All the best gifts of heaven come to us by the agency of inventor and

sage, hero and explorer, organiser and philanthropist, patriot, reformer

and saint. And the hope which inspires their grandest effort is never

that of selfish gain, nor even of fame, though fame is a keen spur,

which perhaps God set before Moses in the noble hope that "thou shalt

bring forth the people" (ver. 12). But the truly impelling force is

always the great deed itself, the haunting thought, the importunate

inspiration, the inward fire; and so God promises Moses neither a

sceptre, nor share in the good land: He simply proposes to him the work,

the rescue of the people; and Moses, for his part, simply objects that

he is unable, not that he is solicitous about his reward. Whatever is

done for payment can be valued by its cost: all the priceless services

done for us by our greatest were, in very deed, unpriced.

Moses, with the new name of God to reveal, and with the assurance that

He is about to rescue Israel, is bidden to go to work advisedly and

wisely. He is not to appeal to the mob, nor yet to confront Pharaoh

without authority from his people to speak for them, nor is he to make

the great demand for emancipation abruptly and at once. The mistake of

forty years ago must not be repeated now. He is to appeal to the elders

of Israel; and with them, and therefore clearly representing the nation,

he is respectfully to crave permission for a three days' journey, to

sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness. The blustering assurance with

which certain fanatics of our own time first assume that they possess a

direct commission from the skies, and thereupon that they are freed

from all order, from all recognition of any human authority, and then

that no considerations of prudence or of decency should restrain the

violence and bad taste which they mistake for zeal, is curiously unlike

anything in the Old Testament or the New. Was ever a commission more

direct than those of Moses and of St. Paul? Yet Moses was to obtain the

recognition of the elders of his people; and St. Paul received formal

ordination by the explicit command of God (Acts xiii. 3).

Strangely enough, it is often assumed that this demand for a furlough of

three days was insincere. But it would only have been so, if consent

were expected, and if the intention were thereupon to abuse the respite

and refuse to return. There is not the slightest hint of any duplicity

of the kind. The real motives for the demand are very plain. The

excursion which they proposed would have taught the people to move and

act together, reviving their national spirit, and filling them with a

desire for the liberty which they tasted. In the very words which they

should speak, "The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us,"

there is a distinct proclamation of nationality, and of its surest and

strongest bulwark, a national religion. From such an excursion,

therefore, the people would have returned, already well-nigh

emancipated, and with recognised leaders. Certainly Pharaoh could not

listen to any such proposal, unless he were prepared to reverse the

whole policy of his dynasty toward Israel.

But the refusal answered two good ends. In the first place it joined

issue on the best conceivable ground, for Israel was exhibited making

the least possible demand with the greatest possible courtesy--"Let us

go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness." Not even so

much would be granted. The tyrant was palpably in the wrong, and

thenceforth it was perfectly reasonable to increase the severity of the

terms after each of his defeats, which proceeding in its turn made

concession more and more galling to his pride. In the second place, the

quarrel was from the first avowedly and undeniably religious: the gods

of Egypt were matched against Jehovah; and in the successive plagues

which desolated his land Pharaoh gradually learnt Who Jehovah was.

In the message which Moses should convey to the elders there are two

significant phrases. He was to announce in the name of God, "I have

surely visited you, and seen that which is done unto you in Egypt." The

silent observation of God before He interposes is very solemn and

instructive. So in the Revelation, He walks among the golden

candlesticks, and knows the work, the patience, or the unfaithfulness of

each. So He is not far from any one of us. When a heavy blow falls we

speak of it as "a Visitation of Providence," but in reality the

visitation has been long before. Neither Israel nor Egypt was conscious

of the solemn presence. Who knows what soul of man, or what nation, is

thus visited to-day, for future deliverance or rebuke?

Again it is said, "I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt

into ... a land flowing with milk and honey." Their affliction was the

divine method of uprooting them. And so is our affliction the method by

which our hearts are released from love of earth and life, that in due

time He may "surely bring us in" to a better and an enduring country.

Now, we wonder that the Israelites clung so fondly to the place of their

captivity. But what of our own hearts? Have they a desire to depart? or

do they groan in bondage, and yet recoil from their emancipation?

The hesitating nation is not plainly told that their affliction will be

intensified and their lives made burdensome with labour. That is perhaps

implied in the certainty that Pharaoh "will not let you go, no, not by a

mighty hand." But it is with Israel as with us: a general knowledge that

in the world we shall have tribulation is enough; the catalogue of our

trials is not spread out before us in advance. They were assured for

their encouragement that all their long captivity should at last receive

its wages, for they should not borrow[6] but ask of the Egyptians jewels

of silver, and gold, and raiment, and they should spoil the Egyptians.

So are we taught to have "respect unto the recompense of the reward."

FOOTNOTES:

[6] So much ignorant capital has been made by sceptics out of this

unfortunate mistranslation, that it is worth while to inquire whether

the word "borrow" would suit the context in other passages. "He

_borrowed_ water and she gave him milk" (Judges v. 25). "The Lord said

unto Solomon, Because thou hast _borrowed_ this thing, and hast not

_borrowed_ long life for thyself, neither hast _borrowed_ riches for

thyself, nor hast _borrowed_ the life of thine enemies" (1 Kings iii.

11). "And Elijah said unto Elisha, Thou hast _borrowed_ a hard thing" (2

Kings ii. 10). The absurdity of the cavil is self-evident.

CHAPTER IV.

_MOSES HESITATES._

iv. 1-17.

Holy Scripture is impartial, even towards its heroes. The sin of David

is recorded, and the failure of Peter. And so is the reluctance of Moses

to accept his commission, even after a miracle had been vouchsafed to

him for encouragement. The absolute sinlessness of Jesus is the more

significant because it is found in the records of a creed which knows of

no idealised humanity.

In Josephus, the refusal of Moses is softened down. Even the modest

words, "Lord, I am still in doubt how I, a private man and of no

abilities, should persuade my countrymen or Pharaoh," are not spoken

after the sign is given. Nor is there any mention of the transfer to

Aaron of a part of his commission, nor of their joint offence at

Meribah, nor of its penalty, which in Scripture is bewailed so often.

And Josephus is equally tender about the misdeeds of the nation. We hear

nothing of their murmurs against Moses and Aaron when their burdens are

increased, or of their making the golden calf. Whereas it is remarkable

and natural that the fear of Moses is less anxious about his reception

by the tyrant than by his own people: "Behold, they will not believe me,

nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared

unto thee." This is very unlike the invention of a later period,

glorifying the beginnings of the nation; but it is absolutely true to

life. Great men do not fear the wrath of enemies if they can be secured

against the indifference and contempt of friends; and Moses in

particular was at last persuaded to undertake his mission by the promise

of the support of Aaron. His hesitation is therefore the earliest

example of what has been so often since observed--the discouragement of

heroes, reformers and messengers from God, less by fear of the attacks

of the world than of the contemptuous scepticism of the people of God.

We often sigh for the appearing, in our degenerate days, of

"A man with heart, head, hand,

Like some of the simple great ones gone."

Yet who shall say that the want of them is not our own fault? The

critical apathy and incredulity, not of the world but of the Church, is

what freezes the fountains of Christian daring and the warmth of

Christian zeal.

For the help of the faith of his people, Moses is commissioned to work

two miracles; and he is caused to rehearse them, for his own.

Strange tales were told among the later Jews about his wonder-working

rod. It was cut by Adam before leaving Paradise, was brought by Noah

into the ark, passed into Egypt with Joseph, and was recovered by Moses

while he enjoyed the favour of the court. These legends arose from

downright moral inability to receive the true lesson of the incident,

which is the confronting of the sceptre of Egypt with the simple staff

of the shepherd, the choosing of the weak things of earth to confound

the strong, the power of God to work His miracles by the most puny and

inadequate means. Anything was more credible than that He who led His

people like sheep did indeed guide them with a common shepherd's crook.

And yet this was precisely the lesson meant for us to learn--the

glorification of poor resources in the grasp of faith.

Both miracles were of a menacing kind. First the rod became a serpent,

to declare that at God's bidding enemies would rise up against the

oppressor, even where all seemed innocuous, as in truth the waters of

the river and the dust of the furnace and the winds of heaven conspired

against him. Then, in the grasp of Moses, the serpent from which he fled

became a rod again, to intimate that these avenging forces were subject

to the servant of Jehovah.

Again, his hand became leprous in his bosom, and was presently restored

to health again--a declaration that he carried with him the power of

death, in its most dreadful form; and perhaps a still more solemn

admonition to those who remember what leprosy betokens, and how every

approach of God to man brings first the knowledge of sin, to be followed

by the assurance that He has cleansed it.[7]

If the people would not hearken to the voice of the first sign, they

should believe the second; but at the worst, and if they were still

unconvinced, they would believe when they saw the water of the Nile, the

pride and glory of their oppressors, turned into blood before their

eyes. That was an omen which needs no interpretation. What follows is

curious. Moses objects that he has not hitherto been eloquent, nor does

he experience any improvement "since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant"

(a graphic touch!), and he seems to suppose that the popular choice

between liberty and slavery would depend less upon the evidence of a

Divine power than upon sleight of tongue, as if he were in modern

England.

But let it be observed that the self-consciousness which wears the mask

of humility while refusing to submit its judgment to that of God, is a

form of selfishness--self-absorption blinding one to other

considerations beyond himself--as real, though not as hateful, as greed

and avarice and lust.

How can Moses call himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, when

Stephen distinctly declares that he was mighty in word as well as deed?

(Acts vii. 22). Perhaps it is enough to answer that many years of

solitude in a strange land had robbed him of his fluency. Perhaps

Stephen had in mind the words of the Book of Wisdom, that "Wisdom

entered into the soul of the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful

kings in wonders and signs.... For Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb,

and made the tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent" (Wisdom x. 16,

21).

To his scruple the answer was returned, "Who hath made man's mouth?...

Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and

teach thee what thou shalt say." The same encouragement belongs to every

one who truly executes a mandate from above: "Lo, I am with you alway."

For surely this encouragement _is_ the same. Surely Jesus did not mean

to offer His own presence as a substitute for that of God, but as being

in very truth Divine, when He bade His disciples, in reliance upon Him,

to go forth and convert the world.

And this is the true test which divides faith from presumption, and

unbelief from prudence: do we go because God is with us in Christ, or

because we ourselves are strong and wise? Do we hold back because we are

not sure of _His_ commission, or only because we distrust ourselves?

"Humility without faith is too timorous; faith without humility is too

hasty." The phrase explains the conduct of Moses both now and forty

years before.

Moses, however, still entreats that any one may be chosen rather than

himself: "Send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send."

And thereupon the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, although at

the moment his only visible punishment was the partial granting of his

prayer--the association with him in his commission of Aaron, who could

speak well, the forfeiting of a certain part of his vocation, and with

it of a certain part of its reward. The words, "Is not Aaron thy brother

the Levite?" have been used to insinuate that the tribal arrangement was

not perfected when they were written, and so to discredit the narrative.

But when so interpreted they yield no adequate sense, they do not

reinforce the argument; while they are perfectly intelligible as

implying that Aaron is already the leader of his tribe, and therefore

sure to obtain the hearing of which Moses despaired. But the arrangement

involved grave consequences sure to be developed in due time: among

others, the reliance of Israel upon a feebler will, which could be

forced by their clamour to make them a calf of gold. Moses was yet to

learn that lesson which our century knows nothing of,--that a speaker

and a leader of nations are not the same. When he cried to Aaron, in the

bitterness of his soul, "What did this people to thee, that thou hast

brought so great a sin upon them?" did he remember by whose

unfaithfulness Aaron had been thrust into the office, the

responsibilities of which he had betrayed?

Now, it is the duty of every man, to whom a special vocation presents

itself, to set opposite each other two considerations. Dare I undertake

this task? is a solemn question, but so is this: Dare I let this task go

past me? Am I prepared for the responsibility of allowing it to drift

into weaker hands? These are days when the Church of Christ is calling

for the help of every one capable of aiding her, and we ought to hear it

said more often that one is afraid _not_ to teach in Sunday School, and

another dares not refuse a proffered district, and a third fears to

leave charitable tasks undone. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth

it not, to him it is sin; and we hear too much about the terrible

responsibility of working for God, but too little about the still graver

responsibility of refusing to work for Him when called.

Moses indeed attained so much that we are scarcely conscious that he

might have been greater still. He had once presumed to go unsent, and

brought upon himself the exile of half a lifetime. Again he presumed

almost to say, I go not, and well-nigh to incur the guilt of Jonah when

sent to Nineveh, and in so doing he forfeited the fulness of his

vocation. But who reaches the level of his possibilities? Who is not

haunted by faces, "each one a murdered self," a nobler self, that might

have been, and is now impossible for ever? Only Jesus could say "I have

finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." And it is notable that

while Jesus deals, in the parable of the labourers, with the problem of

equal faithfulness during longer and shorter periods of employment; and

in the parable of the pounds with that of equal endowment variously

improved; and yet again, in the parable of the talents, with the problem

of various endowments all doubled alike, He always draws a veil over the

treatment of five talents which earn but two or three besides.

A more cheerful reflection suggested by this narrative is the strange

power of human fellowship. Moses knew and was persuaded that God, Whose

presence was even then miraculously apparent in the bush, and Who had

invested him with superhuman powers, would go with him. There is no

trace of incredulity in his behaviour, but only of failure to rely, to

cast his shrinking and reluctant will upon the truth he recognised and

the God Whose presence he confessed. He held back, as many a one does,

who is honest when he repeats the Creed in church, yet fails to submit

his life to the easy yoke of Jesus. Nor is it from physical peril that

he recoils: at the bidding of God he has just grasped the serpent from

which he fled; and in confronting a tyrant with armies at his back, he

could hope for small assistance from his brother. But highly strung

spirits, in every great crisis, are aware of vague indefinite

apprehensions that are not cowardly but imaginative. Thus Cæsar, when

defying the hosts of Pompey, is said to have been disturbed by an

apparition. It is vain to put these apprehensions into logical form, and

argue them down: the slowness of speech of Moses was surely refuted by

the presence of God, Who makes the mouth and inspires the utterance; but

such fears lie deeper than the reasons they assign, and when argument

fails, will yet stubbornly repeat their cry: "Send, I pray Thee, by the

hand of him whom Thou wilt send." Now this shrinking, which is not

craven, is dispelled by nothing so effectually as by the touch of a

human hand. It is like the voice of a friend to one beset by ghostly

terrors: he does not expect his comrade to exorcise a spirit, and yet

his apprehensions are dispelled. Thus Moses cannot summon up courage

from the protection of God, but when assured of the companionship of his

brother he will not only venture to return to Egypt, but will bring with

him his wife and children. Thus, also, He Who knew what was in men's

hearts sent forth His missionaries, both the Twelve and the Seventy (as

we have yet to learn the true economy of sending ours), "by two and two"

(Mark vi. 7; Luke x. 1).

This is the principle which underlies the institution of the Church of

Christ, and the conception that Christians are brothers, among whom the

strong must help the weak. Such help from their fellow-mortals would

perhaps decide the choice of many hesitating souls, upon the verge of

the divine life, recoiling from its unknown and dread experiences, but

longing for a sympathising comrade. Alas for the unkindly and

unsympathetic religion of men whose faith has never warmed a human

heart, and of congregations in which emotion is a misdemeanour!

There is no stronger force, among all that make for the abuses of

priestcraft, than this same yearning for human help becomes when robbed

of its proper nourishment, which is the communion of saints, and the

pastoral care of souls. Has it no further nourishment than these? This

instinctive craving for a Brother to help as well as a Father to direct

and govern,--this social instinct, which banished the fears of Moses and

made him set out for Egypt long before Aaron came in sight, content when

assured of Aaron's co-operation,--is there nothing in God Himself to

respond to it? He Who is not ashamed to call us brethren has profoundly

modified the Church's conception of Jehovah, the Eternal, Absolute and

Unconditioned. It is because He can be touched with the feeling of our

infirmities, that we are bidden to draw near with boldness unto the

Throne of Grace. There is no heart so lonely that it cannot commune with

the lofty and kind humanity of Jesus.

There is a homelier lesson to be learned. Moses was not only solaced by

human fellowship, but nerved and animated by the thought of his brother,

and the mention of his tribe. "Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite?"

They had not met for forty years. Vague rumours of deadly persecution

were doubtless all that had reached the fugitive, whose heart had

burned, in solitary communion with Nature in her sternest forms, as he

brooded over the wrongs of his family, of Aaron, and perhaps of Miriam.

And now his brother lived. The call which Moses would have put from him

was for the emancipation of his own flesh and blood, and for their

greatness. In that great hour, domestic affection did much to turn the

scale wherein the destinies of humanity were trembling. And his was

affection well returned. It might easily have been otherwise, for Aaron

had seen his younger brother called to a dazzling elevation, living in

enviable magnificence, and earning fame by "word and deed"; and then,

after a momentary fusion of sympathy and of condition, forty years had

poured between them a torrent of cares and joys estranging because

unshared. But it was promised that Aaron, when he saw him, should be

glad at heart; and the words throw a beam of exquisite light into the

depths of the mighty soul which God inspired to emancipate Israel and to

found His Church, by thoughts of his brother's joy on meeting him.

Let no man dream of attaining real greatness by stifling his affections.

The heart is more important than the intellect; and the brief story of

the Exodus has room for the yearning of Jochebed over her infant "when

she saw him that he was a goodly child," for the bold inspiration of the

young poetess, who "stood afar off to know what should be done to him,"

and now for the love of Aaron. So the Virgin, in the dread hour of her

reproach, went in haste to her cousin Elizabeth. So Andrew "findeth

first his own brother Simon." And so the Divine Sufferer, forsaken of

God, did not forsake His mother.

The Bible is full of domestic life. It is the theme of the greater part

of Genesis, which makes the family the seed-plot of the Church. It is

wisely recognised again at the moment when the larger pulse of the

nation begins to beat. For the life-blood in the heart of a nation must

be the blood in the hearts of men.

_MOSES OBEYS._

iv. 18-31.

Moses is now commissioned: he is to go to Egypt, and Aaron is coming

thence to meet him. Yet he first returns to Midian, to Jethro, who is

both his employer and the head of the family, and prays him to sanction

his visit to his own people.

There are duties which no family resistance can possibly cancel, and the

direct command of God made it plain that this was one of them. But there

are two ways of performing even the most imperative obligation, and

religious people have done irreparable mischief before now, by rudeness,

disregard to natural feeling and the rights of their fellow-men, under

the impression that they showed their allegiance to God by outraging

other ties. It is a theory for which no sanction can be found either in

Holy Scripture or in common sense.

When he asks permission to visit "his brethren" we cannot say whether he

ever had brothers besides Aaron, or uses the word in the same larger

national sense as when we read that, forty years before, he went out

unto his brethren and saw their burdens. What is to be observed is that

he is reticent with respect to his vast expectations and designs.

He does not argue that, because a Divine promise must needs be

fulfilled, he need not be discreet, wary and taciturn, any more than St.

Paul supposed, because the lives of his shipmates were promised to him,

that it mattered nothing whether the sailors remained on board.

The decrees of God have sometimes been used to justify the recklessness

of man, but never by His chosen followers. They have worked out their

own salvation the more earnestly because God worked in them. And every

good cause calls aloud for human energy and wisdom, all the more because

its consummation is the will of God, and sooner or later is assured.

Moses has unlearned his rashness.

When the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, "Go, return unto Egypt, for all

the men are dead which sought thy life," there is an almost verbal

resemblance to the words in which the infant Jesus is recalled from

exile. We shall have to consider the typical aspect of the whole

narrative, when a convenient stage is reached for pausing to survey it

in its completeness. But resemblances like this have been treated with

so much scorn, they have been so freely perverted into evidence of the

mythical nature of the later story, that some passing allusion appears

desirable. We must beware equally of both extremes. The Old Testament is

tortured, and genuine prophecies are made no better than coincidences,

when coincidences are exalted to all the dignity of express predictions.

One can scarcely venture to speak of the death of Herod when Jesus was

to return from Egypt, as being deliberately typified in the death of

those who sought the life of Moses. But it is quite clear that the words

in St. Matthew do intentionally point the reader back to this narrative.

For, indeed, under both, there are to be recognised the same principles:

that God does not thrust His servants into needless or excessive peril;

and that when the life of a tyrant has really become not only a trial

but a barrier, it will be removed by the King of kings. God is prudent

for His heroes.

Moreover, we must recognise the lofty fitness of what is very visible in

the Gospels--the coming to a head in Christ of the various experiences

of the people of God; and at the recurrence, in His story, of events

already known elsewhere, we need not be disquieted, as if the suspicion

of a myth were now become difficult to refute; rather should we

recognise the fulness of the supreme life, and its points of contact

with all lives, which are but portions of its vast completeness. Who

does not feel that in the world's greatest events a certain harmony and

correspondence are as charming as they are in music? There is a sort of

counterpoint in history. And to this answering of deep unto deep, this

responsiveness of the story of Jesus to all history, our attention is

silently beckoned by St. Matthew, when, without asserting any closer

link between the incidents, he borrows this phrase so aptly.

A much deeper meaning underlies the profound expression which God now

commands Moses to employ; and although it must await consideration at a

future time, the progressive education of Moses himself is meantime to

be observed. At first he is taught that the Lord is the God of their

fathers, in whose descendants He is therefore interested. Then the

present Israel is His people, and valued for its own sake. Now he hears,

and is bidden to repeat to Pharaoh, the amazing phrase, "Israel is My

son, even My firstborn: let My son go that he may serve Me; and if thou

refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn."

Thus it is that infant faith is led from height to height. And assuredly

there never was an utterance better fitted than this to prepare human

minds, in the fulness of time, for a still clearer revelation of the

nearness of God to man, and for the possibility of an absolute union

between the Creator and His creature.

It was on his way into Egypt, with his wife and children, that a

mysterious interposition forced Zipporah reluctantly and tardily to

circumcise her son.

The meaning of this strange episode lies perhaps below the surface, but

very near it. Danger in some form, probably that of sickness, pressed

Moses hard, and he recognised in it the displeasure of his God. The

form of the narrative leads us to suppose that he had no previous

consciousness of guilt, and had now to infer the nature of his offence

without any explicit announcement, just as we infer it from what

follows.

If so, he discerned his transgression when trouble awoke his conscience;

and so did his wife Zipporah. Yet her resistance to the circumcision of

their younger son was so tenacious, with such difficulty was it overcome

by her husband's peril or by his command, that her tardy performance of

the rite was accompanied by an insulting action and a bitter taunt. As

she submitted, the Lord "let him go"; but we may perhaps conclude that

the grievance continued to rankle, from the repetition of her gibe, "So

she said, A bridegroom of blood art thou because of the circumcision."

The words mean, "We are betrothed again in blood," and might of

themselves admit a gentler, and even a tender significance; as if, in

the sacrifice of a strong prejudice for her husband's sake, she felt a

revival of "the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals." For

nothing removes the film from the surface of a true affection, and makes

the heart aware how bright it is, so well as a great sacrifice, frankly

offered for the sake of love.

But such a rendering is excluded by the action which went with her

words, and they must be explained as meaning, This is the kind of

husband I have wedded: these are our espousals. With such an utterance

she fades almost entirely out of the story: it does not even tell how

she drew back to her father; and thenceforth all we know of her is that

she rejoined Moses only when the fame of his victory over Amalek had

gone abroad.

Their union seems to have been an ill-assorted or at least an

unprosperous one. In the tender hour when their firstborn was to be

named, the bitter sense of loneliness had continued to be nearer to the

heart of Moses than the glad new consciousness of paternity, and he

said, "I am a stranger in a strange land." Different indeed had been the

experience of Joseph, who called his "firstborn Manasseh, for God, said

he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house" (Gen.

xli. 51). The home-life of Moses had not made him forget that he was an

exile. Even the removal of imminent death from her husband could not

hush these selfish complaints of Zipporah, not because he was a father

of blood to her little one, but because he was a bridegroom of blood to

her own shrinking sensibilities. It is Miriam the sister, not Zipporah

the wife, who gives lyrical and passionate voice to his triumph, and is

mourned by the nation when she dies. Both what we read of her and what

we do not read goes far to explain the insignificance of their children

in history, and the more startling fact that the grandson of Moses

became the venal instrument of the Danites in their schismatic worship

(Judges xviii. 30, R.V.).

Domestic unhappiness is a palliation, but not a justification, for an

unserviceable life. It is a great advantage to come into action with the

dew and freshness of affection upon the soul. Yet it is not once nor

twice that men have carried the message of God back from the barren

desert and the lonely ways of their unhappiness to the not too happy

race of man.

Now, who can fail to discern real history in all this? Is it in such a

way that myth or legend would have dealt with the wife of the great

deliverer? Still less conceivable is it that these should have treated

Moses himself as the narrative hitherto has consistently done. At every

step he is made to stumble. His first attempt was homicidal, and brought

upon him forty years of exile. When the Divine commission came he drew

back wilfully, as he had formerly pressed forward unsent. There is not

even any suggestion offered us of Stephen's apology for his violent

deed--namely, that he supposed his brethren understood how that God by

his hand was giving them deliverance (Acts vii. 25). There is nothing

that resembles the eulogium of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon the faith

which glorified his precipitancy, like the rainbow in a torrent, because

that rash blow committed him to share the affliction of the people of

God, and renounced the rank of a grand son of the Pharaoh (Heb. xi.

24-5). All this is very natural, if Moses himself be in any degree

responsible for the narrative. It is incredible, if the narrative were

put together after the Captivity, to claim the sanction of so great a

name for a newly forged hierarchical system. Such a theory could

scarcely be refuted more completely, if the narrative before us were

invented with the deliberate aim to overthrow it.

But in truth the failures of the good and great are written for our

admonition, teaching us how inconsistent are even the best of mortals,

and how weak the most resolute. Rather than forfeit his own place among

the chosen people, Moses had forsaken a palace and become a proscribed

fugitive; yet he had neglected to claim for his child its rightful share

in the covenant, its recognition among the sons of Abraham. Perhaps

procrastination, perhaps domestic opposition, more potent than a king's

wrath to shake his purpose, perhaps the insidious notion that one who

had sacrificed so much might be at ease about slight negligences,--some

such influence had left the commandment unobserved. And now, when the

dream of his life was being realised at last, and he found himself the

chosen instrument of God for the rebuke of one nation and the making of

another, how pardonable it must have seemed to leave an unpleasant small

domestic duty over until a more convenient season! How natural it still

seems to merge the petty task in the high vocation, to excuse small

lapses in pursuit of lofty aims! But this was the very time when God,

hitherto forbearing, took him sternly to task for his neglect, because

men who are especially honoured should be more obedient and reverential

than their fellows. Let young men who dream of a vast career, and

meanwhile indulge themselves in small obliquities, let all who cast out

demons in the name of Christ, and yet work iniquity, reflect upon this

chosen and long-trained, self-sacrificing and ardent servant of the

Lord, whom Jehovah seeks to kill because he wilfully disobeys even a

purely ceremonial precept.

Moses was not only religious, but "a man of destiny," one upon whom vast

interests depended. Now, such men have often reckoned themselves exempt

from the ordinary laws of conduct.[8]

It is not a light thing, therefore, to find God's indignant protest

against the faintest shadow of a doctrine so insidious and so deadly,

set in the forefront of sacred history, at the very point where national

concerns and those of religion begin to touch. If our politics are to be

kept pure and clean, we must learn to exact a higher fidelity, and not a

relaxed morality, from those who propose to sway the destinies of

nations.

And now the brothers meet, embrace, and exchange confidences. As Andrew,

the first disciple who brought another to Jesus, found first his own

brother Simon, so was Aaron the earliest convert to the mission of

Moses. And that happened which so often puts our faithlessness to shame.

It had seemed very hard to break his strange tidings to the people: it

was in fact very easy to address one whose love had not grown cold

during their severance, who probably retained faith in the Divine

purpose for which the beautiful child of the family had been so

strangely preserved, and who had passed through trial and discipline

unknown to us in the stern intervening years.

And when they told their marvellous story to the elders of the people,

and displayed the signs, they believed; and when they heard that God had

visited them in their affliction, then they bowed their heads and

worshipped.

This was their preparation for the wonders that should follow: it

resembled Christ's appeal, "Believest thou that I am able to do this?"

or Peter's word to the impotent man, "Look on us."

For the moment the announcement had the desired effect, although too

soon the early promise was succeeded by faithlessness and discontent. In

this, again, the teaching of the earliest political movement on record

is as fresh as if it were a tale of yesterday. The offer of emancipation

stirs all hearts; the romance of liberty is beautiful beside the Nile as

in the streets of Paris; but the cost has to be gradually learned; the

losses displace the gains in the popular attention; the labour, the

self-denial and the self-control grow wearisome, and Israel murmurs for

the flesh-pots of Egypt, much as the modern revolution reverts to a

despotism. It is one thing to admire abstract freedom, but a very

different thing to accept the austere conditions of the life of genuine

freemen. And surely the same is true of the soul. The gospel gladdens

the young convert: he bows his head and worships; but he little dreams

of his long discipline, as in the forty desert years, of the solitary

places through which his soul must wander, the drought, the Amalekite,

the absent leader, and the temptations of the flesh. In mercy, the long

future is concealed; it is enough that, like the apostles, we should

consent to follow; gradually we shall obtain the courage to which the

task may be revealed.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Tertullian appealed to the second of these miracles to illustrate

the possibility of the resurrection. "The hand of Moses is changed and

becomes like that of the dead, bloodless, colourless, and stiff with

cold. But on the recovery of heat and restoration of its natural colour,

it is the same flesh and blood.... So will changes, conversions and

reformation be needed to bring about the resurrection, yet the substance

will be preserved safe." (_De Res._, lv.) It is far wiser to be content

with the declaration of St. Paul that the identity of the body does not

depend on that of its corporeal atoms. "Thou sowest not that body that

shall be, but a naked grain.... But God giveth ... to every seed his own

body" (1 Cor. xv. 37-8).

[8] "I am not an ordinary man," Napoleon used to say, "and the laws of

morals and of custom were never made for me."--_Memoirs of Madame de

Rémusat_, i. 91.

CHAPTER V.

_PHARAOH REFUSES._

v. 1-23.

After forty years of obscurity and silence, Moses re-enters the

magnificent halls where he had formerly turned his back upon so great a

place. The rod of a shepherd is in his hand, and a lowly Hebrew by his

side. Men who recognise him shake their heads, and pity or despise the

fanatic who had thrown away the most dazzling prospects for a dream. But

he has long since made his choice, and whatever misgivings now beset him

have regard to his success with Pharaoh or with his brethren, not to the

wisdom of his decision.

Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp of an obsequious court was a

poor thing in the eyes of an ambassador of God, who entered the palace

to speak such lofty words as never passed the lips of any son of

Pharaoh's daughter. He was presently to become a god unto Pharaoh, with

Aaron for his prophet.

In itself, his presence there was formidable. The Hebrews had been

feared when he was an infant. Now their cause was espoused by a man of

culture, who had allied himself with their natural leaders, and was

returned, with the deep and steady fire of a zeal which forty years of

silence could not quench, to assert the rights of Israel as an

independent people.

There is a terrible power in strong convictions, especially when

supported by the sanctions of religion. Luther on one side, Loyola on

the other, were mightier than kings when armed with this tremendous

weapon. Yet there are forces upon which patriotism and fanaticism

together break in vain. Tyranny and pride of race have also strong

impelling ardours, and carry men far. Pharaoh is in earnest as well as

Moses, and can act with perilous energy. And this great narrative begins

the story of a nation's emancipation with a human demand, boldly made,

but defeated by the pride and vigour of a startled tyrant and the

tameness of a downtrodden people. The limitations of human energy are

clearly exhibited before the direct interference of God begins. All that

a brave man can do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a sudden

conviction that the hour of destiny has struck, all therefore upon which

rationalism can draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is exhibited in

this preliminary attempt, this first demand of Moses.

Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh whom the brothers accosted so

boldly. What we glean of him elsewhere is highly suggestive of some

grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting to us a man of uncontrollable

temper yet of broken courage, a ruthless, godless, daunted man. There is

a legend that he once hurled his spear at the Nile when its floods rose

too high, and was punished with ten years of blindness. In the Libyan

war, after fixing a time when he should join his vanguard, with the main

army, a celestial vision forbade him to keep his word in person, and the

victory was gained by his lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of

having slaughtered the people and set fire to them, and netted the

entire country as men net birds. Forty years then elapse without war

and without any great buildings; there are seditions and internal

troubles, and the dynasty closes with his son.[9] All this is exactly

what we should expect, if a series of tremendous blows had depopulated a

country, abolished an army, and removed two millions of the working

classes in one mass.

But it will be understood that this identification, concerning which

there is now a very general consent of competent authorities, implies

that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with his army. Nothing is on

the other side except a poetic assertion in Psalm cxxxvi. 15, which is

not that God destroyed, but that He "shook off" Pharaoh and his host in

the Red Sea, because His mercy endureth for ever.

To this king, then, whose audacious family had usurped the symbols of

deity for its head-dress, and whose father boasted that in battle "he

became like the god Mentu" and "was as Baal," the brothers came as yet

without miracle, with no credentials except from slaves, and said, "Thus

saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a

feast unto Me in the wilderness." The issue was distinctly raised: did

Israel belong to Jehovah or to the king? And Pharaoh answered, with

equal decision, "Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice? I

know not Jehovah, and what is more, I will not let Israel go."

Now, the ignorance of the king concerning Jehovah was almost or quite

blameless: the fault was in his practical refusal to inquire. Jehovah

was no concern of his: without waiting for information, he at once

decided that his grasp on his captives should not relax. And his second

fault, which led to this, was the same grinding oppression of the

helpless which for eighty years already had brought upon his nation the

guilt of blood. Crowned and national cupidity, the resolution to wring

from their slaves the last effort consistent with existence, such greed

as took offence at even the momentary pause of hope while Moses pleaded,

because "the people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from

their burdens,"--these shut their hearts against reason and religion,

and therefore God presently hardened those same hearts against natural

misgiving and dread and awe-stricken submission to His judgments.

For it was against religion also that he was unyielding. In his ample

Pantheon there was room at least for the possibility of the entrance of

the Hebrew God, and in refusing to the subject people, without

investigation, leisure for any worship, the king outraged not only

humanity, but Heaven.

The brothers proceed to declare that they have themselves met with the

deity, and there must have been many in the court who could attest at

least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for liberty to spend a day in

journeying outward and another in returning, with a day between for

their worship, and warn the king of the much greater loss to himself

which may be involved in vengeance upon refusal, either by war or

pestilence. But the contemptuous answer utterly ignores religion:

"Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their work? Get

ye unto your burdens."

And his counter-measures are taken without loss of time: "that same day"

the order goes out to exact the regular quantity of brick, but supply no

straw for binding it together. It is a pitiless mandate, and

illustrates the fact, very natural though often forgotten, that men as a

rule cannot lose sight of the religious value of their fellow-men, and

continue to respect or pity them as before. We do not deny that men who

professed religion have perpetrated nameless cruelties, nor that

unbelievers have been humane, sometimes with a pathetic energy, a

tenacious grasp on the virtue still possible to those who have no Heaven

to serve. But it is plain that the average man will despise his brother,

and his brother's rights, just in proportion as the Divine sanctions of

those rights fade away, and nothing remains to be respected but the

culture, power and affluence which the victim lacks. "I know not

Israel's God" is a sure prelude to the refusal to let Israel go, and

even to the cruelty which beats the slave who fails to render impossible

obedience.

"They be idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to

our God." And still there are men who hold the same opinion, that time

spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the duties of real life. In

truth, religion means freshness, elasticity and hope: a man will be not

slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, if he serves the Lord. But

perhaps immortal hope, and the knowledge that there is One Who shall

break all prison bars and let the oppressed go free, are not the best

narcotics to drug down the soul of a man into the monotonous tameness of

a slave.

In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian taskmasters and the

officers combined to urge the people to their aggravated labours. And by

the fourteenth verse we find that the latter officials were Hebrew

officers whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them.

So that we have here one of the surest and worst effects of

slavery--namely, the demoralisation of the oppressed, the readiness of

average men, who can obtain for themselves a little relief, to do so at

their brethren's cost. These officials were scribes, "writers": their

business was to register the amount of labour due, and actually

rendered. These were doubtless the more comfortable class, of whom we

read afterwards that they possessed property, for their cattle escaped

the murrain and their trees the hail. And they had the means of

acquiring quite sufficient skill to justify whatever is recorded of the

works done in the construction of the tabernacle. The time is long past

when scepticism found support for its incredulity in these details.

One advantage of the last sharp agony of persecution was that it finally

detached this official class from the Egyptian interest, and welded

Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers already provided. For,

when the supply of bricks came short, these officials were beaten, and,

as if no cause of the failure were palpable, they were asked, with a

malicious chuckle, "Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both

yesterday and to-day, as heretofore?" And when they explain to Pharaoh,

in words already expressive of their alienation, that the fault is with

"thine own people," they are repulsed with insult, and made to feel

themselves in evil case. For indeed they needed to be chastised for

their forgetfulness of God. How soon would their hearts have turned

back, how much more bitter yet would have been their complaints in the

desert, if it were not for this last experience! But if judgment began

with them, what should presently be the fate of their oppressors?

Their broken spirit shows itself by murmuring, not against Pharaoh, but

against Moses and Aaron, who at least had striven to help them. Here, as

in the whole story, there is not a trace of either the lofty spirit

which could have evolved the Mosaic law, or the hero-worship of a later

age.

It is written that Moses, hearing their reproaches, "returned unto the

Lord," although no visible shrine, no consecrated place of worship, can

be thought of.

What is involved is the consecration which the heart bestows upon any

place of privacy and prayer, where, in shutting out the world, the soul

is aware of the special nearness of its King. In one sense we never

leave Him, never return to Him. In another sense, by direct address of

the attention and the will, we enter into His presence; we find Him in

the midst of us, Who is everywhere. And all ceremonial consecrations do

their office by helping us to realise and act upon the presence of Him

in Whom, even when He is forgotten, we live and move and have our being.

Therefore in the deepest sense each man consecrates or desecrates for

himself his own place of prayer. There is a city where the Divine

presence saturates every consciousness with rapture. And the seer beheld

no temple therein, for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the

temple of it.

Startling to our notions of reverence are the words in which Moses

addresses God. "Lord, why hast Thou evil entreated this people? Why is

it that Thou hast sent me? for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy

name, he hath evil entreated this people; neither hast Thou delivered

Thy people at all." It is almost as if his faith had utterly given way,

like that of the Psalmist when he saw the wicked in great prosperity,

while waters of a full cup were wrung out by the people of God (Ps.

lxxiii. 3, 10). And there is always a dangerous moment when the first

glow of enthusiasm burns down, and we realise how long the process, how

bitter the disappointments, by which even a scanty measure of success

must be obtained. Yet God had expressly warned Moses that Pharaoh would

not release them until Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues. But

the warning passed unapprehended, as we let many a truth pass

intellectually accepted it is true, but only as a theorem, a vague and

abstract formula. As we know that we must die, that worldly pleasures

are brief and unreal, and that sin draws evil in its train, yet wonder

when these phrases become solid and practical in our experience, so, in

the first flush and wonder of the promised emancipation, Moses had

forgotten the predicted interval of trial.

His words would have been profane and irreverent indeed but for one

redeeming quality. They were addressed to God Himself. Whenever the

people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him Who reckons the most

unconventional and daring appeal to Him far better than the most

ceremonious phrases in which men cover their unbelief: "Lord, wherefore

hast Thou evil entreated this people?" is in reality a much more pious

utterance than "I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord."

Wherefore Moses receives large encouragement, although no formal answer

is vouchsafed to his daring question.

Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses, and many a crisis

which breaks through all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God

may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in words which only

scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and precise. In the bold

rejoinder of the Syro-Phoenician woman He recognised great faith. His

disciples would simply have sent her away as clamorous.

Moses had again failed, even though Divinely commissioned, in the work

of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord Himself

to undertake the work. This abortive attempt, however, was far from

useless: it taught humility and patience to the leader, and it pressed

the nation together, as in a vice, by the weight of a common burden, now

become intolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was

filled up.

But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the remonstrance of

Moses. Many things happen, for which no distinct verbal explanation is

possible, many things of which the deep spiritual fitness cannot be

expressed in words. Experience is the true commentator upon Providence,

if only because the slow building of character is more to God than

either the hasting forward of deliverance or the clearing away of

intellectual mists. And it is only as we take His yoke upon us that we

truly learn of Him. Yet much is implied, if not spoken out, in the

words, "Now (because the time is ripe) shalt thou see what I will do to

Pharaoh (I, because others have failed); for by a strong hand shall he

let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of the land."

It is under the weight of the "strong hand" of God Himself that the

tyrant must either bend or break.

Similar to this is the explanation of many delays in answering our

prayer, of the strange raising up of tyrants and demagogues, and of much

else that perplexes Christians in history and in their own experience.

These events develop human character, for good or evil. And they give

scope for the revealing of the fulness of the power which rescues. We

have no means of measuring the supernatural force which overcomes but by

the amount of the resistance offered. And if all good things came to us

easily and at once, we should not become aware of the horrible pit, our

rescue from which demands gratitude. The Israelites would not have sung

a hymn of such fervent gratitude when the sea was crossed, if they had

not known the weight of slavery and the anguish of suspense. And in

heaven the redeemed who have come out of great tribulation sing the song

of Moses and of the Lamb.

Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky--which of us feels a thrill

of conscious exultation for these cheap delights? The released prisoner,

the restored invalid, feels it:

"The common earth, the air, the skies,

To him are opening paradise."

Even so should Israel be taught to value deliverance. And now the

process could begin.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Robinson, "The Pharaohs of the Bondage."

CHAPTER VI.

_THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES._

vi. 1-30.

We have seen that the name Jehovah expresses not a philosophic

meditation, but the most bracing and reassuring truth--viz., that an

immutable and independent Being sustains His people; and this great

title is therefore reaffirmed with emphasis in the hour of mortal

discouragement. It is added that their fathers knew God by the name of

God Almighty, but by His name Jehovah was He not known, or made known,

unto them. Now, it is quite clear that they were not utterly ignorant of

this title, for no such theory as that it was hitherto mentioned by

anticipation only, can explain the first syllable in the name of the

mother of Moses himself, nor the assertion that in the time of Seth men

began to call upon the name of Jehovah (Gen. iv. 26), nor the name of

the hill of Abraham's sacrifice, Jehovah-jireh (Gen. xxii. 14). Yet the

statement cannot be made available for the purposes of any reasonable

and moderate scepticism, since the sceptical theory demands a belief in

successive redactions of the work in which an error so gross could not

have escaped detection.

And the true explanation is that this Name was now, for the first time,

to be realised as a sustaining power. The patriarchs had known the name;

how its fitness should be realised: God should be known by it. They had

drawn support and comfort from that simpler view of the Divine

protection which said, "I am the Almighty God: walk before Me and be

thou perfect" (Gen. xvii. 1). But thenceforth all the experience of the

past was to reinforce the energies of the present, and men were to

remember that their promises came from One who cannot change. Others,

like Abraham, had been stronger in faith than Moses. But faith is not

the same as insight, and Moses was the greatest of the prophets (Deut.

xxxiv. 10). To him, therefore, it was given to confirm the courage of

his nation by this exalting thought of God. And the Lord proceeds to

state what His promises to the patriarchs were, and joins together (as

we should do) the assurance of His compassionate heart and of His

inviolable pledges: "I have heard the groaning of the children of

Israel, ... and I have remembered My covenant."

It has been the same, in turn, with every new revelation of the Divine.

The new was implicit in the old, but when enforced, unfolded, reapplied,

men found it charged with unsuspected meaning and power, and as full of

vitality and development as a handful of dry seeds when thrown into

congenial soil. So it was pre-eminently with the doctrine of the

Messiah. It will be the same hereafter with the doctrine of the kingdom

of peace and the reign of the saints on earth. Some day men will smile

at our crude theories and ignorant controversies about the Millennium.

We, meantime, possess the saving knowledge of Christ amid many

perplexities and obscurities. And so the patriarchs, who knew God

Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah, were not lost for want of the

knowledge of His name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living Being

to Whom all these names belong, and Who shall yet write upon the brows

of His people some new name, hitherto undreamed by the ripest of the

saints and the purest of the Churches. Meantime, let us learn the

lessons of tolerance for other men's ignorance, remembering the

ignorance of the father of the faithful, tolerance for difference of

views, remembering how the unusual and rare name of God was really the

precursor of a brighter revelation, and yet again, when our hearts are

faint with longing for new light, and weary to death of the babbling of

old words, let us learn a sober and cautious reconsideration, lest

perhaps the very truth needed for altered circumstance and changing

problem may lie, unheeded and dormant, among the dusty old phrases from

which we turn away despairingly. Moreover, since the fathers knew the

name Jehovah, yet gained from it no special knowledge of God, such as

they had from His Almightiness, we are taught that discernment is often

more at fault than revelation. To the quick perception and plastic

imagination of the artist, our world reveals what the boor will never

see. And the saint finds, in the homely and familiar words of Scripture,

revelations for His soul that are unknown to common men. Receptivity is

what we need far more than revelation.

Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith of his countrymen, by a

solemn repetition of the Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they

shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that is to say, with a

palpable interposition of the power of God, "and with great judgments."

It is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase, afterwards so

common. Not mere vengeance upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in

question: the thought is that of a deliberate weighing of merits, and

rendering out of measured penalties. Now, the Egyptian mythology had a

very clear and solemn view of judgment after death. If king and people

had grown cruel, it was because they failed to realise remote

punishments, and did not believe in present judgments, here, in this

life. But there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Not always, for

mercy rejoiceth over judgment. We may still pray, "Enter not into

judgment with Thy servants, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living

be justified." But when men resist warnings, then retribution begins

even here. Sometimes it comes in plague and overthrow, sometimes in the

worse form of a heart made fat, the decay of sensibilities abused, the

dying out of spiritual faculty. Pharaoh was to experience both, the

hardening of his heart and the ruin of his fortunes.

It is added, "I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you

for a God." This is the language, not of a mere purpose, a will that has

resolved to vindicate the right, but of affection. God is about to adopt

Israel to Himself, and the same favour which belonged to rare

individuals in the old time is now offered to a whole nation. Just as

the heart of each man is gradually educated, learning first to love a

parent and a family, and so led on to national patriotism, and at last

to a world-wide philanthropy, so was the religious conscience of mankind

awakened to believe that Abraham might be the friend of God, and then

that His oath might be confirmed unto the children, and then that He

could take Israel to Himself for a people, and at last that God loved

the world.

It is not religion to think that God condescends merely to save us. He

cares for us. He takes us to Himself, He gives Himself away to us, in

return, to be our God.

Such a revelation ought to have been more to Israel than any pledge of

certain specified advantages. It was meant to be a silken tie, a golden

clasp, to draw together the almighty Heart and the hearts of these

downtrodden slaves. Something within Him desires their little human

love; they shall be to Him for a people. So He said again, "My son, give

Me thine heart." And so, when He carried to the uttermost these

unsought, unhoped for, and, alas! unwelcomed overtures of condescension,

and came among us, He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her chickens

under her wings, those who would not. It is not man who conceives, from

definite services received, the wild hope of some spark of real

affection in the bosom of the Eternal and Mysterious One. It is not man,

amid the lavish joys and splendours of creation, who conceives the

notion of a supreme Heart, as the explanation of the universe. It is God

Himself Who says, "I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to

you a God."

Nor is it human conversion that begins the process, but a Divine

covenant and pledge, by which God would fain convert us to Himself; even

as the first disciples did not accost Jesus, but He turned and spoke to

them the first question and the first invitation; "What seek ye?...

Come, and ye shall see."

To-day, the choice of the civilised world has to be made between a

mechanical universe and a revealed love, for no third possibility

survives.

This promise establishes a relationship, which God never afterwards

cancelled. Human unbelief rejected its benefits, and chilled the mutual

sympathies which it involved; but the fact always remained, and in their

darkest hour they could appeal to God to remember His covenant and the

oath which He sware.

And this same assurance belongs to us. We are not to become good, or

desirous of goodness, in order that God may requite with affection our

virtues or our wistfulness. Rather we are to arise and come to our

Father, and to call Him Father, although we are not worthy to be called

His sons. We are to remember how Jesus said, "If ye being evil know how

to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly

Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!" and to learn that He

is the Father of those who are evil, and even of those who are still

unpardoned, as He said again, "If ye forgive not ... neither will your

heavenly Father forgive you."

Much controversy about the universal Fatherhood of God would be assuaged

if men reflected upon the significant distinction which our Saviour drew

between His Fatherhood and our sonship, the one always a reality of the

Divine affection, the other only a possibility, for human enjoyment or

rejection: "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you,

that ye may be sons of your Father Which is in heaven" (Matt. v. 45).

There is no encouragement to presumption in the assertion of the Divine

Fatherhood upon such terms. For it speaks of a love which is real and

deep without being feeble and indiscriminate. It appeals to faith

because there is an absolute fact to lean upon, and to energy because

privilege is conditional. It reminds us that our relationship is like

that of the ancient Israel,--that we are in a covenant, as they were,

but that the carcases of many of them fell in the wilderness; although

God had taken them for a people, and was to them a God, and said,

"Israel is My son, even My firstborn."

It is added that faith shall develop into knowledge. Moses is to assure

them now that they "shall know" hereafter that the Lord is Jehovah

their God. And this, too, is a universal law, that we shall know if we

follow on to know: that the trial of our faith worketh patience, and

patience experience, and we have so dim and vague an apprehension of

Divine realities, chiefly because we have made but little trial, and

have not tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious.

In this respect, as in so many more, religion is analogous with nature.

The squalor of the savage could be civilised, and the distorted and

absurd conceptions of mediæval science could be corrected, only by

experiment, persistently and wisely carried out.

And it is so in religion: its true evidence is unknown to these who

never bore its yoke; it is open to just such raillery and rejection as

they who will not love can pour upon domestic affection and the sacred

ties of family life; but, like these, it vindicates itself, in the rest

of their souls, to those who will take the yoke and learn. And its best

wisdom is not of the cunning brain but of the open heart, that wisdom

from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be

entreated.

And thus, while God leads Israel, they shall know that He is Jehovah,

and true to His highest revelations of Himself.

All this they heard, and also, to define their hope and brighten it, the

promise of Palestine was repeated; but they hearkened not unto Moses for

anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. Thus the body often holds the

spirit down, and kindly allowance is made by Him Who knoweth our frame

and remembereth that we are dust, and Who, in the hour of His own agony,

found the excuse for His unsympathising followers that the spirit was

willing although the flesh was weak. So when Elijah made request for

himself that he might die, in the utter reaction which followed his

triumph on Carmel and his wild race to Jezreel, the good Physician did

not dazzle him with new splendours of revelation until after he had

slept, and eaten miraculous food, and a second time slept and eaten.

But if the anguish of the body excuses much weakness of the spirit, it

follows, on the other hand, that men are responsible to God for that

heavy weight which is laid upon the spirit by pampered and luxurious

bodies, incapable of self-sacrifice, rebellious against the lightest of

His demands. It is suggestive, that Moses, when sent again to Pharaoh,

objected, as at first: "Behold, the children of Israel have not

hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of

uncircumcised lips?"

Every new hope, every great inspiration which calls the heroes of God to

a fresh attack upon the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered more by

the coldness of the Church than by the hostility of the world. That

hostility is expected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of the

faithful is appalling indeed.

We read with wonder the great things which Christ has promised to

believing prayer, and, at the same time, although we know painfully that

we have never claimed and dare not claim these promises, we wonder

equally at the foreboding question, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall

He find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the earth?" (Luke xviii. 8).

But we ought to remember that our own low standard helps to form the

standard of attainment for the Church at large--that when one member

suffers, all the members suffer with it--that many a large sacrifice

would be readily made for Christ, at this hour, if only ease and

pleasure were at stake, which is refused because it is too hard to be

called well-meaning enthusiasts by those who ought to glorify God in

such attainment, as the first brethren did in the zeal and the gifts of

Paul.

The vast mountains raise their heads above mountain ranges which

encompass them; and it is not when the level of the whole Church is low,

that giants of faith and of attainment may be hoped for. Nay, Christ

stipulates for the agreement of two or three, to kindle and make

effectual the prayers which shall avail.

For the purification of our cities, for the shaming of our legislation

until it fears God as much as a vested interest, for the reunion of

those who worship the same Lord, for the conversion of the world, and

first of all for the conversion of the Church, heroic forces are

demanded. But all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject,

semi-Christianity is to repress everything that is unconventional,

abnormal, likely to embroil us with our natural enemy, the world; and

who can doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, we

shall know of many an aspiring soul, in which the sacred fire had begun

to burn, which sank back into lethargy and the commonplace, murmuring in

its despair, "Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me;

how then shall Pharaoh hear me?"

It was the last fear which ever shook the great heart of the emancipator

Moses.

At the beginning of the grand historical work, of which all this has

been the prelude, there is set the pedigree of Moses and Aaron,

according to "the heads of their fathers' houses,"--- an epithet which

indicates a subdivision of the "family," as the family is a subdivision

of the tribe. Of the sons of Jacob, Reuben and Simeon are mentioned, to

put Levi in his natural third place. And from Levi to Moses only four

generations are mentioned, favouring somewhat the briefer scheme of

chronology which makes four centuries cover all the time from Abraham,

and not the captivity alone. But it is certain that this is a mere

recapitulation of the more important links in the genealogy. In Num.

xxvi. 58, 59, six generations are reckoned instead of four; in 1 Chron.

ii. 3 there are seven generations; and elsewhere in the same book (vi.

22) there are ten. It is well known that similar omissions of obscure or

unworthy links occur in St. Matthew's pedigree of our Lord, although

some stress is there laid upon the recurrent division into fourteens.

And it is absurd to found any argument against the trustworthiness of

the narrative upon a phenomenon so frequent, and so sure to be avoided

by a forger, or to be corrected by an unscrupulous editor. In point of

fact, nothing is less likely to have occurred, if the narrative were a

late invention.

Neither, in that case, would the birth of the great emancipator be

ascribed to the union of Amram with his father's sister, for such

marriages were distinctly forbidden by the law (Lev. xviii. 14).

Nor would the names of the children of the founder of the nation be

omitted, while those of Aaron are recorded, unless we were dealing with

genuine history, which knows that the sons of Aaron inherited the lawful

priesthood, while the descendants of Moses were the jealous founders of

a mischievous schism (Judges xviii. 30, R.V.).

Nor again, if this were a religious romance, designed to animate the

nation in its later struggles, should we read of the hesitation and the

fears of a leader "of uncircumcised lips," instead of the trumpet-like

calls to action of a noble champion.

Nor does the broken-spirited meanness of Israel at all resemble the

conception, popular in every nation, of a virtuous and heroic antiquity,

a golden age. It is indeed impossible to reconcile the motives and the

date to which this narrative is ascribed by some, with the plain

phenomena, with the narrative itself.

Nor is it easy to understand why the Lord, Who speaks of bringing out

"My hosts, My people, the children of Israel" (vii. 4, etc.), should

never in the Pentateuch be called the Lord of Hosts, if that title were

in common use when it was written; for no epithet would better suit the

song of Miriam or the poetry of the Fifth Book.

When Moses complained that he was of uncircumcised lips, the Lord

announced that He had already made His servant as a god unto Pharaoh,

having armed him, even then, with the terrors which are soon to shake

the tyrant's soul.

It is suggestive and natural that his very education in a court should

render him fastidious, less willing than a rougher man might have been

to appear before the king after forty years of retirement, and feeling

almost physically incapable of speaking what he felt so deeply, in words

that would satisfy his own judgment. Yet God had endowed him, even then,

with a supernatural power far greater than any facility of expression.

In his weakness he would thus be made strong; and the less fit he was to

assert for himself any ascendency over Pharaoh, the more signal would be

the victory of his Lord, when he became "very great in the land of

Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the

people" (xi. 3).

As a proof of this mastery he was from the first to speak to the haughty

king through his brother, as a god through some prophet, being too great

to reveal himself directly. It is a memorable phrase; and so lofty an

assertion could never, in the myth of a later period, have been ascribed

to an origin so lowly as the reluctance of Moses to expose his

deficiency in elocution.

Therefore he should henceforth be emboldened by the assurance of

qualification bestowed already: not only by the hope of help and

achievement yet to come, but by the certainty of present endowment. And

so should each of us, in his degree, be bold, who have gifts differing

according to the grace given unto us.

It is certain that every living soul has at least one talent, and is

bound to improve it. But how many of us remember that this loan implies

a commission from God, as real as that of prophet and deliverer, and

that nothing but our own default can prevent it from being, at the last,

received again with usury?

The same bravery, the same confidence when standing where his Captain

has planted him, should inspire the prophet, and him that giveth alms,

and him that showeth mercy; for all are members in one body, and

therefore animated by one invincible Spirit from above (Rom. xii. 4-9).

The endowment thus given to Moses made him "as a god" to Pharaoh.

We must not take this to mean only that he had a prophet or spokesman,

or that he was made formidable, but that the peculiar nature of his

prowess would be felt. It was not his own strength. The supernatural

would become visible in him. He who boasted "I know not Jehovah" would

come to crouch before Him in His agent, and humble himself to the man

whom once he contemptuously ordered back to his burdens, with the abject

prayer, "Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat

Jehovah your God that He may take away from me this death only."

Now, every consecrated power may bear witness to the Lord: it is

possible to do all to the glory of God. Not that every separate action

will be ascribed to a preternatural source, but the sum total of the

effect produced by a holy life will be sacred. He who said, "I have made

thee a god unto Pharaoh," says of all believers, "I in them, and Thou,

Father, in Me, that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me."

CHAPTER VII.

_THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART._

vii. 3-13.

When Moses received his commission, at the bush, words were spoken which

are now repeated with more emphasis, and which have to be considered

carefully. For probably no statement of Scripture has excited fiercer

criticism, more exultation of enemies and perplexity of friends, than

that the Lord said, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he shall not let

the people go," and that in consequence of this Divine act Pharaoh

sinned and suffered. Just because the words are startling, it is unjust

to quote them without careful examination of the context, both in the

prediction and the fulfilment. When all is weighed, compared, and

harmonised, it will at last be possible to draw a just conclusion. And

although it may happen long before then, that the objector will charge

us with special pleading, yet he will be the special pleader himself, if

he seeks to hurry us, by prejudice or passion, to give a verdict which

is based upon less than all the evidence, patiently weighed.

Let us in the first place find out how soon this dreadful process began;

when was it that God fulfilled His threat, and hardened, in any sense

whatever, the heart of Pharaoh? Did He step in at the beginning, and

render the unhappy king incapable of weighing the remonstrances which He

then performed the cruel mockery of addressing to him? Were these as

insincere and futile as if one bade the avalanche to pause which his own

act had started down the icy slopes? Was Pharaoh as little responsible

for his pursuit of Israel as his horses were--being, like them, the

blind agents of a superior force? We do not find it so. In the fifth

chapter, when a demand is made, without any sustaining miracle, simply

appealing to the conscience of the ruler, there is no mention of any

such process, despite the insults with which Pharaoh then assails both

the messengers and Jehovah Himself, Whom he knows not. In the seventh

chapter there is clear evidence that the process is yet unaccomplished;

for, speaking of an act still future, it declares, "I will harden

Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of

Egypt" (vii. 3). And this terrible act is not connected with the

remonstrances and warnings of God, but entirely with the increasing

pressure of the miracles.

The exact period is marked when the hand of doom closed upon the tyrant.

It is not where the Authorised Version places it. When the magicians

imitated the earlier signs of Moses, "his heart was strong," but the

original does not bear out the assertion that at this time the Lord made

it so by any judicial act of His (vii. 13). That only comes with the

sixth plague; and the course of events may be traced, fairly well, by

the help of the margin of the Revised Version.

After the plague of blood "Pharaoh's heart was strong" ("hardened"), and

this is distinctly ascribed to his own action, because "he set his heart

even to this" (vii. 22, 23).

After the second plague, it was still he himself who "made his heart

heavy" (viii. 15).

After the third plague the magicians warned him that the very finger of

some god was upon him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might have

been somewhat of a palliation for his obstinacy, was now ended; but yet

"his heart was strong" (viii. 19).

Again, after the fourth plague he "made his heart heavy"; and it "was

heavy" after the fifth plague, (viii. 32, ix. 7).

Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatuation upon him who has

resolutely infatuated himself hitherto.

But when five warnings and penalties have spent their force in vain,

when personal agony is inflicted in the plague of boils, and the

magicians in particular cannot stand before him through their pain,

would it have been proof of virtuous contrition if he had yielded then?

If he had needed evidence, it was given to him long before. Submission

now would have meant prudence, not penitence; and it was against

prudence, not penitence, that he was hardened. Because he had resisted

evidence, experience, and even the testimony of his own magicians, he

was therefore stiffened against the grudging and unworthy concessions

which must otherwise have been wrested from him, as a wild beast will

turn and fly from fire. He was henceforth himself to become an evidence

and a portent; and so "The Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he

hearkened not unto them" (ix. 12). It was an awful doom, but it is not

open to the attacks so often made upon it. It only means that for him

the last five plagues were not disciplinary, but wholly penal.

Nay, it stops short of asserting even this: they might still have

appealed to his reason; they were only not allowed to crush him by the

agency of terror. Not once is it asserted that God hardened his heart

against any nobler impulse than alarm, and desire to evade danger and

death. We see clearly this meaning in the phrase, when it is applied to

his army entering the Red Sea: "I will make strong the hearts of the

Egyptians, and they shall go in" (xiv. 17). It needed no greater moral

turpitude to pursue the Hebrews over the sands than on the shore, but it

certainly required more hardihood. But the unpursued departure which the

good-will of Egypt refused, their common sense was not allowed to grant.

Callousness was followed by infatuation, as even the pagans felt that

whom God wills to ruin He first drives mad.

This explanation implies that to harden Pharaoh's heart was to inspire

him, not with wickedness, but with nerve.

And as far as the original language helps us at all, it decidedly

supports this view. Three different expressions have been unhappily

rendered by the same English word, to harden; but they may be

discriminated throughout the narrative in Exodus, by the margin of the

Revised Version.

One word, which commonly appears without any marginal explanation, is

the same which is employed elsewhere about "the cause which is too

_hard_ for" minor judges (Deut. i. 17, cf. xv. 18, etc.). Now, this word

is found (vii. 13) in the second threat that "I will harden Pharaoh's

heart," and in the account which was to be given to posterity of how

"Pharaoh hardened himself to let us go" (xiii. 15). And it is said

likewise of Sihon, king of Heshbon, that he "would not let us pass by

him, for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit and made his heart strong"

(Deut. ii. 30). But since it does not occur anywhere in all the

narrative of what God actually did with Pharaoh, it is only just to

interpret this phrase in the prediction by what we read elsewhere of the

manner of its fulfilment.

The second word is explained in the margin as meaning _to make strong_.

Already God had employed it when He said "I will _make strong_ his

heart" (iv. 21), and this is the term used of the first fulfilment of

the menace, after the sixth plague (ix. 12). God is not said to

interfere again after the seventh, which had few special terrors for

Pharaoh himself; but from henceforth the expression "to make _strong_"

alternates with the phrase "to make _heavy_." "Go in unto Pharaoh, for I

have made heavy his heart and the heart of his servants, that I might

show these My signs in the midst of them" (x. 1).

It may be safely assumed that these two expressions cover between them

all that is asserted of the judicial action of God in preventing a

recoil of Pharaoh from his calamities. Now, the strengthening of a

heart, however punitive and disastrous when a man's will is evil (just

as the strengthening of his arm is disastrous then), has in itself no

immorality inherent. It is a thing as often good as bad,--as when Israel

and Joshua are exhorted to "Be _strong_ and of a good courage" (Deut.

xxxi. 6, 7, 23), and when the angel laid his hand upon Daniel and said,

"Be strong, yea, be strong" (Dan. x. 19). In these passages the phrase

is identical with that which describes the process by which Pharaoh was

prevented from cowering under the tremendous blows he had provoked.

The other expression is to make heavy or dull. Thus "the eyes of Israel

were _heavy_ with age" (Gen. xlviii. 10), and as we speak of a _weight_

of honour, equally with the heaviness of a dull man, so we are twice

commanded, "Make heavy (honour) thy father and thy mother"; and the Lord

declares, "I will make Myself heavy (get Me honour) upon Pharaoh" (Deut.

v. 16, Exod. xx. 12, xiv. 4, 17, 18). In these latter references it will

be observed that the making "strong" the heart of Pharaoh, and the

making "Myself heavy" are so connected as almost to show a design of

indicating how far is either expression from conveying the notion of

immorality, infused into a human heart by God. For one of the two

phrases which have been thus interpreted is still applied to Pharaoh;

but the other (and the more sinister, as we should think, when thus

applied) is appropriated by God to Himself: He makes Himself heavy.

It is also a curious and significant coincidence that the same word was

used of the burdens that were made _heavy_ when first they claimed their

freedom, which is now used of the treatment of the heart of their

oppressor (v. 9).

It appears, then, that the Lord is never said to debauch Pharaoh's

heart, but only to strengthen it against prudence and to make it dull;

that the words used do not express the infusion of evil passion, but the

animation of a resolute courage, and the overclouding of a natural

discernment; and, above all, that every one of the three words, to make

hard, to make strong, and to make heavy, is employed to express

Pharaoh's own treatment of himself, before it is applied to any work of

God, as actually taking place already.

Nevertheless, there is a solemn warning for all time, in the assertion

that what he at first chose, the vengeance of God afterward chose for

him. For indeed the same process, working more slowly but on identical

lines, is constantly seen in the hardening effect of vicious habit. The

gambler did not mean to stake all his fortune upon one chance, when

first he timidly laid down a paltry stake; nor has he changed his mind

since then as to the imprudence of such a hazard. The drunkard, the

murderer himself, is a man who at first did evil as far as he dared, and

afterwards dared to do evil which he would once have shuddered at.

Let no man assume that prudence will always save him from ruinous

excess, if respect for righteousness cannot withhold him from those

first compliances which sap the will, destroy the restraint of

self-respect, wear away the horror of great wickedness by familiarity

with the same guilt in its lesser phases, and, above all, forfeit the

enlightenment and calmness of judgment which come from the Holy Spirit

of God, Who is the Spirit of wisdom and of counsel, and makes men to be

of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.

Let no man think that the fear of damnation will bring him to the

mercy-seat at last, if the burden and gloom of being "condemned already"

cannot now bend his will. "Even as they refused to have God in their

knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind" (Rom. i. 28). "I gave

them My statutes and showed them My judgments, which if a man do, he

shall even live in them.... I gave them statutes that were not good, and

judgments wherein they should not live" (Ezek. xx. 11, 25).

This is the inevitable law, the law of a confused and darkened judgment,

a heart made heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an infatuated

will kicking against the pricks, and heaping to itself wrath against the

day of wrath. Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it is avenged

by the obscuring of the lamp of God in the soul. Now, a part of His

guiding light is prudence; and it is possible that men who will not be

warned by the fear of injury to their conscience, such as they suppose

that Pharaoh suffered, may be sobered by the danger of such derangement

of their intellectual efficiency as really befel him.

In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly to their fate (and this

is a judicial act of God, although it comes in the course of nature),

but first they launch themselves upon the slope which grows steeper at

every downward step, until arrest is impossible.

On the other hand, every act of obedience helps to release the will from

its entanglement, and to clear the judgment which has grown dull,

anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may see. Not in vain is the

assertion of the bondage of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the

children of God.

A second time, then, Moses presented himself before Pharaoh with his

demands; and, as he had been forewarned, he was now challenged to give a

sign in proof of his commission from a god.

And the demand was treated as reasonable; a sign was given, and a

menacing one. The peaceable rod of the shepherd, a fit symbol of the

meek man who bore it, became a serpent[10] before the king, as Moses was

to become destructive to his realm. But when the wise men of Egypt and

the enchanters were called, they did likewise; and although a marvel was

added which incontestably declared the superior power of the Deity Whom

Aaron represented, yet their rivalry sufficed to make strong the heart

of Pharaoh, and he would not let the people go. The issue was now knit:

the result would be more signal than if the quarrel were decided at one

blow, and upon all the gods of Egypt the Lord would exercise vengeance.

What are we to think of the authentification of a religion by a sign?

Beyond doubt, Jesus recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when He

said, "If I had not done among them the works that none other man did,

they had not had sin" (John xv. 24). And yet there is reason in the

objection that no amount of marvel ought to deflect by one hair's

breadth our judgment of right and wrong, and the true appeal of a

religion must be to our moral sense.

No miracle can prove that immoral teaching is sacred. But it can prove

that it is supernatural. And this is precisely what Scripture always

proclaims. In the New Testament, we are bidden to take heed, because a

day will come, when false prophets shall work great signs and wonders,

to deceive, if possible, even the elect (Mark xiii. 22). In the Old

Testament, a prophet may seduce the people to worship other gods, by

giving them a sign or a wonder which shall come to pass, but they must

surely stone him: they must believe that his sign is only a temptation;

and above whatever power enabled him to work it, they must recognise

Jehovah proving them, and know that the supernatural has come to them in

judgment, not in revelation (Deut. xiii. 1-5).

Now, this is the true function of the miraculous. At the most, it cannot

coerce the conscience, but only challenge it to consider and to judge.

A teacher of the purest morality may be only a human teacher still; nor

is the Christian bound to follow into the desert every clamorous

innovator, or to seek in the secret chamber every one who whispers a

private doctrine to a few. We are entitled to expect that one who is

commissioned directly from above will bear special credentials with him;

but when these are exhibited, we must still judge whether the document

they attest is forged. And this may explain to us why the magicians were

allowed for awhile to perplex the judgment of Pharaoh whether by fraud,

as we may well suppose, or by infernal help. It was enough that Moses

should set his claims upon a level with those which Pharaoh reverenced:

the king was then bound to weigh their relative merits in other and

wholly different scales.

_THE PLAGUES._

vii. 14.

There are many aspects in which the plagues of Egypt may be

contemplated.

We may think of them as ranging through all nature, and asserting the

mastery of the Lord alike over the river on which depended the

prosperity of the realm, over the minute pests which can make life more

wretched than larger and more conspicuous ills (the frogs of the water,

the reptiles that disgrace humanity, and the insects that infest the

air), over the bodies of animals stricken with murrain, and those of man

tortured with boils, over hail in the cloud and blight in the crop, over

the breeze that bears the locust and the sun that grows dark at noon,

and at last over the secret springs of human life itself.

No pantheistic creed (and the Egyptian religion struck its roots deep

into pantheistic speculation) could thus completely exalt God above

nature, as a superior and controlling Power, not one with the mighty

wheels of the universe, of which the height is terrible, but, as Ezekiel

saw Him, enthroned above them in the likeness of fire, and yet in the

likeness of humanity.

No idolatrous creed, however powerful be its conception of one god of

the hills and another of the valleys, could thus represent a single

deity as wielding all the arrows of adverse fortune, able to assail us

from earth and sky and water, formidable alike in the least things and

in the greatest. And presently the demonstration is completed, when at

His bidding the tempest heaps up the sea, and at His frown the waters

return to their strength again.

And no philosophic theory condescends to bring the Ideal, the Absolute,

and the Unconditioned, into such close and intimate connection with the

frog-spawn of the ditch and the blain upon the tortured skin.

We may, with ample warrant from Scripture, make the controversial

application still more simple and direct, and think of the plagues as

wreaking vengeance, for the worship they had usurped and the cruelties

they had sanctioned, upon all the gods of Egypt, which are conceived of

for the moment as realities, and as humbled, if not in fact, yet in the

sympathies of priest and worshipper (xii. 12).

Then we shall see the domain of each impostor invaded, and every vaunted

power to inflict evil or to remove it triumphantly wielded by Him Who

proves His equal mastery over all, and thus we shall find here the

justification of that still bolder personification which says, "Worship

Him, all ye gods" (Psalm xcvii. 7).

The Nile had a sacred name, and was adored as "Hapee, or Hapee Mu, the

Abyss, or the Abyss of Waters, or the Hidden," and the king was

frequently portrayed standing between two images of this god, his throne

wreathed with water-lilies. The second plague struck at the goddess

HEKT, whose head was that of a frog. The uncleanness of the third plague

deranged the whole system of Egyptian worship, with its punctilious and

elaborate purifications. In every one there is either a presiding

divinity attacked, or a blow dealt upon the priesthood or the sacrifice,

or a sphere invaded which some deity should have protected, until the

sun himself is darkened, the great god RA, to whom their sacred city was

dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the title of his earthly

representative, the Pharaoh or PH-RA. Then at last, after all these

premonitions, the deadly blow struck home.

Or we may think of the plagues as retributive, and then we shall

discover a wonderful suitability in them all. It was a direful omen that

the first should afflict the nation through the river, into which,

eighty years before, the Hebrew babes had been cast to die, which now

rolled bloody, and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that the

luxurious homes of the oppressors should become squalid as the huts of

the slaves they trampled; that their flesh should suffer torture worse

than that of the whips they used so unmercifully; that the loss of crops

and cattle should bring home to them the hardships of the poor who

toiled for their magnificence; that physical darkness should appal them

with vague terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as ever haunt the

bosom of the oppressed, whose life is the sport of a caprice; and at

last that the aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop and pride of

their declining feebleness, and the younger feel beside the cradle of

the first blossom and fruit of love, all the agony of such bereavement

as they had wantonly inflicted on the innocent.

And since the fear of disadvantage in war had prompted the murder of the

Hebrew children, it was right that the retributive blow should destroy

first their children and then their men of war.

When we come to examine the plagues in detail, we discover that it is no

arbitrary fancy which divides them into three triplets, leading up to

the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth, and seventh, each of which

begins a triplet, are introduced by a command to Moses to warn Pharaoh

"in the morning" (vii. 15), or "early in the morning" (viii. 20, ix.

13). The third, sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted without

any warning whatever. The story of the third plague closes with the

defeat of the magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand before

the king, and the ninth with the final rupture, when Moses declares,

"Thou shalt see my face no more" (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29).

The first three are plagues of loathsomeness--blood-stained waters,

frogs and lice; the next three bring actual pain and loss with

them--stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts, and boils upon

all the Egyptians; and the third triplet are "nature-plagues"--hail,

locusts and darkness. It is only after the first three plagues that the

immunity of Israel is mentioned; and after the next three, when the hail

is threatened, instructions are first given by which those Egyptians who

fear Jehovah may also obtain protection. Thus, in orderly and solemn

procession, marched the avengers of God upon the guilty land.

It has been observed, concerning the miracles of Jesus, that not one of

them was creative, and that, whenever it was possible, He wrought by the

use of material naturally provided. The waterpots should be filled; the

five barley-loaves should be sought out; the nets should be let down for

a draught; and the blind man should have his eyes anointed, and go wash

in the Pool of Siloam.

And it is easily seen that such miracles were a more natural expression

of His errand, which was to repair and purify the existing system of

things, and to remove our moral disease and dearth, than any exercise of

creative power would have been, however it might have dazzled the

spectators.

Now, the same remark applies to the miracles of Moses, to the coming of

God in judgment, as to His revelation of Himself in grace; and therefore

we need not be surprised to hear that natural phenomena are not unknown

which offer a sort of dim hint or foreshadowing of the terrible ten

plagues. Either cryptogamic vegetation or the earth borne down from

upper Africa is still seen to redden the river, usually dark, but not so

as to destroy the fish. Frogs and vermin and stinging insects are the

pest of modern travellers. Cattle plagues make ravage there, and hideous

diseases of the skin are still as common as when the Lord promised to

reward the obedience of Israel to sanitary law by putting upon them none

of "the evil diseases of Egypt" which they knew (Deut. vii. 15).[11] The

locust is still dreaded. But some of the other visitations were more

direful because not only their intensity but even their existence was

almost unprecedented: hail in Egypt was only not quite unknown; and such

veiling of the sun as occurs for a few minutes during the storms of sand

in the desert ought scarcely to be quoted as even a suggestion of the

prolonged horror of the ninth plague.

Now, this accords exactly with the moral effect which was to be

produced. The rescued people were not to think of God as one who strikes

down into nature from outside, with strange and unwonted powers,

superseding utterly its familiar forces. They were to think of Him as

the Author of all; and of the common troubles of mortality as being

indeed the effects of sin, yet ever controlled and governed by Him, let

loose at His will, and capable of mounting to unimagined heights if His

restraints be removed from them. By the east wind He brought the

locusts, and removed them by the south-west wind. By a storm He divided

the sea. The common things of life are in His hands, often for

tremendous results. And this is one of the chief lessons of the

narrative for us. Let the mind range over the list of the nine which

stop short of absolute destruction, and reflect upon the vital

importance of immunities for which we are scarcely grateful.

The purity of water is now felt to be among the foremost necessities of

life. It is one which asks nothing from us except to refrain from

polluting what comes from heaven so limpid. And yet we are half

satisfied to go on habitually inflicting on ourselves a plague more foul

and noxious than any occasional turning of our rivers into blood. The

two plagues which dealt with minute forms of life may well remind us of

the vast part which we are now aware that the smallest organisms play in

the economy of life, as the agents of the Creator. Who gives thanks

aright for the cheap blessing of the unstained light of heaven?

But we are insensible to the every-day teaching of this narrative: we

turn our rivers into fluid poison; we spread all around us deleterious

influences, which breed by minute forms of parasitical life the germs of

cruel disease; we load the atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle

with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to vegetation than the

hail-storm or the locust; we charge it with carbon so dense that

multitudes have forgotten that the sky is blue, and on our Metropolis

comes down at frequent intervals the darkness of the ninth plague, and

all the time we fail to see that God, Who enacts and enforces every law

of nature, does really plague us whenever these outraged laws avenge

themselves. The miraculous use of nature in special emergencies is such

as to show the Hand which regularly wields its powers.

At the same time there is no more excuse for the rationalism which would

reduce the calamities of Egypt to a coincidence, than for explaining

away the manna which fed a nation during its wanderings by the drug

which is gathered, in scanty morsels, upon the acacia tree. The awful

severity of the judgments, the series which they formed, their advent

and removal at the menace and the prayer of Moses, are considerations

which make such a theory absurd. The older scepticism, which supposed

Moses to have taken advantage of some epidemic, to have learned in the

wilderness the fords of the Red Sea,[12] to have discovered water, when

the caravan was perishing of thirst, by his knowledge of the habits of

wild beasts, and finally to have dazzled the nation at Horeb with some

kind of fireworks, is itself almost a miracle in its violation of the

laws of mind. The concurrence of countless favourable accidents and

strange resources of leadership is like the chance arrangement of a

printer's type to make a poem.

There is a common notion that the ten plagues followed each other with

breathless speed, and were completed within a few weeks. But nothing in

the narrative asserts or even hints this, and what we do know is in the

opposite direction. The seventh plague was wrought in February, for the

barley was in the ear and the flax in blossom (ix. 31); and the feast of

passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the month Abib, so that the

destruction of the firstborn was in the middle of April, and there was

an interval of about two months between the last four plagues. Now, the

same interval throughout would bring back the first plague to September

or October. But the natural discoloration of the river, mentioned above,

is in the middle of the year, when the river begins to rise; and this,

it may possibly be inferred, is the natural period at which to fix the

first plague. They would then range over a period of about nine months.

During the interval between them, the promises and treacheries of the

king excited alternate hope and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own

race (once the vassals of their tyrants, but already estranged by their

own oppression) began to take rank as officers among the Jews, and to

exhibit the rudimentary promise of national order and government; and

the growing fears of their enemies fostered that triumphant sense of

mastery, out of which national hope and pride are born. When the time

came for their departure, it was possible to transmit orders throughout

all their tribes, and they came out of Egypt by their armies, which

would have been utterly impossible a few months before. It was with

them, as it is with every man that breathes: the delay of God's grace

was itself a grace; and the slowly ripening fruit grew mellower than if

it had been forced into a speedier maturity.

_THE FIRST PLAGUE._

vii. 14-25.

It was perhaps when the Nile was rising, and Pharaoh was coming to the

bank, in pomp of state, to make official observation of its progress, on

which the welfare of the kingdom depended, and to do homage before its

divinity, that the messenger of another Deity confronted him, with a

formal declaration of war. It was a strange contrast. The wicked was in

great prosperity, neither was he plagued like another man. Upon his

head, if this were Menephtah, was the golden symbol of his own divinity.

Around him was an obsequious court. And yet there was moving in his

heart some unconfessed sense of awe, when confronted once more by the

aged shepherd and his brother, who had claimed a commission from above,

and had certainly met his challenge, and made a short end of the rival

snakes of his own seers. Once he had asked "Who is Jehovah?" and had

sent His ambassadors to their tasks again with insult. But now he needs

to harden his heart, in order not to yield to their strange and

persistent demands. He remembers how they had spoken to him already,

"Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, My firstborn, and I have said

unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve Me; and thou hast refused to

let him go: behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn" (iv. 22, R.V.).

Did this awful warning come back to him, when the worn, solemn and

inflexible face of Moses again met him? Did he divine the connection

between this ultimate penalty and what is now announced--the turning of

the pride and refreshment of Egypt into blood? Or was it partly because

each plague, however dire, seemed to fall short of the tremendous

threat, that he hoped to find the power of Moses more limited than his

warnings? "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed

speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to

do evil."

And might he, at the last, be hardened to pursue the people because, by

their own showing, the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped?

Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the brothers come and go,

and inflict their plagues unrestrained; that no insult or violence is

attempted, and we can see the truth of the words "I have made thee as a

god unto Pharaoh."

It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, "I know not Jehovah," that Moses

and Aaron now repeat the demand for release, and say, "Hitherto thou

hast not hearkened: behold, in this thou shalt know that I am Jehovah."

What follows, when attentively read, makes it plain that the blow falls

upon "the waters that are in the river," and those that have been drawn

from it into canals for artificial irrigation, into reservoirs like the

lakes Moeris and Mareotis, and even into vessels for immediate use.

But we are expressly told that it was possible to obtain water by

digging wells. Therefore there is no point whatever in the cavil that

if Moses turned all the water into blood, none was left for the

operations of the magicians. But no comparison whatever existed between

their petty performances and the immense and direful work of vengeance

which rolled down a putrid mass of corrupt waters through the land,

spoiling the great stores of water by which later drought should be

relieved, destroying the fish, that important part of the food of the

nation, for which Israel afterwards lusted, and sowing the seeds of

other plagues, by the pollution of that balmy air in which so many of

our own suffering countrymen still find relief, but which was now

infected and loathsome. Even Pharaoh must have felt that his gods might

do better for him than this, and that it would be much more to the point

just then to undo his plague than to increase it--to turn back the blood

to water than contribute a few drops more. If this was their best

effort, he was already helpless in the hand of his assailant, who, by

the uplifting of his rod, and the bold avowal in advance of

responsibility for so great a calamity, had formally defied him. But

Pharaoh dared not accept the challenge: it was effort enough for him to

"set his heart" against surrender to the portent, and he sullenly turned

back into the palace from the spot where Moses met him.

Two details remain to be observed. The seven days which were fulfilled

do not measure the interval between this plague and the next, but the

period of its infliction. And this information is not given us

concerning any other, until we come to the three days of darkness.[13]

It is important here, because the natural discoloration lasts for three

weeks, and mythical tendencies would rather exaggerate than shorten the

term.

Again, it is contended that only with the fourth plague did Israel begin

to enjoy exemption, because then only is their immunity recorded.[14]

But it is strange indeed to suppose that they were involved in

punishments the design of which was their relief; and in fact their

exemption is implied in the statement that the Egyptians (only) had to

dig wells. It is to be understood that large stores of water would

everywhere be laid up, because the Nile water, however delicious,

carries much sediment which must be allowed to settle down. They would

not be forced, therefore, to fall back upon the polluted common sources

for a supply.

And now let us contrast this miracle with the first of the New

Testament. One spoiled the happiness of the guilty; the other rescued

the overclouded joy of the friends of Jesus, not turning water into

blood but into wine; declaring at one stroke all the difference between

the law which worketh wrath, and the gospel of the grace of God. The

first was impressive and public, as the revelation upon Sinai; the other

appealed far more to the heart than to the imagination, and befitted

well the kingdom that was not with observation, the King who grew up

like a tender plant, and did not strive nor cry, the redeeming influence

which was at first unobtrusive as the least of all seeds, but became a

tree, and the shelter of the fowls of heaven.

FOOTNOTES: