While this anguish was being endured in Egypt, Moses was maturing for

his destiny. Self-reliance, pride of place, hot and impulsive

aggressiveness, were dying in his bosom. To the education of the

courtier and scholar was now added that of the shepherd in the wilds,

amid the most solemn and awful scenes of nature, in solitude,

humiliation, disappointment, and, as we learn from the Epistle to the

Hebrews, in enduring faith. Wordsworth has a remarkable description of

the effect of a similar discipline upon the good Lord Clifford. He

tells--

"How he, long forced in humble paths to go,

Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed.

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

"In him the savage virtues of the race,

Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead;

Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place

The wisdom which adversity had bred."

There was also the education of advancing age, which teaches many

lessons, and among them two which are essential to leadership,--the

folly of a hasty blow, and of impulsive reliance upon the support of

mobs. Moses the man-slayer became exceeding meek; and he ceased to rely

upon the perception of his people that God by him would deliver them.

His distrust, indeed, became as excessive as his temerity had been, but

it was an error upon the safer side. "Behold, they will not believe me,"

he says, "nor hearken unto my voice."

It is an important truth that in very few lives the decisive moment

comes just when it is expected. Men allow themselves to be

self-indulgent, extravagant and even wicked, often upon the calculation

that their present attitude matters little, and they will do very

differently when the crisis arrives, the turning-point in their career

to nerve them. And they waken up with a start to find their career

already decided, their character moulded. As a snare shall the day of

the Lord come upon all flesh; and as a snare come all His great

visitations meanwhile. When Herod was drinking among bad companions,

admiring a shameless dancer, and boasting loudly of his generosity, he

was sobered and saddened to discover that he had laughed away the life

of his only honest adviser. Moses, like David, was "following the ewes

great with young," when summoned by God to rule His people Israel.

Neither did the call arrive when he was plunged in moody reverie and

abstraction, sighing over his lost fortunes and his defeated

aspirations, rebelling against his lowly duties. The humblest labour is

a preparation for the brightest revelations, whereas discontent, however

lofty, is a preparation for nothing. Thus, too, the birth of Jesus was

first announced to shepherds keeping watch over their flock. Yet

hundreds of third-rate young persons in every city in this land to-day

neglect their work, and unfit themselves for any insight, or any

leadership whatever, by chafing against the obscurity of their

vocation.

Who does not perceive that the career of Moses hitherto was divinely

directed? The fact that we feel this, although, until now, God has not

once been mentioned in his personal story, is surely a fine lesson for

those who have only one notion of what edifies--the dragging of the most

sacred names and phrases into even the most unsuitable connections. In

truth, such a phraseology is much less attractive than a certain tone, a

recognition of the unseen, which may at times be more consistent with

reverential silence than with obtrusive utterance. It is enough to be

ready and fearless when the fitting time comes, which is sure to arrive,

for the religious heart as for this narrative--the time for the natural

utterance of the great word, God.

We read that the angel of the Lord appeared to him--a remarkable phrase,

which was already used in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen.

xxii. 11). How much it implies will better be discussed in the

twenty-third chapter, where a fuller statement is made. For the present

it is enough to note, that this is one pre-eminent angel, indicated by

the definite article; that he is clearly the medium of a true divine

appearance, because neither the voice nor form of any lesser being is

supposed to be employed, the appearance being that of fire, and the

words being said to be the direct utterance of the Lord, not of any one

who says, Thus saith the Lord. We shall see hereafter that the story of

the Exodus is unique in this respect, that in training a people tainted

with Egyptian superstitions, no 'similitude' is seen, as when there

wrestled a man with Jacob, or when Ezekiel saw a human form upon the

sapphire pavement.

Man is the true image of God, and His perfect revelation was in flesh.

But now that expression of Himself was perilous, and perhaps unsuitable

besides; for He was to be known as the Avenger, and presently as the

Giver of Law, with its inflexible conditions and its menaces. Therefore

He appeared as fire, which is intense and terrible, even when "the flame

of the grace of God does not consume, but illuminates."

There is a notion that religion is languid, repressive, and unmanly. But

such is not the scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness of joy.

Christ has come that we might have life, and might have it more

abundantly. They who are shut out from His blessedness are said to be

asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this passage among others, with

the comment that "As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire, and

all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who have fallen away from God

are said to have cooled, or to have become cold" (_De Princip._, ii. 8).

A revelation by fire involves intensity.

There is indeed another explanation of the burning bush, which makes the

flame express only the afflictions that did not consume the people. But

this would be a strange adjunct to a divine appearance for their

deliverance, speaking rather of the continuance of suffering than of its

termination, for which the extinction of such fire would be a more

appropriate symbol.

Yet there is an element of truth even in this view, since fire is

connected with affliction. In His holiness God is light (with which, in

the Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be connected); in His

judgments He is fire. "The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his

Holy One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his

briers in one day" (Isa. x. 17). But God reveals Himself in this thorn

bush as a fire which does not consume; and such a revelation tells at

once Who has brought the people into affliction, and also that they are

not abandoned to it.

To Moses at first there was visible only an extraordinary phenomenon; He

turned to see a great sight. It is therefore out of the question to find

here the truth, so easy to discover elsewhere, that God rewards the

religious inquirer--that they who seek after Him shall find Him. Rather

we learn the folly of deeming that the intellect and its inquiries are

at war with religion and its mysteries, that revelation is at strife

with mental insight, that he who most stupidly refuses to "see the great

sights" of nature is best entitled to interpret the voice of God. When

the man of science gives ear to voices not of earth, and the man of God

has eyes and interest for the divine wonders which surround us, many a

discord will be harmonised. With the revival of classical learning came

the Reformation.

But it often happens that the curiosity of the intellect is in danger of

becoming irreverent, and obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and

thus the voice of God must speak in solemn warning: "Moses, Moses, ...

Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place

whereon thou standest is holy ground."

After as prolonged a silence as from the time of Malachi to the Baptist,

it is God Who reveals Himself once more--not Moses who by searching

finds Him out. And this is the established rule. Tidings of the

Incarnation came from heaven, or man would not have discovered the

Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples "What seek ye?" and

told Simon "Thou shalt be called Cephas," and pronounced the listening

Nathaniel "an Israelite indeed," and bade Zaccheus "make haste and come

down," in each case before He was addressed by them.

The first words of Jehovah teach something more than ceremonial

reverence. If the dust of common earth on the shoe of Moses may not

mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry into the presence of our

God mean passions and selfish cravings? Observe, too, that while Jacob,

when he awoke from his vision, said, "How dreadful is this place!" (Gen.

xxviii. 17), God Himself taught Moses to think rather of the holiness

than the dread of His abode. Nevertheless Moses also was afraid to look

upon God, and hid the face which was thereafter to be veiled, for a

nobler reason, when it was itself illumined with the divine glory.

Humility before God is thus the path to the highest honour, and

reverence, to the closest intercourse.

Meantime the Divine Person has announced Himself: "I am the God of thy

father" (father is apparently singular with a collective force), "the

God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." It is a

blessing which every Christian parent should bequeath to his child, to

be strengthened and invigorated by thinking of God as his father's God.

It was with this memorable announcement that Jesus refuted the Sadducees

and established His doctrine of the resurrection. So, then, the bygone

ages are not forgotten: Moses may be sure that a kindly relation exists

between God and himself, because the kindly relation still exists in all

its vital force which once bound Him to those who long since appeared to

die. It was impossible, therefore, our Lord inferred, that they had

really died at all. The argument is a forerunner of that by which St.

Paul concludes, from the resurrection of Christ, that none who are "in

Christ" have perished. Nay, since our Lord was not disputing about

immortality only, but the resurrection of the body, His argument implied

that a vital relationship with God involved the imperishability of the

whole man, since all was His, and in truth the very seal of the covenant

was imprinted upon the flesh. How much stronger is the assurance for us,

who know that our very bodies are His temple! Now, if any suspicion

should arise that the argument, which is really subtle, is over-refined

and untrustworthy, let it be observed that no sooner was this

announcement made, than God added the proclamation of His own

immutability, so that it cannot be said He was, but from age to age His

title is I AM. The inference from the divine permanence to the living

and permanent vitality of all His relationships is not a verbal quibble,

it is drawn from the very central truth of this great scripture.

And now for the first time God calls Israel My people, adopting a phrase

already twice employed by earthly rulers (Gen. xxiii. 11, xli. 40), and

thus making Himself their king and the champion of their cause. Often

afterwards it was used in pathetic appeal:--"Thou hast showed Thy people

hard things,"--"Thou sellest Thy people for nought,"--"Behold, look, we

beseech Thee; we are all Thy people" (Ps. lx. 3, xliv. 12; Isa. lxiv.

9). And often it expressed the returning favour of their king: "Hear, O

My people, and I will speak"; "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people" (Ps. l.

7; Isa. xl. 1).

It is used of the nation at large, all of whom were brought into the

covenant, although with many of them God was not well pleased. And since

it does not belong only to saints, but speaks of a grace which might be

received in vain, it is a strong appeal to all Christian people, all who

are within the New Covenant. Them also the Lord claims and pities, and

would gladly emancipate: their sorrows also He knows. "I have surely

seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard

their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and

I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to

bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land

flowing with milk and honey." Thus the ways of God exceed the desires of

men. Their subsequent complaints are evidence that Egypt had become

their country: gladly would they have shaken off the iron yoke, but a

successful rebellion is a revolution, not an Exodus. Their destined home

was very different: with the widest variety of climate, scenery, and

soil, a land which demanded much more regular husbandry, but rewarded

labour with exuberant fertility. Secluded from heathenism by deserts on

the south and east, by a sublime range of mountains on the north, and by

a sea with few havens on the west, yet planted in the very bosom of all

the ancient civilisation which at the last it was to leaven, it was a

land where a faithful people could have dwelt alone and not been

reckoned among the nations, yet where the scourge for disobedience was

never far away.

Next after the promise of this good land, the commission of Moses is

announced. He is to act, because God is already active: "_I_ am come

down to deliver them ... come now, therefore, and I will send _thee_

unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people." And let this

truth encourage all who are truly sent of God, to the end of time, that

He does not send us to deliver man, until He is Himself prepared to do

so, that when our fears ask, like Moses, Who am I, that I should go? He

does not answer, Thou art capable, but Certainly I will go with thee.

So, wherever the ministry of the word is sent, there is a true purpose

of grace. There is also the presence of One who claims the right to

bestow upon us the same encouragement which was given to Moses by

Jehovah, saying, "Lo, I am with you alway." In so saying, Jesus made

Himself equal with God.

And as this ancient revelation of God was to give rest to a weary and

heavy-laden people, so Christ bound together the assertion of a more

perfect revelation, made in Him, with the promise of a grander

emancipation. No man knoweth the Father save by revelation of the Son is

the doctrine which introduces the great offer "Come unto Me, all ye that

labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 27,

28). The claims of Christ in the New Testament will never be fully

recognised until a careful study is made of His treatment of the

functions which in the Old Testament are regarded as Divine. A curious

expression follows: "This shall be a token unto thee that I have sent

thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall

serve God upon this mountain." It seems but vague encouragement, to

offer Moses, hesitating at the moment, a token which could take effect

only when his task was wrought. And yet we know how much easier it is to

believe what is thrown into distinct shape and particularised. Our trust

in good intentions is helped when their expression is detailed and

circumstantial, as a candidate for office will reckon all general

assurances of support much cheaper than a pledge to canvass certain

electors within a certain time. Such is the constitution of human

nature; and its Maker has often deigned to sustain its weakness by going

thus into particulars. He does the same for us, condescending to embody

the most profound of all mysteries in sacramental emblems, clothing his

promises of our future blessedness in much detail, and in concrete

figures which at least symbolise, if they do not literally describe, the

glories of the Jerusalem which is above.

_A NEW NAME._

iii. 14. vi. 2, 3.

"God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou

say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."

We cannot certainly tell why Moses asked for a new name by which to

announce to his brethren the appearance of God. He may have felt that

the memory of their fathers, and of the dealings of God with them, had

faded so far out of mind that merely to indicate their ancestral God

would not sufficiently distinguish Him from the idols of Egypt, whose

worship had infected them.

If so, he was fully answered by a name which made this God the one

reality, in a world where all is a phantasm except what derives

stability from Him.

He may have desired to know, for himself, whether there was any truth in

the dreamy and fascinating pantheism which inspired so much of the

Egyptian superstition.

In that case, the answer met his question by declaring that God existed,

not as the sum of things or soul of the universe, but in Himself, the

only independent Being.

Or he may simply have desired some name to express more of the mystery

of deity, remembering how a change of name had accompanied new

discoveries of human character and achievement, as of Abraham and

Israel; and expecting a new name likewise when God would make to His

people new revelations of Himself.

So natural an expectation was fulfilled not only then, but afterwards.

When Moses prayed "Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory," the answer was "I

will make all My goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name

of the Lord." The proclamation was again Jehovah, but not this alone. It

was "The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to

anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (xxxiii. 18, 19, xxxiv. 6,

R.V.) Thus the life of Moses, like the agelong progress of the Church,

advanced towards an ever-deepening knowledge that God is not only the

Independent but the Good. All sets toward the final knowledge that His

highest name is Love.

Meanwhile, in the development of events, the exact period was come for

epithets, which were shared with gods many and lords many, to be

supplemented by the formal announcement and authoritative adoption of

His proper name Jehovah. The infant nation was to learn to think of Him,

not only as endowed with attributes of terror and power, by which

enemies would be crushed, but as possessing a certain well-defined

personality, upon which the trust of man could repose. Soon their

experience would enable them to receive the formal announcement that He

was merciful and gracious. But first they were required to trust His

promise amid all discouragements; and to this end, stability was the

attribute first to be insisted upon.

It is true that the derivation of the word Jehovah is still a problem

for critical acumen. It has been sought in more than one language, and

various shades of meaning have been assigned to it, some untenable in

the abstract, others hardly, or not at all, to be reconciled with the

Scriptural narrative.

Nay, the corruption of the very sound is so notorious, that it is only

worth mention as illustrating a phase of superstition.

We smile at the Jews, removing the correct vowels lest so holy a word

should be irreverently spoken, placing the sanctity in the cadence,

hoping that light and flippant allusions may offend God less, so long as

they spare at least the vowels of His name, and thus preserve some

vestige undesecrated, while profaning at once the conception of His

majesty and the consonants of the mystic word.

A more abject superstition could scarcely have made void the spirit,

while grovelling before the letter of the commandment.

But this very superstition is alive in other forms to-day. Whenever one

recoils from the sin of coarse blasphemy, yet allows himself the

enjoyment of a polished literature which profanes holy

conceptions,--whenever men feel bound to behave with external propriety

in the house of God, yet bring thither wandering thoughts, vile

appetites, sensuous imaginations, and all the chamber of imagery which

is within the unregenerate heart,--there is the same despicable

superstition which strove to escape at least the extreme of blasphemy by

prudently veiling the Holy Name before profaning it.

But our present concern is with the practical message conveyed to Israel

when Moses declared that Jehovah, I AM, the God of their fathers, had

appeared unto him. And if we find in it a message suited for the time,

and which is the basis, not the superstructure, both of later messages

and also of the national character, then we shall not fail to observe

the bearing of such facts upon an urgent controversy of this time.

Some significance must have been in that Name, not too abstract for a

servile and degenerate race to apprehend. Nor was it soon to pass away

and be replaced; it was His memorial throughout all generations; and

therefore it has a message for us to-day, to admonish and humble, to

invigorate and uphold.

That God would be the same to them as to their fathers was much. But

that it was of the essence of His character to be evermore the same,

immutable in heart and mind and reality of being, however their conduct

might modify His bearing towards them, this indeed would be a steadying

and reclaiming consciousness.

Accordingly Moses receives the answer for himself, "I AM THAT I AM"; and

he is bidden to tell his people "_I am_ hath sent me unto you," and yet

again "JEHOVAH the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you." The

spirit and tenor of these three names may be said to be virtually

comprehended in the first; and they all speak of the essential and

self-existent Being, unchanging and unchangeable.

I AM expresses an intense reality of being. No image in the dark

recesses of Egyptian or Syrian temples, grotesque and motionless, can

win the adoration of him who has had communion with such a veritable

existence, or has heard His authentic message. No dreamful pantheism, on

its knees to the beneficent principle expressed in one deity, to the

destructive in another, or to the reproductive in a third, but all of

them dependent upon nature, as the rainbow upon the cataract which it

spans, can ever again satisfy the soul which is athirst for the living

God, the Lord, Who is not personified, but IS.

This profound sense of a living Person within reach, to be offended, to

pardon, and to bless, was the one force which kept the Hebrew nation

itself alive, with a vitality unprecedented since the world began. They

could crave His pardon, whatever natural retributions they had brought

down upon themselves, whatever tendencies of nature they had provoked,

because He was not a dead law without ears or a heart, but their

merciful and gracious God.

Not the most exquisite subtleties of innuendo and irony could make good

for a day the monstrous paradox that the Hebrew religion, the worship of

I AM, was really nothing but the adoration of that stream of tendencies

which makes for righteousness.

Israel did not challenge Pharaoh through having suddenly discovered that

goodness ultimately prevails over evil, nor is it any cold calculation

of the sort which ever inspires a nation or a man with heroic fortitude.

But they were nerved by the announcement that they had been remembered

by a God Who is neither an ideal nor a fancy, but the Reality of

realities, beside Whom Pharaoh and his host were but as phantoms.

I AM THAT I AM is the style not only of permanence, but of permanence

self-contained, and being a distinctive title, it denies such

self-contained permanence to others.

Man is as the past has moulded him, a compound of attainments and

failures, discoveries and disillusions, his eyes dim with forgotten

tears, his hair grey with surmounted anxieties, his brow furrowed with

bygone studies, his conscience troubled with old sin. Modern unbelief

is ignobly frank respecting him. He is the sum of his parents and his

wet-nurse. He is what he eats. If he drinks beer, he thinks beer. And it

is the element of truth in these hideous paradoxes which makes them

rankle, like an unkind construction put upon a questionable action. As

the foam is what wind and tide have made of it, so are we the product of

our circumstances, the resultant of a thousand forces, far indeed from

being self-poised or self-contained, too often false to our best self,

insomuch that probably no man is actually what in the depth of

self-consciousness he feels himself to be, what moreover he should prove

to be, if only the leaden weight of constraining circumstance were

lifted off the spring which it flattens down to earth. Moses himself was

at heart a very different person from the keeper of the sheep of Jethro.

Therefore man says, Pity and make allowance for me: this is not my true

self, but only what by compression, by starvation and stripes and

bribery and error, I have become. Only God says, I AM THAT I AM.

Yet in another sense, and quite as deep a one, man is not the coarse

tissue which past circumstances have woven: he is the seed of the

future, as truly as the fruit of the past. Strange compound that he is

of memory and hope, while half of the present depends on what is over,

the other half is projected into the future; and like a bridge,

sustained on these two banks, life throws its quivering shadow on each

moment that fleets by. It is not attainment, but degradation to live

upon the level of one's mere attainment, no longer uplifted by any

aspiration, fired by any emulation, goaded by any but carnal fears. If

we have been shaped by circumstances, yet we are saved by hope. Do not

judge me, we are all entitled to plead, by anything that I am doing or

have done: He only can appraise a soul a right Who knows what it yearns

to become, what within itself it hates and prays to be delivered from,

what is the earnestness of its self-loathing, what the passion of its

appeal to heaven. As the bloom of next April is the true comment upon

the dry bulb of September, as you do not value the fountain by the pint

of water in its basin, but by its inexhaustible capabilities of

replenishment, so the present and its joyless facts are not the true

man; his possibilities, the fears and hopes that control his destiny and

shall unfold it, these are his real self.

I am not merely what I am: I am very truly that which I long to be. And

thus, man may plead, I am what I move towards and strive after, my

aspiration is myself. But God says, I AM WHAT I AM. The stream hurries

forward: the rock abides. And this is the Rock of Ages.

Now, such a conception is at first sight not far removed from that

apathetic and impassive kind of deity which the practical atheism of

ancient materialists could well afford to grant;--"ever in itself

enjoying immortality together with supreme repose, far removed and

withdrawn from our concerns, since it, exempt from every pain, exempt

from all danger, strong in its own resources and wanting nought from us,

is neither gained by favour nor moved by wrath."

Thus Lucretius conceived of the absolute Being as by the necessity of

its nature entirely outside our system.

But Moses was taught to trust in Jehovah as intervening, pitying sorrow

and wrong, coming down to assist His creatures in distress.

How could this be possible? Clearly the movement towards them must be

wholly disinterested, and wholly from within; unbought, since no

external influence can modify His condition, no puny sacrifice can

propitiate Him Who sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the

inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers: a movement prompted by no

irregular emotional impulse, but an abiding law of His nature, incapable

of change, the movement of a nature, personal indeed, yet as steady, as

surely to be reckoned upon in like circumstances, as the operations of

gravitation are.

There is no such motive, working in such magnificent regularity for

good, save one. The ultimate doctrine of the New Testament, that God is

Love, is already involved in this early assertion, that being wholly

independent of us and our concerns, He is yet not indifferent to them,

so that Moses could say unto the children of Israel "I AM hath sent me

unto you."

It is this unchangeable consistency of Divine action which gives the

narrative its intense interest to us. To Moses, and therefore to all who

receive any commission from the skies, this title said, Frail creature,

sport of circumstances and of tyrants, He who commissions thee sits

above the waterfloods, and their rage can as little modify or change His

purpose, now committed to thy charge, as the spray can quench the stars.

Perplexed creature, whose best self lives only in aspiration and desire,

now thou art an instrument in the hand of Him with Whom desire and

attainment, will and fruition, are eternally the same. None truly fails

in fighting for Jehovah, for who hath resisted His will?

To Israel, and to all the oppressed whose minds are open to receive the

tidings and their faith strong to embrace it, He said, Your life is

blighted, and your future is in the hand of taskmasters, yet be of good

cheer, for now your deliverance is undertaken by Him Whose being and

purpose are one, Who _is_ in perfection of enjoyment all that He _is_ in

contemplation and in will. The rescue of Israel by an immutable and

perfect God is the earnest of the breaking of every yoke.

And to the proud and godless world which knows Him not, He says,

Resistance to My will can only show forth all its power, which is not at

the mercy of opinion or interest or change: I sit upon the throne, not

only supreme but independent, not only victorious but unassailable;

self-contained, self-poised and self-sufficing, I AM THAT I AM.

Have we now escaped the inert and self-absorbed deity of Lucretius, only

to fall into the palsying grasp of the tyrannous deity of Calvin? Does

our own human will shrivel up and become powerless under the compulsion

of that immutability with which we are strangely brought into contact?

Evidently this is not the teaching of the Book of Exodus. For it is

here, in this revelation of the Supreme, that we first hear of a nation

as being His: "I have seen the affliction of My people which is in Egypt

... and I have come down to bring them into a good land." They were all

baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Yet their carcases fell

in the wilderness. And these things were written for our learning. The

immutability, which suffers no shock when we enter _into_ the covenant,

remains unshaken also if we depart from the living God. The sun shines

alike when we raise the curtain and when we drop it, when our chamber is

illumined and when it is dark. The immutability of God is not in His

operations, for sometimes He gave His people into the hand of their

enemies, and again He turned and helped them. It is in His nature, His

mind, in the principles which guide His actions. If He had not chastened

David for his sin, then, by acting as before, He would have been other

at heart than when He rejected Saul for disobedience and chose the son

of Jesse to fulfil all His word. The wind has veered, if it continues to

propel the vessel in the same direction, although helm and sails are

shifted.

Such is the Pauline doctrine of His immutability. "If we endure we shall

also reign with Him: if we shall deny Him, He also will deny us,"--and

such is the necessity of His being, for we cannot sway Him with our

changes: "if we are faithless, He abideth faithful, for He cannot deny

Himself." And therefore it is presently added that "the firm foundation

of the Lord standeth sure, having" not only "this seal, that the Lord

knoweth those that are His,"--but also this, "Let every one that nameth

the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness" (2 Tim. ii. 12, 13,

19, R.V.).

The Lord knew that Israel was His, yet for their unrighteousness He

sware in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest.

It follows from all this that the new name of God was no academic

subtlety, no metaphysical refinement of the schools, unfitly revealed to

slaves, but a most practical and inspiring truth, a conviction to warm

their blood, to rouse their courage, to convert their despair into

confidence and their alarms into defiance.

They had the support of a God worthy of trust. And thenceforth every

answer in righteousness, every new disclosure of fidelity, tenderness,

love, was not an abnormal phenomenon, the uncertain grace of a

capricious despot; no, its import was permanent as an observation of the

stars by an astronomer, ever more to be remembered in calculating the

movements of the universe.

In future troubles they could appeal to Him to awake as in the ancient

days, as being He who "cut Rahab and wounded the Dragon." "I am the

Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."

And as the sublime and beautiful conception of a loving spiritual God

was built up slowly, age by age, tier upon tier, this was the foundation

which insured the the stability of all, until the Head Stone of the

Corner gave completeness to the vast design, until men saw and could

believe in the very Incarnation of all Love, unshaken amid anguish and

distress and seeming failure, immovable, victorious, while they heard

from human lips the awful words, "Before Abraham was, I AM." Then they

learned to identify all this ancient lesson of trustworthiness with new

and more pathetic revelations of affection: and the martyr at the stake

grew strong as he remembered that the Man of Sorrows was the same

yesterday and to-day and for ever; and the great apostle, prostrate

before the glory of his Master, was restored by the touch of a human

hand, and by the voice of Him upon Whose bosom he had leaned, saying,

Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the Living One.

And if men are once more fain to rend from humanity that great

assurance, which for ages, amid all shocks, has made the frail creature

of the dust to grow strong and firm and fearless, partaker of the Divine

Nature, what will they give us in its stead? Or do they think us too

strong of will, too firm of purpose? Looking around us, we see nations

heaving with internal agitations, armed to the teeth against each

other, and all things like a ship at sea reeling to and fro, and

staggering like a drunken man. There is no stability for us in

constitutions or old formulæ--none anywhere, if it be not in the soul of

man. Well for us, then, that the anchor of the soul is sure and

steadfast! well that unnumbered millions take courage from their

Saviour's word, that the world's worst anguish is the beginning, not of

dissolution, but of the birth-pangs of a new heaven and earth,--that

when the clouds are blackest because the light of sun and moon is

quenched, then, then we shall behold the Immutable unveiled, the Son of

Man, who is brought nigh unto the Ancient of Days, now sitting in the

clouds of heaven, and coming in the glory of His Father!

_THE COMMISSION._

iii. 10, 16-22.

We have already learned from the seventh verse that God commissioned

Moses, only when He had Himself descended to deliver Israel. He sends

none, except with the implied or explicit promise that certainly He will

be with them. But the converse is also true. If God sends no man but

when He comes Himself, He never comes without demanding the agency of

man. The overruled reluctance of Moses, and the inflexible urgency of

his commission, may teach us the honour set by God upon humanity. He has

knit men together in the mutual dependence of nations and of families,

that each may be His minister to all; and in every great crisis of

history He has respected His own principle, and has visited the race by

means of the providential man. The gospel was not preached by angels.

Its first agents found themselves like sheep among wolves: they were an

exhibition to the world and to angels and men, yet necessity was laid

upon them, and a woe if they preached it not.