Here, then, we perceive with the utmost clearness what St. Paul so

clearly discerned--the true meaning of the Law, its convicting power,

its design to work not righteousness, but self-despair as the prelude of

self-surrender. For who can, by resolving, govern his desires? Who can

abstain not only from the usurping deed, but from the aggressive

emotion? Who will not despair when he learns that God desireth truth in

the inward parts? But this despair is the way to that better hope which

adds, "In the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me

with hyssop, and I shall be clean."

And as a strong interest or affection has power to destroy in the soul

many weaker ones, so the love of God and our neighbour is the appointed

way to overcome the desire of taking from our neighbour what God has

given to him, refusing it to us.

THE LESSER LAW.

xx. 18-xxiii. 33.

With the close of the Decalogue and its universal obligations, we

approach a brief code of laws, purely Hebrew, but of the deepest moral

interest, confessed by hostile criticism to bear every mark of a remote

antiquity, and distinctly severed from what precedes and follows by a

marked difference in the circumstances.

This is evidently the book of the Covenant to which the nation gave its

formal assent (xxiv. 7), and is therefore the germ and the centre of the

system afterwards so much expanded.

And since the adhesion of the people was required, and the final

covenant was ratified as soon as it was given, before any of the more

formal details were elaborated, and before the tabernacle and the

priesthood were established, it may fairly claim the highest and most

unique position among the component parts of the Pentateuch, excepting

only the Ten Commandments.

Before examining it in detail, the impressive circumstances of its

utterance have to be observed.

It is written that when the law was given, the voice of the trumpet

waxed louder and louder still. And as the multitude became aware that in

this tempestuous and growing crash there was a living centre, and a

voice of intelligible words, their awe became insufferable: and instead

of needing the barriers which excluded them from the mountain, they

recoiled from their appointed place, trembling and standing afar off.

"And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us and we will hear, but let

not God speak with us lest we die." It is the same instinct that we have

already so often recognised, the dread of holiness in the hearts of the

impure, the sense of unworthiness, which makes a prophet cry, "Woe is

me, for I am undone!" and an apostle, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful

man."

Now, the New Testament quotes a confession of Moses himself, well-nigh

overwhelmed, "I do exceedingly fear and quake" (Heb. xii. 21). And yet

we read that he "said unto the people, Fear not, for God is come to

prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not"

(xx. 20). Thus we have the double paradox,--that he exceedingly feared,

yet bade them fear not, and yet again declared that the very object of

God was that they might fear Him.

Like every paradox, which is not a mere contradiction, this is

instructive.

There is an abject fear, the dread of cowards and of the guilty, which

masters and destroys the will--the fear which shrank away from the mount

and cried out to Moses for relief. Such fear has torment, and none ought

to admit it who understands that God wishes him well and is merciful.

There is also a natural agitation, at times inevitable though not

unconquerable, and often strongest in the highest natures because they

are the most finely strung. We are sometimes taught that there is sin in

that instinctive recoil from death, and from whatever brings it close,

which indeed is implanted by God to prevent foolhardiness, and to

preserve the race. Our duty, however, does not require the absence of

sensitive nerves, but only their subjugation and control. Marshal Saxe

was truly brave when he looked at his own trembling frame, as the cannon

opened fire, and said, "Aha! tremblest thou? thou wouldest tremble much

more if thou knewest whither I mean to carry thee to-day." Despite his

fever-shaken nerves, he was perfectly entitled to say to any waverer,

"Fear not."

And so Moses, while he himself quaked, was entitled to encourage his

people, because he could encourage them, because he saw and announced

the kindly meaning of that tremendous scene, because he dared presently

to draw near unto the thick darkness where God was.

And therefore the day would come when, with his noble heart aflame for a

yet more splendid vision, he would cry, "O Lord, I beseech Thee show me

Thy glory"--some purer and clearer irradiation, which would neither

baffle the moral sense, nor conceal itself in cloud.

Meanwhile, there was a fear which should endure, and which God desires:

not panic, but awe; not the terror which stood afar off, but the

reverence which dares not to transgress. "Fear not, for God is come to

prove you" (to see whether the nobler emotion or the baser will

survive), "and that His fear may be before your faces" (so as to guide

you, instead of pressing upon you to crush), "that ye sin not."

How needful was the lesson, may be seen by what followed when they were

taken at their word, and the pressure of physical dread was lifted off

them. "They soon forgat God their Saviour ... they made a calf in

Horeb, and worshipped the work of their own hands." Perhaps other

pressures which we feel and lament to-day, the uncertainties and fears

of modern life, are equally required to prevent us from forgetting God.

Of the nobler fear, which is a safeguard of the soul and not a danger,

it is a serious question whether enough is alive among us.

Much sensational teaching, many popular books and hymns, suggest rather

an irreverent use of the Holy Name, which is profanation, than a filial

approach to a Father equally revered and loved. It is true that we are

bidden to come with boldness to the throne of Grace. Yet the same

Epistle teaches us again that our approach is even more solemn and awful

than to the Mount which might be touched, and the profaning of which was

death; and it exhorts us to have grace whereby we may offer service

well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe, "for our God is a consuming

fire" (Heb. iv. 16, xii. 28). That is the very last grace which some

Christians ever seem to seek.

When the people recoiled, and Moses, trusting in God, was brave and

entered the cloud, they ceased to have direct communion, and he was

brought nearer to Jehovah than before.

What is now conveyed to Israel through him is an expansion and

application of the Decalogue, and in turn it becomes the nucleus of the

developed law. Its great antiquity is admitted by the severest critics;

and it is a wonderful example of spirituality and searching depth, and

also of such germinal and fruitful principles as cannot rest in

themselves, literally applied, but must lead the obedient student on to

still better things.

It is not the function of law to inspire men to obey it; this is

precisely what the law could not do, being weak through the flesh. But

it could arrest the attention and educate the conscience. Simple though

it was in the letter, David could meditate upon it day and night. In the

New Testament we know of two persons who had scrupulously respected its

precepts, but they both, far from being satisfied, were filled with a

divine discontent. One had kept all these things from his youth, yet

felt the need of doing some good thing, and anxiously demanded what it

was that he lacked yet. The other, as touching the righteousness of the

law, was blameless, yet when the law entered, sin revived and slew him.

For the law was spiritual, and reached beyond itself, while he was

carnal, and thwarted by the flesh, sold under sin, even while externally

beyond reproach.

This subtle characteristic of all noble law will be very apparent in

studying the kernel of the law, the code within the code, which now lies

before us.

Men sometimes judge the Hebrew legislation harshly, thinking that they

are testing it, as a Divine institution, by the light of this century.

They are really doing nothing of the sort. If there are two principles

of legislation dearer than all others to modern Englishmen, they are the

two which these flippant judgments most ignore, and by which they are

most perfectly refuted.

One is that institutions educate communities. It is not too much to say

that we have staked the future of our nation, and therefore the hopes of

humanity, upon our conviction that men can be elevated by ennobling

institutions,--that the franchise, for example, is an education as well

as a trust.

The other, which seems to contradict the first, and does actually modify

it, is that legislation must not move too far in advance of public

opinion. Laws may be highly desirable in the abstract, for which

communities are not yet ripe. A constitution like our own would be

simply ruinous in Hindostan. Many good friends of temperance are the

reluctant opponents of legislation which they desire in theory but which

would only be trampled upon in practice, because public opinion would

rebel against the law. Legislation is indeed educational, but the danger

is that the practical outcome of such legislation would be disobedience

and anarchy.

Now, these principles are the ample justification of all that startles

us in the Pentateuch.

Slavery and polygamy, for instance, are not abolished. To forbid them

utterly would have substituted far worse evils, as the Jews then were.

But laws were introduced which vastly ameliorated the condition of the

slave, and elevated the status of woman--laws which were far in advance

of the best Gentile culture, and which so educated and softened the

Jewish character, that men soon came to feel the letter of these very

laws too harsh.

That is a nobler vindication of the Mosaic legislation than if this

century agreed with every letter of it. To be vital and progressive is a

better thing than to be correct. The law waged a far more effectual war

upon certain evils than by formal prohibition, sound in theory but

premature by centuries. Other good things besides liberty are not for

the nursery or the school. And "we also, when we were children, were

held in bondage" (Gal. iv. 3).

It is pretty well agreed that this code may be divided into five parts.

To the end of the twentieth chapter it deals directly with the worship

of God. Then follow thirty-two verses treating of the personal rights

of man as distinguished from his rights of property. From the

thirty-third verse of the twenty-first chapter to the fifteenth verse of

the twenty-second, the rights of property are protected. Thence to the

nineteenth verse of the twenty-third chapter is a miscellaneous group of

laws, chiefly moral, but deeply connected with the civil organisation of

the state. And thence to the end of the chapter is an earnest

exhortation from God, introduced by a clearer statement than before of

the manner in which He means to lead them, even by that mysterious Angel

in Whom "is My Name."

PART I.--THE LAW OF WORSHIP.

xx. 22-26.

It is no vain repetition that this code begins by reasserting the

supremacy of the one God. That principle underlies all the law, and must

be carried into every part of it. And it is now enforced by a new

sanction,--"Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from

heaven: ye shall not make _other gods_ with Me; gods of silver or gods

of gold ye shall not make unto you" (vers. 22, 23). The costliest

material of this low world should be utterly contemned in rivalry with

that spiritual Presence revealing Himself out of a wholly different

sphere; and in so far as they remembered Him, and the Voice which had

thrilled their nature to its core, in so far would they be free from the

desire for any carnal and materialised divinity to go before them.

Impressed with such views of God, their service of Him would be moulded

accordingly (24, 25). It is true that nothing could be too splendid for

His sanctuary, and Bezaleel was presently to be inspired, that the work

of the tabernacle might be worthy of its destination. Spirituality is

not meanness, nor is art without a consecration of its own. But it must

not intrude too closely upon the solemn act wherein the soul seeks the

pardon of the Creator. The altar should not be a proud structure, richly

sculptured and adorned, and offering in itself, if not an object of

adoration, yet a satisfying centre of attention for the worshipper. It

should be simply a heap of sods. And if they must needs go further, and

erect a more durable pile, it must still be of materials crude,

inartistic, such as the earth itself affords, of unhewn stone. A golden

casket is fit to convey the freedom of some historic city to a prince,

but the noblest offering of man to God is too humble to deserve an

ostentatious altar.

"If thou lift up a tool upon it thou hast polluted it:" it has lost its

virginal simplicity; it no longer suits a spontaneous offering of the

heart, it has become artificial, sophisticated, self-conscious,

polluted.

It is vehemently urged that these verses sanction a plurality of altars

(so that one might be of earth and another of stone), and recognise the

lawfulness of worship in other places than at a central appointed

shrine. And it is concluded that early Judaism knew nothing of the

exclusive sanctity of the tabernacle and the temple.

This argument forgets the circumstances. The Jews had been led to Horeb,

the mount of God. They were soon to wander away thence through the

wilderness. Altars had to be set up in many places, and might be of

different materials. It was an important announcement that in every

place where God would record His name He would come unto them and bless

them. But certainly the inference leans rather toward than against the

belief that it was for Him to select every place which should be sacred.

The last direction given with regard to worship is a homely one. It

commands that the altar must not be approached with steps, lest the

clothes of the priest should be disturbed and his limbs uncovered.

Already we feel that we have to reckon with the temper as well as the

letter of the precept. It is divinely unlike the frantic indecencies of

many pagan rituals. It protests against all infractions of propriety,

even the slightest, such as even now discredit many a zealous movement,

and bear fruit in many a scandal. It rebukes all misdemeanour, all

forgetfulness in look and gesture of the Sacred Presence, in every

worshipper, at every shrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Prof. Tyndall, _Belfast Address_, p. 60. What progress has

scientific unbelief made since 1874 in solving this "question of

questions for the present hour"? It has perfected the phonograph, but it

has not devised a creed.

[36] "Or _beside Me_" (R.V.) The preposition is so vague that either of

our English words may suggest quite too definite a meaning, as when

"before Me" is made to mean "in My angry eyes," or "beside Me" is taken

to hint at resentment for intrusion upon the same throne.

[37] Gury, Compend., i., secs. 607, 623.

CHAPTER XXI.

_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._

PART II.--RIGHTS OF THE PERSON.

xxi. 1-32.

The first words of God from Sinai had declared that He was Jehovah Who

brought them out of slavery. And in this remarkable code, the first

person whose rights are dealt with is the slave. We saw that a

denunciation of all slavery would have been premature, and therefore

unwise; but assuredly the germs of emancipation were already planted by

this giving of the foremost place to the rights of the least of all and

the servant of all.

As regards the Hebrew slave, the effect was to reduce his utmost bondage

to a comparatively mild apprenticeship. At the worst he should go free

in the seventh year; and if the year of jubilee intervened, it brought a

still speedier emancipation. If his debt or misconduct had involved a

family in his disgrace, they should also share his emancipation, but if

while in bondage his master had provided for his marriage with a slave,

then his family must await their own appointed period of release. It

followed that if he had contracted a degrading alliance with a foreign

slave, his freedom would inflict upon him the pang of final severance

from his dear ones. He might, indeed, escape this pain, but only by a

deliberate and humiliating act, by formally renouncing before the judges

his liberty, the birthright of his nation ("they are My servants, whom I

brought forth out of Egypt, they shall not be sold as

bondservants"--Lev. xxv. 42), and submitting to have his ear pierced, at

the doorpost of his master's house, as if, like that, his body were

become his master's property. It is uncertain, after this decisive step,

whether even the year of jubilee brought him release; and the contrary

seems to be implied in his always bearing about in his body an indelible

and degrading mark. It will be remembered that St. Paul rejoiced to

think that his choice of Christ was practically beyond recall, for the

scars on his body marked the tenacity of his decision (Gal. vi. 17). He

wrote this to Gentiles, and used the Gentile phrase for the branding of

a slave. But beyond question this Hebrew of Hebrews remembered, as he

wrote, that one of his race could incur lifelong subjection only by a

voluntary wound, endured because he loved his master, such as he had

received for love of Jesus.

When the law came to deal with assaults it was impossible to place the

slave upon quite the same level as the freeman. But Moses excelled the

legislators of Greece and Rome, by making an assault or chastisement

which killed him upon the spot as worthy of death as if a freeman had

been slain. It was only the victim who lingered that died comparatively

unavenged (20, 21). After all, chastisement was a natural right of the

master, because he owned him ("he is his money"); and it would be hard

to treat an excess of what was permissible, inflicted perhaps under

provocation which made some punishment necessary, on the same lines with

an assault that was entirely lawless. But there was this grave restraint

upon bad temper,--that the loss of any member, and even of the tooth of

a slave, involved his instant manumission. And this carried with it the

principle of moral responsibility for every hurt (26, 27).

It was not quite plain that these enactments extended to the Gentile

slave. But in accordance with the assertion that the whole spirit of the

statutes was elevating, the conclusion arrived at by the later

authorities was the generous one.

When it is added that man-stealing (upon which all our modern systems of

slavery were founded) was a capital offence, without power of

commutation for a fine (xxi. 16), it becomes clear that the advocates of

slavery appeal to Moses against the outraged conscience of humanity

without any shadow of warrant either from the letter or the spirit of

the code.

There remains to be considered a remarkable and melancholy sub-section

of the law of slavery.

In every age degraded beings have made gain of the attractions of their

daughters. With them, the law attempted nothing of moral influence. But

it protected their children, and brought pressure to bear upon the

tempter, by a series of firm provisions, as bold as the age could bear,

and much in advance of the conscience of too many among ourselves

to-day.

The seduction of any unbetrothed maiden involved marriage, or the

payment of a dowry. And thus one door to evil was firmly closed (xxii.

16).

But when a man purchased a female slave, with the intention of making

her an inferior wife, whether for himself or for his son (such only are

the purchases here dealt with, and an ordinary female slave was treated

upon the same principles as a man), she was far from being the sport of

his caprice. If indeed he repented at once, he might send her back, or

transfer her to another of her countrymen upon the same terms, but when

once they were united she was protected against his fickleness. He might

not treat her as a servant or domestic, but must, even if he married

another and probably a chief wife, continue to her all the rights and

privileges of a wife. Nor was her position a temporary one, to her

damage, as that of an ordinary slave was, to his benefit.

And if there was any failure to observe these honourable terms, she

could return with unblemished reputation to her father's home, without

forfeiture of the money which had been paid for her (xxi. 7-11).

Does any one seriously believe that a system like the African slave

trade could have existed in such a humane and genial atmosphere as these

enactments breathed? Does any one who knows the plague spot and disgrace

of our modern civilisation suppose for a moment that more could have

been attempted, in that age, for the great cause of purity? Would to God

that the spirit of these enactments were even now respected! They would

make of us, as they have made of the Hebrew nation unto this day, models

of domestic tenderness, and of the blessings in health and physical

vigour which an untainted life bestows upon communities.

By such checks upon the degradation of slavery, the Jew began to learn

the great lesson of the sanctity of manhood. The next step was to teach

him the value of life, not only in the avenging of murder, but also in

the mitigation of such revenge. The blood-feud was too old, too natural

a practice to be suppressed at once; but it was so controlled and

regulated as to become little more than a part of the machinery of

justice.

A premeditated murder was inexpiable, not to be ransomed; the murderer

must surely die. Even if he fled to the altar of God, intending to

escape thence to a city of refuge when the avenger ceased to watch, he

should be torn from that holy place: to shelter him would not be an

honour, but a desecration to the shrine (xxi. 12, 14). According to this

provision Joab and Adonijah suffered. For the slayer by accident or in

hasty quarrel, "a place whither he shall flee" would be provided, and

the vague phrase indicates the antiquity of the edict (ver. 13). This

arrangement at once respected his life, which did not merit forfeiture,

and provided a penalty for his rashness or his passion.

It is because the question in hand is the sanctity of man, that the

capital punishment of a son who strikes or curses a parent, the

vicegerent of God, and of a kidnapper, is interposed between these

provisions and minor offences against the person (15-17).

Of these latter, the first is when lingering illness results from a blow

received in a quarrel. This was not a case for the stern rule, eye for

eye and tooth for tooth,--for how could that rule be applied to it?--but

the violent man should pay for his victim's loss of time, and for

medical treatment until he was thoroughly recovered (18, 19).

But what is to be said to the general law of retribution in kind? Our

Lord has forbidden a Christian, in his own case, to exact it. But it

does not follow that it was unjust, since Christ plainly means to

instruct private persons not to exact their rights, whereas the

magistrate continues to be "a revenger to execute justice." And, as St.

Augustine argued shrewdly, "this command was not given for exciting the

fires of hatred, but to restrain them. For who would easily be satisfied

with repaying as much injury as he received? Do we not see men slightly

hurt athirst for slaughter and blood?... Upon this immoderate and unjust

vengeance, the law imposed a just limit, not that what was quenched

might be kindled, but that what was burning might not spread." (Cont.

Faust, xix. 25.)

It is also to be observed that by no other precept were the Jews more

clearly led to a morality still higher than it prescribed. Their

attention was first drawn to the fact that a compensation in money was

nowhere forbidden, as in the case of murder (Num. xxxv. 31). Then they

went on to argue that such compensation must have been intended, because

its literal observance teemed with difficulties. If an eye were injured

but not destroyed, who would undertake to inflict an equivalent hurt?

What if a blind man destroyed an eye? Would it be reasonable to quench

utterly the sight of a one-eyed man who had only destroyed one-half of

the vision of his neighbour? Should the right hand of a painter, by

which he maintains his family, be forfeited for that of a singer who

lives by his voice? Would not the cold and premeditated operation

inflict far greater mental and even physical suffering than a sudden

wound received in a moment of excitement? By all these considerations,

drawn from the very principle which underlay the precept, they learned

to relax its pressure in actual life. The law was already their

schoolmaster, to lead them beyond itself (_vide_ Kalisch _in loco_).

Lastly, there is the question of injury to the person, wrought by

cattle.

It is clearly to deepen the sense of reverence for human life, that not

only must the ox which kills a man be slain, but his flesh may not be

eaten; thus carrying further the early aphorism "at the hand of every

beast will I require ... your blood" (Gen. ix. 5). This motive, however,

does not betray the lawgiver into injustice: "the owner of the ox shall

be quit"; the loss of his beast is his sufficient penalty.

But if its evil temper has been previously observed, and he has been

warned, then his recklessness amounts to blood-guiltiness, and he must

die, or else pay whatever ransom is laid upon him. This last clause

recognises the distinction between his guilt and that of a deliberate

man-slayer, for whose crime the law distinctly prohibited a composition

(Num. xxxv. 31).

And it is expressly provided, according to the honourable position of

woman in the Hebrew state, that the penalty for a daughter's life shall

be the same as for that of a son.

As a slave was exposed to especial risk, and his position was an ignoble

one, a fixed composition was appointed, and the amount was memorable.

The ransom of a common slave, killed by the horns of the wild oxen, was

thirty pieces of silver, the goodly price that Messiah was prized at of

them (Zech. xi. 13).

PART III.--RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.

xxi. 33-xxii. 15.

The vital and quickening principle in this section is the stress it lays

upon man's responsibility for negligence, and the indirect consequences

of his deed. All sin is selfish, and all selfishness ignores the right

of others. Am I my brother's keeper? Let him guard his own property or

pay the forfeit. But this sentiment would quickly prove a disintegrating

force in the community, able to overthrow a state. It is the ignoble

negative of public spirit; patriotism, all by which nations prosper. And

this early legislation is well devised to check it in detail. If an ox

fall into a pit or cistern, from which I have removed the cover, I must

pay the value of the beast, and take the carcase for what it may be

worth. I ought to have considered the public interest (xxi. 33). If I

let my cattle stray into my neighbour's field or vineyard, there must be

no wrangling about the quality of what he has consumed: I must forfeit

an equal quantity of the best of my own field or vineyard (xxii. 5). If

a fire of my kindling burn his grain, standing or piled, I must make

restitution: I had no right to kindle it where he was brought into

hazard (xxii. 6). This is the same principle which had already

pronounced it murder to let a vicious ox go loose. And it has to do with

graver things than oxen and fires,--with the teachers of principles

rightly called incendiary, the ingenious theorists who let loose

abstract speculations pernicious when put into practice, the

well-behaved questioners of morality, and the law-abiding assailants of

the foundations which uphold law.

It is quite in the same spirit that I am accountable for what I borrow

or hire, and even for its accidental death (since for the time being it

was mine, and so should the loss be); but if I hired the owner with his

beast, it clearly continued to be in his charge (14, 15). But again, my

responsibility may not be pressed too far. If I have not borrowed

property, but consented to keep it for the owner, the risk is fairly

his, and if it be stolen, the presumption is not against my integrity,

although I may be required to clear myself on oath before the judges (7,

8). But I am accountable in such a case for cattle, because it was

certainly understood that I should watch them; and if a wild beast have

torn any, I must prove my courage and vigilance by rescuing the carcase

and producing it (10-13).

But I must not be plunged into litigation without a compensating hazard

on the other side: he whom God shall condemn shall pay double unto his

neighbour (9).

It only remains to be observed, with regard to theft, that when cattle

was recovered yet alive, the thief restored double, but when his act was

consummated by slaughtering what he had taken, then he restored a sheep

fourfold, and for an ox five oxen, because his villainy was more

high-handed. And we still retain the law which allows the blood of a

robber at night to be shed, but forbids it in the day, when help can

more easily be had.

All this is reasonable and enlightened law; founded, like all good

legislation, upon clear and satisfactory principles, and well calculated

to elevate the tone of the public feeling, to be not only so many

specific enactments, but also the germinant seeds of good.

CHAPTER XXII.

_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._

PART IV.

xxii. 16-xxiii. 19.

The Fourth section of this law within the law consists of enactments,

curiously disconnected, many of them without a penalty, varying greatly

in importance, but all of a moral nature, and connected with the

well-being of the state. It is hard to conceive how the systematic

revision of which we hear so much could have left them in the condition

in which they stand.

It is enacted that a seducer must marry the woman he has betrayed, and

if her father refuse to give her to him, then he must pay the same dower

as a bridegroom would have done (xxii. 16, 17). And presently the

sentence of death is launched against a blacker sensual crime (19). But

between the two is interposed the celebrated mandate which doomed the

sorceress to death, remarkable as the first mention of witchcraft in

Scripture, and the only passage in all the Bible where the word is in

the feminine form--a witch, or sorceress; remarkable also for a far

graver reason, which makes it necessary to linger over the subject at

some length.

SORCERY.

"Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live."--xxii. 18.

The world knows only too well what sad and shameful inferences have been

drawn from these words. Unspeakable terrors, estrangement of natural

sympathy, tortures and cruel deaths, have been inflicted on many

thousands of the most forlorn creatures upon earth (creatures who were

sustained in their sufferings by no high ardour of conviction or

fanaticism, not being martyrs but simply victims), because it was held

that Moses, in declaring that witches should not live, affirmed the

reality of witchcraft. No sooner did the argument cease to be dangerous

to old women than it became formidable to religion; for now it was urged

that, since Moses was in error about the reality of witchcraft, his

legislation could not have been inspired.

What are we to say to this?

In the first place it must be observed that the existence of a sorcerer

is one thing, and the reality of his powers is quite another. What was

most sad and shameful in the mediæval frenzy was the burning to ashes of

multitudes who made no pretensions to traffic with the invisible world,

who frequently held fast their innocence while enduring the agonies of

torture, who were only aged and ugly and alone. Upon any theory, the

prohibition of sorcery by the Pentateuch was no more answerable for

these iniquities than its other prohibitions for the lynch law of the

backwoods.

On the other hand, there were real professors of the black art: men did

pretend to hold intercourse with spirits, and extorted great sums from

their dupes in return for bringing them also into communion with

superhuman beings. These it is reasonable to call sorcerers, whether we

accept their professions or not, just as we speak of thought-readers and

of mediums without being understood to commit ourselves to the

pretensions of either one or other. In point of fact, the existence, in

this nineteenth century after Christ, of sorcerers calling themselves

mediums, is much more surprising than the existence of other sorcerers

in the time of Moses or of Saul; and it bears startling witness to the

depth in human nature of that craving for traffic with invisible powers

which the law prohibited so sternly, but the roots of which neither

religion nor education nor scepticism has been able wholly to pluck up.

Again, from the point of view which Moses occupied, it is plain that

such professors should be punished. They are virtually punished still,

whenever they obtain money under pretence of granting interviews with

the departed. If we now rely chiefly upon educated public opinion to

stamp out such impositions, that is because we have decided that a

struggle between truth and falsehood upon equal terms will be

advantageous to the former. It is a subdivision of the debate between

intolerance and free thought. Our theory works well, but not universally

well, even under modern conditions and in Christian lands. And assuredly

Moses could not proclaim freedom of opinion, among uneducated slaves,

amid the pressure of splendid and of seductive idolatries, and before

the Holy Ghost was given. To complain of Moses for proscribing false

religions would be to denounce the use of glass for seedlings because

the full-grown plant flourishes in the open air.

Now, it would have been preposterous to proscribe false religions and

yet to tolerate the sorcerer and the sorceress. For these were the

active practitioners of another worship than that of God. They might not

profess idolatry; but they offered help and guidance from sources which

Jehovah frowned upon, rival sources of defence or knowledge.

The holy people was meant to grow up under the most elevating of all

influences, reliance upon a protecting God, Who had bidden His children

to subdue the world as well as to replenish it, and of Whom one of their

own poets sang that He had put all things under the feet of man. Their

true heritage was not bounded by the strip of land which Joshua and his

followers slowly conquered; to them belonged all the resources of nature

which science, ever since, has wrested from the Philistine hands of

barbarism and ignorance. And this nobler conquest depended upon the

depth and sincerity of man's feeling that the world is well-ordered and

stable and the heritage of man, not a chaos of various and capricious

powers, where Pallas inspires Diomed to hunt Venus bleeding off the

field, or where the incantations of Canidia may disturb the orderly

movements of the skies. Who could hope to discover by inductive science

the secrets of such a world as this?

The devices of magic cut the links between cause and effect, between

studious labour and the fruits which sorcery bade men to steal rather

than to cultivate. What gambling was to commerce, that was witchcraft to

philosophy, and the mischief no more depended on the validity of its

methods than upon the soundness of the last device for breaking the bank

at Monte Carlo.

If one could actually extort their secrets from the dead, or win for

luxury and sloth a longer life than is bestowed upon temperance and

labour, he would succeed in his revolt against the God of nature. But

the revolt was the endeavour; and the sorcerer, however falsely,

professed to have succeeded; and preached the same revolt to others. In

religion he was therefore an apostate, and in the theocracy a traitor

against the King, one whose life was forfeited if it was prudent to

exact the penalty.

And when we consider the fascination wielded by such pretensions, even

in ages when the stability of nature is an axiom, the dread which false

religions all around and their terrible rituals must have inspired, the

superstitious tendencies of the people and their readiness to be misled,

we shall see ample reasons for treading out the first sparks of so

dangerous a fire.

Beyond this it is vain to pretend that the law of Moses goes. It was

right in declaring the sorcerer and the sorceress to be real and

dangerous phenomena. It never declared their pretensions to be valid

though illegitimate. And in one noteworthy passage it proclaims that a

real sign or a wonder could only proceed from God, and when it

accompanied false teaching was still a sign, though an ominous one,

implying that the Lord would prove them (Deut. xiii. 1-3). This does not

look very like an admission of the existence of rival powers, inferior

though they might be, who could interfere with the order of His world.

Sorcery in all its forms will die when men realise indeed that the world

is His, that there is no short or crooked way to the prizes which He

offers to wisdom and to labour, that these rewards are infinitely richer

and more splendid than the wildest dreams of magic, and that it is

literally true that all power, in earth as well as heaven, is committed

into the Hands which were pierced for us. In such a conception of the

universe, incantations give place to prayers, and prayer does not seek

to disturb, but to carry forward and to consummate, the orderly rule of

Love.

The denunciation of witchcraft is quite naturally followed, as we now

perceive, by the reiteration of the command that no sacrifice may be

offered to any god except Jehovah (20). Strange and hateful offerings

were an integral part of witchcraft, long before the hags of Macbeth

brewed their charm, or the child in Horace famished to yield a spell.

THE STRANGER.

xxii. 21, xxiii. 9.

Immediately after this, a ray of sunlight falls upon the sombre page.

We read an exhortation rather than a statute, which is repeated almost

literally in the next chapter, and in both is supported by a beautiful

and touching reason. "A stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shall ye

oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." "A stranger

shall ye not oppress, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye

were strangers in the land of Egypt" (xxii. 21, xxiii. 9).

The "stranger" of these verses is probably the settler among them, as

distinguished from the traveller passing through the land. His want of

friends and ignorance of their social order would place him at a

disadvantage, of which they are forbidden to avail themselves, either by

legal process (for the first passage is connected with jurisprudence),

or in the affairs of common life. But the spirit of the commandment

could not fail to influence their treatment of all foreigners; and

simple and commonplace though it appear to us, it would have startled

many of the wisest and greatest peoples of antiquity, and would have

fallen as strangely upon the ears of the Greeks of Pericles, as of the

modern Bedouin, with whom Israel had kinship. A foreigner, as such, was

a foe: to wrong him was a paradox, because he had no rights: kinship, or

else alliance or treaty was required to entitle the weaker to any better

treatment than it suited the stronger to allow.

Yet we find a precept reiterated in this Jewish code which involves, in

its inevitable though slow development, the abolition of negro slavery,

the respect by powerful and civilised nations of the rights of

indigenous tribes, the most boundless advance of philanthropy, through

the most generous recognition of the fraternity of man.

However sternly the sword of Joshua might fall, it struck not at the

foreigner, as such, but at those tribes, guilty and therefore accursed

of God, the cup of whose iniquity was full. And yet there was enough of

carnage to prove that so gracious a commandment as this could not have

risen spontaneously in the heart of early Judaism. Does it seem to be

made more natural, by any proposed shifting of the date?

The reason of the precept is beautifully human. It rests upon no

abstract basis of common rights, nor prudential consideration of mutual

advantage.

In our time it is sometimes proposed to build all morality upon such

foundations; and strange consequences have already been deduced in cases

where the proposed sanction has not seemed to apply. But, in fact, no

advance in virtue has ever been traced to self-interest, although,

after the advance took place, self-interest has always found its account

in it. A progressive community is made of good men, and the motive to

which Moses appeals is compassion fed by memory: "For ye were strangers

in the land of Egypt" (xxii. 21); "For ye know the heart of a stranger,

seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (xxiii. 9).

The point is not that they may again be carried into captivity: it is

that they have felt its bitterness, and ought to recoil from inflicting

what they writhed under.

Now, this appeal is a master-stroke of wisdom. Much cruelty, and almost

all the cruelty of the young, springs from ignorance, and that slowness

of the imagination which cannot realise that the pains of others are

like our own. Feeling them to be so, the charities of the poor toward

one another frequently rise almost to sublimity. And thus, when

suffering does not ulcerate the heart and make it savage, it is the most

softening of all influences. In one of the most threadbare lines in the

classics, the queen of Carthage boasts that

"I, not ignorant of woe,

To pity the distressful know."

And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the natural development of our

Saviour's human powers, is that which declares that "In that He Himself

hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are

tempted" (Heb. ii. 18).

To this principle, then, Moses appeals, and by the appeal he educates

the heart. He bids the people reflect on their own cruel hardships, on

the hateful character of their tyrants, on their own greater hatefulness

if they follow the vile example, after such bitter experience of its

character. He does not yet rise to the grand level of the New Testament

morality, Do all to thy neighbour which it is not servile and dependent

to will that he should do for thee. But he attains to the level of that

precept of Confucius and Zoroaster which has been so unworthily compared

with it: Do not unto thy neighbour what thou wouldest not that he should

do to thee--a precept which mere indifference obeys. Nay, he excels it;

for the mental and spiritual attitude of one who respects his helpless

neighbour because he so much resembles himself, will surely not be

content without relieving the griefs that have so closely touched him.

Thus again the legislation of Moses looks beyond itself.

Now, if the Jew should be merciful because he had himself known

calamity, what implicit confidence may we repose upon the Man of sorrows

and acquainted with grief?

In the same spirit they are warned against afflicting the widow or the

orphan. And the threat which is added joins hand with the exhortation

which preceded. They should not oppress the stranger, because they had

been strangers and oppressed. Now the argument advances. The same God

Who then heard their cry will hear the cry of the forlorn, and avenge

them, according to the judicial fate which He had just announced, in

kind, by bringing their own wives to widowhood and their children to

orphanage (xxii. 22-4).

To their brethren they should not lend money upon usury; but loans are

no more recommended than afterwards by Solomon: the words are "if thou

lend" (ver. 25). And if the raiment of the borrower were taken for a

pledge, it must be returned for him to use at night, or else God will

hear his cry, because, it is added very significantly and briefly, "I

am gracious" (ver. 27). It is the most exalting of all motives: Be

merciful, for I am merciful: ye shall be the children of your Father.

Again is to be observed the influence reaching beyond the

prescription--the motive which cannot be felt without many other and

larger consequences than the restoration of pledges at sunset.

How comes this precept to be followed by the words, "Thou shalt not

curse God nor blaspheme a ruler" (ver. 28)? and is not this again

somewhat strangely followed by the order not to delay to offer the

firstfruits of the soil, to consecrate the firstborn son, and to devote

the firstborn of cattle at the same age when a son ought to be

circumcised? (vers. 29, 30).

If any link can be discovered, it is in the sense of communion with God,

suggested by the recent appeal to His character as a motive that should

weigh with man. Therefore they must not blaspheme Him, either directly

or through His agents, nor tardily yield Him what He claims. Therefore

it is added, "Ye shall be holy men unto Me," and from the sense of

dignity which religion thus inspires, a homely corollary is deduced--"Ye

shall not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field" (ver. 31).

The bondmen of Egypt must learn a high-minded self-respect.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._

xxiii. 1-19.

The twenty-third chapter begins with a series of commands bearing upon

the course of justice; but among these there is interjected very

curiously a command to bring back the stray ox or ass of an enemy, and

to help under a burden the over-weighted ass of him that hateth thee,

even "if thou wouldest forbear to help him." It is just possible that

the lawgiver, urging justice in the bearing of testimony, interrupts

himself to speak of a very different manner in which the action may be

warped by prejudice, but in which (unlike the other) it is lawful to

show not only impartiality but kindness. The help of the cattle of one's

enemy shows that in the bearing of testimony we should not merely

abstain from downright wrong. And it is a fine example of the spirit of

the New Testament, in the Old.

"Thou shalt not take up a false report" (ver. 1) is a precept which

reaches far. How many heedless whispers, conjectures lightly spoken

because they were amusing, yet influencing the course of lives, and

inferences uncharitably drawn, would have been still-born if this had

been remembered!

But when the scandal is already abroad, the temptation to aid its

progress is still greater. Therefore it is added, "Put not thine hand

with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness." Whatever be the menace or

the bribe, however the course of opinion seem to be decided, and the

assent of an individual to be harmless because the result is sure, or

blameless because the responsibility lies elsewhere, still each man is a

unit, not an "item," and must act for himself, as hereafter he must give

account. Hence it results inevitably that "Thou shalt not follow a

multitude to do evil, neither shalt thou speak in a cause to turn aside

after a multitude to wrest judgment" (ver. 2). The blind impulses of a

multitude are often as misleading as the solicitations of the bad, and

to aspiring temperaments much more seductive. There is indeed a strange

magnetism in the voice of the public. Every orator knows that a great

assembly acts upon the speaker as really as he acts upon it: its

emotions are like a rush of waters to sweep him away, beyond his

intentions or his ordinary powers. Yet he is the strongest individual

there; no other has at all the same opportunity for self-assertion, and

therefore its power over others must be more complete than over him.

This is one reason for the institution of public worship. Men neglect

the house of God because they can pray as well at home, and encourage

wanton subdivisions of the Church because they think there is no very

palpable difference between competing denominations, or even because

competition may be as useful in religion as in trade, as if our

competition with the world and the devil for souls would not

sufficiently animate us, without competing with one another. But in

acting thus they weaken the effect for good of one of the mightiest

influences which work evil among us, the influence of association. Men

are always persuading themselves that they need not be better than their

neighbours, nor ashamed of doing what every one does. And yet no voice

joins in a cry without deepening it: every one who rushes with a crowd

makes its impulse more difficult to stem; his individuality is not lost

by its partnership with a thousand more; and he is accountable for what

he contributes to the result. He has parted with his self-control, but

not with the inner forces which he ought to have controlled.

Against this dangerous influence of the world, Christ has set the

contagion of godliness within His Church, and every avoidable

subdivision enfeebles this salutary counter-influence.

Moses warns us, therefore, of the danger of being drawn away by a

multitude to do evil; but he is thinking especially of the peril of

being tempted to "speak" amiss. Who does not know it? From the statesman

who outruns his convictions rather than break with his party, and who

cannot, amid deafening cheers, any longer hear his conscience speak,

down to the humblest who fails to confess Christ before hostile men, and

therefore by-and-by denies Him, there is not one whose speech and

silence have never been in danger of being set to the sympathies of his

own little public like a song to music.

That Moses was really thinking of this tendency to court popularity, is

plain from the next clause--"Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his

cause" (ver. 3).

It is an admirable caution. Men there are who would scorn the opposite

injustice, and from whom no rich man could buy a wrongful decision with

gold or favour, but who are habitually unjust, because they load the

other scale. The beam ought to hang straight. When justice is concerned,

the poor man's friend is almost as contemptible as his foe, and he has

taken a bribe, if not in the mean enjoyment of democratic popularity,

yet in his own pride--the fancy that he has done a magnanimous act, the

attitude in which he poses.

As in law so in literature. There once was a tendency to describe

magnanimous persons of quality, and repulsive clodhoppers and villagers.

Times have changed, and now we think it much more ingenious and

high-toned to be quite as partial and disingenuous, reversing the cases.

Neither is true, and therefore neither is artistic. No class in society

is deficient in noble qualities, or in base ones. Nor is the man of

letters at all more independent, who flatters the democracy in a

democratic age, than he who flattered the aristocracy when they had all

the prizes to bestow.

Other precepts forbid bribery, command that the soil shall rest in the

seventh year, when its spontaneous produce shall be for the poor, and

further recognise and consecrate relaxation, by instituting (or more

probably adopting into the code) the three feasts of Passover,

Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The section closes with the words "Thou

shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk" (ver. 19). Upon this clause

much ingenuity has been expended. It makes occult reference to some

superstitious rite. It is the name for some unduly stimulating compound.

But when we remember that, just before, the sabbatical fruit which the

poor left ungleaned was expressly reserved for the beasts of the field,

that men were bidden to help the overladen ass of their enemies, and

that care is taken elsewhere that the ox should not be muzzled when

treading out grain, that the birdnester should not take the dam with the

young, and that neither cow nor ewe should be slain on the same day with

its young (Deut. xxv. 4, xxii. 6; Lev. xxii. 28), the simplest meaning

seems also the most probable. Men, who have been taught respect for

their fellow-men, are also to learn a fine sensibility even in respect

to the inferior animals. Throughout all this code there is an exquisite

tendency to form a considerate, humane, delicate and high-minded nation.

It remained, to stamp upon the human conscience a deep sense of

responsibility.

PART V.--ITS SANCTIONS.

xxiii. 20-33.

This summary of Judaism being now complete, the people have to learn

what mighty issues are at stake upon their obedience. And the transition

is very striking from the simplest duty to the loftiest privilege: "Thou

shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. Behold, I send an Angel

before thee.... Beware of him: for My Name is in him" (19-21).

We have now to ask how much this mysterious phrase involves; who was the

Angel of whom it speaks?

The question is not, How much did Israel at that moment comprehend? For

we are distinctly told that prophets were conscious of speaking more

than they understood, and searched diligently but in vain what the

spirit that was in them did signify (1 Peter i. 11).

It would, in fact, be absurd to seek the New Testament doctrine of the

Logos full-blown in the Pentateuch. But it is mere prejudice,

unphilosophical and presumptuous, to shut one's eyes against any

evidence which may be forthcoming that the earliest books of Scripture

were tending towards the last conclusions of theology; that the slender

overture to the Divine oratorio indicates already the same theme which

thunders from all the chorus at the close.

It is scarcely necessary to refute the position that a mere "messenger"

is intended, because angels have not yet "appeared as personal agents

separate from God." Kalisch himself has amply refuted his own theory.

For, he says, "we are compelled ... to refer it to Moses and his

successor Joshua" (_in loco_). So then He Who will not forgive their

transgressions is he who prayed that if God would not pardon them, his

own name might be blotted from the book of life. He, to whom afterwards

God said "I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee" (xxxiii.

19), is the same of Whom God said "My name is in Him." This position

needs no examination; but the perplexities of those who reject the

deeper interpretation is a strong confirmation of its soundness. We have

still to choose between the promise of a created angel, and some

manifestation and interposition of God, distinguished from Jehovah and

yet one with Him. This latter view is an evident preparation for clearer

knowledge yet to come. It is enough to stamp the dispensation which puts

it forth as but provisional, and therefore bears witness to that other

dispensation which has the key to it. And it is exactly what a Christian

would expect to find somewhere in this summary of the law.

What, then, do we read elsewhere about the Angel of Jehovah? What do we

find, especially, in these early books?

A difficulty has to be met at the very outset. The issue would be

decided offhand, if it could be shown that the Angel of this verse is

the same who is offered, as a poor substitute for their Divine

protector, in the thirty-third chapter. But no contrast can be clearer

than between the encouraging promise before us, and the sharp menace

which then plunged Israel into mourning. Here is an Angel who must not

be provoked, who will not pardon you, because "My Name is in Him." There

is an angel who will be sent because God will not go up, ... lest He

consume them (vers. 2, 3). He is not the Angel of God's presence, but of

His absence. When the intercession of Moses won from God a reversal of

the sentence, He then said "My Presence (My Face) shall go with thee,

and I will give thee rest,"[38] but Moses answers, not yet reassured,

"If Thy Presence (Thy Face) go not up with us, carry us not up hence.

For wherein shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight?...

Is it not that Thou goest with us? And the Lord said, I will do this

thing also that thou hast spoken" (14-17).

Moreover, Isaiah, speaking of this time, says that "In all their

affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence (His Face)

saved them" (Isa. lxiii. 9).

Thus we find that some angel is to be sent because God will not go up:

that thereupon the nation mourns, although in this twenty-third chapter

they had received as a gladdening promise, the assurance of an Angel

escort in Whom is the name of God; that in response to prayer God

promises that His Face shall accompany them, so that it may be known

that He Himself goes with them; and finally that His Face in Exodus is

the Angel of His Face in Isaiah. The prophet at least had no doubt

whether the gracious promise in the twenty-third chapter answered, in

the thirty-third chapter, to the third verse or the fourteenth--to the

menace, or to the restored favour.

This difficulty being now converted into an evidence, we turn back to

examine other passages.

When the Angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar, "she called the name of

Jehovah that spake unto her El Roi" (Gen. xvi. 11, 13). When God tempted

Abraham, "the Angel of Jehovah called unto him out of heaven, and said,

... I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son

... from Me" (Gen. xxii. 11, 12). When a man wrestled with Jacob, he

thereupon claimed to have seen God face to face, and called the place

Peniel, the Face (Presence) of God (Gen. xxxii. 4, 30). But Hosea tells

us that "He had power with God: yea, he had power over the Angel, ...

and there He spake with us, even Jehovah, the God of hosts" (Hos. xii.

3, 5). Even earlier, in his exile, the Angel of the Lord had appeared

unto him and said, "I am the God of Bethel ... where thou vowedst a vow

unto Me." But the vow was distinctly made to God Himself: "I will surely

give the tenth to Thee" (xxxi. 11, 13; xxviii. 20, 22). Is it any wonder

that when this patriarch blessed Joseph, he said, "The God before whom

my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which hath fed me all my

life long unto this day, the Angel which hath redeemed me from all

evil, (may He) bless the lads" (xlviii. 15, 16)?

In Exodus iii. 2 the Angel of the Lord appeared out of the bush. But

presently He changes into Jehovah Himself, and announces Himself to be

Jehovah the God of their fathers (iii. 2, 4, 15). In Exodus xiii. 21

Jehovah went before Israel, but the next chapter tells how "the Angel of

the Lord which went before Israel removed and went behind" (xiv. 19);

while Numbers (xx. 16) says expressly that "He sent an Angel and brought

us out of Egypt."

By the comparison of these and many later passages (which is nothing but

the scientific process of induction, leaning not on the weight of any

single verse, but on the drift and tendency of all the phenomena) we

learn that God was already revealing Himself through a Medium, a

distinct personality whom He could send, yet not so distinct but that

His name was in Him, and He Himself was the Author of what He did.

If Israel obeyed Him, He would bring them into the promised land (ver.

23); and if there they continued unseduced by false worships, He would

bless their provisions, their bodily frame, their children; He would

bring terror and a hornet against their foes; He would clear the land

before them as fast as their population could enjoy it; He would extend

their boundaries yet farther, from the Red Sea, where Solomon held Ezion

Geber (1 Kings ix. 26), to the Mediterranean, and from the desert where

they stood to the Euphrates, where Solomon actually possessed Palmyra

and Thiphsah (2 Chron. viii. 4; 1 Kings iv. 24).

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Even if the rendering were accepted, "Must My Presence (My Face) go

with thee?" (Can I not be trusted without a direct Presence?) the

argument would not be affected, because Moses presses for the favour and

obtains it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_THE COVENANT RATIFIED. THE VISION OF GOD._

xxiv.

The opening words of this chapter ("Come up unto the Lord") imply,

without explicitly asserting, that Moses was first sent down to convey

to Israel the laws which had just been enacted.

This code they unanimously accepted, and he wrote it down. It is a

memorable statement, recording the origin of the first portion of Holy

Scripture that ever existed as such, whatever earlier writings may now

or afterwards have been incorporated in the Pentateuch. He then built an

altar for God, and twelve pillars for the tribes, and sacrificed

burnt-offerings and peace-offerings unto the Lord. Sin-offerings, it

will be observed, were not yet instituted; and neither was the

priesthood, so that young men slew the offerings. Half of the blood was

poured upon the altar, because God had perfected His share in the

covenant. The remainder was not used until the law had been read aloud,

and the people had answered with one voice, "All that the Lord hath

commanded will we do, and will be obedient." Thereupon they too were

sprinkled with the blood, and the solemn words were spoken, "Behold the

blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all

these words." The people were now finally bound: no later covenant of

the same kind will be found in the Old Testament.

And now the principle began to work which was afterwards embodied in the

priesthood. That principle, stated broadly, was exclusion from the

presence of God, relieved and made hopeful by the admission of

representatives. The people were still forbidden to approach, under pain

of death. But Moses and Aaron were no longer the only ones to cross the

appointed boundaries. With them came the two sons of Aaron, (afterwards,

despite their privilege, to meet a dreadful doom,) and also seventy

representatives of all the newly covenanted people. Joshua, too, as the

servant of Moses, was free to come, although unspecified in the summons

(vers. 1, 13).

"They saw the God of Israel," and under His feet the blueness of the sky

like intense sapphire. And they were secure: they beheld God, and ate

and drank.

But in privilege itself there are degrees: Moses was called up still

higher, and left Aaron and Hur to govern the people while he communed

with his God. For six days the nation saw the flanks of the mountain

swathed in cloud, and its summit crowned with the glory of Jehovah like

devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud, and during forty days they

knew not what had become of him. Was it time lost? Say rather that all

time is wasted except what is spent in communion, direct or indirect,

with the Eternal.

The narrative is at once simple and sublime. We are sometimes told that

other religions besides our own rely for sanction upon their

supernatural origin. "Zarathustra, Sâkya-Mooni and Mahomed pass among

their followers for envoys of the Godhead; and in the estimation of the

Brahmin the Vedas and the laws of Manou are holy, divine books" (Kuenen,

_Religion of Israel_, i. 6). This is true. But there is a wide

difference between nations which assert that God privately appeared to

their teachers, and a nation which asserts that God appeared to the

public. It is not upon the word of Moses that Israel is said to have

believed; and even those who reject the narrative are not entitled to

confound it with narratives utterly dissimilar. There is not to be found

anywhere a parallel for this majestic story.

But what are we to think of the assertion that God was seen to stand

upon a burning mountain?

He it is Whom no man hath seen or can see, and in His presence the

seraphim veil their faces.

It will not suffice to answer that Moses "endured as seeing Him that is

invisible" (Heb. xi. 27), for the paraphrase is many centuries later,

and hostile critics will rule it out of court as an after-thought. At

least, however, it proves that the problem was faced long ago, and tells

us what solution satisfied the early Church.

With this clue before us, we ask what notion did the narrative really

convey to its ancient readers? If our defence is to be thoroughly

satisfactory, it must show an escape from heretical and carnal notions

of deity, not only for ourselves, but also for careful readers from the

very first.

Now it is certain that no such reader could for one moment think of a

manifestation thorough, exhaustive, such as the eye receives of colour

and of form. Because the effect produced is not satisfaction, but

desire. Each new vision deepens the sense of the unseen. Thus we read

first that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders, saw

God, from which revelation the people felt and knew themselves to be

excluded. And yet the multitude also had a vision according to its power

to see; and indeed it was more satisfying to them than was the most

profound insight enjoyed by Moses. To see God is to sail to the horizon:

when you arrive, the horizon is as far in front as ever; but you have

gained a new consciousness of infinitude. "The appearance of the glory

of the Lord was seen like devouring fire in the eyes of the children of

Israel" (ver. 17). But Moses was aware of a glory far greater and more

spiritual than any material splendour. When theophanies had done their

utmost, his longing was still unslaked, and he cried out, "Show me, I

pray Thee, Thy glory" (xxxiii. 18). To his consciousness that glory was

still veiled, which the multitude sufficiently beheld in the flaming

mountain. And the answer which he received ought to put the question at

rest for ever, since, along with the promise "All My goodness shall pass

before thee," came the assertion "Thou shalt not see My face, for no man

shall see Me and live."

So, then, it is not our modern theology, but this noble book of Exodus

itself, which tells us that Moses did not and could not adequately see

God, however great and sacred the vision which he beheld. From this book

we learn that, side by side with the most intimate communion and the

clearest possible unveiling of God, grew up the profound consciousness

that only some attributes and not the essence of deity had been

displayed.

It is very instructive also to observe the steps by which Moses is led

upward. From the burning bush to the fiery cloud, and thence to the

blazing mountain, there was an ever-deepening lesson of majesty and awe.

But in answer to the prayer that he might really see the very glory of

his Lord, his mind is led away upon entirely another pathway: it is "All

My goodness" which is now to "pass before" him, and the proclamation is

of "a God full of compassion and gracious," yet retaining His moral

firmness, so that He "will by no means clear the guilty."

What can cloud and fire avail, toward the manifesting of a God Whose

essence is His love? It is from the Old Testament narrative that the New

Testament inferred that Moses endured as seeing indeed, yet as seeing

Him Who is inevitably and for ever invisible to eyes of flesh: he

learned most, not when he beheld some form of awe, standing on a paved

work of sapphire stone and as it were the very heaven for clearness, but

when hidden in a cleft of the rock and covered by the hand of God while

He passed by.

On one hand the people saw the glory of God: on the other hand it was

the best lesson taught by a far closer access, still to pray and yearn

to see that glory. The seventy beheld the God of Israel: for their

leader was reserved the more exalting knowledge, that beyond all vision

is the mystic overshadowing of the Divine, and a voice which says "No

man shall see Me and live." The difference in heart is well typified in

this difference in their conduct, that they saw God and ate and drank,

but he, for forty days, ate not. Satisfaction and assurance are a poor

ideal compared with rapt aspiration and desire.

Thus we see that no conflict exists between this declaration and our

belief in the spirituality of God.

We have still to ask what is the real force of the assertion that God

was in some lesser sense seen of Israel, and again, more especially, of

its leaders.

What do we mean even by saying that we see each other?--that, observing

keenly, we see upon one face cunning, upon another sorrow, upon a third

the peace of God? Are not these emotions immaterial and invisible as the

essence of God Himself? Nay, so invisible is the reality within each

bosom, that some day all that eye hath seen shall fall away from us, and

yet the true man shall remain intact.

Man has never seen more than a hint, an outcome, a partial

self-revelation or self-betrayal of his fellow-man.

"Yes, in the sea of life in-isled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live _alone_.

* * * * *

God bade betwixt 'our' shores to be

The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea."

And yet, incredible as the paradox would seem, if it were not too common

to be strange, the play of muscles and rush of blood, visible through

the skin, do reveal the most spiritual and immaterial changes. Even so

the heavens declare that very glory of God which baffled the undimmed

eyes of Moses. So it was, also, that when rended rocks and burning skies

revealed a more immanent action of Him Who moves through all nature

always, when convulsions hitherto undreamed of by those dwellers in

Egyptian plains overwhelmed them with a new sense of their own smallness

and a supreme Presence, God was manifested there.

Not unlike this is the explanation of St. Augustine, "We need not be

surprised that God, invisible as He is, appeared visibly to the

patriarchs. For, as the sound which communicates the thought conceived

in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so the form by

which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible, was not God

Himself. Nevertheless it was He Himself Who was seen under that form, as

the thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice; and the

patriarchs recognised that, although the bodily form was not God, they

saw the invisible God. For, though Moses was conversing with God, yet he

said, 'If I have found grace in Thy sight, show me Thyself'" (_De Civ.

Dei_, x. 13). And again: "He knew that he saw corporeally, but he sought

the true vision of God spiritually" (_De Trin._, ii. 27).

It has still to be added that His manifestation is exactly suited to the

stage now reached in the education of Israel. Their fathers had already

"seen God" in the likeness of man: Abraham had entertained Him; Jacob

had wrestled with Him. And so Joshua before Ai, and Manoah by the rock

at Zorah, and Ezekiel by the river Chebar, should see the likeness of a

man. We who believe the doctrine of a real Incarnation can well perceive

that in these passing and mysterious glimpses God was not only revealing

Himself in the way which would best prepare humanity for His future

coming in actual manhood, but also in the way by which, meanwhile, the

truest and deepest light could be thrown upon His nature, a nature which

could hereafter perfectly manifest itself in flesh. Why, then, do not

the records of the Exodus hint at a human likeness? Why did they "behold

no similitude"? Clearly because the masses of Israel were utterly

unprepared to receive rightly such a vision. To them the likeness of

man would have meant no more than the likeness of a flying eagle or a

calf. Idolatry would have followed, but no sense of sympathy, no

consciousness of the grandeur and responsibility of being made in the

likeness of God. Anthropomorphism is a heresy, although the Incarnation

is the crowning doctrine of the faith.

But it is hard to see why the human likeness of God should exist in

Genesis and Joshua, but not in the history of the Exodus, if that story

be a post-Exilian forgery.

This is not all. The revelations of God in the desert were connected

with threats and prohibitions: the law was given by Moses; grace and

truth came by Jesus Christ. And with the different tone of the message a

different aspect of the speaker was to be expected. From the blazing

crags of Sinai, fenced around, the voice of a trumpet waxing louder and

louder, said "Thou shalt not!" On the green hill by the Galilæan lake

Jesus sat down, and His disciples came unto Him, and He opened His mouth

and said "Blessed."

Now, the conscience of every sinner knows that the God of the

commandments is dreadful. It is of Him, not of hell, that Isaiah said

"The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling hath surprised the godless

ones. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us

shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isa. xxxiii. 14).

For him who rejects the light yoke of the Lord of Love, the fires of

Sinai are still the truest revelation of deity; and we must not deny

Sinai because we know Bethlehem. We must choose between the two.

CHAPTER XXV.

_THE SHRINE AND ITS FURNITURE._

xxv. 1-40.

The first direction given to Moses on the mountain is to prepare for the

making of a tabernacle wherein God may dwell with man. For this he must

invite offerings of various kinds, metals and gems, skins and fabrics,

oil and spices; and the humblest man whose heart is willing may

contribute toward an abode for Him Whom the heaven of heavens cannot

contain.

Strange indeed is the contrast between the mountain burning up to

heaven, and the lowly structure of the wood of the desert, which was now

to be erected by subscription.

And yet the change marks not a lower conception of deity, but an

advance, just as the quiet and serene communion of a saint with God is

loftier than the most agitating experience of the convert.

This is the first announcement of a fixed abiding presence of God in the

midst of men, and it is therefore the precursor of much. St. John

certainly alluded to this earliest dwelling of God on earth when he

wrote, "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us" (John i. 14).

A little later it was said, "Ye also are builded together for an

habitation of God" (Eph. ii. 22); and again the very words used at first

of the tabernacle are applied to faithful souls: "We are a temple of

the living God, as God said, I will dwell in them and walk in them" (2

Cor. vi. 16; Lev. xxvi. 11). For God dwelt on earth in the Messiah

hidden by the veil, that is to say His flesh (Heb. x. 20), and also in

the hearts of all the faithful. And a yet fuller communion is to come,

of which the tabernacle in the wilderness was a type, even the descent

of the Holy City, when the true tabernacle of God shall be with men, and

He shall tabernacle with them (Rev. xxi. 3).

It may seem strange that after the commandment "Let them make Me a

sanctuary" the whole chapter is devoted to instructions, not for the

tabernacle but for its furniture. But indeed the four articles

enumerated in this chapter present a wonderfully graphic picture of the

nature and terms of the intercourse of God with man. On one side is His

revelation of righteousness, but righteousness propitiated and become

gracious, and this is symbolised by the ark of the testimony and the

mercy-seat. On the other side the consecration both of secular and

sacred life is typified by the table with bread and wine, and by the

golden candlestick. Except thus, no tabernacle could have been the

dwelling of the Lord, nor ever shall be.

And this is the true reason why the altar of incense is not even

mentioned until a later chapter (xxx.). We do homage to God because He

is present: it is rather the consequence than the condition of His abode

with us.

The first step towards the preparation of a shrine for God on earth is

the enshrining of His will: Moses should therefore make first of all an

ark, wherein to treasure up "the testimony which I shall give thee," the

two tables of the law (xxv. 16). In it were also the pot of manna and

Aaron's rod which budded (Heb. ix. 4), and beside it was laid the whole

book of the law, for a testimony, alas! against them (Deut. xxxi. 26).

Thus the ark was to treasure up the expression of the will of God, and

the relics which told by what mercies and deliverances He claimed

obedience. It was a precious thing, but not the most precious, as we

shall presently learn; and therefore it was not made of pure gold, but

overlaid with it. That it might be reverently carried, four rings were

cast and fastened to it at the lower corners, and in these four staves,

also overlaid with gold, were permanently inserted.

The next article mentioned is the most important of all.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the mercy-seat was a mere

lid, an ordinary portion of the ark itself. It was made of a different

and more costly material, of pure gold, with which the ark was only

overlaid. There is separate mention that Bezaleel "made the ark, ... and

he made the mercy-seat" (xxxvii. 1, 6), and the special presence of God

in the Most Holy Place is connected much more intimately with the

mercy-seat than with the remainder of the structure. Thus He promises to

"appear in the cloud above the mercy-seat" (Lev. xvi. 2). And when it is

written that "Moses heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the

mercy-seat which is upon the ark of the testimony" (Num. vii. 89), it

would have been more natural to say directly "from above the ark" unless

some stress were to be laid upon the interposing slab of gold. In

reality no distinction could be sharper than between the ark and its

cover, from whence to hear the voice of God. And so thoroughly did all

the symbolism of the Most Holy Place gather around this supreme object,

that in one place it is actually called "the house of the mercy-seat" (1

Chron. xxviii. 11).

Let us, then, put ourselves into the place of an ancient worshipper.

Excluded though he is from the Holy Place, and conscious that even the

priests are shut out from the inner shrine, yet the high priest who

enters is his brother: he goes on his behalf: the barrier is a curtain,

not a wall.

But while the Israelite mused upon what was beyond, the ark, as we have

seen, suggests the depth of his obligation; for there is the rod of his

deliverance and the bread from heaven which fed him; and there also are

the commandments which he ought to have kept. And his conscience tells

him of ingratitude, and a broken covenant; by the law is the knowledge

of sin.

It is therefore a sinister and menacing thought that immediately above

this ark of the violated covenant burns the visible manifestation of

God, his injured Benefactor.

And hence arises the golden value of that which interposes, beneath

which the accusing law is buried, by means of which God "hides His face

from our sins."

The worshipper knows this cover to be provided by a separate ordinance

of God, after the ark and its contents had been arranged for, and finds

in it a vivid concrete representation of the idea "Thou hast cast all my

sins behind Thy back" (Isa. xxxviii. 17). That this was its true

intention becomes more evident when we ascertain exactly the meaning of

the term which we have, not too precisely, rendered "mercy-seat."

The word "seat" has no part in the original; and we are not to think of

God as reposing on it, but as revealing Himself above. The erroneous

notion has probably transferred itself to the type from the heavenly

antitype, which is "the throne of grace," but it has no countenance

either in the Greek or the Hebrew name of the Mosaic institution. Nor is

the notion expressed that of gratuitous and unbought "mercy." When

Jehovah showeth mercy unto thousands, the word is different. It is true

that the root means "to cover," and is once employed in Scripture in

that sense (Gen. vi. 14); but its ethical use is generally connected

with sacrifice; and when we read of a "sin-offering for _atonement_," of

the half-shekel being an "_atonement_-money," and of "the day of

_atonement_," the word is a simple and very similar development from the

same root with this which we render _mercy-seat_ (Exod. xxx. 10, 16;

Lev. xxiii. 27, etc.).

The Greek word is found twice in the New Testament: once when the

cherubim of glory overshadow the _mercy-seat_, and again when God hath

set forth Christ to be a _propitiation_ (Heb. ix. 5; Rom. iii. 25). The

mercy-seat is therefore to be thought of in connection with sin, but sin

expiated and thus covered and put away.

We know mysteries which the Israelite could not guess of the means by

which this was brought to pass. But as he watched the high priest

disappearing into that awful solitude, with God, as he listened to the

chime of bells, swung by his movements, and announcing that still he

lived, two conditions stood out broadly before his mind. One was the

bringing in of incense: "Thou shalt bring a censer full of burning coals

of fire from before the altar, that the cloud of the incense may cover

the mercy-seat" (Lev. xvi. 13). Now, the connection between prayer and

incense was quite familiar to the Jew; and he could not but understand

that the blessing of atonement was to be sought and won by intense and

burning supplication. And the other was that invariable demand, the

offering of a victim's blood. All the sacrifices of Judaism culminated

in the great act when the high priest, standing in the most holy and the

most occult spot in all the world, sprinkled "blood upon the mercy-seat

eastwards, and before the mercy-seat sprinkled of the blood with his

finger seven times" (Lev. xvi. 14).

Thus the crowning height of the Jewish ritual was attained when the

blood of the great national sacrifice was offered not only before God,

but, with special reference to the covering up of the broken and

accusing law, before the mercy-seat.

No wonder that on either side of it, and moulded of the same mass of

metal, were the cherubim in an attitude of adoration, their outspread

wings covering it, their faces bent, not only as bowing in reverence

before the Divine presence, but, as we expressly read, "toward the

mercy-seat shall the faces of the cherubim be." For the meaning of this

great symbol was among the things which "the angels desire to look

into."

We now understand how much was gained when God said "There will I meet

thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat" (ver. 22).

It was an assurance, not only of the love which desires obedience, but

of the mercy which passes over failure.[39]

Thus far, there has been symbolised the mind of God, His righteousness

and His grace.

The next articles have to do with man, his homage to God and his witness

for Him.

There is first the table of the shewbread (vers. 23-30), overlaid with

pure gold, surrounded, like the ark, with "a crown" or moulding of gold,

for ornament and the greater security of the loaves, and strengthened by

a border of pure gold carried around the base, which was also ornamented

with a crown, or moulding. Close to this border were rings for staves,

like those by which the ark was borne. The table was furnished with

dishes upon which, every Sabbath day, new shewbread might be conveyed

into the tabernacle, and the old might be removed for the priests to

eat. There were spoons also, by which to place frankincense upon each

pile of bread; and "flagons and bowls to pour out withal." What was thus

to be poured we do not read, but there is no doubt that it was wine,

second only to bread as a requisite of Jewish life, and forming, like

the frankincense, a link between this weekly presentation and the

meal-offerings. But all these were subordinate to the twelve loaves, one

for each tribe, which were laid in two piles upon the table. It is clear

that their presentation was the essence of the rite, and not their

consumption by the priests, which was possibly little more than a

safeguard against irreverent treatment. For the word shewbread is

literally bread of the face or presence, which word is used of the

presence of God, in the famous prayer "If Thy presence go not with me,

carry us not up hence" (xxxiii. 15). And of whom, other than God, can it

here be reasonably understood? Now Jacob, long before, had vowed "Of all

that Thou givest me, I will surely give the tenth to Thee" (Gen.

xxviii. 22). And it was an edifying ordinance that a regular offering

should be made to God of the staple necessaries of existence, as a

confession that all came from Him, and an appeal, clearly expressed by

covering it with frankincense, which typified prayer (Lev. xxiv. 7) that

He would continue to supply their need.

Nor is it overstrained to add, that when this bread was given to their

priestly representatives to eat, with all reverence and in a holy place,

God responded, and gave back to His people that which represented the

necessary maintenance of the tribes. Thus it was, "on the behalf of the

children of Israel, an everlasting covenant" (Lev. xxiv. 8).

The form has perished. But as long as we confess in the Lord's Prayer

that the wealthiest does not possess one day's bread ungiven--as long,

also, as Christian families connect every meal with a due acknowledgment

of dependence and of gratitude--so long will the Church of Christ

continue to make the same confession and appeal which were offered in

the shewbread upon the table.

The next article of furniture was the golden candlestick (vers. 31-40).

And this presents the curious phenomenon that it is extremely clear in

its typical import, and in its material outline; but the details of the

description are most obscure, and impossible to be gathered from the

Authorised Version. Strictly speaking, it was not a lamp, but only a

gorgeous lamp-stand, with one perpendicular shaft, and six branches,

three springing, one above another, from each side of the shaft, and all

curving up to the same height. Upon these were laid the seven lamps,

which were altogether separate in their construction (ver. 37). It was

of pure gold, the base and the main shaft being of one piece of beaten

metal. Each of the six branches was ornamented with three cups, made

like almond blossoms; above these a "knop," variously compared by Jewish

writers to an apple and a pomegranate, and still higher, a flower or

bud. It is believed that there was a fruit and flower above each of the

cups, making nine ornaments on each branch. The "candlestick" in ver. 34

can only mean the central shaft, and upon this there were "four cups

with their knops and flowers" instead of three. With the lamp were

tongs, and snuff-dishes in which to remove the charred wick from the

temple.

As we are told that when the Lord called the child Samuel, "the lamp of

God was not yet gone out" (1 Sam. iii. 3), it follows that the lights

were kept burning only during the night.

We have now to ascertain the spiritual meaning of this stately symbol.

There are two other passages in Scripture which take up the figure and

carry it forward. In Zechariah (iv. 2-12) we are taught that the

separation of the lamps is a mere incident; they are to be conceived of

as organically one, and moreover as fed by secret ducts with oil from no

limited supply, but from living olive trees, vital, rooted in the system

of the universe. Whatever obscurity may veil those "two sons of oil"

(and this is not the place to discuss the subject), we are distinctly

told that the main lesson is that of lustre derived from supernatural,

invisible sources. Zerubbabel is confronted by a great mountain of

hindrance, but it shall become a plain before him, because the lesson of

the vision of the candlestick is this--"Not by might, nor by power, but

by My Spirit, saith the Lord." A lamp gives light not because the gold

shines, but because the oil burns; and yet the oil is the one thing

which the eye sees not. And so the Church is a witness for her Lord, a

light shining in a dark place, not because of its learning or culture,

its noble ritual, its stately buildings or its ample revenues. All these

things her children, having the power, ought to dedicate. The ancient

symbol put art and preciousness in an honourable place, worthily

upholding the lamp itself; and in the New Testament the seven lamps of

the Apocalypse were still of gold. But the true function of a lamp is to

be luminous, and for this the Church depends wholly upon its supply of

grace from God the Holy Ghost. It is "not by might, nor by power, but by

My Spirit, saith the Lord."

Again, in the Revelation, we find the New Testament Churches described

as lamps, among which their Lord habitually walks. And no sooner have

the seven churches on earth been warned and cheered, than we are shown

before the throne of God seven torches (burning by their own

incandescence--_vide_ Trench, _N. T. Synonyms_, p. 162), which are the

seven spirits of God, answering to His seven light-bearers upon the

earth (Rev. iv. 5).

Lastly, the perfect and mystic number, seven, declares that the light of

the Church, shining in a dark place, ought to be full and clear, no

imperfect presentation of the truth: "they shall light the lamps, to

give light over against it."

Because this lamp shines with the light of the Church, exhibiting the

graces of her Lord, therefore a special command is addressed to the

people, besides the call for contributions to the work in general, that

they shall bring pure olive oil, not obtained by heat and pressure, but

simply beaten, and therefore of the best quality, to feed its flame.

It is to burn, as the Church ought to shine in all darkness of the

conscience or the heart of man, from evening to morning for ever. And

the care of the ministers of God is to be the continual tending of this

blessed and sacred flame.

_THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT._

xxv. 9, 40.

Twice over (vers. 9, 40, and cf. xxvi. 30, xxvii. 8, etc.) Moses was

reminded to be careful to make all things after the pattern shown him in

the mount. And these words have sometimes been so strained as to convey

the meaning that there really exists in heaven a tabernacle and its

furniture, the grand original from which the Mosaic copy was derived.

That is plainly not what the Epistle to the Hebrews understands (Heb.

viii. 5). For it urges this admonition as a proof that the old

dispensation was a shadow of ours, in which Christ enters into heaven

itself, and our consciences are cleansed from dead works to serve the

living God. The citation is bound indissolubly with all the

demonstration which follows it.

We are not, then, to think of a heavenly tabernacle, exhibited to the

material senses of Moses, with which all the details of his own work

must be identical.

Rather we are to conceive of an inspiration, an ideal, a vision of

spiritual truths, to which all this work in gold and acacia-wood should

correspond. It was thus that Socrates told Glaucon, incredulous of his

republic, that in heaven there is laid up a pattern, for him that wishes

to behold it. Nothing short of this would satisfy the inspired

application of the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the

readers, who were Jewish converts, are asked to recognise in this verse

evidence that the light of the new dispensation illuminated the

institutions of the old.

Without this pervading sentiment, the most elaborate specifications of

weight and measurement, of cup and pomegranate and flower, could never

have produced the required effect. An ideal there was, a divinely

designed suggestiveness, which must be always present to his

superintending vigilance, as once it shone upon his soul in sacred

vision or trance; a suggestiveness which might possibly be lost amid

correct elaborations, like the soul of a poem or a song, evaporating

through a rendering which is correct enough, yet in which the spirit,

even if that alone, has been forgotten.

It is surely a striking thing to find this need of a pervading sentiment

impressed upon the author of the first piece of religious art that ever

was recognised by heaven.

For it is the mysterious all-pervading charm of such a dominant

sentiment which marks the impassable difference between the lowliest

work of art, and the highest piece of art-manufacture which is only a

manufactured article.

And assuredly the recognition of this principle among a people whose

ancient history shows but little interest in art, calls for some

attention from those who regard the tabernacle itself as a fiction, and

its details as elaborated in Babylonia, in the priestly interest.

(Kuenen, _Relig. of Israel_, ii. 148).

The problem of problems for all who deny the divinity of the Old

Testament is to explain the curious position which its institutions are

consistent in accepting. They rest on the authority of heaven, and yet

they are not definitive, but provisional. They are always looking

forward to another prophet like their founder, a new covenant better

than the present one, a high priest after the order of a Canaanite

enthroned at the right hand of Jehovah, a consecration for every pot in

the city like that of the vessels in the temple (Deut. xviii. 15; Jer.

xxxi. 31; Ps. cx. 1, 4; Zech. xiv. 20). And here, "in the priestly

interest," is an avowal that the Divine habitation which they boast of

is but the likeness and shadow of some Divine reality concealed. And

these strange expectations have proved to be the most fruitful and

energetic principles in their religion.

This very presence of the ideal is what will for ever make the highest

natures quite certain that the visible universe is no mere resultant of

clashing forces without a soul, but the genuine work of a Creator. The

universe is charged throughout with the most powerful appeals to all

that is artistic and vital within us; so that a cataract is more than

water falling noisily, and the silence of midnight more than the absence

of disturbance, and a snow mountain more than a storehouse to feed the

torrents in summer, being also poems, appeals, revelations, whispers

from a spirit, heard in the depth of ours.

Does any one, listening to Beethoven's funeral march, doubt the

utterance of a soul, as distinct from clanging metal and vibrating

chords? And the world has in it this mysterious witness to something

more than heat and cold, moisture and drought: something which makes the

difference between a well-filled granary and a field of grain rippling

golden in the breeze. This is not a coercive argument for the hostile

logic-monger: it is an appeal for the open heart. "He that hath ears to

hear, let him hear."

To fill the tabernacle of Moses with spiritual meaning, the ideal

tabernacle was revealed to him in the Mount of God.

Let us apply the same principle to human life. There also harmony and

unity, a pervading sense of beauty and of soul, are not to be won by

mere obedience to a mandate here and a prohibition there. Like Moses, it

is not by labour according to specification that we may erect a shrine

for deity. Those parables which tell of obedient toil would be sadly

defective, therefore, without those which speak of love and joy, a

supper, a Shepherd bearing home His sheep, a prodigal whose dull

expectation of hired service is changed for investiture with the best

robe and the gold ring, and welcome of dance and music.

How shall our lives be made thus harmonious, a spiritual poem and not a

task, a chord vibrating under the musician's hand? How shall thought and

word, desire and deed, become like the blended voices of river and wind

and wood, a witness for the divine? Not by mere elaboration of detail

(though correctness is a condition of all true art), but by a vision

before us of the divine life, the Ideal, the pattern shown to all, and

equally to be imitated (strange though it may seem) by peasant and

prince, by woman and sage and child.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] This investigation offers a fine example of the folly of that kind

of interpretation which looks about for some sort of external and

arbitrary resemblance, and fastens upon that as the true meaning.

Nothing is more common among these expounders than to declare that the

wood and gold of the ark are types of the human and Divine natures of

our Lord. If either ark or mercy-seat should be compared to Him, it is

obviously the latter, which speaks of mercy. But this was of pure gold.

CHAPTER XXVI.

_THE TABERNACLE._

xxvi.

We now come to examine the structure of the tabernacle for which the

most essential furniture has been prepared.

Some confusion of thought exists, even among educated laymen, with

regard to the arrangements of the temple; and this has led to similar

confusion (to a less extent) concerning the corresponding parts of the

tabernacle. "The temple" in which the Child Jesus was found, and into

which Peter and John went up to pray, ought not to be confounded with

that inner shrine, "the temple," in which it was the lot of the priest

Zacharias to burn incense, and into which Judas, forgetful of all its

sacredness in his anguish, hurled his money to the priests (Luke ii. 46;

Acts iii. 3; Luke i. 9; Matt. xxvii. 5). Now, the former of these

corresponded to "the court of the tabernacle," an enclosure open to the

skies, and containing two important articles, the altar of burnt

sacrifices and the laver. This was accessible to the nation, so that the

sinner could lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and the priests

could purify themselves before entering their own sacred place, the

tabernacle proper, the shrine. But when we come to the structure itself,

some attention is still necessary, in order to derive any clear notion

from the description; nor can this easily be done by an English reader

without substituting the Revised Version for the Authorised. He will

then discover that we have a description, first of the "curtains of the

tabernacle" (vers. 1-6), and then of other curtains which are not

considered to belong to the tabernacle proper, but to "the tent over the

tabernacle" (7-13), being no part of the rich ornamental interior, but

only a protection spread above it; and over this again were two further

screens from the weather (14), and finally, inside all, are "the boards

of the tabernacle"--of which boards the two actual apartments were

constructed (15-30)--and the veil which divided the Holy from the Most

Holy Place (31-3).

"The curtains of the tabernacle" were ten, made of linen, of which every

thread consisted of fine strands twisted together, "and blue and purple

and scarlet," with cherubim not embroidered but woven into the fabric

(1).

These curtains were sewn together, five and five, so as to make two

great curtains, each slightly larger than forty-two feet by thirty,

being twenty-eight cubits long by five times four cubits broad (2, 3).

Finally these two were linked together, each having fifty loops for that

purpose at corresponding places at the edge, which loops were bound

together by fifty golden clasps (4-6). Thus, when the nation was about

to march, they could easily be divided in the middle and then folded in

the seams.

This costly fabric was regarded as part of the true tabernacle: why,

then, do we find the outer curtains mentioned before the rest of the

tabernacle proper is described?

Certainly because these rich curtains lie immediately underneath the

coarser ones, and are to be considered along with "the tent" which

covered all (7). This consisted of curtains of goats' hair, of the same

size, and arranged in all respects like the others, except that their

clasps were only bronze, and that the curtains were eleven in number,

instead of ten, so that half a curtain was available to hang down over

the back, and half was to be doubled back upon itself at the front of

"the tabernacle," that is to say, the richer curtains underneath. The

object of this is obvious: it was to bring the centre of the goatskin

curtains over the edge of the linen ones, as tiles overlap each other,

to shut out the rain at the joints. But this implies, what has been said

already, that the curtains of the tabernacle should lie close to the

curtains of the tent.

Over these again was an outer covering of rams' skins dyed red, and a

covering of sealskins above all (14). This last, it is generally agreed,

ran only along the top, like a ridge tile, to protect the vulnerable

part of the roof. And now it has to be remembered that we are speaking

of a real tent with sloping sides, not a flat cover laid upon the flat

inner structure of boards, and certain to admit the rain. By calling

attention to this fact, Mr. Fergusson succeeded in solving all the

problems connected with the measurements of the tabernacle, and bringing

order into what was little more than chaos before (_Smith's Bible

Dict._, "Temple").

The inner tabernacle was of acacia wood, which was the only timber of

the sanctuary. Each board stood ten cubits high, and was fitted by

tenons into two silver sockets, which probably formed a continuous base.

Each of these contained a talent of silver, and was therefore more than

eighty pounds weight; and they were probably to some extent sunk into

the ground for a foundation (xxxviii. 27). There were twenty boards on

each side; and as they were a cubit and a half broad, the length of the

tabernacle was about forty-five feet (16-18). At the west end there were

six boards (22), which, with the breadth of the two posts or boards for

the corners (23-4) just gives ten cubits, or fifteen feet, for the width

of it. Thus the length of the tabernacle was three times its breadth;

and we know that in the Temple (where all the proportions were the same,

the figures being doubled throughout) the subdividing veil was so hung

as to make the inner shrine a perfect square, leaving the holy place

twice as long as it was broad.

The posts were held in their places by wooden bars, which were overlaid

with gold (as the boards also were, ver. 29) and fitted into golden

rings. Four such bars, or bolts, ran along a portion of each side, and

there was a fifth great bar which stretched along the whole forty-five

feet from end to end. Thus the edifice was firmly held together; and the

wealth of the material makes it likely that they were fixed on the

inside, and formed a part of the ornament of the edifice (26-9).

When the two curtains were fastened together with clasps, they gave a

length of sixty feet. But we have seen that the length of the boards

when jointed together was only forty-five feet. This gives a projection

of seven feet and a half (five cubits) for the front and rear of the

tent beyond the tabernacle of boards; and when the great curtains were

drawn tight, sloping from the ridge-pole fourteen cubits on each side,

it has been shown (assuming a right-angle at the top) that they reached

within five cubits of the ground, and extended five cubits beyond the

sides, the same distance as at the front and rear. The next

instructions concern the veil which divided the two chambers of the

sanctuary. This was in all respects like "the curtain of the

tabernacle," and similarly woven with cherubim. It was hung upon four

pillars; and the even number seems to prove that there was no higher one

in the centre, reaching to the roof--which seems to imply that there was

a triangular opening above the veil, between the Holy and the Most Holy

Place (31, 32).