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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 Boston and New York 
 
THE OPEN MYSTERY 
 
 A READING OF THE MOSAIC STORY 
 
 A. D. T. WHITNEY 
 
 " All these things are done in parables." 
 
 " I will open my mouth in parables : 
 1 will utter things kept secret from the 
 foundation of the world." 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (CJc Iftibetjsite px0$, €ambatge 
 
 1897, 
 
Copyright, 1897, 
 Bl ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Tlie Riverside Press^ Cambridge, Mass.^ 17. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
TO 
 
 MY GRANDSONS 
 
 FOE AND WITH WHOM THESE STUDIES WEEE BEGUN 
 
 THE¥ ARE NOW AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 22031 6 
 
PEELIMINARY 
 
 In this old Story — at the heart of it — is 
 something that is true ; something that has 
 been believed and lived. Something there is 
 here that is beyond all question of mere out- 
 ward form, or order, or authorships ; some- 
 thing that has been given into the souls of 
 men who have been thus received into the 
 " fellowship of the mystery " which was from 
 the beginning, and yet was not a hiding 
 against all finding, but only a safe' -covering 
 for a sure, continual bringing forth. The 
 secret of the Holy Scripture is a perpetual 
 making manifest. 
 
 The Bible is not to be read or argued on 
 the surface. The Truth for which it was 
 lived and written lies below. The miner who 
 finds gold may not know the geologic history 
 of the earth-crust he has to search and pene- 
 trate. He seizes upon such clue as the gold 
 itself gives him, and learns an instinct and 
 perception for following its veins. He strikes 
 
vi PRELIMINARY 
 
 through all the drift and shift and conglomera- 
 tion of the ages, not caring so much for how 
 it came there in just such shape as for the 
 treasure it bears. 
 
 There is such a simple, effectual way of 
 searching the Sacred Books. 
 
 In this Reading of the Mosaic Story it has 
 been tried. 
 
 To reach and understand the central unity, 
 — to see that it is the solution of all external 
 doubts and complications, — that it is " the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever," the very 
 Christ-life of the world, — is the end of all 
 endeavor to trace and comprehend these Ini- 
 tials of Revelation. 
 
 A. D. T. W. 
 
 Milton, January 6, 1897 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 TA.OZ 
 
 THE NATUBAL BEGIMTINGS 1 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. The Garden 21 
 
 II. The Fiest Crime 36 
 
 III. The Deluge 42 
 
 PART III 
 
 THE GOD Of THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 I. The Light op the Livihg .... 71 
 
 II. Consecration AND Sacrifice 78 
 
 III. The Mistake op Abraham 92 
 
 IV. The Patriaechal Character " 99 
 
 V. Egypt 120 
 
 PART IV 
 
 THE EVENTS AND SIGNS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 I. The Rod of Power 143 
 
 II. The Giving of the Great Name . . 153 
 III. The Lord's Passover 159 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 IV. The Spoiling op the Egyptians .... 166 
 
 V. The Cloud and the Fike . 170 
 
 VI. The Red Sea . 177 
 
 VII. The Hunger and Thibst of the Wildeb- 
 
 NESS . ... . . 185 
 
 VIII. The Mountain 191 
 
 IX. The Ten Sayings \ ... 198 
 
 X. FoETY Days in the Mount 217 
 
 XI. The Tabernacle 222 
 
 XII. The Golden Calf 232 
 
 Xm. The Clift of the Kock 237 
 
 XrV. The Sedition of Aaron and Miriam . 255 
 
 XV. The Revolt of Korah . 276 
 
 XVI. The Budded Rod 295 
 
 XVII. The Tbansgression at Kadesh . . . . ,31 1 
 
 PART V 
 
 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 I. The Serpents of Fire, and the Serpent 
 
 OF Beass . . . ... o2;! 
 
 n. The Stoey of Balaam .339 
 
 in. The Vexing of the Midianites .... 358 
 
 IV. The Camp in Moab 369 
 
 V. The Righteous Commonwealth .... 387 
 
 VI. The Entering In 400 
 
 Closing Note 409 
 
THE OPEN MYSTERY 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 Thoughts come before things. 
 
 There is no thing, anywhere, that was not 
 a thought before it was a thing. 
 
 The world was made out of God's thoughts. 
 
 God's thoughts are in heaven ; the things 
 He makes to show them by are on, the earth. 
 
 " In the beginning God made the heaven 
 and the earth." 
 
 If a man builds a house, he first builds it 
 of thoughts. He things a house. He "makes 
 up his mind " just what kind of a house he 
 will have. That is what he calls his plan. 
 He sees it all with his inside sight, before a 
 stick is cut or a brick laid. Then he puts 
 the sticks and the bricks together, and sets 
 his plan in a shape. The shape teUs what the 
 
2 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 plan has been, — the man's thought and pur- 
 pose of a house. 
 
 Then the use he puts it to is another telling 
 of a thought. He thinks what kind of a life 
 he wants to live, before he builds the house to 
 live it in. So the house, and the house-keep- 
 ing, are just a telling out of a plan in himself, 
 of something that he is, and of what he wants 
 to be. For to he, is just to act out what a 
 thought of be-ing is. 
 
 We may start, then, with this truth : that 
 every thing is a showing of a thought. The 
 thoughts are in heaven, — the inside world ; 
 the things are in the earth, — the outside 
 world. One is the region of the real, the 
 other of the manifest. That there have been, 
 that there will be, both, — " from everlast- 
 ing to everlasting," — is the only possibility 
 we can conceive. " World without end " 
 must be a continual creation, — the appearing 
 of the invisible by the visible, forever ; " the 
 eternal power and Godhead clearly seen and 
 understood by the things that are made." 
 
 Can one imagine »io-thing ? No light, — 
 no air, — no sound ; no place, even, that has 
 no thing in it; for a place would be some- 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 3 
 
 thing, — a space between things. We can 
 not think of absolute emptiness and non- 
 existence. We cannot think away every- 
 thing; we can only push things apart from 
 each other, leaving room for what may have 
 been, or might be, between them. We cannot 
 look into vacancy, except from something next 
 to vacancy, upon which we stand. Vacancy is 
 only a place for something. We think away 
 out to the edge of nothing, and lo ! we come 
 against its edge. We try to imagine a hole 
 with nothing in it, and we find there must be 
 something around it, for it to be a hole. 
 
 We read of a place where a world — or an 
 earth — might be, but was not yet. It was a 
 deep, shapeless darkness. It was an ocean of 
 the unformed. Yet a thought brooded upon 
 it. " The Spirit of God moved upon the face 
 of the waters." God meant an earth there, 
 and He was thinking it into being. 
 
 When we think or plan, we have to take 
 things already made to carry out our plan 
 with. Earth, and stone, and wood, and water 
 are the things we never could have thought or 
 planned. We can create nothing. We can 
 only use what is created. God's thoughts are 
 
4 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 the essences of things ; they turn directly into 
 things " by the word of his power." 
 
 And what was the very first thing ? 
 
 What does Moses — searching back in the 
 spirit to very first perceptions — see and de- 
 clare as the first creation, so far back as the 
 mind of man can ever trace ? 
 
 Light — unless the Darkness had been some- 
 thing. 
 
 God thought Light, and Light came. All 
 through the empty Darkness, it shone and 
 spread, and filled the great Nothing, and made 
 Something of it. 
 
 Perhaps, if we only knew, the making of 
 things is but the separating out of the great 
 Thought, — which is dark • to us because it 
 is all, and we cannot comprehend all, — the 
 parts or particles which may be comprehended 
 by minds that are but parts themselves, and 
 must take the truth in little portions. It is 
 the only way a visible world, of parts related 
 to each other, and acting upon each other, 
 could be made out of an invisible Whole. 
 God, undivided, is a Dark Presence. He 
 divides himself, that He may make himself 
 visible. 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 5 
 
 Light was the first dividing of the Life. It 
 was the first showing of God in the making of 
 things. 
 
 Light was separated from Darkness, and 
 shone forth in it, everywhere, in unit particles, 
 or atoms. 
 
 And then began to work, in this first crea^ 
 tion or separating, the great, wonderful law by 
 which all that is separated and made distinct 
 urges and drifts together again, to become the 
 one that it was before, and still is, however 
 divided and individualized. 
 
 The particles in this vast living Sea of 
 Light drew together. There was motion 
 among them ; impulse ; the motion and im- 
 pulse of Life itself. Whirling and winding, 
 they gathered, here and there, in the immense 
 spaces,, into globe-forms ; and so there were 
 suns in the heavens. So our sun began, and 
 took a place. 
 
 And then, as soon as each sun or globe was 
 so far a One again, it reverted to the first law 
 by which a One must be always dividing and 
 giving itself to be a Many ; as God began the 
 universe from himself. Each sun sent off its 
 particles by that great giving impulse which 
 is the beating of the heart of life ; and again 
 
6 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 these particles were whirled and driven, seek- 
 ing each other, away out in the far distances 
 to which they had again been thrown. Find- 
 ing each other, and gathering in little, new 
 globes, they became earths, or planets, each 
 belonging to the sun that had sent it forth, 
 and immediately wheeling round and round 
 it, with the impulse to return to it again. 
 
 It was a long time after these distinct 
 globes of light were formed before there was 
 anything else at all. But the life of all things 
 was in the light, and the light was burning, as 
 as well as shining, with it. All warmth is 
 life, and the light was so full of life that it was 
 hot, to an intensity that cannot be conceiYcd. 
 All possible things were in it in what we caU 
 a state of incandescence ; in a glowing molten 
 fusion. 
 
 We know very well in ourselves what it 
 is to glow with a thought. To have some 
 plan or purpose which so stirs the mind as to 
 make it all a-kindle, and to send a sense of 
 physical warmth through the very body. So 
 it was with God's thought in the intensity of 
 his creation. All things that were to be, and 
 that were as yet unformed, seethed and boiled 
 in the first created substance. Waters, earths, 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 7 
 
 rocks, metals, plants, animals, — were all, in 
 their elements, as one great surging mass of 
 fervid fire. 
 
 When a substance is intensely hot, we 
 know that dividing it — breaking or stirring 
 it — helps to cool it down. And exactly so it 
 is with thoughts. Bringing them into sep- 
 arate detail, placing and appointing them, 
 calms them from the fervency in which they 
 began to be. Use — turning thoughts into 
 things and actions — changes fervency into 
 fact ; makes it something definite and practi- 
 cal, which is — usable, through having rela- 
 tion to other things. Whatever power or 
 possibility is in a thought, is power to become 
 a substantial manifestation. 
 
 By this very process, the thoughts hidden 
 in the fire of the creation, and from which it 
 was enkindled, became forms of life and use. 
 God put them into act. 
 
 He separated and separated them again, 
 from each other, distinguishing them into 
 individual quality and character and sub- 
 stance ; and yet with such relation to each 
 other, in nature and action and fitness, that 
 they continually turned again, in their differ- 
 
8 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 ent uses, toward the oneness of all in which 
 they were at first. 
 
 We call the mingled substance of the begin- 
 ning, which was as fire, gaseous ; the particles 
 of its great ocean, apart and moving, had no 
 adherence of solidity; they were free. No 
 two particles ran together so as to make one. 
 They interpenetrated each other, we say; 
 rather, they were intercurrent. 
 
 Yet were they so secretly charged and con- 
 stituted that they had hidden sympathies of 
 kind ; by which they found each other out, 
 and drew together. Not one atom could go 
 astray ; it was sure to come to its own. In 
 the earliest creation, as forever among his 
 souls, God was, and is, the Lord of Hosts. 
 No many is too many for his certain rule 
 and guidance. Each particle — of matter or 
 of spirit — has its aim and place, and fails 
 of neither. 
 
 This elemental joining was the development 
 of substances, the arraying of force, the mani- 
 folding of condition and relation. It was the 
 working out from the one Great Thought the 
 details of its mighty and beautiful Work. 
 
 Oxygen and Nitrogen, as we call them, — 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 9 
 
 particles of matter vivified each by its own 
 portion of the divine power, — found each 
 other ; drew apart together, and a breath of 
 life existed; an atmosphere in which life 
 might feed was poured around the earth. 
 God said, " Let there be a Firmament ; " and 
 this clear, invisible flood gathered itself be- 
 tween the forming globe and the far-surround- 
 ing deep of unformed substance, " dividing 
 the waters from the waters." That was the 
 second point of Creation. Below, were the 
 yet more intimately converging vapors that 
 were condensing into seas ; above, were ihe 
 thin, intangible ethers of a boundless space. 
 
 The firmament enveloped thp earth ; through 
 it the Earth shone, still a star, hot and lumi- 
 nous ; the waters upon it were hot oceans. As 
 their particles cooled, and ran yet more closely 
 together, developing density and weight, the 
 crystal rocks appeared, the adhesion of other, 
 different atoms which were all the while mak- 
 ing their new combinations from the water- 
 gases, and clinging together with a force so 
 strong as to become what we call solid. Their 
 attraction drew them closer and closer, until 
 it seemed to bring them to a full stop, and 
 fasten them to a shape and place. They were 
 
10 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 no longer fluid, or flowing, but fixed. Around 
 them, and down into all the huge hollows be- 
 tween, rolled and settled the waters. There 
 were now mountains and seas. The Creation 
 — the wonderful separating and orderly join- 
 ing again of shining atoms — had got so far : 
 to fluid and solid. But the fluid, for a long 
 time, was hot water, and the solid was hot, 
 slowly cooling and hardening rock. This was 
 the Third Day ; the third period of the vast, 
 long process. In it, the hot rocks, worn by 
 the hot water, — that is, their particles dis- 
 turbed in their close clinging, and loosened by 
 the rush and surge and pressure of the ocean, 
 whose own elements fed also upon the elements 
 of the rocks, seizing and bearing away what 
 they in turn i had special appetite or seeking 
 for, ^ began to give up something of their 
 hard hold, and to be separated and carried 
 off, as soft soil, by the tides and currents, and 
 lodged in any crannies or against any ridges 
 where they might rest ; and this softened soil 
 was the earth in which might be new motions 
 of atoms of life. These were vegetations ; an 
 action of yet deeper powers of life ; a choosing 
 of particles in organic relation ; not a mere 
 clinging of substance, but a using upon each 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 11 
 
 other a wonderful influence and help by which 
 together they could build up living forms and 
 begin living uses. Eieceiving and giving be- 
 gan. God's Thought had so prevailed by the 
 urging of his great Will that it had made of 
 itself tabernacles, receptacles for the higher, 
 larger inflowing of that Will, to the perfect 
 unfolding of its revelations. Out of Life was 
 to come life ; thought, at last, was to derive 
 from Thought, and return to it in conscious, 
 loving joy and obedience. 
 
 The first of life was in atoms, again ; in 
 miiiute cell-forms ; mere simple spheres of 
 substance which had in them some blind 
 unconscious hunger. 
 
 There was a desire shut up in matter, which 
 reached continually for the Spirit that had 
 framed matter to be filled with Itself. And 
 the Spirit poured in, and life began. 
 
 There was action, reaching; cell put forth 
 cell, and made more room for holding Life. 
 At first there were only what seemed con- 
 glomerations ; then one part began to minister 
 to another of the life ; to take relation ; to 
 divide into functions. And all this " worked 
 that self -same Spirit, dividing to each severally 
 as it would." 
 
12 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 Vegetable cells built up into stems, searched 
 downward into roots; drank thirstily of the 
 life that was in air and earth and moisture ; 
 knowing in themselves nothing but to be 
 hungry and thirsty and to eat and drink ; not 
 feeling or foreseeing what was feeding in 
 them toward a higher power, a more perfect 
 glory. But God's intent and meaning were 
 in them and behind them, working surely to 
 his final purpose all the while. 
 
 Grass blades grew out of the first simple 
 soil ; tall, rank, and strong, with the first 
 intense potencies, we suppose they were. 
 Grasses branched into herbage ; stems reared 
 further and further into the waiting air and 
 sunlight, taking their inspiration from above, 
 and put forth leaves and fronds. The leaf 
 was prophecy and parable. It had in itself 
 the elements of all future structures ; the skel- 
 eton-fibre, — the sap-filled veins, — the tender 
 tissue which the sap - secretions formed into 
 body and outline. 
 
 The Day of the grass and herb was upon 
 the earth. It was " evolution ; " but God was 
 the Evolver, and the evolved was his manifes- 
 tation. 
 
 Forever descending upon and into the 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 13 
 
 creation were light and breath ; forever ascend- 
 ing were the asking and the reaching and the 
 absorbing. It was the ladder of the living, 
 between heaven and earth, up and down which 
 traveled the angels, — the ministers. " He 
 maketh his angels spirits (breathings) ; his 
 ministers a flame (a shining and a warmth) of 
 fire." 
 
 Head all that hundred and fourth Psalm 
 with this thought of the creating God in it ; 
 the working and giving of his life and power. 
 Did not David have the same faith in the 
 making of things that Moses had ? And has 
 Science, at the point even to which it has crept 
 in this day, any contradiction to this great 
 Belief which goes behind Science, and grasps 
 on to future Fact which Science alone will 
 never reach ? 
 
 Is not the song that "the morning stars 
 sang together " the same that sang in the hearts 
 of Moses and of David, — yes, more, is it not 
 in the full Revelation, — the "'■Song of Moses 
 and of the Lamb " f Is it not the Alpha and 
 Omega of the Word of Creation ? 
 
 It was the Fourth Period, according to the 
 belief of Moses, in which the great order of 
 
14 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 the heavens was unrolled, and became apparent 
 from the point of earth. No man was yet there 
 to see; but man afterward looked back by 
 thought and reason, or by the intuitions through 
 which God led thought and reason to know- 
 ledge, and placed himself in wondering imagi- 
 nation upon his home-globe in its genesis 
 halfway completed, and saw thence the vast 
 opening panorama that must have been 
 revealed. The great Light that was first 
 made, — that was everywhere, — that had 
 still wrapped about the earth itself beyond its 
 own little air-ocean, as with a garment slip- 
 ping slowly away and disappearing, as the 
 planet cooled, by the scattering of its atoms 
 to invisibility, — had been as a " darkness 
 from excess of light," to hide, as daylight hides 
 the stars, the bodies shining in far space, and 
 moving, to primitive understanding, in their 
 majestic rhythm of Night and Day and the 
 great Seasons of the Year. 
 
 Moses only knew the heavenly motions as 
 accounted for by men of his time ; but his 
 perception was something far more interior 
 and essential, and so more real and true, than 
 his knowledge or his eyesight. He knew, 
 within his mind, straight from God's Mind, 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 15 
 
 something of how it must have been. He 
 took his start from the great Certainty in him, 
 
 — God a,lone is : from God began the world : 
 and he traveled with God down the awful 
 divisions of his Will into Act, the successions 
 of his power in grand, inclusive stages, instead 
 of back, with a half-blind human exploration 
 from far, subdivided effects into central causes. 
 He believed what* reached him this wise, of the 
 truths of the Beginning ; it was faith in him, 
 
 — immediate conception ; — that faith which, 
 thousands of years afterward. Saint Paul told 
 the people of the Christian Church is never 
 of ourselves, or our finding out : " it is the 
 gift of God." 
 
 So, by this wonderful gift, which always 
 precedes discovery, it came to Moses to inter- 
 pret and explain an order of things which all 
 the world's study ever since only verifies as 
 a magnificent outline of a history concerning 
 which Science may go on laboring forever in 
 finding out particulars, but can never, with 
 any however wise details, gainsay or contra- 
 dict. 
 
 The blinding Light, then, gathered itself 
 away, as when some great work is finished the 
 
16 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 material out of which it has been put in form 
 is cleared from the beautiful fabric ; and 
 Creation stood manifest, as we see it now ; it 
 was another " Let there be ! " from the voice 
 of God. " Let there be lights ! " Separate, 
 orderly, each in its own place and circle, 
 instead of the rushing, universal, unformed 
 Light. " Lights in the firmament of heaven," 
 the upper, far-off space ; " to ride the day and 
 the night, and the seasons and the years, and 
 to give light upon the earth. And it was so. 
 And God saw that it was good. And the 
 evening and the morning were the Fourth 
 Day." Always an evening and a morning ; a 
 time of dimness and waiting and half accom- 
 plishment, and a time of achievement, and 
 gladness, and a new step forward in the story 
 of things. 
 
 The earth was ready, with light and water, 
 air and food ; all was cooled down to a soft, 
 though fervid, temperature, in which animals 
 might live, and breathe, and eat; and then 
 came the command. Let there be living crea- 
 tures in the water and in the air. Notice 
 the explicit form of it, which anticipates aU 
 that we are finding out from the other end — 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 17 
 
 creeping back to the Inspiration of God by 
 the path that explores to Him through the 
 curious, invisible ways of matter, that are but 
 the obediences of creation to his wiU : notice 
 how Moses believes that God said, " Let the 
 waters bring forth abundantly the moving- 
 creature that hath life." 
 
 Moses did not Icnow what germ-cells were, 
 we suppose : we need not be too sure even of 
 that ; but we are certain that he did know 
 what the germ-cells are teaching us, — that 
 fluid matter is the very motion of creatures 
 that have life ; that it is instinct with God's 
 own life and purpose in the material; and 
 that from his first thought and command, all 
 was in his world that ever should be : that his 
 world was simply of and from Himself. 
 
 And God blessed them — -with the very 
 force and gift of his own life ; saying, " Be 
 f ruitfxil, and multiply, and fiU the waters, and 
 the seas, and the earth." 
 
 And the evening and the morning were the 
 Fifth Day. 
 
 And God said, " Let the earth bring forth ! " 
 The waters and the air had their fishes and 
 
18 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 their fowl ; let the earth find out its hidden 
 elements of being ; let the creeping thing and 
 the beast be alive and glad in their way and 
 their place that God had given them. And it 
 was so. And God saw that it was good. 
 
 Now we are in the long Sixth Day. There 
 was no pause after this. When the heast had 
 been made, the work was very near the best, 
 the human ; and it went swiftly on. 
 
 " God created man in his own image ; " He 
 had brought the receptacle up to the highest 
 receiving possibility : He " breathed into him " 
 his own breath, and "man became a living 
 soul." The life of the spirit was added to the 
 life of matter ; a son of God's own likeness 
 stood forth, to possess and understand and use 
 his works. " Let him have dominion," were 
 God's words, proclaiming his child's inherit- 
 ance. " Let him rule over the fish of the 
 sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the 
 cattle, and over every creeping thing that 
 creepeth upon the earth." 
 
 " Over : " it was outside rule and use ; 
 ijtyithin, God kept his own place of power and 
 work. He gives the inward being, always ; 
 with the beast, and with man, it is so forever. 
 
THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 19 
 
 He waits till man desires and asks, and con- 
 sents in obedience, to give him the highest, 
 the inmost of all ; the spiritual birth into a 
 sure, eternal, as yet unmanifested, life ; this is 
 " the power of the Resurrection." 
 
 " Of the dust of the ground," — of matter, 
 and in relation to matter, — is the first man ; 
 " of the earth, earthy ; " God breathes into 
 him a human power of life, and he becomes a 
 soul ; He will yet breathe into him the Holy 
 Ghost from heaven, and make of him a quick- 
 ening spirit. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE GARDEN 
 
 Moses begins the garden-story in his second 
 chapter of the Book of Genesis, or the Record 
 of the Beginnings. In it he recapitulates the 
 "generations," or the births of things, with 
 a summing up of the facts ; a repetition of the 
 one great statement that this origination, and 
 all its majestically unfolding succession, was 
 of the Lord Grod, who " made the earth and 
 the heavens, and every plant of the field he- 
 fore it was in the earth, and every herb of 
 the field hefore it grew ; " they being in his 
 Thought before the things were, and the possi- 
 bility of them being hidden in the living force 
 of creation, from the very first word until 
 the definite completion. And Moses repeats, 
 " The Lord God formed man of the dust of 
 the ground : " man, also, — the highest created 
 
22 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 thing, was of and through the lowest ; the 
 intent of him and the process of his making, 
 being in all, from the very first particle-birth 
 of matter, and the preparation of all being 
 for the environment of his life and training in 
 the earth. 
 
 It is here, in his personal relation toward 
 man, that the God of Creation is called The 
 Lord God ; the Bestower, the Provider, the 
 Ruler of human life. It was the Lord God 
 who " planted a garden eastward in Eden ; " 
 a home-place and centre for his child ; and 
 who walked there with Adam in the cool of 
 the day ; in the morning freshness of his be- 
 ing, and of all things. 
 
 A garden is a safe place where living 
 growths may be cherished. God put man 
 into a garden; and he planted the garden 
 eastward in Eden, which is toward the sun- 
 rising, in delight. 
 
 Did Moses mean some little patch of ground 
 only, literally bounded by the four branches 
 of the great Eiver of Western Asia ? Or did 
 " Eden " stand for the whole beautiful, im- 
 spoiled, orderly earth, and " eastward " mean 
 its whole steady unerring turning toward the 
 Source of Life and Light ? 
 
THE GARDEN 23 
 
 " Eastward," all through the Hebrew Scrip- 
 ture, denotes, inmostly, toward God. For 
 joy and worship men turned eastward. " The 
 glory of God came by the way of the east." 
 The Levites, in the Temple, singing and 
 praising the Lord, " stood at the east end of 
 the altar." Even when threat and disaster 
 are foretold, as judgment or discipline from 
 God, it is from the east — out of his Power 
 and Presence — that they are said to be sent. 
 It was an east wind that brought the locusts 
 which devoured the land of Egypt ; it was 
 an east wind that drove back the sea for the 
 safe crossing of the Israelites. " Because my 
 people hath forgotten me," saith the Lord 
 in the prophecy of Jeremiah, " I will scatter 
 them as with an east wind before the enemy." 
 
 So, whatever the " Garden of Eden " was 
 in reality, — whether just one literal spot of 
 earth beautiful and safe between great rivers, 
 and lying beneath a glorious warm-brooding 
 sky ; or a type-image of the first, essential 
 life of man, abiding in the love and peace of 
 the Almighty Presence, and the life of his 
 Righteousness, — it was eastward, — toward 
 the heaven whence came the sun-shining, the 
 power, and the glory. It means that there 
 
24 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 was a time of simplicity and direct knowledge, 
 when man lived with God, and knew Him as 
 his Friend. 
 
 Out of this garden, this early life, Moses 
 believed and said that man was driven by 
 sin ; by disobedience to the holy ; by a turn- 
 ing back from God into himself. By seeking 
 to himself the knowledge, from earth-grown 
 sources, that he should have waited upon God 
 for, and taken just in the way and time that 
 God should give it. By hastening to make 
 bread for himself out of the stones of the 
 material, instead of living by the immediate 
 daily bread of the Word of God. 
 
 " Dress and keep the garden that I have 
 made ; eat the fruit of the trees of it ; take 
 all the good that grows out of it for your 
 own living : but of one hidden, central thing, 
 seek not of your own power to seize ; be not 
 impatient to realize and decide and command 
 for yourselves the Why, and the Why Not, — 
 the evil and the good. Leave the knowledge, 
 the understanding, the ordaining, the revela- 
 tion, to Me. The inmost meaning, the eter- 
 nal outcome, of your life are Mine. Day by 
 day you shall live by me, as I will give you 
 life continually. You cannot live of your- 
 
THE GARDEN 25 
 
 selves ; the purpose and the gift are mine : if 
 you think to take these presumptuously into 
 your own will and doing, — if you turn from 
 my instant leading and commandment, you 
 shall not live ; you shall surely die."' 
 
 The First Great Commandment was set 
 forth then. " I am the Lord thy God. Thou 
 shalt love me — lean to me — receive me — 
 in all things: in your heart and mind, and 
 soul and strength ; your desires, your thoughts 
 and knowledges, your power and act. My 
 Strength, my Truth, my Love are the Source 
 aiid Feeding of them all. It is the Sacrament 
 of Being. I am your Daily Bread. Ye shall 
 live by my word alone." This was the secret 
 of the Law of the Garden, which Moses put on 
 record in a history under a figure, long before 
 he graved it at the head of the First Table 
 of Stone, for the leading of the Children of 
 Israel back out of the slavery of Egypt into 
 the freedom and blessing of the Promised 
 Land. 
 
 Moses believed, and tells in the story, that 
 man was not a complete being except as male 
 and female ; that it was in the image of God's 
 own Nature he was so created as a double 
 
26 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 one. Man stands for the Thought, that forms 
 in specific understanding, and eventuates in 
 act; woman for the Desire, the. Impulse, the 
 Motive, that is at the hidden heart of Life, 
 and urates it to its realization and detail. 
 Knowledges, and the Love that reaches out 
 and proves itself in knowledges — what else 
 complete and unify desire and experience? 
 And what else but desire and experience 
 comprise and express the whole of human 
 life? 
 
 Dominion was given to man in the outset ; 
 before his dual nature was declared to him. 
 Motive was supplied as the feminine to the 
 masculine ; the inner, spiritual hope and affec- 
 tion were inalienably joined to all outward 
 reach and achievement ; together they made 
 the doing of the Will on earth and in heaven. 
 And lest mind and heart should ever lose 
 relation to each other, each was separately 
 personified in a duplex human existence, a 
 mutual and dear personal representation. 
 Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, 
 lived together in the Garden of Eden : " out 
 of the ground " the' beasts of the earth and 
 the bodily Adam were formed; out of the 
 essential Man himself was taken the principle 
 
THE GARDEN 27 
 
 which became existent to himself as coun- 
 terpart and complement; the only possible 
 revealing to him of the double nature and 
 image in which he had been created ; in 
 which only, because it is the nature and image 
 of the Divine, he was to be able to love, and 
 know, and live from the Lord his God. 
 
 And then the parable goes on. For fact 
 or fable, all things are parables. And next 
 we learn the story of the woman and the 
 serpent. 
 
 Into human desire, — represented by the 
 woman, as the affectional nature of man, — 
 came a false understanding, an earthly sub- 
 tilty, represented by the cunning, creeping 
 thing of the ground ; the creature that was 
 only wise with a little keener wisdom in the 
 same way as the other " beasts of the field." 
 Only a beast of the field, — a life and under- 
 standing of the lowest things, after all, though 
 it dared to touch and promise of the highest. 
 And this lower understanding, getting hold 
 of man's desire, put this question into that 
 side of his nature : " You are not to know all 
 things ? You are not to eat of all the trees ? 
 And yet the trees are there, and the fruit of 
 
28 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS. 
 
 them. Why are they in the garden ? Yes, 
 in the very heart of it ? Why should you not 
 be wise even to the heart of things ? " 
 
 Perhaps we had better stop a moment right 
 here to remind ourselves afresh that we are 
 studying what Moses helieved ; what he got 
 hold of, behind what he saw, that made what 
 he saw plain to him ; and to understand his 
 way of putting it, we must grasp with him this 
 vital centre, this real thing he was sure of, — 
 and then see if we can comprehend how he 
 would be likely to present his faith in words, 
 and what were the circumstances that had 
 shaped his methods of thinking and expres- 
 sion. 
 
 Reading back through man's experience in 
 the world, this was the inner fact that Moses 
 had found out, — speaking, as we do, of what 
 God teaches through thought-processes in the 
 human mind : that there was, and is, a first 
 law, — a law in the heart, in the sense that 
 is above thought, as spirit is above brain. If 
 first law had been obeyed, the ten command- 
 ments would not have needed, as ten distinct 
 precepts, to be graven on stones. The first 
 man — or the earliest men — whether Adam 
 alone in Eden, or a beginning of the race in 
 
THE GARDEN 29 
 
 the earth just large enough to come into 
 mutual relations — knew, by intuition, by an 
 inward implanted word, a law of right and 
 wrong. The may do, and the may not do, 
 were perceived by a sense of things created in 
 them; "the light that lighteth every man 
 that Cometh into the world." It said to 
 them, — and it was the word of the Lord, 
 " nigh, and in the heart, " — " Of all the 
 fruit of the garden," — of all the things that 
 I have made and given you, — " take and use ; 
 eat of all the trees that are good for food ;" 
 enjoy, assimilate, grow by them ; they are for 
 your life; "in all these things is the visita- 
 tion of my Spirit." Know the good, by pos- 
 session, by appropriation, by putting it into 
 deed. But so you shall not know evil. Of 
 evil, — that it may be, and that it is the 
 opposite and antagonism of good, — ^you may, 
 you do know: by experience, by putting it 
 into deeds, you shall not know. "Ye shall 
 not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and 
 emir 
 
 All this story of Adam and Eve and the 
 serpent is a setting forth of 'this truth that 
 Moses believed lay at the beginning of moral 
 history. The commandment was in the inner 
 
30 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 consciousness. Positive good was all about 
 man, created for him, in Ms reach; evil the 
 negative, was a something involved, as light 
 involves shadow. Wrong lay over against 
 the right, as a possibility. Biit it was not to 
 be experimented ; not to be put in form, tried, 
 tested by man's act, to see whether he could 
 eat of it and not die. 
 
 Man was not to walk in the shadow, but in 
 the light. 
 
 How was Moses to tell this to the Children 
 of Israel, to whom he desired to give the 
 truth ? How had he himself been taught all 
 inner knowledges ? He was " learned in all 
 the knowledge of the Egyptians." He had 
 been brought up and taught among the signs 
 and mysteries of the priests. He was trained 
 in symbolisms ; he knew all the stories of their 
 gods ; the fables in which were told eternal 
 facts, but in which the fact and fable were 
 carefully kept separate, — the fable for the 
 ignorant people, the fact for the priests only. 
 So what wonder, if when he had a great single 
 truth to tell, — something that had cleared 
 itself to him out of all the mixture of false 
 and earthly imaginations, and had showed him 
 plainly the One Power and Life of things, 
 
THE GARDEN 31 
 
 and the Law of its Righteousness, — he should 
 tell it to them in a simple story suited' to their 
 interest and comprehension, or, if the story- 
 were already made, that he should indorse it ? 
 It is the way the truth is told all through the 
 Bible, — by the signs in things, and in the 
 outside life of men. Reasons are folded in 
 appearances ; the naked, abstract^ spiritual 
 truth is clothed in history, in example. Every 
 Hebrew child could understand and remember 
 the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent 
 and the forbidden fruit ; as childhood grew 
 into maturity, in the individual and in the 
 race, the inner meaning and knowledge of the 
 story would dawn and expand to them ; not 
 to contradict and confuse, but to illuminate. 
 But for a long time — having, through trying 
 to be as gods, knowing the good and the evil, 
 lost out of their hearts God's first inspiration 
 of knowledge — men had to live in types. 
 They had to learn, partially and darkly, by 
 an outside form. It would only be when the 
 form of things and the soul of things should 
 be made one to them again by a pure obedi- 
 ence, that they should have once more the 
 sure, direct perception, the Visitation of the 
 Spirit. 
 
32 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 Meanwhile, it was given to one here and 
 there to "know the mysteries," and to tell 
 them again, in symbolic legend that should stay 
 by in outer memory, until the inner apprehen- 
 sion should awaken ; " lest" — in case that, 
 as the Lord of Truth puts it concerning his 
 own speech in parable, — " they should at any 
 time repent, and be converted, and I should 
 make them whole." 
 
 In those early days, and under their habits 
 of speech, the people at least knew this ; that 
 they ioere taught in parables, and that some- 
 thing mightier than they were yet able to re- 
 ceive was for the time hidden from their eyes. 
 
 It could scarcely have occurred to the 
 grandly simple mind of Moses, wise in the in- 
 finite deep meanings and intent upon their 
 utterance, that in a remotely future time, after 
 reiterated prophecy and gospel, there should 
 come into brief succession upon the earth a 
 generation of men so learned and shrewd in 
 naturalisms as to let go his divine insights in 
 gravely arguing the circumstantial credibility 
 of his similitudes ! 
 
 He believed that the Law of Good and Evil 
 was the Law of Life and Death. That life 
 only lives by good, and that evil in itself is 
 
THE GARDEN 33 
 
 death, and has to die. By learning evil, man 
 came to the necessity of death, that a new life 
 of good might be begun. Good is the only 
 everlasting ; bad must pass away. Through 
 long time, through long pain ; because evil 
 has joined itself to life, and clings to it as 
 disease clings to the body. But the end is the 
 death of the evil. Disease is perishing, — it 
 is the process of it. The outward body may 
 go with the disease, but the life escapes : if 
 there is yet good with the life it will begin 
 again. To be given over to evil altogether is 
 the everlasting Death. 
 
 Moses saw and believed yet further concern- 
 ing this innate Law of Righteousness which 
 was the Commandment of the Garden ; and 
 he goes on to tell it in the story. 
 
 So Moses wrote, " The man knows good 
 and evil ; he has partaken of them both : he 
 may not put forth his hand, as he is now, to 
 the tree of life, and eat, and live so forever. 
 The evil must first be done away. Therefore 
 the Lord God drove man forth " out of the 
 safe, sweet garden where he could only have 
 stayed in his early innocence, and sent him 
 into the wilderness, to struggle, to suffer, to 
 
34 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 conquer. And. the shining, terrible Law, of 
 Life for Good and Death for Evil, stood be- 
 fore the gate of the garden, and "kept the 
 way " by which there was now no returning. 
 Man had chosen the other way, and he must 
 go on through its toils, its dangers, its sor- 
 rows, its needs, to learn the good of Good and 
 the evil of Evil, and to come to the eternal life 
 by the suffering of earthly death. 
 
 That was the way Moses explained the 
 great problem of things which concerns every 
 human soul. Each soul i§ its own Adam, and 
 makes its own choice. But evil choices have 
 made it harder and harder in the world. We 
 are not in a garden, but in a wilderness. 
 
 It was long, long after Moses that the great 
 word came through One who lived the truth 
 and died for it : " In the world ye shall have 
 tribulation ; but be of good cheer ; I have 
 overcome the world." And through the vision 
 of Him by his apostle, — " Fear none of 
 those things which thou shalt suffer : be thou 
 faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
 crown of life." "He that overcometh shall 
 not be hurt of the second death. To him that 
 overcometh wUl I give to eat of the hidden 
 manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 
 
THE GARDEN 35 
 
 the stone a new name written. I will write 
 upon him My new Name." " To him that 
 overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my 
 throne, even as I also overcame, and am set 
 down with my Father in his throne. He that 
 overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment, 
 and I will not blot out his name out of the 
 book of life. These are they which came out 
 of great tribulation, and have washed their 
 robes, and made them white in the blood of 
 the Lamb. Behold, I make all things new." 
 " Blessed are they that do his commandments, 
 that they may have right to the tree of life, 
 and enter in through the gates intp the city." 
 The first chapters of Genesis and the last 
 chapters of the Revelation should be read the 
 one with the other. The Garden of Eden, 
 where God walked with man in his first inno- 
 cence : the new heavens and the new earth 
 wherein is to dwell righteousness, — where is 
 the Holy City, New Jerusalem, the taberna- 
 cle of God with men ; these are the begin- 
 ning and the end, the purpose and accomplish- 
 ment, the type and the fulfillment. Between 
 lies the whole moral history — the whole 
 spiritual evolution — of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FIEST CRIME 
 
 Moses tells — or indorses — here a very 
 simple story.; a mere matter of tradition, it 
 would seem, as handed down among the early 
 people of the earth, regarding the first births 
 and lives of men, and the first differentia- 
 tions of humanity from original type ; the first 
 workings, in consequence, of character and mo- 
 tive, resulting in open act. Going behind 
 the letter of the narrative, which is our study 
 in these testimonies, we have found the great 
 faith in a Divine Personality and Power, of 
 which things made are the evidence, to be the 
 inner understanding of creation ; and that the 
 order of creation follows inevitably the order 
 of a Divine Life. 
 
 Now we come to the story of human life in 
 its divine relation and its natural environment, 
 and of how the perfect unity and co-working 
 of these was disturbed by sin, until the divine 
 and the natural were even set in a horrible 
 
THE FIRST CRIME 37 
 
 antagonism. Moses is as brief in his outlines 
 as he was before. He explains- not ; he does 
 not discuss ; he sets forth plain fact, behind 
 which lies cause, the be-cause of his telling. 
 His very brevity shows the urgency of inner 
 purpose. It is the eternal Why of things — 
 it is the spiritual law of life — that is searched 
 out and put on record. Moses is not a mere 
 reciter of old legends. 
 
 The key to the whole account — the reason 
 why of the happening and history — lies in 
 the seventh verse of this fourth chapter of the 
 Beginnings. " If thou doest well, shalt thou 
 not be accepted ? And if thou doest not 
 well, sin lieth at the door." That which " lies 
 at a man's door," is the charge to him of his 
 doings ; the point and showing of his personal 
 responsibility. 
 
 Sin lay at the door of Cain, in that he had 
 made an untrue, insufficient offering, — one 
 that, in its nature and motive, could not be 
 accepted. Acceptance was not arbitrary, of 
 favoritism. It was of integral worthiness — 
 worth-ship. Sin lay farther back than Cain 
 himself ; in the first departure from a holy 
 loyalty, by which the son of Adam and Eve 
 came into an inheritance of evil tendency, a 
 
38 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 strain of sometMng in himself against which 
 the better of him would have to struggle. 
 Sin is departure, aberration from right and 
 love. Crime is violent act against them. 
 When sin had got into the world, crime 
 followed : upon loss came woes. 
 
 Cain and Abel were very likely twin 
 brothers; this probability has been deduced 
 from the concise statement concerning their 
 birth. They represented the twofold nature 
 of man. Cain means acquisition, — the tak- 
 ing to one's self. Eve said, " / have gotten 
 a man from the Lord." There was self 
 claiming first place. The child was hers ; she 
 had gotten him. In the child was born, and 
 in him ruled, this principle of getting, — of 
 assuming and appropriating. Ahel means a 
 hreath, hence, superficially interpreted a tran- 
 sitoriness ; as if it were a prophecy of his 
 short life upon the earth. Why not, rather, 
 an inspiration ? Why not the quickening 
 of the Spirit, the birth to something higher 
 than the mortal inheritance of self and sin ? 
 The rest of the story is plain indication that 
 such significance was there. 
 
 Abel was a keeper of sheep. His work was 
 chosen among living creatures. He served — 
 
THE FIRST CRIME 39 
 
 with love, feeding, cherishing — the life. 
 Not the mere material, — the " fruit of the 
 ground." He was drawn to gentle, living 
 sympathies ; to the work of shepherding, 
 which was type of the Lord's own care of liv- 
 ing souls. In this, he was on a higher plane 
 of use and affection than his brother Cain. 
 And it was of life — life that he loved, — 
 life that was as his own — that he offered 
 his sacrifice. This, though still only in the 
 type, means all. It is the giving of life, — 
 of heart's desire, — to the divine will and pur- 
 pose, that God wants, not the formal, outside 
 offering of things. For all things are already 
 his : it is life only that He has so shared with 
 his children that they may turn and offer it 
 again to Him. Cain brought of his acquisi- 
 tions. Abel brought of his living affections. 
 The one of what he had got ; as if he could 
 give to God. The other of what he was ; as 
 already belonging to God. And each knew 
 his answer of the Lord. How, the text does 
 not explain. That belongs in the hidden 
 sense. Moses only says, " The Lord had 
 respect unto Abel and to his offering ; but 
 unto Cain and to his offering he had not 
 respect." And Cain was wroth. What with? 
 
40 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 Not himself ; not the lower of the double hu- 
 man nature. . With the higher nature of his 
 brother, by which his lower was condemned. 
 He sided with his own wrong ; that way lies 
 wrath and punishment. Not with God and 
 the truth against his own evil ; that way 
 would have been forgiveness and restoration. 
 Repentance sets God on man's side ; it annuls 
 wrath, for wrath is only contradiction. 
 
 Now comes God's demand. " Why art thou 
 wroth? Why art thou contrary to Me ? If 
 thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? 
 And if thou doest not well, thy sin lieth in 
 the way." 
 
 And the terrible sentence f oUows, — the 
 law of life and death, — the condition of con- 
 demnation or of victory, — which sounds so 
 enigmatical to first careless hearing, but is so 
 deep in awful, righteous certainty. " And 
 unto thee" — unto this lower nature of thine, 
 if thou by sin wilt have it so, — " shall be his 
 desire," — the desire of the higher ; " and the 
 lower shall rule." 
 
 The lower, — the brutal — -did rule. " Cain 
 rose up against Abel his brother, and slew 
 him." 
 
 What did Moses — what must we — believe 
 
THE FIRST CRIME 41 
 
 by this, but that the earthly may slay the 
 heavenly ? • 
 
 " And now " — came the voice of God 
 again — " thou art cursed." Your life has 
 crossed — thwarted, — all my meaning for 
 you. " The very ground " — even the earthly 
 for the sake of which thou hast sinned — 
 " shall not henceforth yield unto thee her 
 strength. Thou shalt be a fugitive and a 
 vagabond," — a restless, unsatisfied, baffled 
 wanderer and striver — "in the earth." It 
 was saying to him, " Go ; the earth is open 
 before you ; struggle, acquire what you can ; 
 but the very earth is not with you, for it is 
 the outcome of, and works according to, the 
 heavenly ; and upon the heavenly you have 
 turned your back." 
 
 Nevertheless, even Cain should not, as he 
 feared, be slain ; he should not be destroyed ; 
 life should remain to him, and so, surely some 
 final hope. But now, " he went out from the 
 presence of the Lord." 
 
CHAPTER rn 
 
 THE DELUGE 
 
 The story of the Deluge is the stoiy of 
 a Great Cleansing. A taking away of men, 
 that Man upon the earth might make a new 
 beginning. 
 
 Cain went out into the land of Nod. 
 
 Nod means wandering. Cain was a vaga^ 
 bond; the first great vagrant, without home 
 or place upon the earth. He was a man with- 
 out bond, or ties ; he had destroyed his family 
 relationship and claim ; he was without human 
 anchorage ; drifting, driven to and fro. Yet 
 he was a man, and alive ; and his hfe, broken 
 and spoiled as it was, went on. He made to 
 himself new ties. No : man makes nothing ; 
 he accepts. God still gave to Cain, — into all 
 that was left on the God-side of his nature. 
 He gave him wife and children ; and his chil- 
 dren's children increased in the land of his 
 wandering. 
 
THE DELUGE 43 
 
 They began to learn the arts of life. They 
 built cities ; Cain himself built the first one, 
 and called it after the name of his firstborn 
 son, Enoch. Family and established home 
 began to be, and to be dear and honored, upon 
 the earth. There was all this to save, and 
 to grow from, even for the man who had 
 cursed himself against earth by the first crime, 
 and for his descendants. 
 
 Men grew wise and cunning in many works 
 and inventions. They found out about music, 
 — the management of sweet, grand sounds ; 
 and they made instruments of sound ■ — - harps, 
 and organs, — and learned the handling of 
 them. Jubal, the sixth in line from Cain, 
 and seventh from Adam, " was the father of 
 all such as handle the harp and the organ." 
 
 Notice this one little instance of the relation 
 of letter and meaning in Scripture record; 
 a quite plain example of how the first only 
 indicates — not defines — the second. Jubal 
 was not the progenitor, in the flesh, &f all who 
 have since lived as skilled lovers of music. He 
 was the beginner of musical art ; the father of 
 music, as Galen and Hippocrates were fathers 
 ,of medicine ; as the seers of the first Chris- 
 tian centuries were the fathers of the Church, 
 
44 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 We have no trouble in understanding the 
 fact. It is only in divorcing letter and mean- 
 ing that trouble and doubt come. Words, 
 terms of speech, are but signs put forth. The 
 real thing is behind the sign. Once accept 
 this, and look for an interpretation in all, 
 and tangles become clues, and darkness turns 
 luminous. The every-day speech of to-day, 
 used so carelessly and with such superficial 
 intent, is like the rocks and fossils, rich with 
 revelation, — full-stored with histories of old 
 human experience. We never get the reality 
 of anything without analysis. Why should 
 we expect the profoundest truth to lie bare 
 and evident upon the surface, in narrative 
 and utterance through which men of old time 
 signified their deepest, uttermost knowledges ? 
 Interpretation is disclosure ; an opening forth. 
 Of language, it is the rendering of something 
 shut up in language, hindered by its limits. 
 Except for symbolism, which brings like to 
 like, reminding us of something we know by 
 which we may begin to apprehend the inex- 
 pressible, word and speech would not be hu- 
 man. They would be as mere animal sounds, 
 the cries of the beasts, uttering no thought, 
 but only present, momentary feeling. We 
 
THE DELUGE 45 
 
 are to remember this ; to start with it as a 
 premise, and carry it on into all conclusions 
 in the study of what has been grandly and 
 truly called "Holy Writ." For "holy" is 
 " wholly ; " holiness is entireness, wholeness ; 
 complete in both inward and outward, spirit- 
 ual and natural, which are a whole, and not 
 separate. 
 
 Tubal-Cain, the brother of Jubal, was the 
 " instructor of every artificer in brass and 
 iron ; " of all useful and ornamental work in 
 the metals ; tool-making, cunning and elabo- 
 rate decorations ; devices to reinforce human 
 power in the subduing of all things to the 
 service of human life, — fine and exquisite 
 architectures and adornments, also. Away 
 back before the Flood, before any connected 
 and complete history, these skills and sciences 
 began. To what they may have grown before 
 the great destruction came, we have no record 
 but that of scant tradition. Men lived long 
 lives, and wrought and builded. The length 
 of life itself argues much of complete achieve- 
 ment. A man could shape and pursue his 
 idea deliberately to perfection. He was not 
 hurried, nor stopped short. A generation 
 could accomplish what centuries have failed 
 
46 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 of since, in the slow periods of the middle ages 
 which our histories chronicle. The same gen- 
 eration held centuries in its unloosened grasp ; 
 there was no detaching and imperfect join- 
 ing again of purpose and progTess. We have 
 come to times now, when acceleration takes 
 the place of continuance, and a man's fifty 
 years are fuller and faster than — perhaps — 
 Methuselah's nine hundred and sixty-nine. 
 
 Yet how shall we compare, and know ? The 
 higher the arts, — the more far-reaching the 
 discoveries, — the frailer and more temporary 
 the mechanical means and appliances, hence 
 the more entirely perishing the indicating 
 traces. The Pyramids stand for countless 
 centuries : the electric threads that join the 
 uttermost parts of the earth in instant inter- 
 course, and inaugurate absolutely new eras of 
 labor, method, power, accomplishment, would 
 — were the thought of man that invents and 
 uses confused and lost — vanish like cobwebs 
 from off wind-blown twigs. 
 
 What we do know is that as knowledges 
 and skills increased, self and sin increased 
 their power with them, just as they do to-day. 
 We read of the " sons of God " taking the 
 " daughters of men " to be their wives, and 
 
THE DELUGE 47 
 
 that of such union giants of might arose and 
 were renowned. What was this but the join- 
 ing of divine force, given from heaven, to the 
 desires and motives of earth ? Even this God 
 allows to come to pass. He does not stop his 
 gift, though men make earthly and evil use 
 of it. His sun keeps on shining and stream- 
 ing forth vitality, upon the just and upon the 
 unjust. But, sometime, in his own time, He 
 interposes. He who says to the sea, " Thou 
 shalt come thus far, and no farther," says the 
 same thing to human pride and self-will and 
 presumption. " When the enemy shall come 
 in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall 
 lift up a standard against him." The very 
 Spirit, the very Law, by and under which 
 men work to their own ends, becomes the 
 Avenger, — that it may be the Redeemer. 
 
 And so we find that there was a time when 
 this came to pass in the far-back, legendary 
 periods ; and that this visitation of God, the 
 certainty of it, and the need of it, and the 
 remedy by means of it, were what Moses be- 
 lieved in. Always behind the awfulness, a 
 mercy : an evil to be done away, a good to be 
 established. That God takes in hand what 
 man is spoiling, and, utterly destroying the 
 
48 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 harm, gives man a clean chance again, is the 
 faith underlying all the woes and threats and 
 judgments of the Old Testimony. It is the 
 central Testimony itself. God's judgments 
 are a solemn adjusting, — a setting right : his 
 judgments and his justifying are one, as the 
 word is one. " Shall not the Judge of aU the 
 earth do right ? " " O thou enemy, destruc- 
 tions are come to a perpetual end : but the 
 Lord shall endure forever ; he hath prepared 
 his throne for judgment. And he shall judge 
 the world in righteousness ; he shall minister 
 judgment to the people in uprightness." That 
 is what is to come of it aU. 
 
 In the mean time, something is true that we 
 are hardly able to understand, so wonderful, 
 so divine is it. And this wonderful, divine 
 thing is what we read next, in this histtry 
 that Moses believed, and it is the very secret 
 of his believing. 
 
 God com-passionates. He endures, suffers, 
 with us. What we bear, He bears. What 
 we bring upon ourselves, we bring upon Him, 
 in the pain of his own wise, sure, terrible 
 judgments. As it is the good — the God — 
 in us that suffers in our remorse, it is the All- 
 Good, — the God himself, — who suffers in 
 
THE DELUGE 49 
 
 all the wrong of humanity. It is the " Lamb," 
 
 — the Tenderness and Truth of the Heart of 
 God, — " in the midst of the throne," — the 
 Almightiness, — that forever shares with us 
 in a mystery of At-one-ment. " God so loved 
 the world " from the beginning, that He never 
 spared himself in all the world's anguish. 
 " The Lamb was slain from the foundation of 
 the world." 
 
 " He repenteth him of the evil." " He is 
 gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of 
 great kindness, and repenteth Mm of the evil." 
 
 " Therefore, saith the Lord, turn ye to me 
 with all your hearts." He gives of his own 
 repentance into the hearts of men, that so He 
 may forgive and restore. Repentance, — de- 
 struction of evil, — turning back to the good, 
 
 — there is no other way ; there can be no other 
 " scheme of salvation." And it begins in God 
 himself. 
 
 When man goes wrong, God is sorry. 
 Wrong is sorrow, and the sorrow for it can 
 only be in the good. When " God saw that 
 the wickedness of man was great upon the 
 earth, and that every imagination of his heart 
 was only evil continually, it" — the evil — 
 " repented the Lord that he had made man 
 
50 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 upon the earth, and it grieved him at his 
 heart." 
 
 This word " repent," here, is not the same 
 that means " to turn back." It means just 
 what the last clause of the sentence explains. 
 It " grieved him at his heart." It was not 
 change of purpose, or discovery of mistake. 
 He knew what would happen when He made 
 man ; He did not draw back from his under- 
 taking now, and He never will; his "word 
 never returns unto him void." He goes on 
 with his work through all that He and his 
 children must bear together, to perfect the 
 glory that He means for them with Him : 
 and all the way He is " tenderly sorry " with 
 them. 
 
 The destruction must come, — the renova- 
 tion must be made. " I wUl destroy the life 
 that I have made upon the earth, — for it re- 
 penteth me." It would not have " repented " 
 Him ; it would not have made Him tenderly 
 sorry, if He coidd create, or permit, evil. He 
 would have let man go on : He would have 
 made him comfortable in his wickedness; it 
 would have been but man's living out of some- 
 thing which Grod had in his own nature and 
 had given to him. And the provision for it 
 
THE DELUGE 51 
 
 would have been in his power. But God 
 never does make man comfortable in sin. Good 
 was the end of his creation; and until man 
 himself would be sorry, and leave his evil, 
 God himself must bear to be sorry for him. 
 He must bring to an end, for the sake of a new 
 beginning. Earthly life, in itself, was of no 
 consequence. It was only as the training to 
 and unfolding of a heavenly, that it mattered. 
 It was temporary, anyway : and the " times " 
 were " in his hand." 
 
 The earth was "filled with violence," 
 through the corruption of all flesh. There- 
 fore, the time had come. I will destroy the 
 flesh, and the evil, said the Lord. 
 
 " But Noah found grace in the eyes of the 
 Lord." Transpose the sentence. " The eyes 
 of the Lord found his own grace in Noah." 
 He found good, rather than evil, ruling in him. 
 And not a particle of good can ever be de- 
 stroyed. Noah, having a divine good in him, 
 was to be saved alive. 
 
 " Noah was a just man. . . . And Noah 
 walked with God." 
 
 And the name " Noah " means " rest," — 
 " comfort." 
 
62 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 Rest in the Lord, and comfort of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 The Holy Spirit also findeth " rest " in the 
 soul that receives it. 
 
 Here we have the whole Divine - human 
 relation. 
 
 Moses tells us that God " said " something 
 " unto Noah." 
 
 The just man, — the man who "loves justice 
 and judgment," who works for them in all his 
 doings, — who so " walks with God " in His 
 own ways, — shall be spoken to in his heart 
 by the Lord. 
 
 The Lord walks ajid talks with his true 
 human child who follows in his leading and 
 listens. More than all the special story of 
 Noah, and the rain and the ark and the great 
 overwhelming of waters on the earth, and the 
 saving upon Ararat, was, in the mind of Moses, 
 this faith. Noah was a grand, representative 
 man. The Flood was a representative circum- 
 stance in the history of things. The great 
 outward experience was great only as it re- 
 vealed the inward. It is very strange that 
 people take the letter of the narrative, the 
 detail of the circumstance, to be the impor- 
 
THE DELUGE 53 
 
 tant thing, — the thmg to be made sure of 
 or to disprove, to doubt or to believe, — and 
 imagine that the whole spiritual authority of 
 the Bible depends on such letter and circum- 
 stance, imperfectly handed down and recorded 
 in the memories and chronicles of men. They 
 seem to forget that we have no absolutely per- 
 fect record of the details of any historical 
 event. Of the main facts, the causes and re- 
 sults, we are confidently certain ; but in the 
 press of action, in the urgency of momentous 
 experience, much is always confused and even 
 contradictory to eye-witness itself or to imme- 
 diate recollection. There are disputes about 
 the statistics of the battle of Waterloo ; but no 
 one doubts that there was a battle of Water- 
 loo, and that it was the end of the Napoleonic 
 domination of Europe. 
 
 After Moses — after anybody — has come 
 to see that the great matters illustrated in 
 the outside event are true; that God's work 
 upon the earth and in human lives is the 
 making of good and the destruction of evil ; 
 that the one has in it the law of eternal life, 
 and the other the law of eternal death ; that 
 the Lord will not lose nor waste a particle of 
 
54 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 the good, in the race or in the individual 
 soul ; that every right-doing puts a man on the 
 side of God and his infinite power; that all 
 " the steps of a good man are ordered by the 
 Lord ; " that the thoughts of truth and wisdom 
 in a man's mind are whisperings directly to 
 him out of the Eternal Thought and Know- 
 ledge ; — what else, in comparison, signifies 
 the question whether an earthly event and 
 experience were remembered and reported 
 with unerring accuracy and complete under- 
 standing from remotest age, — from behind 
 and during and after a Deluge which swept 
 away men and the traces of men, except a 
 small remnant of a tribe or family, — or some 
 points were left open to a doubt or a con- 
 jecture ? Do we get the story of a shipwreck 
 or a railway disaster of last week with such 
 precision from the survivors as seems to be 
 demanded here ? 
 
 That evil, corrupted life was swept away, in 
 a great region of the earth, and an evil time 
 brought to an end that a fresh and better 
 might begin ; that some lives, with the good 
 yet living and possible in them, were spared 
 and separated for this new Genesis ; that 
 God's Thought works in human thought, and 
 
THE DELUGE 55 
 
 that He leads and teaches and provides and 
 prevents ; that, above all, his own Heart is 
 filled with the very feeling, in a divine entire- 
 ness, that man's knows faintly and in part, — 
 so that the pain of a man is but a small sign 
 of something that thrills the Almighty Spirit, 
 and that Almightiness itself is set to heal and 
 turn to peace — these are the inward facts 
 that are set before the mere story, in the very 
 order of the telling. We come to them be- 
 fore we come to a single word about the ark, 
 and the strange pairing of living creatures, by 
 sevens and by twos, and the forty days and 
 forty nights of tempest and flood, and the cov- 
 ering of aU the hills fifteen cubits deep, and 
 the perishing of all living substance except 
 that in the ark, where the Lord had put it 
 for safety by the hand of Noah, and himself, 
 with his own hand, had " shut him in." 
 
 Every here and there is a wonderful word of 
 parable in these old statements of God's deal- 
 ing with men in outside providences. " The 
 Lord shut him in." He showed Noah just 
 one thing to do, one way and place to take 
 and enter, and He " shut him in." It is a 
 safe and beautiful thing when the Lord shuts 
 one in, leaving no doubt or wandering, or even 
 
56 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 escape, possible. The child knows then that 
 he is under the controlling hand of the Father, 
 and has only to lie stUl and wait His time ; 
 to " humble himself under the mighty hand of 
 God, that in due time He may exalt him." 
 " Rest in the Lord," — in the place where He 
 puts you, even when He shuts you in, — the 
 Bible keeps telling us, all through ; " and 
 He shall give you the desires of your heart." 
 Not the desires of your mistaken imagination, 
 — not the freedom and ease you might like 
 for the moment, — but the real heart and life 
 desire and need, which these passing wishes 
 erroneously represent ; the real desire of his 
 own Heart, which in you is your true instinct 
 toward eternal life. 
 
 We lose these beautiful words of the Word 
 when we puzzle and argue, and strive to 
 reconcile, or to justify ourselves in rejecting, 
 the fragmentary and necessarily incomplete 
 annal of events, which is made their vehicle. 
 "The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life." 
 We want to find from the Bible what God's 
 Truth was in the hearts of men, longer ago 
 than we can look for any carefully collated 
 and authenticated particulars of what happened 
 to them day by day, or age by age. 
 
THE DELUGE 57 
 
 With this clear purpose, we shall find our- 
 selves constantly and intuitively reading be- 
 tween the lines, — we shall find, without 
 dictation, the spiritual correspondence, as the 
 men did who learned it by living it, and who 
 were the Believers of the Bible. 
 
 "We shall see that whether the whole globe 
 was submerged or not ; whether all life every- 
 where was destroyed, or only a local deluge 
 swept what was known to the few survivors 
 as the " whole earth ; " whether the wisdom 
 and foresight of the ark-building was a spe- 
 cial, mysterious disclosure to Noah, or given 
 to him through the natural channel of his 
 human perceptions ; whether his plan seem- 
 ingly evolved from his own mental effort 
 and invention, or was " commanded " him by 
 a voice external to his self - consciousness ; 
 whether the gathering signs of the atmos- 
 phere and season, or the direct warning of 
 God, apprised him that the great water win- 
 dows of heaven would soon be opened, and 
 th^ rivers would burst their bounds and rush 
 and spread until the whole countryside should 
 be as a sea, in which everything would per- 
 ish ; whether he gathered of his family and of 
 the living creatures upon which human life 
 
58 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 depended, so far as was possible to him, into 
 the great vessel three hundred cubits long and 
 fifty wide, and thirty high, with one window 
 and one door ; or whether all the fauna of 
 Asia, as the legend seems to relate, found a 
 way in and room to stay — what need to 
 trouble about, since we can never definitively 
 certify nor explain what is meant? Why 
 not take the story just as Moses found and 
 took it, — rough, primitive, broken, patched 
 with different versions, graphically startling in 
 some extremes of statement, after the manner 
 of human repetitions, — yet nevertheless the 
 conveyance of a fact ; the assurance of a stu- 
 pendous something which surely did happen, 
 and behind and in whose happening was the 
 working of the mighty purpose which created 
 and controls the world and man, always for 
 good, and always against evilf 
 
 How can we fail to see that this was what 
 Moses found in it, and that this was the 
 wheat which he gathered and garnered up, 
 whatever remaining chaff of its first outgrown 
 growth yet clung about it ? That this is the 
 chief thing he believed about it all, and held 
 worth while in preserving the record, is sim- 
 ply plain. 
 
THE DELUGE 59 
 
 A great Destruction came, and a special sal- 
 vation was provided. The man who walked 
 with God and received his commandment, and 
 ■•'did according to all that God commanded 
 him," had his way shown to him, and escape 
 made : he was shut into a perfect safety while 
 "the waters prevailed upon the earth," and 
 was borne to a mountain-top, — an island in 
 the great deep uplifted from immovable foun- 
 dations, to be the centre of a new world for 
 him and his descendants. And he " built an 
 altar " there, and made a fresh, " clean offer- 
 ing " to the Lord ; and the Lord " smelled 
 the sweet savor " of it and entered into sol- 
 emn " co-venant " — coming together — with 
 the man ; meeting his simple sign of faith on 
 His own supreme part with a promise : that 
 " while the earth should remain, seedtime and 
 harvest, summer and winter, should not fail." 
 
 " I will not curse the ground any more for 
 man's sake : the imagination of man's heart is 
 evil from Ms youth." 
 
 Is it a straining of interpretation to sup- 
 pose that this word may be akin to that which 
 came to David : " He knoweth our frame ; 
 He remembereth that we are dust " ? 
 
 God will not add any more or needless 
 
60 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 hardships for us ; He will help us to endure 
 and overcome those that are and must be. 
 He knows that man is but as in a childhood 
 and a youth, — in his mere beginnings, — 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Perhaps already the objection may arise 
 which is sometimes urged against such oc- 
 cult understandings and interpretations of the 
 Scriptures : why are the real meanings so 
 overlaid and hidden? Why must there be 
 such painstaking, such research, such labori- 
 ous finding out of something beyond the let- 
 ter? Why are the things we need most to 
 know not made directly apparent in simple 
 statement ? /^ 
 
 Beeause_jthej_are_the_JiiddenT. the deep 
 things, the things of heart and spirit and of 
 spiritual apprehension, that can only be indi- 
 cated — not exhaustively set forth — by that 
 which is outwardly experienced. ^ Because 
 human life is an outcome of essential truth, 
 and essential truth must be read_bac}5^ from 
 it, and within it. Because all mysteries and 
 knowledges and faiths are but for the reve- 
 lation of the living heart of things, which is 
 the Heart of Love, which is the Heart of 
 
THE DELUGE 61 
 
 God. Can we know God's heart at a glance, 
 in a hurry, and does it lie on the outside of 
 the things manifest from it ? > 
 
 The persons who rebel most readily against 
 the need of deep reach and insight in the 
 understanding of the Bible will study eagerly 
 what later, lesser human writings mean ; 
 they cannot search too centrally for the in- 
 tents of Dante and Milton, of Shakespeare 
 and Browning : a new reading, a fresh sig- 
 nificance, is hailed with enthusiasm, with 
 exultation ; cleverness, and the delight of 
 apprehension, are proved and gratified ; the 
 greatest poets are often measured as great- 
 est by their obscurities, which are taken for 
 granted as profundities. Underneath it all 
 is a strong, latent satisfaction in the truth 
 that it takes somewhat of genius to compre- 
 hend Genius. Even so, " the things of the 
 Spirit are spiritually discerned." If we can 
 see them, only in a little, we are glad, because 
 we find that our own souls can breathe the 
 heavenly air : we, too, are spiritually alive. 
 
 It is not what any story tells us, merely as 
 a story, that moves our thought and feeling, 
 centrally ; it is the human nature, experience, 
 want, hope, sympathy, that it stirs within us ; 
 
62 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 it is the realizing sense of what may be, and is, 
 in human life, and the promise and possibil- 
 ity of it ; it is the strengthening for our own 
 need which we get from the history of others ; 
 their endurings, helps, leadings, rescues, sal- 
 vations. This is what hands stories down, 
 not merely from lip to lip, but from heart to 
 heart. They are all representations, para^ 
 bles ; as such the meaning behind them is 
 the thing we look for, whether consciously or 
 not. It is what the patriarchs felt in the sig- 
 nificance of their old-family traditions; it is 
 what they told them for, from father to son ; 
 it is what Moses found in them, and believed, 
 and indorsed, and went on to understand 
 God's further revelation by, — and so, now 
 that they have come down to us, it is but the 
 simplest, most direct apprehension, and no 
 mystical wresting or changing, to take the 
 text as the envelope of an innermost truth ; 
 just as true to-day as it was when Abraham 
 sat in his tent door and told the old tales 
 over to the boy Isaac, the son of his old age, 
 and made known to him his own certainty of 
 the wonderful covenant-making of the Lord 
 God with himself, when the Word came to 
 him in an intimate, personal revelation, an 
 
THE DELUGE 63 
 
 " appearing " of the Most High, saying to 
 him, " I am the Almighty God ; walk before 
 me, and be thou perfect ; and I wiU make my 
 covenant between me and thee, and will mul- 
 tiply thee exceedingly." And when Abram 
 fell upon his face, listening with a holy fear 
 and awe, " God talked with him," he told his 
 child, and said to him yet more clearly, 
 " Behold, my covenant i& with thee, and thou 
 shalt be a father of many nations." We shall 
 come to this presently, when in the Mosaic 
 record we find the origin and basis of aU 
 Hebrew faith in the great Belief of Abraham. 
 
 Before we leave the lesson of the Ark, how- 
 ever, we may surely interpret it into our own 
 lives, as the patriarchs and Moses did into 
 theirs, and on the same lines of distinct in- 
 sight and assured personal trust. 
 / The Lord will help every one of us to build 
 his ark ; and to the safety of it Hie will him- 
 self shut each man in. The environment of 
 life surrounds us with limit, hindrance, shel- 
 ter ; and on the great waters of the flood of 
 being and event. He will cause us to be borne 
 to the Mountain of His Best. 
 
 He will shut us in with ourjywn ; in home 
 and family He will protect and save us, and 
 
64 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 bring us together to the Land of the New Be- 
 ginning. All that ministers and belongs to 
 our true life shall be saved with us, and shall 
 come forth, with old, familar dearness and 
 use, after the death - deluge, upon the new 
 earth, under the new heavens. All the length 
 and breadth and depth and height of our ex- 
 perience, through which we are to come to our 
 full and final and safe possession, are minutely 
 ordered and adapted by himself. He puts 
 the building, as it seems to us, into our own 
 hands : but He provides, directs, measures for 
 us, all the way through. If we follow his 
 plan, obey his word, our ark is a sure abiding 
 and a certain survival. If we choose rather 
 to drift on without Him, we are swept into 
 wild waters, and, for the time being, perish/^ 
 Our ark is to be of " gopher-wood ; " the 
 wood of the hard, century - enduring, ever- 
 green and living tree ; that does not lose its 
 leafage, — that is full of a rich, conserving, 
 purifying, sweet-breathing balsam. Pine, — 
 fir, — cypress, — cedar, — of whatever variety 
 the "gopher-wood" may have been, it belonged 
 to this sweet, noble order ; typical of every- 
 thing strong, calm, beautiful, precious, and 
 long-lasting. 
 
THE DELUGE 65 
 
 " Within and without," the Ark was to be 
 " pitched " with the fragrant resin of the tree, 
 to keep the waters out, and the strength in- 
 tact ; it was the essential principle, joining, 
 keeping sound, defending the whole structure. 
 
 One window, open upward, was to light it 
 all ; one door, for going out or coming in, was 
 to be provided ; there was to be neither access 
 nor egress otherwise than divinely permitted 
 and commanded; and the door was to be set 
 in the side, serving the three levels and par- 
 allels of the " stories." This is unstrained 
 suggestion of the three levels, or " degrees," 
 of human being and relation, — the natural, 
 the spiritual, the celestial ; the three entrances 
 and outlets of the Life given unto man. 
 
 Is this " mysticism " in the sense of the un- 
 real ? Or is not all that is vitally real most 
 surely mystical, in the sense of reaching into 
 and drawing from the secret and sacred ? 
 
 All life, and all food for life, are gathered 
 into every man's ark, share for share, repre- 
 sentatively. There is nothing God has made 
 upon the earth that is not made for every soul, 
 in its portion and degree. It may be but 
 imprisoned, scarcely known or accounted of, 
 for the interval ; but it is there ; it is all wait- 
 
66 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 ing to be set free ; it is for food, use, pleasure, 
 in the great coming, fulfilling time. When 
 everything outside in the earth shall perish, 
 something of all shall have remained, been 
 housed, stored up, for the restoration ; and 
 all, in a new increase and abundance, shall be 
 g^ven again to men. 
 
 Out of the window of the Ark goes forth, 
 first, the raven ; the strong-winged bird, eager 
 and seeking ; the confident expectation that 
 keeps its unfaltering flight to and fro about 
 the Ark, above the waters, until the waters are 
 dried away. And then the tender dove may 
 be let loose, — the loving hope, the timorous 
 desire ; and she finds at first no visible rest, 
 but returns into her old shelter and patience ; 
 then she goes forth again, and lo ! the young 
 olive branch, in its pale, fresh green, stirs in 
 the gentle wind that breathes over the un- 
 covered hillside, and the new, cleansed earth 
 is reborn to the eternal light ! 
 
 If there is anything in this different from 
 what Moses, and Abraham, and the Hebrew 
 people as children of the living God, must 
 have felt in their hearts and believed and 
 found their help in, when they heard and told 
 
THE DELUGE 67 
 
 again the story of the Flood, and the Ark, and 
 the Mountain of Rest and Regeneration, we 
 may, if we will, call the tale a useless fable, 
 and reject its authority ; but if our own hearts 
 find and feel it full of this reality, it is to us 
 the Testimony, and we need not trouble nor 
 cavil about mechanical details, or uncertainties 
 of verbal representation. For why was fable 
 ever invented, but to convey something so in- 
 finitely and intensely true that no mere single, 
 literal history can hold or express it all ? 
 
 Christ spoke in parables ; the world was 
 built in parables ; human history goes on in 
 parables, of which each separate chronicle 
 holds a meaning for the race. And all these 
 things are so enshrined, that in due time they 
 may come forth ; as the facts of Creation 
 come forth to human knowledge from their 
 safe sepulture in the silent, age-worn rocks. 
 
 " Ye shall know, if ye follow on to know 
 the Lord." 
 
 " What I do, thou knowest not now, but 
 thou shalt know hereafter." 
 
 " I have many things to say imto you, but 
 ye cannot bear them now. The Spirit shall 
 bring all things to your remembrance." 
 
 " He that is instructed unto the kingdom of 
 
68 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 heaven is like unto an householder, which 
 bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
 and old." 
 
 Old Parson Robinson said it to the Holland 
 Pilgrims. " There is yet great light to break 
 forth from the word of God." And the chil- 
 dren of the Pilgrims, through their very in- 
 herited loyalty to the Word, and its letter as 
 infolding the Word, may blessedly find it so, 
 in face of all radical overthrow and shallow 
 contempt. 
 
 So, the deeper we look into the primitive 
 formations of human thought, the grander, 
 more interior, vital meanings and revelations 
 we shall discern ; not by arbitrary or fancifid 
 constructions, but by simple inseeing, and 
 the recognition of the unity of the particular 
 form with the larger spiritual reality. 
 
 There is still a more profound meaning, 
 therefore, than we have yet touched in this 
 study, in the testimony of the Ark ; we find it 
 if we reverse the word, and say — as was said 
 later — the Ark of the Testimony. For it is 
 there, already, hidden in the story of Noah, 
 and his building under the instruction of God. 
 
 He could never — no man can ever — build 
 an outside ark, unless he had the Ark inside 
 
THE DELUGE 69 
 
 him. The pattern of things must always be 
 in the heavens. 
 
 In the inmost heaven of a man's soul is a 
 centre God makes for himself. It is the " Ark 
 of the Co-venant; " the Place of the Coming- 
 Together of God and the man ; the " secret 
 place of the Most High ; " the " closet " man 
 enters into when with " shut door " he holds 
 communion with his Maker. It is the place 
 that may not be profaned ; the " house of 
 prayer " that may not be made " a den of 
 thieves." 
 
 This is where God gives a man from himself, 
 his individual nature ; where He says to him, 
 " I have called thee by thy name ; thou art 
 mine." It is where all real Thought and Con- 
 sciousness begin ; the vital point of union be- 
 tween the Infinite and the finite ; from which 
 lesser thoughts, knowledges, and their ulti- 
 mations flow forth, which seem to the man his 
 own thinkings and life. It is the centre from 
 which only he is truly alive. When he abides 
 in the mere outer senses of his mind, believing 
 them all his own and aU of himself, cutting 
 ofE from heavenly source and consciousness, — 
 making Tp\a,j-things of his separated fancies 
 and self -impulses, — he confuses and perplexes 
 
70 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 
 
 all the true relation of his living. He departs 
 from God, and begins to die. The branch is 
 lopped o£E from the tree, and slowly perishes. 
 
 So, — let us read through the parable, and 
 remember, — it was out of the Ark of God's 
 Eest within him that " Noah " — the man 
 whose name was "Rest" — built the outer 
 vessel that bore his life, and the lives that 
 were of his own and his full inheritance of 
 being from the Lord, unto " Ararat," — the 
 " Holy Land," — the Mountain of God's Holy 
 Presence, and man's final Rest in Him. 
 
 One word — one interpretative key — is 
 set throughout to the unlocking of the succes- 
 sive doors of the whole grand revelation. 
 
PART III 
 
 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 
 
 What Abraham believed comes into the 
 Mosaic record. It came into the life of Moses ; 
 at was the root of the belief of Moses. 
 
 In the third generation from Shem, the eld- 
 est son of Noah, according to the genealogy 
 in Genesis, the great " dividing of the earth," 
 and the scattering of the multiplied families 
 abroad to make new Centres, — yet always in 
 families, though the nation was broken up, 
 and its very language confused into dialects, — 
 took place. 
 
 The one great people, using all its material 
 resources together, had grown powerful and 
 daring ; it thought by material force to reach 
 and possess not only the earth, but by force 
 and progress to build itself up into the very 
 heaven ; to lay hold of the very sources of 
 power. 
 
72 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 Is the story of the Tower of Babel any whit 
 different from the story of any earthly build- 
 ing since, in any age, even our own, when 
 achievement in the natural and tangible makes 
 men bold to say, " Go to : we are coming into 
 the command of all things ; all things are ours 
 by the conquering of our intellect and strength ; 
 there is no spiritual or unknown absolutely 
 beyond our attainment by brave, persistent 
 climbing on steps of the actual, the practical ; 
 we can ascend into what has been supposed 
 the mystical, the super-sensible, by firm foot- 
 hold on the positive, the concrete ; there is no 
 other way on, or up?" We build towers upon 
 solid earth, and say it is the sole foundation ; 
 forgetting that God set the earths themselves 
 afloat on the invisible ; that He has hung the 
 round world in an intangible infinity, that so 
 by the word of his will only it shall be upheld 
 and moved. 
 
 No wonder if in the rude ages men thought 
 to scale the imreachable by a huge physical 
 structure piled upward from the ground and 
 making foothold into heaven. It was the 
 same presumption of grasping the eternal and 
 controlling it in the sensuous and apparent. 
 Babel and the Pyramids are the crude witness 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 73 
 
 of the Past ; the dynamo and the electric wire 
 are the testimony of to-day. They climbed ; 
 we penetrate. They sought to set foot beyond 
 earth-boundaries; we to lay our hands upon 
 the secret motive force of things, and wield 
 and steer the planet. 
 
 On the low, flat, rockless plain they made 
 their essay ; with false, imperfect, crumbling 
 substance ; bricks, — their own poor mould- 
 ing and contrivance, — instead of everlasting 
 stones ; and slime — the mere ooze and mud 
 of earthliness — to hold their work together, 
 instead of the strong cementing of the rock- 
 particles themselves, slaked with a pure, living 
 water. 
 
 And God looked upon their futile work. 
 " The Lord came down to see the city and the 
 tower, which the children of men builded." 
 
 And He said : " This is their one united 
 thought and purpose ; they are the whole, 
 single human strength, with a single, mis- 
 taken human thought ; and this is the thing 
 that they wiU do. They are of one common 
 speech, one common wish ; but they do not 
 truly, inwardly understand ; therefore the out- 
 ward, seeming understanding shall be broken 
 up." 
 
74 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 God works by Law ; by fulfilling law, and 
 not by breaking it. By its own inherent 
 weakness, the mutual word and counsel con- 
 cerning their false undertaking feU. into dire 
 confusion ; in their very language they be- 
 came unintelligible to each other. It is the 
 way of the False : the miracle of the True is 
 that each man hears in his own tongue the 
 Word that is spoken. What is more unin- 
 telligible than human speech without identi- 
 cal comprehension ? They drifted away from 
 their own centre ; they " scattered " them- 
 selves " upon the face of the earth." The 
 text says, " the Lord did scatter them abroad : " 
 so He did, just as He " hardened Pharaoh's 
 heart;" by the inevitable working of moral, 
 spiritual cause and effect. 
 
 And so, from Shinar, the augmented mul- 
 titude of the tribes, too vast to keep longer 
 in one commonwealth, dispersed itself abroad 
 through Asia ; and still the generations of the 
 families went on, and the peoples grew ; and 
 in various quarters and divisions established 
 themselves separately, and by separate in- 
 fluences grew farther and farther apart, and 
 strange, — the one folk from the other, — in 
 tongue, in habits, in thought and theory, and 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 75 
 
 in the practical ordering and expression of 
 life. 
 
 Four generations succeeded, after this divi- 
 sion, — from Peleg to Terah ; in the fifth, we 
 find the son of Terah, Abram ; born a Chal- 
 dean, living with his father Terah and his 
 wife Sarai, in Haran, Mesopotamia. 
 
 And now we come to what we are looking 
 for, — the Faith of Abraham. 
 
 It was in him before the " new name," with 
 the great Promise in it, was given to him ; 
 when he was simply and grandly, Abram, 
 '•'■ father of height. ^^ One asks what this can 
 mean of him, other than that he reached, in 
 his faith toward God, his conscious " walking 
 with Him," the height of human nature ; a 
 life in which man's sonship to the Divine in- 
 herits all, and can but become father, handed 
 down of the same life and inheritance, to the 
 multitude who shall follow in his line, and be- 
 lieve after him, and " walk," also, " before 
 God in the light of the living." 
 
 Abram believed that God leads the indi- 
 vidual man ; concerns himself with individual 
 hopes and needs ; appoints to the single soul 
 its way, and brings every son of his as by the 
 hand, into " the land that He will show him." 
 
76 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 To him God clearly " appeared." The Di- 
 vine word came down into his thought, his 
 heart ; he had not to pierce heaven for it, nor 
 go down into the deep. It was with him ; 
 nigh to him ; in his own hearing, in his own 
 mouth. The things that made themselves 
 felt within him were the impulses of God's 
 Will in his behalf ; before he could think, for 
 himself, the thoughts were in God for him. 
 When his thinking — in this faith, under this 
 leading — took word, it was the speech of 
 God, and he listened. 
 
 " It is not in man that walketh, to direct 
 his steps." He knew this. And knowing it, 
 — and looMng above himself, — he saw the 
 sign ; he was sure of his path. " Thine ears 
 shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This 
 is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the 
 right hand, and when ye turn to the left." 
 Listening and believing, watching and obey- 
 ing, never hasty with his own impetuous 
 reason and desire, but waiting for the certain 
 counsel of the Spirit, he began that intimate 
 fellowship with the One Invisible and True, 
 which all the emblem-worship of fire and sun 
 and star taught by Chaldean seers could never 
 realize. 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 11 
 
 And with this in his heart, and as a com- 
 mandment in his ears, he went forth from 
 Haran with his wife and his nephew, and his 
 people ; childless, but believing that some- 
 how, whether he had child or no, the word of 
 God to him should be true, — " In thee shall 
 all families of the earth be blessed." To do 
 God's errand, God's way, whether he could 
 see through it or not, — this was the faith, 
 this the obedience, of " faithful Abraham." 
 It was the self-same thing that Saint Paul, in 
 the new Dispensation, preached as the "life 
 by the faith of the Son of God," who had 
 been fuU^ manifested in the flesh ; writing to 
 the Galatians all that beautiful, urgent expos- 
 tulation of the third chapter of his epistle, 
 concerning the receiving of the Spirit, and 
 the " hearing of faith," — " even as Abraham 
 believed God," and " before the gospel " was 
 told of Him, " In thee shall all nations of the 
 earth be blessed." 
 
 " So then," he declares, " they which be of 
 faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 
 
 This being the faith of Abraham concern- 
 ing God, as the Giver and Director of all 
 life and circumstance, — as the Lord of Hosts 
 because the Lord and Leader of each sep- 
 arate, conscious soul, and no other possible 
 way ; — that He is indeed the Life and the 
 Surrounding; that what we have learned to 
 call Environment is simply the compassing 
 about, the preventing, the following, of the 
 one Eternal, living Spirit, according to the 
 laws of an infinitely comprehending love and 
 wisdom, in all things that concern and befall a 
 man ; — there was directly involved with such 
 belief a corresponding sense of man's side of 
 the relation; a perception that human life is 
 the " coming-together," or " co-venant " of God 
 and man, the Soul creating and the soul cre- 
 ated, in an experience given to each individual 
 as a sole, peculiar illustration from among the 
 infinite possibilities of an infinite being. 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 79 
 
 God divides himself : He lets each one 
 live with Him — as it were, for Him — a piece 
 of his life. He shares — deputes — his per- 
 sonality. It is the Communion ; the Body- 
 broken and distributed : the current of his 
 own Heart - flow poured into human recep- 
 tivity and consciousness. The New Testi- 
 mony in Christ has revealed this ; but away 
 back in Abraham was a germ given of the 
 glorious faith, and a dim resulting concep- 
 tion of man's due and blessed share in the 
 accorded relation. This latter formed itself 
 to the understanding and conscience of Abra- 
 ham in two leading ideas and claims of right- 
 eousness on his own part, as answering to 
 such grand, condescending Righteousness of 
 God on his behalf. 
 
 And these were. Consecration and Sacrifice. 
 
 The man's life, taken from God's hand, sus- 
 tained and surrounded by his continual gift 
 and providence, is a holy, sure, and happy 
 thing. It is guaranteed by a promise, and 
 the promise is implied from the beginning, 
 in the very making of a man in the Maker's 
 image, to be a representative of Him, in 
 thought and love, in definite power, purpose, 
 action. " Every good gift and every perfect 
 
80 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 gift " was assured already in the mind of 
 Him " with whom is no variableness, neither 
 shadow of turning." Yet beyond, and more- 
 over, that man might know this mind of God, 
 and give himself willingly to its working out, 
 the revelation came to him in the strong 
 word of the Lord in his very soul : " Surely 
 blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I 
 will multiply thee." This was the Oath of 
 the Immutable ; the solemn covenant under- 
 standing that He made with man, in the early 
 simplicity in which man was able to hear his 
 voice ; " so that by two immutable things, in 
 which it was impossible for God to lie," — 
 the divine, original act of a Will that never 
 retracts, and the word spoken into the human 
 spirit, which has repeated itself in the hope 
 and expectation of every human spirit since, 
 — " we might have a strong consolation, who 
 have fled for refuge " from aU mortal doubts, 
 dismays, and uncertainties, " to lay hold on 
 the hoj)e set before us, sure and steadfast, and 
 which entereth into that within the veil" of 
 all the hidden mysteries. 
 
 Simply inevitable, then, it is, that man's 
 part of the covenant should be obedience and 
 trust ; a rendering back of life into God's 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 81 
 
 hand, to shape it as He will ; a self-surrender, 
 from the beginning and always, to the Divine 
 authority and care. Everything was to be 
 sacred ; everything was to be a service, an 
 offering. The recognition of this obligation, 
 in its two sublime elements, found expression 
 with Abraham in outward rite ; the ceremo- 
 nial circumcision, and the ceremonial sacri- 
 fice. The one was the initial token of the 
 other. Both were signs of the one essential 
 fact, — that man is God's, and that from first 
 to last, from inmost to uttermost, in all the 
 power of being and all the outcome of action, 
 he is a form of the Will of God ; consciously 
 joyful in that Will and in its Force, that are 
 lent to him as his own, that he may know so 
 much as a single soul in an endless life may 
 know, of what God can think and feel and 
 do, on the line of one continuous and beau- 
 tiful intent and possibility. This is to have 
 part in the " manifold wisdom of God ; " to 
 be in relation with every other part, and to 
 have sympathetic knowledge of all. It is to 
 share in the " unsearchable riches of Christ ; " 
 to be " heirs of God, and joint heirs with his 
 Son ; " to " comprehend with all saints the 
 breadth and length and depth and height ; " 
 
82 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 to " know the love of God which passeth 
 knowledge," and to be " filled with all the 
 fullness of God." 
 
 " This do in remembrance of me," comes 
 to be, in the full revelation, the grand and 
 gracious bidding, in every least partaking of 
 life, each drop and morsel of partictdar expe-' 
 rience, to take something out of the Divine 
 Heart and Being into our very own. 
 
 The beginning of such living with God was 
 in the faith and obedience of Abraham. It 
 was the centre of his belief. What he be- 
 lieved, we may safely believe with him ; to the 
 form and expression of his belief, in detail or 
 limitation, we are not bound down. We have 
 our teaching of to-day direct from the same 
 Spirit that talked with him; in our new cir- 
 cumstance, we have our own new showing, as 
 truly as he had when he was led out of Haran 
 in Mesopotamia, across the Euphrates into the 
 country of Canaan. 
 
 So we may go on to read of his interpreta- 
 tion and expression of Sacrifice without being 
 troubled by his methods or mistakes, — the 
 great underlying truth of Sacrifice, or loyal 
 rendering up of the very life itseK continu- 
 ally, being ours, as it was his. And the com- 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 83 
 
 fort of his mistakes is, that God set them 
 right; he was God's man through them all, 
 and he was not left alone to the limitations 
 of his own outer judgment ; but the inner in- 
 spiration and the gentle outer compelling were 
 with and around him unfailingly. 
 
 "As the mountains are round about Jeru- 
 salem, so the Lord is round about his people 
 forever." 
 
 Abraham had but the beginnings of the 
 great Belief which is the full knowledge of 
 God, and of his Christ in man ; which itself 
 is " life eternal." 
 
 Sacrifice and Atonement are simply and 
 only the " Co-venant," the Coming-together, 
 — the At-one-ment, — of the Holy and the 
 Imperfect, which mean the Infinite and the 
 incomplete. The Infinite, working always in 
 the finite to completion, comes into this life 
 of man by degrees, as the human, led and 
 trained by God's Providence, can be prepared 
 to receive it. And the more can only be 
 given in response to the offering of the less. 
 It is the living interchange between God and 
 man. It is the movement and inter-relation 
 of the Father and the Son and the Holy 
 Spirit ; the infinite elements and essential 
 
84 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 relations of the Divine Nature, taking three- 
 fold form always in creation and revelation 
 from a Threefold Being. 
 
 Father and Son, — Origin and Begetting ; 
 Spirit, — the living Power and Proceeding of 
 this eternal generation ; the One, and mutual 
 Life. 
 
 God is continually making the human out of 
 the Divine. We feel, therefore, our conscious 
 life in its two parts, the spiritual and the 
 natural ; we have soul and body ; we have 
 essence and circumstance. 
 
 Sin is the divorce of soul and sense. It is 
 a living from the separated inferior half of 
 the dual nature. Redemption and restoration 
 are the joining of them together again. 
 
 Christ hath broken down the middle wall 
 of partition, making the two one. 
 
 The Coming of the Kingdom is the estab- 
 lishment of the doing of the Will in heaven 
 and in earth. There shall be a new heaven 
 and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 The Heart -sacrifice is the offering of the 
 heart-life. The blood of the sprinkling, upon 
 the doorposts and garments, is the consecra- 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 85 
 
 tion of every outside thing of living, — the 
 wearing of all circumstance, which is the form- 
 raiment of existence, and the goings out and 
 comings in in the sight of the Lord, in this 
 glad and willing " bloodshedding," which is the 
 simple pouring forth along God's channels, in 
 his love and service, of the very currents of 
 men's being. It is not a casting away, or a 
 destruction ; it is a living use and fulfillment. 
 This is the true Passion Sign ; the passing 
 over of human desire and purpose to the divine 
 intent and commandment ; and the Lord's re- 
 sponse to it is absolution and remission, — a 
 setting free from, and putting utterly away, 
 — of the separating evil ; a reconstructing in 
 the wholeness which is holiness, of what God 
 from the first put together, but man has put 
 asunder; a leading back into the quietness 
 and rest of a perfect harmony of the inward 
 and the outward. Good-will, — God's-will, — 
 is Peace on Earth; the reconciling of the 
 heavenly and everlasting with the circumstan- 
 tial and transitory. The apparitions of heaven 
 and earth may change, progress, pass away ; 
 the Word of God shall not pass away, but 
 shall be continually spoken. It shall take 
 new, grander, more glorious form, for ever 
 
86 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 and ever. There shall always be form ; there 
 shall always be a land, and a home; there 
 shall be "world without end," though there 
 "shall be no more sea," to divide, to dislo- 
 cate. For " world " is but the clothing and sub- 
 stantiating of the heavenly, ineffable Thought 
 of God. There shall be world, — a Word, — 
 while God shall continue to think. " In the 
 Father's house are many mansions ; " and 
 " we shall dwell in the house of the Lord for- 
 ever." 
 
 When we read of Blood, in the Old Cove- 
 nant or in the New, it will relieve all our 
 perplexities and set aside all our disputes, if 
 we render it, in our understanding, as what 
 it truly signifies, — Heart-life. The blood of 
 the old sacrifice was the sign, in an extreme 
 realism, of this holy offering and surrender of 
 life to the Lord. We are " made clean by 
 the Blood of Christ," when his Life, by a 
 spiritual transfusion, is given into our own, 
 and becomes its essential force, its sanctifying, 
 holy-making, grace. There is no other redemp- 
 tion. All the rest is sign — fulfillment in the 
 outward — of this. Christ gave his bodily 
 blood, in the perfect and absolute sacrifice. 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 87 
 
 in man's name, and for man's sake, of the all 
 of himself, spirit and body, to his Father. He 
 was lifted up, that he might draw all men 
 after him. After that, Christ dieth no more ; 
 death hath no more dominion ; but in natural 
 and spiritual, inward and outward, substance 
 and sign, heaven and earth. Life, from God 
 the Father and through his Son, flows on, 
 triumphant and eternal. 
 
 And this Gospel, this Revelation, this 
 Prophecy, is the one grand meaning of all the 
 Holy Scripture, Old and New. It is the heart 
 of all parable ; it is the reason and interpreta- 
 tion of all ordinance. 
 
 Symbolism is language in its essentials. It 
 is the expression of the unity of the outer with 
 the inner life ; the translation of the spiritual 
 by the natural. All speech is an effort toward 
 this ; all speech is derived from symbols, which 
 are speechi The word of God has gone forth 
 into all the world. 
 
 A wonderful thing happened to Abram very 
 early in his migration from Mesopotamia to 
 Canaan, — from heathendom to the land where 
 the light should dwell. After his brave con- 
 flict with the four savage kings, the rescue of 
 Lot, and the generous fraternizing with the 
 
88 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 friendly border monarchs, he was met by Mel- 
 chizedek, " priest of the most high God," who 
 came forth to him bearing bread and wine ; 
 the Holy Supper. 
 
 A priest of God is one who feels and inter- 
 prets the signs of God ; who can thus handle 
 the mysteries of the word of life, and give 
 God's message to men. 
 
 Food and drink are sacraments. The re- 
 ceiving of them is the receiving, by material 
 medium, the Divine Force by which we live 
 and grow. To do this consciously and rever- 
 ently, is to eat and drink " worthily." 
 
 This daily partaking and outward nourish- 
 ing is sign again and continual reminder of 
 the way that aU things are of God, and of 
 Him are made " the power of an endless life " 
 to us, in our experience and understanding. 
 Bread and wine are circumstance and inspi- 
 ration. Circumstance and inspiration are as 
 bread and wine. They are body and spirit. 
 The one builds up our form of life, — the 
 other i/iforms it with the conscious thought 
 and love and power which from the very SquI 
 of God make living souls of us. 
 
 To take the Holy Supper, as God has made 
 it and as Christ gave it, is to enter in, con- 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 89 
 
 sciously, to this direct, continual, dependent, 
 happy relation with the Lord God. To make 
 sign of it, by the eating of the sacred bread 
 and the drinking of the sacred wine, is to espe- 
 cially realize and openly confess it. This is 
 the Communion Ordinance of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 Melchizedek brought the bread and wine 
 to Abram in solemn significance. It was a 
 foreshowing of what should be fully declared 
 and revealed to all men by Him who is " a 
 High Priest forever after the order of Mel- 
 chizedek." 
 
 Did Abram know, and believe, all this, at 
 that very time ? We remember that we are 
 searching out what Abraham believed ; what 
 it was given him to know of God. But is be- 
 lief always formulated? Is intuition always 
 translated? Does the mind always say to 
 itself, in word and syllable, what the heart 
 apprehends ? , 
 
 God always gives us the next thing. Abram 
 received in his soul the command and the life 
 from God, and then and therefore the sign 
 was given him. Something whose fullness 
 of meaning should expand afterward to his 
 thought, was presented to him in outward 
 
90 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 ceremony. The possibility of his understand- 
 ing — the power of heavenly things — was 
 already born in him, as it was in the disci- 
 ples, even while they perceived but dimly the 
 present word and act of their Lord. " What 
 I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt 
 know hereafter," is what God continually says 
 to us in his highest, deepest parables. Of aU 
 parables, the parable of food and drink is the 
 most intimate, the most evident and continual, 
 the most inclusive. It is our satisfying. It 
 is daily gift meeting daily want. Bread for 
 the building of the body, — wine^ or water, 
 for the refreshing, recreating of the spirit. 
 The body of life is to be God's righteousness ; 
 our circumstance is to be act and form after 
 his commandment. Goodness is the Good. 
 " Nourish us with all goodness," the Church 
 prays ; and again, " that our bodies may be 
 made clean by his body." And the wine is the 
 very inspiration of the Divine ; the innermost, 
 vital supplying. " Our soids, washed with 
 his most precious blood ; " flooded, regener- 
 ated by the tide that from the very Heart of 
 Him fills our hearts, and changes them to his 
 own nature from aU debasements. The " holy 
 mysteries " are the " spiritual food " of body 
 
CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 91 
 
 and blood, by which we are " made members 
 incorporate in the mystical Body of Christ, 
 which is the blessed company of all faithful 
 people." 
 
 And these " holy mysteries " are in our 
 common daily partaking ; the rite is but the 
 symbol, the reminder. True ritualism makes 
 all living a Sacrament. 
 
 As a common refreshment, Melchizedek 
 offered the bread and the wine to Abram ; his 
 very offering of it so was its everlasting sig- 
 nificance. 
 
CHAPTER m 
 
 THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 
 
 The Hebrew Patriarcli was a man ; subject, 
 therefore, to limitation and mistake. From 
 the simplest natural life he was just brought 
 into the beginning of the spiritual ; how should 
 he at once see all things absolutely and in 
 their full and final relation? He was great 
 in the power of faith, but in the infancy of its 
 development. In his expression of belief, he 
 might easily fall into an error. What would 
 the Bible be to us, if the Believers of whom 
 it is the Record halted in no partialities of 
 imderstanding, made no misapplication of the 
 truth, in their endeavor to grasp its complete- 
 ness and to bring it to daily form and practice ? 
 We should simply not be able as human be- 
 ings to accept the story. We should say, It 
 is a myth, a dream, a fable of Utopia. We 
 should be further from recognizing the Rev- 
 elation that is in it than we are now, when we 
 stumble at the literal chronicles of spiritual 
 
THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 93 
 
 experience, and at the flaws of character and 
 of judgment that warped the divine intent and 
 commandment to narrow uses and applications'; 
 or that even debased them with unworthy sub- 
 terfuge, thinking so to carry out God's su- 
 preme purpose and — anticipating the later 
 corruption of the Christian Church — to jus- 
 tify the means by the end. There was all this 
 admixture of the fallible with the infallible in 
 the day of Abraham, which has continued to 
 be until our own. " We have the treasure in 
 earthen vessels." Shall we therefore cast away 
 the vessel, treasure and all ? 
 
 Abraham was born and trained a Chaldean. 
 He had been used to the worship of the ele- 
 ments ; he had witnessed the horrible rites of 
 human sacrifice. Out of this he had come to 
 the knowledge that God is a Spirit, the cre- 
 ating Torce of the visible elements ; and to 
 the perception that a sacrifice to Him can be 
 no infliction of pain and death upon helpless 
 vicarious victims, but must be the giving of 
 one^s own. Something out of a man's own 
 life, — his dearest and best, — his very life 
 itself, if demanded, — must be offered up, in 
 sign and proof that the man is wholly God's. 
 Abraham got thus far out of the old pagan 
 
94 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 darkness and violence. He brought down — 
 or it was given to him to apprehend and 
 apply — the idea of sacrifice to the individual 
 concern of every soul with its Maker ; a some- 
 thing that lay between the Lord God and his 
 child ; a rendering up, out of special personal 
 life, a gift to the Giver ; a testimony of in- 
 most, uttermost human witness to the supreme 
 testifying of the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 Of his flocks, of his herds, of the work of 
 his hands ; of his desires, his affections ; of 
 his purposes, acts, choices ; of all that was his, 
 of all that was himself, — the best, the strong- 
 est, the cleanest, — was offering to be made. 
 This was sacrifice ; this was making sacred ; 
 this was, in everything, " Holiness to the 
 Lord." And this it was in Abraham's heart 
 to do. 
 
 Was there anything that he could not re- 
 linquish ? Was there anything too good, too 
 dear, to give up to God? This searching 
 problem faced him with its deep demand, as it 
 has in all ages faced the earnest, devout, self- 
 scrutinizing spirit. And Abraham answered 
 within himself, " I must give to the Lord my 
 son, even my son Isaac." 
 
 God let him think so. It was true. He 
 
THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 95 
 
 must give his best love, in all perfect consecra/- 
 tion ; he must give his son — by aU example, 
 counsel, motive, training — to the Divine 
 Hand and "Will, to make of and through them 
 whatsoever that Power and Purpose would. 
 This was the word of God, away down in the 
 secret being of the man, out of which the 
 fancied message came ; in coming up thence 
 it took shape in the man's fashion of thought, 
 in the mind-working that he had only thus far 
 grown to ; and he thought he heard God say, 
 " Lay thy son Isaac upon the altar. Give up 
 his life to me. Slay him with the knife, and 
 burn him with the fire." 
 
 And Abraham took the knife, and laid the 
 wood upon the shoulders of the boy Isaac, and 
 led him up into the mountain. 
 
 But when he had builded the altar, and piled 
 the wood, and bound his child upon it for the 
 sacrifice, the true voice came out of the inner 
 heaven to his soul, — " Lay not thy hand upon 
 the lad!'' 
 
 And Abraham looked — hehind him ; and 
 lo ! a ram caught in a thicket by the horns. 
 
 Back — into his own life — into motive, 
 spirit, influence ; into the hard shaping of old, 
 false, cruel teaching ; into the thicket of per- 
 
96 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 plexities, the tangle of selfisli hopes and true 
 devotions, propitiatory desire and fervor of 
 real renunciation, — God made him look, and 
 see where was the coarse, brutal, hard thing 
 in himself, that must be slain ; not the sweet, 
 tender, natural human affection, but the dis- 
 torted motive with its twisted, torturing horns, 
 the secret evil greed, the disguised sin, that 
 must be renounced, destroyed, in the name of 
 the Lord God, and for the sake of his beau- 
 tiful righteousness. It was the first, half- 
 comprehended whisper of the interior, heav- 
 enly significance of all ritual offering, of all 
 outward surrender, which alone makes oblation 
 holy ; it was the first stirring of the new sense, 
 the hidden interpretation of typical require- 
 ment ; it was the beginning of what David 
 came to know and declare as commandment : 
 " Stand in awe, and sin not. Offer the sacri- 
 fices of righteousness, and put your trust in 
 the Lord." " Thou desirest not sacrifice ; thou 
 delightest not in burnt offering ; the sacrifices 
 of God are a hrohen " (significantly in the He- 
 brew passive, — not se?/'-shattered) " spirit ; a 
 broken and a contrite " (again in the passive, — 
 one that has suffered bruising) " heart, O God, 
 thou wilt not despise." The accepting of pain. 
 
THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 97 
 
 that comes by God's permission, in the way 
 of obedience; not the seeking, the assump- 
 tion, of suffering, for any merit's sake. Abra- 
 ham had a far, faint foreshowing of this, the 
 " full, perfect, and sufficient satisfaction " of 
 the Christ, who "when He cometh into the 
 world, saith, Sacrifice and offering thou would- 
 est not ; but a body " — a way and form of 
 life — " thou hast prepared me : lo, I come to 
 do thy wiU, O God." 
 
 All the way between Abraham and Jesus 
 was continued the sign, and all the way was 
 repeated the experience, that only with pain, 
 only with giving up, in the mere body of life, 
 can the spirit of life be made regnant. All 
 the way from the coming of Christ, and the 
 suffering of Christ in the flesh, to the coming 
 again " without sin unto salvation," must the 
 experience go on. There is always to be an 
 altar in the earth ; under " the golden altar 
 that is before God " in heaven, are the souls 
 of them who have suffered, and who ask, How 
 long, O Lord, is it to be ? Wearing their white 
 robes, they are bidden to " rest yet for a little 
 season, until their fellow servants and their 
 brethren, that should be killed as they were, 
 should he fulfilled." 
 
98 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 It is the sign; it is the mystery. The 
 " glory that shall be revealed " alone can ex- 
 plain it. But we need mistake nothing. We 
 are to court no suffering ; to refuse no pure 
 happiness ; to outrage no truth of our nature. 
 We are to slay nothing but the ram in the 
 thicket. We are not to impose or to inflict 
 upon ourselves ; we are to leave our discipline 
 to God ; we are to bear only that to which we 
 are called ; to " humble ourselves under the 
 mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in 
 due time." 
 
 The secret of the old ceremonial, done away 
 in Christ, is the secret of the tender chastise- 
 ment — the pure leading or even driving — of 
 Him who himself is "touched with the feel- 
 ing of our infirmities," — "wounded for our 
 transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." 
 
 Something of this lovely relation of the hu- 
 man to the Divine — this submissive, trusting, 
 obeying sonship — was revealed to Abraham. 
 
 " Your father Abraham," said Jesus to the 
 Jews, " rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it, 
 and was glad." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PATEIAKCHAL CHAKACTEE 
 
 Between the revelation of the faith to 
 Abraham and its development by Moses, lies 
 the story of the lives in which this faith was 
 doing its primitive work. 
 
 We must remember that it was primitive. 
 
 Abraham believed God. 
 
 Yet even in his highest faith he fell into 
 mistake. 
 
 Abraham believed God as close beside him ; 
 in his daily common life. He believed in the 
 Angel of the Presence. 
 
 Nevertheless, in daily, common life, he failed, 
 went wrong. 
 
 Yes ; just as we do. Therein lies our com- 
 fort, even, to this day of what should be our 
 larger, deeper faith. 
 
 Therein surely lay the comfort and the hope 
 of the generations after Abraham, and before 
 the Christ, who as men called Abraham father, 
 claimed the Promise, and believed that yet in 
 the line of Abraham should "aU nations of 
 the earth be blessed." 
 
100 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 The faith of Abraham was in him the he- 
 ginning of righteousness. It is the beginning 
 
 — the first creation and the only source — of 
 righteousness in us. 
 
 It was " counted to him for righteousness." 
 God accredits beforehand. He "imputes" 
 that which shaU be. This was what Paul 
 found out, as the secret of " faith and works ; " 
 the saving, — the making sound, — in inmost 
 principle and power, by one ; the ultimating, 
 
 — the beautiful, perfect, eternal evolution, in 
 the other. 
 
 The one is the "moving of the Spirit of 
 God upon the face of the waters." The other 
 is the lovely, orderly creation ; the appearing 
 in things visible of the inmost Word. 
 
 It comes by degrees. First, the Light. 
 Then the things that live in the light. 
 
 God is not impatient with his creation. He 
 takes the long six days to work it out in. On 
 the seventh He will rest, and say that it is 
 • good. 
 
 Abraham undeniably had his weak human 
 side, and its human contradictions. On the 
 one hand were his visions of the Divine, in 
 which he was exalted to be the "friend of 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 101 
 
 God." On the other, he was but the Arab 
 herdsman, the chief of a small wandering 
 company, the husband of Sarah, a man envi- 
 roned with dangers, and living on the alert; 
 driven, it seemed to himself, sometimes to sub- 
 terfuges ; afterward, in perplexing domestic 
 circumstances, to the cruel repudiation of a 
 woman and child — the child his own — who 
 were helplessly dependent upon him. 
 
 Do we take these things as part of the holy 
 story, — as sacred, and to be justified to all 
 extreme because they are the doing of a man 
 chosen by the Lord ? Or are we to reject the 
 belief that the Lord chooses and abides by 
 any human life at all ? 
 
 It was precisely out of these things that the 
 man was chosen. 
 
 And what are we, that we may dare to 
 judge ? How far have we got beyond Abra- 
 ham, even now, with our expediences and di- 
 plomacies, our laxities and rigidities, tolerances 
 and intolerances, national, social, personal ? 
 Yet, is there no truth — no vision — among 
 us? 
 
 God taught a great thing to Abraham, by a 
 great and terrible event. Straight to the very 
 
102 THE OOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 question the lesson went. Shall the evil — 
 the ignorance — the debasement — upon the 
 earth be reckoned without or against the good ? 
 Shall the evil be visited and condemned, and 
 the good not be spared, reserved? Which 
 shall be real, and endure, — the hindrance of 
 unrighteousness, — of imperfection, even, — or 
 the testimony of absolute uprightness ? Which 
 shall be final and universal, — the grovel and 
 trail of the serpent upon the ground, or the 
 attitude of the man before his God ? 
 
 If there be ten true men in a city of thou- 
 sands, — if there be one living truth, wel- 
 comed and beloved, in the soul of a man, — 
 those ten, that truth, shall save the city, shall 
 sanctify the life and continue it to its perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah perished. Lot was 
 saved out of the fire alive. 
 
 The fault of Abraham perished with the 
 brief circumstance, the frail mortality, of 
 Abraham. The faith of Abraham survives, 
 a deathless witness, a sure inheritance, for- 
 ever. 
 
 " Abraham gave all that he had to his son 
 Isaac." He gave him his worldly goods, send- 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 103 
 
 ing away the sons of his step-wives " unto the 
 east country, with gifts." 
 
 He gave the word of his faith in Jehovah, 
 and of God's Promise, to the son through 
 whom the promise was to be fulfilled. He 
 provided that Isaac should take a wife only 
 by the leading of the Lord, and from among 
 his own kindred in Mesopotamia, who be- 
 : lieved also in the One Most High. 
 
 And Isaac received the wife, " fair to look 
 upon," Rebekah, apportioned to him by the 
 sign of God ; and he believed also, after the 
 faith of his father, and " intreated the Lord," 
 in his turn, for the wish of his soul. 
 
 Withal, Abraham bequeathed to Isaac his 
 own imperfections. He handed down to him 
 his own possibilities of duplicity, his own nar- 
 row partiality. Isaac sinned against the truth 
 precisely as his father had done ; precisely as 
 his father had done, he centred all his love un- 
 fairly upon one son, leaving Rebekah just as 
 unfairly to cling to and scheme for the other. 
 In this way, the fault of Abraham did not per- 
 ish with his natural life, though with that it 
 may have ceased out of himself. 
 
 And in Jacob all once more reappeared, 
 with individual modifications, not certainly of 
 
104 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 an ennobling quality. He was timid, selfish, 
 time-serving, cunning. 
 
 Was he altogether different in these points 
 of his human nature from the human nature 
 of to-day? Are these things yet eliminated 
 from the inheritance of the race, in its far- 
 down transmission through the ages ? 
 
 Was he at all a favorite of God because of 
 them? Or was he helped of God, through 
 simple faith, against them and in spite of 
 them, to their overcoming ? 
 
 Were his shifts and contrivances, his over- 
 reachings, his crafts, any more incongruous 
 with his spiritual fervors than the same things 
 are to-day in the world of policies and shrewd- 
 nesses that is held as separate from the world 
 of religious thought, observance, and even 
 emotion, and confessed as "secular"? Is 
 Jacob's Bethel any more a falsity and mock- 
 ery in his life than are our own church spires 
 that bristle all over a land given wildly, in 
 another order and allowance, to the rushing 
 greed, monopoly, self-seeking, of thousands of 
 Jacobs eager only after their individual own ? 
 
 What right have we to object to a begin- 
 ning of faith that had to deal with such ele- 
 ments in the human soul, and after nearly 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 105 
 
 four thousand years has still to deal with 
 them? 
 
 Nevertheless, the Church of God is in our 
 midst, and in every believing man, as it was 
 in the heart of Jacob ; and it will save us 
 yet. 
 
 Do we not need, in the spiritual history of 
 the race, just such a showing of what God will 
 do with just such a crude, mixed, warped, and 
 vacillating human nature ? Do we not need 
 the great, merciful word to be spoken to us, 
 
 — "I am the Lord ; I change not ; therefore 
 ye sons of Jacob are not consumed " ? 
 
 Just because of the poor and pitiful part of 
 his character, and its need, — that is ours also, 
 
 — there is no sentence in aU the blessed Scrip- 
 ture more dear and beautiful to us than this, 
 
 — " The God of Jacob is thy refuge " ! 
 
 If Jacob, before he became Israel, thought, 
 in his narrow feebleness, that God's care of 
 him was a partial, exclusive one, — that there 
 was nothing so important to the Divine plan, 
 so close to the Divine sympathy, as his own 
 little safety and interest, — that does not 
 change the fact that this son of Isaac had 
 hold of Ms part of the sure and beautiful 
 
106 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 triitli that " God is loving unto every man," 
 individually and especially ; that in his heart 
 there is a place for each one that none other ^ 
 occupies ; that God's thought goes into every 
 detail of every life, and his love feels with 
 every touch and throb of every human de- 
 sire and pain and gladness. That Jacob only 
 learned it as regarded himself was his own 
 limitation, — his own loss. A man cannot 
 receive more than he can hold, of whatever 
 large and gloriously universal truth. That 
 Jacob got what belonged to him, and lived 
 his special life in a full faith, is all that we 
 can look for in him, and it makes his witness 
 just so far sufBcient. 
 
 Spiritual life, like the physical, begins with 
 a cell-form. ]\Ian is a unit. As the proto- 
 plasmic cell is a single want, to which the 
 universe is supply and answer, so is the proto- 
 soul a single receptacle, truly conscious of 
 no other, hardly conscious of itself, — with 
 only a self-longing to be filled and satisfied, 
 from the Divine that it knows not yet to be 
 Divine. 
 
 Even when it has become an organism, and 
 man recognizes himself as a being of thought 
 and growth and possibility, he is still a sepa- 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 107 
 
 rate man looking to a separate God. All first 
 theology is selfish. Man is a baby, claiming 
 a mother as all his own, without the faintest 
 conception that she is mother to other children 
 also. Religious theories begin in like manner. 
 They narrow election and salvation to an ac- 
 cepted few. 
 
 Each of the old patriarchs chose one child 
 out of many, to give aU to ; from his own par- 
 tiality he came to believe in a partial God. 
 This was not radical mistake as to a Grod at 
 all, or his personal presence and providence, 
 but only limit to the idea of what God could 
 be. 
 
 Israel, as a nation, continued in this par- 
 tiality. Holding the grand reality, that God 
 was God, and their God, they knew no more 
 than to stop there, though the word of the 
 Lord kept telling them plainly that He was 
 " the God of the whole earth," and that " all 
 men should know that He was the Lord." 
 
 In their behalf, they thought; and got < no 
 further. The gathering in of the Gentiles, — 
 the Gospel to a whole waiting world, — the 
 " loving the neighbor as one's self," and so 
 entering with the great love of the Lord into 
 the wide joy of the Lord, — was a thing to 
 
108 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 come, in the far-o£E revelation of a time and 
 order yet to be. 
 
 We are not obliged to stop wbere they did. 
 To do so would be never to arrive where they 
 have long since arrived. To discard their faith 
 because it had not aU unfolded, would be to 
 throw away the only possible beginning of the 
 whole and best. 
 
 Even Jacob did attain. He did win from 
 his God the new name of Israel. In this his 
 experience, one more revelation was made 
 manifest than even in the first high faith 
 of Abraham — the revelation of redemption. 
 That such faith can at last save a man out of 
 meanness and falsity and cowardice, and make 
 him generous and true and brave with the 
 love of his brother and his fearless certainty 
 of God. 
 
 " Return unto the land of thy fathers, and 
 to thy kindred ; and I will be with thee," said 
 the voice of the Lord to Jacob, after the twice 
 seven years of service to Laban in Haran, and 
 yet six more years in which he " provided for 
 his own house also," and grew rich, and " in- 
 creased exceedingly." 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 109 
 
 It is hardly sweet and of a simple assurance 
 to read the mingled history just here ; the 
 confusion of God's true word with the cun- 
 ning promptings of a' man's own mind to the 
 outwitting of another man, and the calling 
 this a heavenly inspiration. Perhaps Jacob 
 had really gotten no more from Laban than 
 he had faithfully earned in the long twenty 
 years ; but it was surely not gotten in God's 
 way. Doubtless it was quite time that he 
 should be called from his successful strata- 
 gems and circumventions, and put in fresh 
 and nobler relations with a past in which there 
 was much that he should atone for. 
 
 There were fraud and contrivance iii the de- 
 parture. Rachel purloined her father's gods, 
 and hid them with a falsehood ; and with all 
 his household and his goods and his camels 
 and his cattle, Jacob stole away secretly from 
 Laban. 
 
 And Laban pursued and overtook him with 
 not unreasonable complaint. They quarreled. 
 They had it all out at last, — claim and re- 
 proach, accusal and justifying ; and both were 
 so far right and so far wrong, and the inter- 
 ests of both were so far intermixed, that it 
 ended in a treaty ; a covenant witnessed by 
 
110 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 " an heap of stones," raised into a pillar, be- 
 side which they did eat together in a certain 
 amity, and did promise, mutually, that never, 
 for any harm, should either pass beyond this 
 pillar to the other. 
 
 " And Laban rose up, and kissed his sons 
 and his daughters, and blessed them; and 
 Laban departed, and returned unto his place." 
 
 Poor old Laban! Surely the same good 
 Lord went back with him into his forlornness 
 and old age, to comfort him, who went for- 
 ward with Jacob and his wives and his chil- 
 dren into the southward country, to the home 
 of his youth. 
 
 " And Jacob went on his way, and the 
 angels of God met him." 
 
 There is no mistaking when the angels of 
 God do meet a man. He may deceive him- 
 self half his life with sophistries ; he may 
 parley and prevaricate with himself, and be- 
 cause he has once tarried at a Bethel, and 
 had the ascending and descending beauty of 
 a vision into the surrounding of the unseen, 
 and heard a voice saying, " I am with thee, 
 and will keep thee in all places whither thou 
 goest," he may possibly persuade himself that 
 his own after wishes and scheming suggestions 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 111 
 
 are of that same holy word and counsel ; he 
 may overlay his faith with greed, and stint his 
 obedience by fear, but he will never mistake 
 when God's angels come again in earnest, and 
 his life and motive shrivel in the flame of their 
 pure presence, and a great winnowing wind 
 sweeps through him in the stooping of their 
 wings, before which all chafE of the vain and 
 ignoble in him flies off, dispersing ; when 
 some tremendous circumstance compels him, 
 and tests him to the very centre of will and 
 courage and resolve ; or when a tender light 
 reveals to him the depths of his own spirit, 
 and of the meanings of his past, and his miss- 
 ings and his forfeitings, and the love that he 
 did not know but sinned against ; and a re- 
 pentance searches him through and through, 
 until the best of him aches and yearns and 
 stretches out strong desire toward the return- 
 ing and restoring that may yet be if God will ; 
 when things like these happen, there is doubt 
 neither in the man's own mind nor in the 
 reading of his story. 
 
 God's angels came and met Jacob on the 
 way toward Edom and his brother Esau. 
 And he knew them, for both the peace and 
 
112 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 the rebuke that were in their faces ; and he 
 said, " This is God's host ; and he called the 
 name of the place Mahanaim, " — " the two 
 hosts," or "the two camps." He knew that 
 beside Jiis tents were the tents of the invisi- 
 ble ; that he was visited as of old by them who 
 descended upon the great ■ ladder " set up on 
 earth, whose top reached into the heaven." 
 
 Surrounded with their tender influence, 
 their reproach, their pleading, he sent forward 
 men to find his brother, bearing gentle, be- 
 seeching message ; that he had come back 
 after all this time into the home country ; not 
 needing anything, for that he had gained 
 much worldly goods, — : " oxen, and asses, and 
 flocks, and men-servants and women-servants." 
 Not for any help, or to demand or seize any- 
 thing of his brother's possessions ; only to ask 
 a welcome. 
 
 " I have sent to tell my lord," was the word 
 of respectful homage, " that I may find grace 
 in thy sight." 
 
 That meant all ; forgiveness, reconciliation, 
 brotherly unity again. The better part of 
 Jacob's nature was stirred, and warm, and 
 eager. He was coming home, to his old 
 father, to his kindred in the south country, to 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 113 
 
 make his abode, with all that he had gained, 
 among them. He wanted, he besought for, 
 not only a peaceful permission, but a loving 
 reception. 
 
 The messengers came back with their an- 
 nouncement : " We came to thj^ brother Esau, 
 and also he cometh to meet thee, and four 
 hundred men with him." 
 
 Why four hundred men ? The conscious, 
 fearful spirit of Jacob quaked instantly at 
 this. 
 
 To do him honor? To emphasize with a 
 splendid generosity the forgiveness of the old, 
 and the kindly response to the new ? 
 
 Jacob was not yet of such a generosity him- 
 self as to understand it so. He was " greatly 
 afraid and distressed ; " his old terrors got 
 hold of him ; he thought only of escape. He 
 divided his people and his flocks into two 
 bands ; and said, " If Esau come to the one 
 company, and smite it, then the other company 
 which is left shall escape." 
 
 Something double in the man always sug- 
 gested the hedging with double chances. A 
 finer nature would have gone forward with 
 all, for mutual and entire defense, or for the 
 sharing of whatever fate together. One com- 
 
114 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 pany was to be sacrificed, that the other might 
 be unobserved, or let alone. It was a throw- 
 ing to the wolves. 
 
 What can be done with such a limp, uncer- 
 tain, collapsing character as that? 
 
 God knew when He took it in hand. 
 
 Jacob fell a-praying. For himself, and for 
 safety ; for " the mother with the children." 
 That last, and the confession, — "I am not 
 worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of 
 all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy 
 servant," — were the redeeming points in the 
 appeals ; they proved that in him which was 
 redeemable. 
 
 Then he turned to his policy again ; changed 
 and ruled, doubtless, by the nobler instinct, 
 the side of him that had spoken in the truest 
 of his prayer. He would not wait to be 
 attacked, and for his goods and following to 
 be seized; he would send rich, ample gifts 
 to Esau. He would show his brother that 
 he had come to share ; that the old grasping 
 covetousness in him was outgrown, replaced. 
 
 He divided off, in hundreds, and thirties, 
 and twenties, and tens, of his flocks and cattle ; 
 a magnificent portion of all ; and he set them 
 in separate droves, and said to his servants, 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 115 
 
 " Pass over," with them, " before me, and put 
 a space between drove and drove." And he 
 commanded each servant in charge to say to 
 Esau, as he in turn came up with him, " They 
 be thy servant Jacob's. It is a present to my 
 lord Esau ; and behold, also he is behind us." 
 
 Eestitution, compensation; not friendly and 
 beseeching words only. This would move the 
 heart of Esau, convincing his clear, honest 
 sense of right and right intent. " Afterward 
 I will see his face ; peradventure," — after 
 these, — " he will accept of me." 
 
 And that night he " took his two wives, and 
 his two women-servants, and his eleven sons, 
 and passed over the ford Jabbok." 
 
 That night was the great crisis of his life. 
 
 The good and the worthless in him came to 
 open issue* 
 
 " There wrestled a man with him until the 
 breaking of the day." 
 
 True manhood, — the real man in him, 
 represented or not by an outward objective 
 presence, — against the petty, timorous, half- 
 way, hindering self. 
 
 Only by some similarly intense vital expe- 
 rience, can this great conflict of Jacob with 
 the angel be understood. It is not every soul 
 
116 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 that is capable of such contradiction. Not 
 every man comes to such direct question and 
 grapple. He who does cannot be utterly con- 
 temptible. 
 
 There were two Jacobs in the Struggle. The 
 one, yet dominated by his lower impulse, not 
 ready yet to yield to the angelic insistence 
 and demand; the other, knowing that the 
 heavenly must conquer or himself be lost, and 
 crying out with passion and strain of counter- 
 action, " I will not let thee go, except thou 
 bless me ! " 
 
 Jacob was of an open spiritual nature. He 
 was susceptible to influence from both realms 
 of the unseen. Now the low and evil, through 
 the natural, laid hold of him and moved his 
 act ; now the high celestial force swept down 
 upon him and possessed him, so that he rose 
 above his daily plane, and cast off his habitual 
 hindrances and failings. Which man of him 
 should overcome, outlast, and he, was the de- 
 termination to which these alternating con- 
 trols must, at some point in the making of him, 
 arrive. 
 
 And this night the hour had come. 
 
 Alone with God's angel, tiU the break of 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 117 
 
 day, he strove, and tried conclusions. At last, 
 the touch upon the very quick, the " hol- 
 low of his thigh," — the weakness where his 
 power should be, — was laid by the finger 
 of his holy foe. He felt that poor self of him 
 confess to its own impotence and baseness. 
 He knew, for the first time, and realized to 
 his inmost shrinking consciousness, that his 
 very being was out of joint. 
 
 " Thou art wanting," the convicting touch 
 had said to him. " Here, where should be thy 
 sinew and thy strength, — in thy very motive 
 power, — thou art lame and halt. Thou canst 
 not contend with me, neither wilt thou suffer 
 me to prevail." — " Let me go ; for the day 
 breaketh." 
 
 It was like the cursing of the fruitless fig- 
 tree ; a declaring that the curse already was. 
 
 And then the human soul asserted its 
 humanity, wherein it was the better of the 
 tree. It turned against its own unworthiness, 
 took side with the condemnation, and made 
 its claim upon the eternal Life. 
 
 Surrendering and conquering at once, it 
 cried out, " Angel of God, I will not perish ! 
 I will not let thee go, except thou bless me ! " 
 
118 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 " What is thy name ? " came presently the 
 answer. " What art thou ? By what art thou 
 known ? " 
 
 The searching question went down into all 
 the man's memory and life. 
 
 " And he said, Jacob ; I am The Sup- 
 planter." 
 
 " No more Jacob," feU upon his changed 
 spirit the grand sentence of the angel, " but 
 Israel. As a prince hast thou power with 
 God and with men, and hast prevailed." 
 
 The princely in him was awakened. Hence- 
 forth in the princely, — in the upright, in the 
 highest of him as a man, — should he be 
 known, remembered. He should be Israel. 
 His children should be the Children of Israel ; 
 under that name a great nation before God. 
 
 Jacob had won at last his true birthright. 
 
 " I have seen God face to face," he said, 
 " and my hfe is preserved." 
 
 And he called the name of the place " Pe- 
 niel," — "The Face of God." 
 
 "And as he passed over Penuel, the sun 
 rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh." 
 
 There must be, in the remainder of a life 
 upon the earth, a loss, an impairment, where 
 
THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 119 
 
 there has been a sin. The reminder of his , 
 weakness was with Jacob ; the touch of the 
 angel remained upon the shrunken sinew, as 
 he went upon his further way. Nevertheless, 
 even halting, he went in the new strength of 
 the Lord, and was at one with Him in the love 
 of his brother. 
 
 In that common Divine love, the two of the 
 same birth and the long alienation were recon- 
 ciled. 
 
 In the place of his new home in Shechem 
 of Canaan, Jacob built an altar and called it 
 El-elohe-Israel. God, — the God of Israel : 
 the God of the new man, and the Giver of the 
 new name. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 Every now and then, at high points of 
 crisis in the Hebrew history, there was a so- 
 journ in Egypt. 
 
 Abraham went down there, driven by fam- 
 ine, with Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his bro- 
 ther's son ; and came back into the south coun- 
 try of Canaan, with all that he had gained 
 there, at the generous command of the Pha- 
 raoh, after his deception with the king con- 
 cerning Sarai. 
 
 Isaac, in like manner, for the same cause of 
 want in his own country, journeyed far that 
 way ; but was forbidden actually to go over 
 into Egypt, and stayed among the Philistines ; 
 upon whose king he practiced the self-same 
 deceit that his father had done with the Pha- 
 raoh. He also grew exceedingly rich in the 
 strange country, and came back to Beersheba, 
 in the southmost limit of his own, and thence 
 afterward a little farther north, to Hebrop, 
 
EGYPT 121 
 
 in the mountain lands that were to become a 
 part of the portion of the tribe of Judah. 
 
 Joseph, the best beloved son of Jacob, — 
 the boy of vision and mystic interpretations, 
 — reading the inner signs of things by the 
 prophetic gift, and finding in them a marvel- 
 ous assurance of power and errand in his own 
 life, which he in pure simplicity declared 
 among his brethren, — sold by them in their 
 anger and envy into a caravan of wandering 
 Ishmaelites, — was sold again in Egypt ; there 
 to fulfill the high purposes that had been in a 
 remote shadow revealed to him. 
 
 Famine again scourged Canaan. There 
 was plenty of corn in Egypt. The brethren 
 were sent down by their father Jacob, to buy 
 and bring back of the abundance ; and of 
 their journeys it resulted that Joseph, splen- 
 did in power as governor and treasurer for 
 the king, was made known to them. 
 
 Again it came to pass that the whole 
 Hebrew family migrated to this land of lux- 
 ury and magnificent mystery, where for centu- 
 ries uncertain in their record they remained ; 
 at first prospering richly under the favor of 
 the friendly monarch to whose confidence 
 
122 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 and patronage the very seership of Joseph — 
 scorned of his kindred, but believed in among 
 the soothsayings of a people dimly touched 
 with their own half -presciences — had raised 
 him ; afterward, crushed down into abject 
 slavery under cruel oppression by rulers who 
 " knew not Joseph." 
 
 Through Egypt, always, came the chosen 
 to their higher promise. " Out of Egypt," 
 in the glorious fullness of time for his Gos- 
 pel, did God even " call his Son." There is 
 grand significance in it all, from the begin- 
 ning to the end. 
 
 Egypt is " Mizraim ; " the dual country ; 
 the Upper and the Lower ; a land and nation 
 rich and glowing in natural life, and wise 
 with intellectual wisdoms. 
 
 Fertile to superabundance, the " granary of 
 the world ; " refined in its domestic custom 
 and relation ; finished in civilization ; cunning 
 and expert in the industrial arts; grand to 
 sublimity in its architecture and monuments ; 
 proud and dominant in arms and rule; pro- 
 found in knowledges ; far-reaching, even to 
 the occult, in thought, — it was yet only a 
 dual development. It had to do only with 
 two planes of being, — the physical and Intel- 
 
EGYPT 123 
 
 lectual. In these it might be the very " cen- 
 tre and border of the earth," for depth of 
 understanding and wide circuit of achieve- 
 ment ; but it had not touched the third 
 sphere. The spiritual was not opened to it. 
 
 Egypt was its own Sphinx ; it was Reason 
 and Materialism ; a superb human head upon 
 a correspondingly superb animal body. Egypt 
 reared up the incomprehensible grandeur of 
 the Pyramids, in the lines and numbers of the 
 building of the universe ; but the makers of 
 the Pyramids reached not the eternal signi- 
 ficance of lines and numbers ; they builded 
 beyond themselves, for an after interpretation. 
 
 There was a King's Chamber in the heart 
 of the great structure ; but it was a sealed 
 darkness ; it held an empty coffer. 
 
 The religion of Egypt was theoretical; its 
 system was a zodiac of shining, indubitable 
 signs, precisely studied and diagrammed; 
 through it lay the apparent path of a great 
 Sun ; but Egypt stopped at the apparent, — 
 the phenomenal ; her philosophy did not pen- 
 etrate to the heart of all apparence, the word 
 of light whose movement through creation 
 makes the manifest. Her myth ended in 
 myth ; her ladder had its foot upon the earth, 
 
124 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 but its top ended short in the mid-air. The 
 angels of God could not descend upon it. 
 
 Into this circumstance and civilization was 
 drifted, — sent for keeping and for training, 
 needing for a time just this habitat, — the 
 germ of a spiritual faith ; the life of a peo- 
 ple who held the initial of a final, perfect 
 truth, the key to the door of the heavenly. It 
 seemed as yet but idle in their hands ; they 
 had not come where they could put its power 
 to the full disclosure. It was to open to them 
 aU the doors ; the natural should not be mere 
 natural to them, nor the intellectual all of 
 understanding; but access to the supreme is 
 by the positive ; the beginnings are in hiero- 
 glyphic. They must first sojourn in Egypt. 
 
 It was a long reach from Joseph to Moses. 
 
 We first find Joseph's insight manifesting 
 itself in a divination of dreams and omens ; 
 an interpretation of parable-signs into mean- 
 ings and tokens of that which should happen 
 in the natural. This was his beginning in 
 his youth, when he dreamed his own dreams 
 about the stars of heaven and the sheaves of 
 the harvest ; the sheaves that his brothers 
 
EGYPT 125 
 
 bound bending down and making obeisance 
 before his own sheaf in the field ; and the yet 
 more audacious and offending similitude of 
 the sun and the moon and the eleven stars 
 rendering homage to his presence. 
 
 Because of these arrogant prefigurements 
 his brethren were indignant, and hated him; 
 and his father Jacob rebuked him. Never- 
 theless, Jacob, recollecting the dreams of his 
 own youth, and their divine fulfillment, " ob- 
 served the saying," and laid it by in mind. 
 
 After his betrayal into slavery, and his 
 supposed death, — after his first surprising 
 fortunes in Egypt, in the house of Potiphar, 
 and the evil and malicious false accusation 
 upon which he was cast into prison, — Joseph 
 appears again in the exercise of his peculiar 
 powers in the reading of the dreams of his 
 fellow prisoners ; translating their auguries 
 into the correspondent coming events, every 
 particular of which undeviatingly took place. 
 
 All this was external, psychological ; but 
 behind it we find presently the deep Hebrew 
 conviction of the word and working of the 
 Lord ; the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
 asserting itself, when, the Pharaoh upon the 
 
126 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 throne having been strangely visited by a 
 dream which none could interpret, his officer 
 remembered the "young man, servant to the 
 captain of the guard," who had foretold his 
 own hapj)y reinstatement, and whom he had, 
 with selfish heedlessness, left languishing in 
 prison " two full years." 
 
 Summoned before the presence of the king, 
 Joseph came, and listened to the demand that 
 Pharaoh made : "I have dreamed a dream, 
 and none can interpret it ; I have heard say 
 that thou canst understand a dream." 
 
 It was a royal order ; it was a great royal 
 compliment. It was a different thing from the 
 talks in the prison, with companions, servants 
 like himself, upon the surface meanings of 
 their sleeping fancies. It meant for Joseph the 
 assumption of grave office and responsibility ; 
 the declaring of something which shoidd affect 
 a kingdom, and disclose Almighty counsel. 
 
 " It is not in me," he said simply. " God 
 shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." 
 
 And then Pharaoh told the young Hebrew 
 his two dreams ; of the fat kine and the lean 
 kine by the river, and again of the full ears 
 in the corn and the ears blasted with the east 
 wind ; and the lean kine and the thin ears de- 
 
EGYPT 127 
 
 vouring the fat kine and the full ears ; and 
 that none of his wise men could declare the 
 portent to him. 
 
 " God hath shewed Pharaoh what he is 
 about to do," was the answer of the son of Is- 
 rael. And after he had expounded the dreams 
 as one, and their meaning as of the time of 
 plenty and the time of famine in the land, he 
 said again, as he had began, " What God is 
 about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh." — 
 " And for that," he repeats, " the dream was 
 doubled unto Pharaoh twice ; because the thing 
 is established by God, and God will shortly 
 bring it to pass." 
 
 Then he counseled the king ; and with such 
 simple wisdom, that he and all his servants 
 about him saw that the judgment was clear and 
 good. And to question of " a man discreet 
 and wise " to carry out the counsel, — 
 
 " Can we find," said Pharaoh to his court, 
 " such a one as this, in whom the Spirit of 
 God is ? " 
 
 The faith of the Hebrew was of quickening 
 power ; it conveyed itself into the soul of the 
 king; for at least that moment, he saw the 
 depth open, and the light stream from beyond 
 all enveiling sign. 
 
128 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 And he made Joseph his ruler and purveyor 
 over his people. 
 
 So it all came to pass, as the word had been 
 said ; and God was with Joseph in the "land of 
 Egypt; and the Egyptians were fed through 
 the time of famine, "and all countries came 
 into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn ; because 
 that the famine was sore in all lands." 
 
 We know well how Jacob heard of this corn 
 in Egypt, and sent down his sons from Canaan 
 to buy ; and how Joseph dealt with them, and 
 hid himself .from them for a while, watching, 
 questioning, testing them ; demanding that 
 they should bring to him their youngest bro- 
 ther, — his very own brother, — Benjamin ; 
 and how remorse stirred suddenly in their 
 hearts for their old sin, and they said among 
 themselves in the presence of the stern ruler, 
 " We are guilty concerning our brother. We 
 saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought 
 us, and we would not hear. Therefore is this 
 distress come upon us." 
 
 And Reuben answered bitterly, " Spake I 
 not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the 
 child ; and ye would not hear ? Therefore, be- 
 hold, also his blood is required." 
 
EGYPT 129 
 
 It was as the day of judgment to these sons 
 of Israel. It was the day of their purifying 
 repentance, and their restoration. 
 
 They spoke in their own tongue, and knew 
 not that the ruler understood ; but Joseph, hear- 
 ing every word, turned away his face and wept. 
 It was like the pity of the Lord, who knows aU 
 we say to ourselves in our self-condemnation. 
 
 He had told them, in offering his conditions, 
 " This do, and live ; for I fear God." And 
 even that — his acknowledgment of their God, 
 the God of Israel — had not made him known 
 to them. 
 
 So Joseph took Simeon as hostage, and 
 " bound him before their eyes," and let the 
 others go, with their sacks full upon their 
 laden asses, and their money secretly returned 
 to them, each man's in the mouth of his sack. 
 
 One of them, opening his sack by the way, 
 found it. " My money is restored ! " he cried. 
 And their very hearts failed them, over- 
 whelmed by such strange nobility of treatment 
 where they had deserved nothing, and afraid 
 of what the gift might mean. 
 
 " What hath God done unto us ? " they ex- 
 claimed. " Is it his great good, or somehow 
 his visitation for our great evil ? " 
 
130 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 And they came to their father Israel, with 
 their wonderful, troubled story ; and they emp- 
 tied their sacks before him ; " and behold, 
 every man's bundle of money was in his 
 sack." 
 
 All given back, — the gracious sign ! And 
 yet they were all afraid : they could not under- 
 stand the full mercy. 
 
 And Jacob mourned. 
 
 They had this yet to bear. They had to 
 hear him say, iu his old, tremulous, grieving 
 accents, " Me have ye bereaved of my chil- 
 dren : Joseph is not ; and Simeon is not ; and 
 ye will take Benjamin away. All these things 
 are against me." 
 
 Then Reuben, the firstborn, the " beginning 
 of his strength," — the truest in these matters 
 of all the brethren, — offered his two sons as 
 pledges. " Slay them," he said, " if I bring 
 him not to thee. Deliver him into my hand, 
 and I will bring him to thee again." But 
 Israel still refused. 
 
 Famine again ; and sore in the land. 
 
 The corn brought from Egypt exhausted ; 
 and Jacob saying once more to his sons, " Go 
 again, and buy us a little food." 
 
EGYPT 131 
 
 Judah remonstrated. " We may not go," 
 he said, " except we take our brother. The 
 man did solemnly protest unto us." 
 
 " Why told ye him ye had another bro- 
 ther?" 
 
 "He asked us straitly." 
 
 " Send the lad with me," said Judah, — he 
 who should be the sceptre-bearer ; — "I will 
 be surety for him." 
 
 And their father Israel said, " Then do this : 
 carry the man a present : take of the best 
 fruits of the land ; balm, honey, spices, myrrh, 
 nuts, almonds. Take double money ; and the 
 money that was brought again in the mouth of 
 your sacks carry again ; peradventure it was 
 an oversight. Take — also " — we may im- 
 agine with what struggle this last concession 
 came — " your brother" — the very heart of 
 me. " Go again unto the man ; and God Al- 
 mighty give you mercy before the man ! " 
 
 They did all as their father had said. They 
 came down into Egypt, with their gifts, and 
 their money, for payment and repayment, and 
 Benjamin. 
 
 With a trembling anxiety they met the 
 steward of Joseph's house, whom the gover- 
 
132 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 nor sent out to them ; and they told him the 
 whole story. 
 
 "We came honestly to buy food," they 
 said; "and when we opened our sacks," be- 
 hold, every man's money in the mouth of his 
 sack. We have brought it again, and we 
 have brought other money. We want food. 
 We cannot tell who put the money in our 
 sacks." 
 
 And the steward, to their glad astonish- 
 ment, answered, " Peace be to you ; fear 
 not ; your God, the God of your father, hath 
 given you treasure in your sacks. I had your 
 money." 
 
 This man was an Egyptian ; a worshiper of 
 Osiris and of Ashteroth ; yet he had honor in 
 his heart, like Pharaoh, for the gods of other 
 men. Surely neither he, nor his king, was so 
 far, after all, from the kingdom of heaven that 
 is within aU. And they had among them, in 
 their very midst of confidence and honor, the 
 leaven of the life of Joseph. 
 
 The steward brought out Simeon to them ; 
 safe, and well entreated. He gave them water 
 for their refreshment, and provender for their 
 beasts; and bade them make ready to eat 
 bread with Joseph at the noontide meal. 
 
EGYPT 133 
 
 When Joseph came, and — their gifts in 
 their hands — they " bowed themselves to the 
 earth," the great officer of the king seems 
 scarcely to have seen the offering, or heeded 
 much the salutation, literal fulfillment though 
 it was of his own old boyhood's dream. He 
 asked them simply of their welfare, and then 
 allowed the longing of his heart to utter itself 
 in the carefully restrained question, '.' Your 
 father ? The old man of whom ye spake, — 
 is he well, and yet alive ? " 
 
 "And they answered, Thy servant our 
 father is in good health ; he is yet alive." 
 And again " they bowed down their heads, 
 and made obeisance." 
 
 He lifted up his eyes upon Benjamin. 
 
 " Is this your younger brother, of whom ye 
 spake unto me ? — God be gracious unto thee, 
 my son ! " 
 
 And then, with his great love surging in his 
 heart, he had to " make haste," and he re- 
 treated into his chamber, and wept there. 
 
 But he "washed his face," and still "re- 
 frained himself," and went out, and said, 
 " Set on bread." And they ate, at their sep- 
 arate tables ; Joseph by himself, as state de- 
 manded ; the brethren by themselves, and the 
 
134 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 Egyptians by themselves ; for they might not 
 eat with Hebrews. And they ate and drank, 
 and were all merry. 
 
 And stiU Joseph refrained, and tried them 
 again. In love, as God tries; to bring out 
 the truest and best that was in them. 
 
 The sacks were filled; the money was put 
 again tui the mouths of the sacks ; and in 
 Benjamin's sack the governor's silver cup, out 
 of which he drank, and divined. 
 
 And then, when they were a little way out 
 of the city, the steward was sent after them. 
 
 " Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for 
 good?" was his stern demand. "Is not this 
 the cup in which my lord drinketh, and 
 whereby he divineth? Ye have done evil." 
 
 He spoke as to guilty men. He explained 
 nothing. 
 
 But the men in their truth spoke proudly. 
 
 " Wherefore Saith my lord these words ? 
 God forbid we should do this ! Did we not 
 bring back all the money ? Wherefore then 
 should we steal ? " 
 
 And they took down every man his sack 
 to the ground ; and opened them for search- 
 ing. 
 
EGYPT 136 
 
 "And the cup was found in Benjamin's 
 sack." 
 
 They were all brought back to Joseph's 
 house. 
 
 And Joseph charged them with the deed, 
 asking them how it was that they had done it. 
 
 " Wot ye not," he said, " that such a man 
 as I can certainly divine ? " 
 
 And Judah saw how the old iniquity — 
 "the iniquity of their heels," — of their past 
 — had " compassed them about ; " and he said, 
 in the depth of his contrition, " How shall we 
 clear ourselves ? ' ' We are not clear ; if of 
 this thing, we are not clear of the other, that 
 has been ; " God hath found out the iniquity 
 of thy servants ; behold, we are my lord's ser- 
 vants, both we, and he also with whom the cup 
 is found." 
 
 And Joseph said, "God forbid; the man 
 in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be 
 my servant. As for you, get you up in peace 
 unto your father." ' 
 
 Then Judah came near unto him, and en- 
 treated. 
 
 He told the whole long, sad, touching story ; 
 of their father, the old man, and the son of 
 
136 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 his old age; all that was left to him of the 
 wife of his youth's love, Rachel; that the 
 other of the two she bare him had perished ; 
 that " his life was bound up in the lad's Hfe ; " 
 that to go back without Benjamin would be to 
 take his father's life ; that he, Judah, would 
 stay, and be a bondman, for he was surety for 
 the boy ; but that he could not go up without 
 the lad unto his father. 
 
 Then Joseph sent away all his Egyptian 
 servants and guards, and stood alone among 
 his brethren, and declared himself to them, 
 and no longer refrained himself, but laid by 
 his dignity, and wept aloud. 
 
 " I am Joseph. Doth Tny father yet live ? " 
 he cried. 
 
 And not a man could answer ; for they were, 
 dismayed, and " troubled at his presence." 
 
 It was like a meeting in the life beyond 
 with him whom they had injured and slain. 
 
 And as one, loving and forgiviag in the Life 
 Beyond, might do, did Joseph. 
 
 " Come near to me, I pray you," he said. 
 And then they did come near. 
 
 " I am Joseph, whom ye sold into Egypt. 
 Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that 
 
EGYPT 137 
 
 ye sold me hither." I am not angry. " God 
 did send me before you to preserve life." 
 
 Is it not so they go before us toward whom 
 we have failed, whom in our ignorance and 
 folly and unkindness we have injured, to for- 
 give and to make a place, — to be as Christs 
 for us before God ? 
 
 " God sent me before you to preserve you, 
 . . . and to save your lives by a great deliv- 
 erance." 
 
 Is there not this great comfort also laid up 
 for us in the story of Joseph ? 
 
 "God hath made me lord of all Egypt; 
 come down unto me : tarry not : haste, and 
 bring down my father hither. Tell him of 
 all my glory in Egypt. You shall dwell in the 
 land of Goshen : you shall be near to me ; I 
 will nourish you. Ye shall belong in the land, 
 and grow here." 
 
 " And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's 
 neck, and wept ; and Benjamin wept upon his 
 neck." 
 
 They were like the last tears, that may even 
 be shed in the first hours of heaven; before 
 God shall wipe away all tears from oflE all 
 faces. 
 
138 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 " Moreover, he kissed all his brethren." 
 No old wrong was remembered. It was all 
 God's right. They were to rejoice together. 
 
 So Israel came down into Egypt, and the 
 last long sojourn was begun. 
 
 " Regard not your stuff ; take wagons, to 
 bring your father, and your wives, and your 
 little ones ; the good of all the land of Egypt 
 is yours." 
 
 Again, it was like the gathering of the kin- 
 dreds together, to their home ; the " place pre- 
 pared," among the " many mansions." 
 
 And when Israel heard the word, and saw 
 how his child, parted from him long years 
 before, had sent for him and was waiting for 
 him, " his spirit revived," and he said, " It is 
 enough : Joseph my son is yet alive." 
 
 " And Joseph made ready his chariot, and 
 went up to meet Israel, his father, to Goshen ; 
 and presented himself unto him ; and he fell 
 on his neck, and wept a good while." 
 
 Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, tak- 
 ing five of his brethren with him. 
 
EGYPT 139 
 
 Proud, doubtless, he was of these grand 
 young men, five out of eleven, sons of Israel, 
 sons of Abraham. 
 
 And how surely he relied upon the magna- 
 nimity of the king ! His people were shep- 
 herds ; and " every shepherd was an abomina- 
 tion unto the Egyptians ; " yet Joseph had 
 bidden them to declare their calling to Pha- 
 raoh, when he should ask it of them. 
 
 When the king put the question, therefore, 
 " What is your occupation ? " they answered, 
 " We are shepherds ; we have come hither to 
 sojourn, for the famine is sore in the land of 
 Canaan. We pray thee, let thy servants dwell 
 in the land of Goshen." And Pharaoh turned 
 to Joseph, saying only, " Thy father and thy 
 brethren are come unto thee : the land of 
 Egypt is before thee ; in the best of the land 
 make thy father and thy brethren to dwell ; and 
 if thou knowest any men of activity among 
 them, then make them rulers over my cattle." 
 
 " And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, 
 and set him before Pharaoh." 
 
 And Pharaoh inquired kindly of him; of 
 his age, seeing him so gentle and venerable. 
 
 And Jacob told him that his pilgrimage had 
 been of a hundred and thirty years, yet the 
 
140 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 days of his life had been few and evil, and 
 had not attained unto the years of the life of 
 his fathers. " Few and evil," — or insuffi- 
 cient, — do men count the years of their lives 
 upon this earth, after aU is done ; for they are 
 not the " attaining ; " they have been con- 
 sumed in a hope and a striving, with many a 
 delay and thwart. Because, the end is not yet. 
 
 " And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out 
 from before Pharaoh." 
 
 And Joseph gave his father and his breth- 
 ren a possession in the land of Eameses, the 
 "best of the land;" but it lay to the east- 
 ward, that which was called the land of 
 Goshen. It was not in the strict ancient 
 boundary of Egypt, but a province. So the 
 shepherd people were separate, in their do- 
 main, from the Egyptians. 
 
 There Israel gathered his sons about him, 
 and gave them in his last days his inspired 
 counsel and admonition, his prophetic word 
 and characterization of each, and " yielded up 
 his spirit," and was gathered unto his people. 
 
 After the death of Israel, his sons were 
 again afraid. 
 
 " Peradventure Joseph wiU hate us now, 
 
EGYPT 141 
 
 and requite us all the evil which we did unto 
 him," they said. And they sent a messenger 
 to entreat a fresh forgiveness, and his mercy. 
 It is a harder and a longer thing for the sin- 
 ner to forgive his own sin, than for the sin to 
 be forgiven. The evil that has been in him 
 keeps him slow to believe in the everlasting 
 good. He wants the seventy times seven assur- 
 ance. And God has given it in the seventy 
 times seven command. 
 
 Once again did Joseph speak the plain, 
 strong word. " Fear not : am I in the place 
 of God ? " he told them. " Ye thought evil 
 against me ; but God meant it unto good, to 
 bring to pass as it is this day, to save much 
 people alive." 
 
 It was God's forgiveness ; God's taking up 
 and making right ; the forgiveness of man was 
 the included .thing, 
 
 " Now therefore, fear ye not ; I will nourish 
 you, and your little ones." And he comforted 
 them, and spake kindly to them. 
 
 "And Joseph lived an hundred and ten 
 years ; he saw Ephraim's children of the third 
 generation ; the children of the son of Manas- 
 seh were brought up upon Joseph's knees." 
 
142 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
 
 God is good unto the hindreds ; he saves 
 his people in their families. Every man shall 
 have his own, and shall dwell among them. 
 This was the gospel to the patriarchs. 
 
 " And Joseph said at last unto his breth- 
 ren, I die ; and God will surely visit you, 
 and bring you out of this land unto the land 
 which he sware unto Abraham, and to Isaac, 
 and to Jacob. God will surely visit you," he 
 repeated ; " and ye shall carry up my bones 
 from hence." 
 
 And he took an oath thereto from the chil- 
 dren of Israel. 
 
 " So Joseph died, an hundred and ten years 
 old : and they embalmed him, and he was put 
 in a coffin in Egypt." 
 
PART IV 
 
 THE EVENTS AND SIGNS OP THE EXODUS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE KOD OF POWER 
 
 " God shall surely visit you," Joseph had 
 declared to his people, in the clear-seeing of 
 his dying hours. 
 
 It was centuries later, fewer or more as the 
 chronologies have not been able definitely to 
 determine, that the word came to Moses in 
 Midian. 
 
 Born in Egypt, of a Hebrew mother, his 
 life outlawed from before his birth, but saved, 
 as Joseph's had been, by the will of God, — 
 taken in gentle charge by the daughter of a 
 Pharaoh, — he had grown to manhood, been 
 educated, adopted wholly as an Egyptian. 
 
 Nevertheless, his time waited. The love of 
 his own people was in him ; his birthright as 
 a son of Israel remained. He walked between 
 the races, mingling with the daily life of each, 
 related though distinct. 
 
144 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 The Hebrew shepherds had been degraded 
 into slavery. Over them were the hard Egyp- 
 tian taskmasters. A cruelty of one of these 
 upon a countryman of his own, awakened the 
 righteous wrath of kindred, to defense and 
 retribution. Moses slew the Egyptian, and 
 escaped into Midian. 
 
 For forty years he lived there, in the wilder- 
 ness, an Arabian. He served Jethro, an Arar 
 bian shepherd, and took his daughter for wife. 
 
 Out of Midian, after the forty years, he was 
 to return into Egypt, called and sent of God, 
 and bearing from Him the rod of a divine 
 authority. 
 
 A rod is a sign — it is also a conveyance 
 — of Power. It is the kingly sign, — the 
 sceptre. It is the sign of a finding, a dis- 
 cerning power ; the power of discovery, which 
 is the descent of a thought-power through a 
 man's briin, and even to his very fingers, 
 whereby hidden knowledges are laid hold of, 
 secret treasures and springs of water brought 
 to light and use, and wonderful mechanisms 
 adapted and informed. The divining rod, — 
 the magician's and the sibyl's and the fairy's 
 wand, — are symbols as old as human imagi- 
 
THE ROD OF POWER 145 
 
 nation and belief. And there is a reality in 
 them. There is always a conducting line for 
 the living force. There is a rod for the light- 
 ning. There is a possible grasp and bringing 
 down of the Unseen Might into human affairs. 
 There is a trolley-beam that reaches up and 
 lays hold of the great vital currents of crea- 
 tion, and draws thence what it wants for the 
 work, the act, of the hour. There is a faith 
 that puts its hand in God's, and through which 
 God's hand works the wonders that it will. 
 Life is fast shaping itself, though half blindly, 
 and with many a misapplication, presumption, 
 and blunder, to this marvelous relation. The 
 man who stands upon a car-platform and holds 
 the motor is in direct touch with the Divine. 
 Here and there, possibly, one thinks of it. 
 Each one, maybe, in his obscure sense of the 
 mystery of it, feels more than he puts into 
 conscious thought. If men could keep con- 
 tinual recognition of it, in every grasp they 
 have of any life-force, — every human being 
 would be strong with the immediate strength 
 of the Most High. Every soul would be a 
 Moses. The time is coming. Here and there 
 it has come. " Lay hold of My Strength," 
 saith the Lord. And a Saint Paul cries out 
 
146 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 exultingly, " I can do all things, through 
 Christ which strengtheneth me." Christian 
 Science is as old as the Book of Exodus. 
 Moses learned the alphabet of it away out 
 there in Midian. 
 
 Leading his father-in-law's flocks over the 
 far part of the desert to find pasture, he came 
 to the mountain of God. 
 
 The Great Presence — the awful Might — 
 was there before him, in the inaccessible 
 heights, the tremendous overshadowing ma^ 
 jesty, of Horeb. 
 
 At the mountain foot, close to the desert 
 sands, grew a living thing ; a bush. On the 
 edge of desolation, life began again ; and the 
 light of life shone forth from the growing herb 
 to the opened sight of Moses. It was a sudden 
 revelation. He beheld it straightway to its 
 heart as the Life of God making itself food 
 for the life of beasts and men. The glory of 
 heaven shone through the little plant ; it was 
 all aflame with that which blazes in sun and 
 star ; it was Present Deity. " The angel of the 
 Lord appeared imto Moses out of the midst of 
 the bush." 
 
 So vivid was it that his very bodily senses 
 took part in the perception. How was he to 
 
THE ROD OF POWER 147 
 
 distinguish between that which came through 
 ordinary channel of outward impression and 
 that way reached his inner knowledge every 
 day, and this, given direct from the within to 
 the within, yet to whose intimate touch and 
 thrill the external chords vibrated in answer 
 to the same reality they were attuned to for 
 carrying its word from world to spirit ? 
 
 It even seemed to him as wholly a won- 
 der of sensation ; a thing to be investigated 
 on the material plane. He would have come 
 close to it with common touch and literal be- 
 holding ; he would ''have sought to penetrate 
 — as men keep trying still to do — to the 
 great why of a fact from the outside ; to learn 
 the because of a glory opened forth to him 
 from a common growth, with test of eyesight 
 and of fingers' ends ; to probe with handling 
 the secret of the incarnation of a power that 
 burned in splendor of fire and did not con- 
 sume. 
 
 But the voice of God called to him, — and 
 again his senses seemed to bring the word, — 
 " Put thy shoes from o£E thy feet ; " stop thine 
 outward approach; try not to search that way, 
 and to explain. Be content that the glory is 
 shown thee ; there is no need to strive to come 
 
148 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 nearer or to know more ; be still where thou 
 art ; " the place whereon thou standest is holy 
 ground." It is I, saith the Lord, that come 
 to thee ! 
 
 And possessed with the sublime fear which 
 was of the enfolding of Almightiness, Moses 
 stood still, and hid his face, — shut out his 
 bodily senses, — and listened. 
 
 And the Voice said, " I am the God of thy 
 father. The God of Abraham, the God of 
 Isaac, the God of Jacob. I have heard the 
 cry of my people, and I am come down to de- 
 liver them. I will deliver them by thee. I 
 will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest 
 bring forth my people, the children of Israel, 
 out of Egypt." 
 
 " What am I," cries Moses, " that I should 
 go to Pharaoh, and bring the children of Israel 
 forth?" 
 
 " I will be with thee," was the answer ; " I 
 have sent thee. Thou shalt bring them forth, 
 and ye shall serve me upon this mountain." 
 They shall learn my visible Presence, and my 
 leading, as thou art learning. I wiU. show 
 myself to them also in the things that I have 
 made, and in the ways by which I shall guide 
 them. 
 
THE ROD OF POWER 149 
 
 "But if they ask me the name of this 
 God of their fathers, what shall I answer 
 them?" 
 
 In the' midst of the awe and the glory, the 
 sense was upon him of his utter incapacity 
 to transfer the vision ; to repeat the heavenly 
 word ; to prove the revelation to the dulled and 
 darkened souls of the people who had been 
 Egyptian slaves, — makers of bricks, — so 
 long. 
 
 " Say unto them," answered the awful Voice, 
 " I AMhsiih sent me unto you." 
 
 The God who is ; the Be-ing ; the Power 
 in all things by which all things are ; that 
 which you can neither find nor name, the Hid- 
 den Life. That which all souls question, 
 search for ; behold, they need not search, they 
 need not question. Before they can ask, they 
 have felt Me : the very ground they stand on 
 is holy with Me ! 
 
 This was the great manifestation ; the er- 
 rand; the message. Then, surging through 
 the man's thought, quickened divinely, came 
 the plan, the instruction. 
 
150 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Gather the elders of Israel together; say 
 to them, The Lord God of your fathers has 
 appeared unto me. Tell them of the great 
 Promise : "I have surely visited you ; and I 
 will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt 
 unto a land flowing with milk and honey. I 
 will do wonders in the land of Egypt; and 
 after that, the king will let you go." 
 
 Suppose there did intrude and mingle with 
 the absolute, pure Word, a swift calculation 
 of the man's own mind for ways and means? 
 Suppose the device did suggest itself of " spoil- 
 ing the Egyptians," — of not going away 
 empty? Is it not easy to detach and distin- 
 guish this from the grand, full command and 
 promise, " Certainly I will be with thee ; I 
 will care for thee ; " and from the true be- 
 lieving which was ready to receive, to rely, 
 and to obey? Can we point to any human 
 leadership or action where faith and obedience 
 have rested utterly upon the Lord, and where 
 no small anxiety has sought to provide and 
 contrive as of itself ? 
 
 The Bible story is a human story. The 
 Divine is in it ; but humanity has never yet, 
 except in the One Only-Begotten, surrendered 
 itself wholly, to very identification with the 
 
THE ROD OF POWER 151 
 
 Divine. That was to come; the Old Testa- 
 ment was leading to the New ; the New is 
 leading now to the final coming of the Son of 
 Man in the glory of the Father, — the lifting 
 up of the race into the life with Grod, — the 
 " bringing in of everlasting righteousness." 
 
 Moses had found the Presence of God. To 
 be in the presence of God is to receive power. 
 
 The Lord said to Moses, " What is that in 
 thine hand ? " 
 
 Already in his grasp, and he knew it not. 
 " Only a rod." 
 
 " Cast it on the ground." 
 
 Moses cast it on the ground before the 
 Lord, and it became a living thing, — a quiv- 
 ering, coiling, swift-gliding serpent. Some- 
 thing instinct, and quick from end to end, 
 with writhing, palpitating force. 
 
 That is thy rod ! " Put forth thy hand, 
 and take it by the tail." 
 
 " And Moses put forth his hand, and 
 caught it, and it became a rod in his hand ; " 
 waiting for his command and use. 
 
 Doubtless there was a flash of wondering 
 pride through the man's mind, that he held 
 the amazing thing ; that to his word or act it 
 
152 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 would answer ; that his touch controlled it. 
 Do we have no such wondering of self-glory 
 now? 
 
 " Put thy hand into thy bosom." Take to 
 thyself, if thou wilt, the marvel, the achieve- 
 ment, the possible of power. Through thy 
 hand a miracle has been done : fold that 
 hand, with the sense of its potency in it, be- 
 hind the swelling pride of thine own person- 
 ality. 
 
 Moses " put his hand into his bosom ; when 
 he took it out, it was leprous as snow." 
 
 " Put thine hand into thy bosom again." 
 
 Take to thyself now thy rebuke, thy punish- 
 ment. 
 
 And when Moses meekly obeyed the second 
 bidding, and plucked forth his hand a second 
 time, lo, it was again as his other flesh. No 
 different ; no better ; only mortal flesh, as the 
 rod was a common rod. But it was clean, 
 and sound, and ready for God's service ; and 
 with God was the wonder, and the power, and 
 the glory. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GIVING OF THE GEEAT NAME 
 
 God had bidden Moses to say to the chil- 
 dren of Israel, " It is the I Am who hath sent 
 me to you. The Be-ing, — the Almighty 
 One." 
 
 Afterward, when Moses had begun his er- 
 rand, and made his first appeal to Pharaoh 
 for the Hebrews in the name of the Lord 
 God, — when he had met only with contempt, 
 and the king had said, "I know nothing of 
 your Lord God, neither will I let this people 
 go ; " when through his taskmasters Pharaoh 
 had put yet heavier and impossible burdens 
 upon the Israelites, so that they made muti- 
 nous accusation on their own part against 
 Moses and Aaron, declaring that they had 
 deceived with false promises only to make the 
 condition of the people worse ; when Moses 
 came in discouragement to the Lord, and 
 demanded, as ignorant, half -believing human 
 hearts do always demand in their sore trou- 
 
154 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 bles, — " Wherefore ? " " Why is it that 
 thou hast so entreated us? Why is it that 
 thou hast sent me to do that which is impos- 
 sible ? " — then the Lord in his majesty an- 
 swered to the soul of Moses, " Thou shalt see 
 what I will do ! I am the Lord. I am the 
 Almighty God, who appeared to Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Jacob, and by that name I 
 was known to them. Now I will make my- 
 self known to you, and to my people, by my 
 Name Jehovah. I wUl bring you out from 
 your burdens and bondage ; I will redeem 
 you with an outstretched arm, and I will take 
 you to me for a people, and ye shall know 
 that I am the Lord, your God. I a7n the 
 Lord." 
 
 It was a new and further revelation. It 
 became a new, and larger, and closer believ- 
 ing in the soul of Moses. 
 
 Jehovah was the Person of the Divine ; the 
 Lord of the Human; related in all points to 
 the humanity He had made, in his own Infi- 
 nite Humanity. The Jehovah-Angel was the 
 personal, intimate, visiting, abiding Presence 
 of God with men : the Emmanuel, the God- 
 manifest. Jehovah was the " separate Name " 
 
GIVING OF THE GREAT NAME 155 
 
 of God ; known only — as is the name He 
 gives to each soul of his redeemed to call it 
 by — to "them who have received it." 
 
 It was by this Name that Moses, and the 
 Hebrew people, henceforth believed in God. 
 It held the whole mystery of Being and Di- 
 viueness. In it was the Covenant with the 
 created. It was a sacred thing: they dared 
 not use it on their lips, but only in their 
 secret hearts. Openly, devoutly, lovingly, 
 they called Him Lord ; apprehending now 
 a new meaning in the name Lord God, and 
 learning for the first time how that great, 
 dear meaning was enshrined in the syllables 
 interpreted to Moses beyond the early under- 
 standing of their fathers. It was the awful, 
 beautiful significance that had come to them ; 
 it was the hiowledge iy the name, not the 
 mere calling by it, which indeed the first sons 
 of Adam had been taught, beforehand of the 
 full interpretation. " By my name Jehovah 
 was I not Icnown unto them," said the Lord. 
 
 The opening of new knowledges follows al- 
 ways the simple, first, believing acceptations. 
 It is the law of Revelation. The word — the 
 sign — is given men first ; afterward, the full 
 understanding. 
 
156 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 We have no right to discuss, to doubt, to 
 pronounce upon, the deep things of the King- 
 dom, till we have received its first elements 
 as little children. A page of Greek will re- 
 main forever unintelligible to him who has not 
 learned first the alphabet of the characters in 
 which it is written. 
 
 The belief of believers is at once the key 
 and the assurance of faitb. " To him that 
 hath " — even the smallest beginning, as a 
 grain of mustard seed — ■ " shall more be 
 given ; but from him that hath not, shall be 
 taken away even that which he hath." That 
 which he hath is not a vital seed ; it is a husk 
 only, and the wind shall blow it away. 
 
 There is a holding of the seed of truth in a 
 mystery ; a waiting for its unfolding ; a watch- 
 ing for the command of how to deal with it ; 
 a reverent fulfilling of conditions, in the con- 
 fidence of something that shall grow. There 
 is a contemptuous tearing to pieces, and scat- 
 tering, of that which safely — even blindly 
 — envelops it, and a casting away of what to 
 our ignorance seems hard and uselessly hid- 
 den, but which has in it the very nucleus and 
 miracle of life. 
 
GIVING OF THE GREAT NAME 157 
 
 To Abraham — to Moses — to the Hebrew 
 people — were intrusted the beginnings ; the 
 alphabet, the first syllables, of heavenly lan- 
 guage ; the object-illustrations of eternal and 
 infinite Fact. With all their misconstructions 
 of Divine Will, with all their low and limited 
 appropriations, with all their disobediences 
 and rebellions and apostasies, they still, as a 
 nation, held fast to the first tokens and com- 
 mandments ; kept the first ordinances ; be- 
 lieved in the foundation law, and looked for 
 the Promise. It was their work in the line 
 of the ages ; their sacred commission upon the 
 earth. Among them were always a few high 
 witnesses, a few Seers of the Truth beyond 
 the ordinance. 
 
 These were the " Israelites ; " by whose 
 name Paul appealed, sixteen centuries after, 
 to his people of that day, " stumbling at the 
 old stumbling stone " of the mere law, and 
 refusing the New Jehovah-Revelation of " the 
 love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
 " I could wish myself under ban from 
 Christ," he cries with passion of desire in 
 their behalf, " for my brethren, for my kins- 
 men ; who are Israelites ; of the adoption, 
 and the glory, and the covenants, and the 
 
158 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 giving of the law, and the service of God, and 
 the promises ; whose are the fathers, and of 
 whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is 
 over all, God blessed forever ! " 
 
 " Not as if the word of God hath taken 
 none effect," he adds, with his great Gospel 
 cheer and trust. " For they are not all Is- 
 rael, — not aU children, — who are of Israel, 
 and the seed of Abraham. The children of 
 the flesh are not the children of God ; but 
 the Children of the Promise are counted for 
 the seed." 
 
 " Many are called ; few are chosen," de- 
 clared the Lord himself. 
 
 Yet " there is no restraint to the Lord, to 
 save by many or by few," said the Joshua 
 of the Old Testimony ; and the Christ of the 
 New chose but twelve, to send out with his 
 word into all the. world. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE lord's PASSOVER 
 
 Life offered is life redeemed. 
 
 Life is of me, saith the Lord ; and life is 
 mine. Give it back to me, and I will save it. 
 Render it up in sacrifice, and I wiU redeem it. 
 
 This is the sign of the slain lamb, of the 
 blood upon the doorposts of man's going out 
 and coming in ; and of the Lord, holding judg- 
 ment in his hand, passing by in mercy. 
 
 It would have been just as true for the 
 Egyptian as for the Israelite; but through 
 the Israelite the gospel of it was given to the 
 world. 
 
 " Eat of the passover, shod, with thy staff 
 in thy hand ; " ready, instantly, to follow the 
 Lord's bidding. 
 
 It is a double passing- over ; it is man's 
 pass-over to God's side, renouncing his bond- 
 age to Egypt, and standing shod and ready to 
 follow and serve the Lord ; it is God's Pass- 
 over of Redemption, putting by repented evils 
 
160 EVENTS , OF THE EXODUS 
 
 and old, sinful, slothful worldly servitude, and 
 beginning with his child a new leading into 
 peace and safety and freedom. Henceforth, 
 every step is to be out of the strange land 
 toward the Home Land, the Land of Promise. 
 
 The moment a life turns to God, and facing 
 about upon itself abjures its old wrong, con- 
 demning it in the conscience of God's truth, 
 that instant and thenceforward the whole might 
 of God is for mercy ; against the sin — to de- 
 stroy and blot it out and make it as though it 
 had never been, as to the life out of which it 
 is cast, but only a knowledge gained against 
 such evil forever ; and,yo»' the repenting child, 
 to undo, and prevent, and pass over, the of- 
 fense, estrangement, penalty. " All things " 
 begin to "work together for good, to them 
 who " begin to " love God, who are the called 
 according to his purpose." 
 
 This, and nothing else, or short of it, is Sal- 
 vation. 
 
 The gospel is hidden in the first Paschal 
 service, — the first shielding and sparing in 
 the midst of judgment, according to open con- 
 dition and covenant. 
 
 There was wrong and sin in the dwellings of 
 the Israelites, as well as of the Egyptians ; but 
 
THE LORD'S PASSOVER 161 
 
 the dealing with the one was different from 
 the dealing with the other, as the attitude 
 and relation of the two peoples was different 
 with the Lord himself. To bring Egypt to the 
 right, and to the knowledge and confession of 
 heavenly truth, it was still needful that pen- 
 alty — which is Divine Teaching of immuta- 
 ble truth — should have its continued work. 
 Egypt would come no other way. But the 
 moment a people, or a soul, surrenders wholly 
 to the Eternal Righteousness, that moment the 
 Eternal Righteousness imputes itself to the 
 returning prodigal, and Eternal Love works 
 altogether in his behalf. The remission of sin 
 begins. 
 
 The Passover, indeed, has to be eaten with 
 " bitter herbs," and with bread from which the 
 old leaven has been utterly rejected. Re- 
 pentance, — a new life, — only with these is 
 given the absolution. 
 
 Law, which they did not recognize or con- 
 fess as God's, had its wonderful way with the 
 Egyptians. There befell them what we call 
 a " strange poetical justice ; " but a justice 
 which is shaped in the eternal nature and 
 trend of things and deed; of spiritual force 
 set in action by ill or good in spirit, act, life. 
 
162 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 — by obedience or transgression of inmost 
 truth and good ; and which takes its form, far 
 more often than we perceive or trace, after 
 the very likeness, and in the selfsame relation 
 with, the sin. 
 
 The Egyptians had sought to keep the He- 
 brews in slavery ; and lest they should grow 
 too strong, they had ordered that every man 
 child of Israel should be slain at its birth. 
 
 The Lord God would have both Hebrews 
 and Egyptians in allegiance — not in slavery, 
 but in the " liberty of the truth " — to him- 
 self ; and lest they should grow too strong 
 against their own best life, by transmission and 
 perpetuation of evil, there came upon the evil 
 nation, in the order of His Providence, which 
 handles all causes and events, the smiting of 
 its own firstborn. Undoubtedly, the firstborn 
 sons ; " from the firstborn of Pharaoh upon the 
 throne to the firstborn of the maid servant be- 
 hind the miU, and the captive in the dungeon ; 
 and all the firstborn of beasts and cattle." 
 Truly saith the Lord God, " Ye shall sanctify 
 to me every firstborn creature ; it is mine." 
 And if his own be not given to Him, his might 
 can claim it. 
 
 " Ye shall set apart unto the Lord every 
 
THE LORD'S PASSOVER 163 
 
 firstling of a beast ;, " and " all the firstborn of 
 man shalt thou redeem " with sacrifice. 
 
 The first is God's : with everything ye shall 
 " seek first his kingdom and righteousness;" 
 only so can He, in his own best, everlasting 
 way, add everything unto you. 
 
 The first love, — the first service, — the 
 chief joy, — the chief possession : in them- 
 selves, in their wholeness, in all that they are 
 to men, they are to be continually rendered up. 
 In the consciousness that they are of God, — 
 in the very joy, in the very using, — they are to 
 be a holy sacrifice ; so only can they be joy, or 
 use, at all ; for they are of God already, and 
 it is his purpose, his gladness, that comes to 
 man by them. To recognize this, is to receive, 
 in fullness ; to render up, is to have rendered 
 back " a thousandfold, even in this present 
 time ; and in the world to come " to have 
 " life everlasting." 
 
 The sign was in the altar sacrifice ; the 
 " whole burnt - offering," carried up, in the 
 flame of love, to the Love from whence it came. 
 The beautiful reality is in the whole heavenly 
 life of them who forever, without pain or loss, 
 shall "walk before Him in the light of the 
 living." 
 
164 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Now and again, God reaches fortli his hand 
 and takes back his own ; not in anger, not 
 eternally, but that man may know ; may follow 
 his desire, and find it safe with the Father ; 
 may learn to say " It is the Lord who taketh 
 away, as it was He who gave ; yes, as it is He 
 who shall give again. Blessed be the Name 
 of the Lord." 
 
 Judgment is not revenge ; it is a justifying ; 
 a setting right. " Shall not the Judge of all 
 the earth do right ? " " The Lord shall judge 
 his people." " Is God unrighteous who taketh 
 vengeance ? (I speak as a man) " saith Saint 
 Paul ; " God forbid : for then how shall God 
 judge " (set right) " the world ? " 
 
 " Judgment " and " vengeance " have been 
 sorely misinterpreted through human limit : 
 divinely, widely, in the whole and at last, 
 they mean " adjustment," — " vindication." 
 
 Man's vengeance is a " getting equal " with 
 his fellow, in an injury. God's vengeance is 
 the conquering of wrong with right. " Is not 
 my "v^ay equal ? Is not your way unequal ? " 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 The same thing was in the Plague and in 
 the Passover ; it was the compelling and the 
 leading ; always from evil, and toward the 
 
THE LORD'S PASSOVER 165 
 
 good. God's hand, by the hand of Moses, 
 dealt mightily with Egypt and with Israel ; it 
 was to one end with all. 
 
 The Ziaw of the Divine Ordering came by 
 Moses : the grace and truth of it have come 
 by Jesus Christ. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SPOrLLNG OF THE EGYPTIANS 
 
 It was a rude justice that inspired Moses 
 to tell the people, upoa the eve of their flight, 
 to borrow of their Egyptian neighbors their 
 " jewels of gold and jewels of silver." Perhaps 
 what Moses was able to believe in at this time 
 was only stern force, relentless retribution ; 
 what was behind these he felt only dimly ; the 
 Will of God was grand, awful, resistless ; the 
 justice of God was against the evil-doers, in all 
 things. But in the later light, we may surely 
 see deeper, and recognize blessed meanings 
 which, after aU, were at the heart of Moses' 
 convictions, — his certainty of the " Thus 
 saith the Lord," which justified his own com- 
 mands. 
 
 The wisdom of the kingdom is uttered in 
 strange parables, which it is only given to them 
 who enter into the mysteries to understand. 
 
 Christ told the story of the unjust stew- 
 ard, who cheated his lord in befriending his 
 
THE SPOILING OF THE EGYPTIANS 167 
 
 fellows ; and he declared that the lord com- 
 mended his unjust steward, in that he had 
 done wisely in his generation ; as far as he 
 had the nature to do, — as far as he had — 
 yet — been born into doing. 
 
 And Jesus added his own command, which 
 has perplexed many : " And I say unto you, 
 Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of 
 unrighteousness ; that when ye fail, they may 
 receive you into everlasting habitaitions." 
 
 Following instantly upon this word comes 
 the seeming contradiction : " He that is faith- 
 ful in little, is faithful also in much. If ye 
 have not been faithful in the unrighteous 
 mammon, who will commit to your trust the 
 true riches ? " 
 
 The only reconciling is the " good out of 
 evil " which we are bidden to find and to make 
 sure of. Make to yourselves opportunities for 
 the righteousness of heaven out of the un- 
 righteousness of earth. In the very things 
 of self which men strive for to possess sep- 
 arately, discover the means and implements 
 for your work of brotherly love, — your ser- 
 vice to the neighbor. The unjust steward, — 
 according to his light, — acted for the largest 
 benefit of his fellows. According to your 
 
168 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 light, and within the ordering of God and 
 His Commandment, do ye likewise. For so 
 you build for yourselves the everlasting habita- 
 tions; even the "habitation of God through 
 the Spirit." 
 
 Carry out with you into every larger, better 
 phase of life, the best things — the lasting 
 things — the really precious and beautiful 
 things — of the life that has been. 
 
 Even among the Egyptians, ye may gather 
 jewels of silver and jewels of gold. They 
 have robbed you ; ye have suffered their op- 
 pressions ; but something ye may make them 
 render back. Something lovely, — something 
 of imperishable value, — they will have given 
 into your hands. It is yours ; bear it away 
 with you; it is the result of old labor, old 
 endurance, old uncompensations. 
 
 Out of the stress and deprival and struggle 
 of this life, we shall bear away its best, in 
 concentred worth and resplendence, to shine 
 in our glad possession forever. It is the spoil 
 of the Egyptians. 
 
 Underneath the act which the Israelites 
 committed, and which Moses sanctioned, but 
 which as an outward act we condemn, lay this 
 meaning, justification, promise. It was an 
 
THE SPOILING OF THE EGYPTIANS 169 
 
 unuttered sense of this that impelled Moses ; 
 we may receive and rejoice in it, while we 
 discern and refuse for ourselves the outward 
 wrong, the forcible or crafty righting of our- 
 selves in outward things ; while we apprehend 
 and obey the Christian precept, " Recompense 
 to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest 
 in the sight of all men. Avenge not your- 
 selves : I will repay, saith the Lord." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CLOUD AND THE FIEE 
 
 In the strength of the faith of Moses and 
 Aaron, the Children of Israel took their way 
 into the wilderness. '■'■They took thdr jour- 
 ney," the text says ; but directly after it de- 
 clares, " The Lord went before them to lead 
 them the way: by day in a piUar of cloud, 
 and by night in a pillar of fire." He gave 
 them guidance, shielding, light. 
 
 For forty years of day and night, the wil- 
 derness was to be their world. A whole gen- 
 eration was to pass away, a whole generation 
 to be born and grow, while they traveled. A 
 whole story of life was to be enacted in that 
 desert tract of country, where, nevertheless, 
 the Lord would lead and feed them, give them 
 bread to eat and water to drink, and show 
 them all their way. All their way from 
 Egypt to Canaan ; from servitude and sorrow 
 to freedom, and the beautiful, plentiful Land 
 of God. 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE 111 
 
 He himself went hefore them. He himself, 
 in tlie cloud of a gracious mystery, in the glow 
 and glory of his Presence. He veiled him- 
 self, sparing them the too awful and continual 
 blaze of Deity ; he lifted up light upon them 
 when they needed it in the heavy darkness. 
 He gave himself to them in as much and in 
 as near as they could bear. 
 
 Their " Spiritual Rock followed them ; " 
 companied with them. " And that Rock was 
 Christ." God was already in the world in his 
 Christhood ; in his close abiding and sharing 
 with men. 
 
 And this was the Believing of Moses, and 
 his leading of the Children of Israel. 
 
 Whatever the external sign of it was, the 
 Presence never left them. " He took not away 
 the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar 
 of fire by night, from before the people." 
 
 " For he said. Surely they are my people : 
 ... so he was their Saviour. In all their 
 afflictions he was affiicted, and the Angel of 
 his Presence saved them: in Bis love and in 
 his pity he redeemed them." 
 
 Look unto the Lord. That was the lesson, 
 and the comfort, the strength, and the peace, 
 and the assurance of the wilderness. Is there 
 
172 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 any other, now or ever, in the wilderness of 
 mortal living and earthly journeying ? 
 
 " Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the 
 ends of the earth ; for I am God, and there is 
 none else." 
 
 " Look unto the Kock whence ye are hewn." 
 
 " Make thy face to shine upon thy servant : 
 save me for thy mercies' sake ;"..." that 
 I may walk before God in the light of the 
 living." 
 
 " Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that com- 
 pass yourselves about with sparks : walk in 
 the light of your " own " fire, and the sparks 
 that ye have kindled. . . . Ye shall lie down 
 in sorrow." 
 
 " Oh that I were as in the days when God 
 preserved me : when his candle shined upon 
 my head, and by his light I walked iu dark- 
 ness." 
 
 " O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us 
 walk in the light of the Lord." 
 
 " Who is among you that feareth the Lord, 
 and obeyeth the voice of his servant, that 
 walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let 
 him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay 
 upon his God." 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE 173 
 
 " Our fellowship is with the Father, and 
 with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the mes- 
 sage which we have heard of him, and declare 
 unto you, that God is light, and in him is no 
 darkness at all." 
 
 "I am the Light of the World ; he that 
 abideth in me shall not walk in darkness, but 
 shall have the light of life." 
 
 " The Light which lighteth every man that 
 Cometh into the world." 
 
 " God, who commanded the light to shine 
 out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to 
 give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
 of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
 
 " The city had no need of the sun, . . . for 
 the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb 
 is the light thereof." 
 
 Jesus — Christ. The Cloud of the human, 
 — the Glory of the Divine. 
 
 The Word made flesh, that it might dwell 
 among us: the Glory of the Only Begotten, 
 moving before the world, to lead it through 
 its night-time to the Everlasting Day. 
 
 Moses, David, Isaiah, Job in his lament; 
 every prophet and teacher and believer of the 
 truth, through the whole Bible Record, to the 
 Christ Visible himself, and the apostles who 
 
174 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 walked with him in the earthly, and saw the 
 visions of the Heavenly in his Transfiguration, 
 his Glorification, and the open splendors of 
 his New Jerusalem, — tell us the same thing, 
 — of the Shadow and the Shining, — the Guid- 
 ing and Abiding, — which are the Presence of 
 the Lord God. 
 
 " Come near before the Lord," commanded 
 Moses to the complaining people. " And be- 
 hold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the 
 cloud." 
 
 " I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy- 
 seat." 
 
 The Cloud and the Fire are one. 
 
 They are the Leading, Protecting, Showing, 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 By faith of them Moses followed, and drew 
 after him the hosts — even the rebellious, up- 
 braiding, untrusting hosts — of the congrega- 
 tion of Israel. 
 
 The Cloud and the Fire are one. 
 
 There is a veiled, and there is an Immediate 
 Presence. 
 
 In all natural things, in aU natural circum- 
 stances, in the life and work of every day, 
 God limits himself to us ; He goes before us, 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE 175 
 
 in a hidden majesty, to lead us the way. He 
 covers himself, in his gift and providence, in 
 his commandment, his teaching, his speaking 
 with men, with the law and condition of the 
 earthly. Even Moses, when he came forth 
 from the Intimate Glory, to give the word of 
 the Lord to the people, spoke to them " with a 
 veil upon his face ; " and he kept the veil upon 
 his face until he went in to speak with the 
 Lord again. 
 
 A beautiful veil was hung before the place 
 of the Ark of the Testimony : it was " between 
 the holy and the Most Holy place." 
 
 Christ came, and walked, in the earthly ; 
 " in the veil of his flesh ; " to show men the 
 way, through the earthly. 
 
 In the night-time, when the earthly was 
 withdrawn. He came in the Fire of the Holy 
 Ghost, and gave himself to his own. 
 
 In the every-day, the common, the rudi- 
 mentary, God is in the Cloud, before us : in 
 the hour and the power of the spirit, when it 
 pauses and separates from the natural, and 
 the natural is put away as into its own dark- 
 ness, then the Lord comes with inner tran- 
 scendent light into the very soul. Then 
 He teaches, leads, speaks, straight from the 
 
176 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Divine, into the divine He has divided to us, 
 to be as ourselves. 
 
 " The Pillar of the Cloud went before the 
 people by day, to lead th^m the way ; and the 
 Pillar of Fire by night, to give them light." 
 
 The PiUar of the Cloud, and the Pillar of 
 the Fire, are One. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BED SEA 
 
 The Children of Israel, led by the Lord's 
 command through Moses, went out into the 
 Wilderness and encamped by the sea. And 
 the Egyptians followed them, surrounded 
 them, and hemmed them in. 
 
 More or less, the Israelites had been willing 
 slaves in the land of Egypt. More or less, 
 they were looking back, even now, upon such 
 security, such comfort of the flesh and of in- 
 dolent, irresponsible submission, as they had 
 had in their bondage. Now, they had made 
 enemies utterly, and to the death, of their old 
 taskmasters. Their Past pursued them, as it 
 pursues every soul that departs out of Egypt 
 to follow the Lord to the land which He "will 
 provide. " Behold, the Egyptians marched 
 after them ; and they were sore afraid." 
 
 Not yet had they come into the promised 
 peace and safety. Not yet were they out of 
 reach of their old miserableness. Their old 
 
178 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 evils followed hard upon them, and would 
 not let them go. " We would better have 
 stayed ! " they cried out to Moses. " "We 
 might as well have been content. We shall 
 die here in the wilderness. The vengeance of 
 the wicked is come upon us." 
 
 " Wait. Fear not. Stand still. Ye shall 
 see the salvation of the Lord. The Egyptians 
 whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them 
 again no more forever. The Lord shall fight 
 for you, and ye shall hold your peace." That 
 was the grand word which Moses answered to 
 their terrified souls. 
 
 It is the word of assurance against all the 
 evil of men's past. 
 
 " Speak to the children of Israel that they 
 go forward : lift up thy rod, and stretch out 
 thy hand over the sea, and divide it : the chil- 
 dren of Israel shall go on dry ground through 
 the midst of the sea." 
 
 There shaU be no hopelessness, no destruc- 
 tion or confounding, to them who believe in 
 me, and follow after my command, whatsoever 
 bondage or corruption they may have come 
 out from, saith the Lord, in the word of this 
 wonderful history. That which has enslaved 
 and debased them may pursue them with con- 
 
THE RED SEA 179 
 
 demnation, with threatening, with fear and 
 shame ; but it shall not seize nor conquer 
 them, nor follow them forever. Its power 
 over them is gone ; I myself will beat it back. 
 
 " I will get me honor upon the host of 
 them." 
 
 " And the Angel of God which went before 
 the camp of Israel, removed and went behind 
 them ; and it came between the camp of the 
 Egyptians and the camp of Israel ; and it was 
 a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave 
 light by night to these : so that the one came 
 not near the other all the night." 
 
 The Presence of the Lord is both before 
 and behind ; it is between man and his past, 
 when the past accuses and threatens him ; and 
 that which he has forsaken for the Lord shall 
 not overtake him to destroy him. The Lord 
 himself will interpose between the old un- 
 righteousness and the new purity ; He will 
 be a cloud and a darkness to hide the hateful 
 thing out of the better life ; to this it shall 
 only be as a burning light and a shining mercy 
 of admonition and forgiveness, to encourage 
 and make plain and safe the going in the 
 forward way. Through all night of doubt, 
 through all gloom of dread and self-reproach, 
 
180 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 it shall be both shield and assurance ; cover- 
 ing and manifestation. 
 
 Moses stretched out his hand over the sea ; 
 over the deep waters that the people had to 
 pass, and which had seemed to shut them back 
 among their enemies : " and the Lord caused 
 the sea to go back, by a strong east wind, 
 all that night, and made the sea dry, and the 
 waters divided. And the children of Israel 
 went into the midst of the sea upon the dry 
 ground ; and the waters," which had forbid- 
 den them and made them afraid, " were a 
 wall unto them upon their right hand and on 
 their left." 
 
 And through the pillar of fire and cloud the 
 Lord looked upon the Egyptians, and troubled 
 them, and took off their chariot wheels ; and 
 again he commanded Moses, Stretch out thine 
 hands over the sea. And the sea returned 
 to his strength, and the Lord overthrew the 
 Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 
 
 Beforehand, He gave them the great sign 
 of the prophet Micah : " He will subdue our 
 iniquities ; and thou wilt east all their sins 
 into the depths of the sea." 
 
 It was the same sign that Christ gave, when 
 
THE RED SEA 181 
 
 He sent the devils out of the possessed men 
 into the herd of swine, and the herd of swine 
 into the sea to perish in the waters. 
 
 The evil thing shall perish; the bad past 
 shall not follow and overcome. As soon as it 
 is the past, and not any living, present part 
 of us, the Lord can destroy it and save us 
 alive. It is all He waits for. 
 
 " Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out 
 of the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel 
 saw the great work which the Lord did upon 
 the Egyptians ; and the people believed the 
 Lord, and his servant Moses." 
 
 Believed, — what ? 
 
 It was not the event, the doing, that called 
 for act of faith. That had passed before their 
 eyes. " They saw the great work ; and they 
 helieved the Lord, and his servant Moses." 
 
 It was not history, to them, to be ques- 
 tioned, sifted, caviled at ; it was present fact, 
 actual experience. In it, the Lord had been 
 with them ; they believed that. He had stood 
 between them and their enemies ; between 
 their horrible past and their hoped-for future ; 
 they knew and believed that. He would be, 
 in like manner, their Guide and their Defense 
 forever. In that moment of exaltation, they 
 
182 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 believed all this ; and it remained with them 
 strongly enough to be handed down, in a 
 wonderful recital and creed, from generation 
 to generation of their descendants. 
 
 And Moses and the Children of Israel sang 
 together a great song of triumph : — 
 
 " I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath 
 triumphed gloriously : the horse and his rider 
 hath He thrown into the sea. The Lord is 
 my strength and my song, and He is become 
 my salvation. . . . 
 
 " In the greatness of thine excellency thou 
 hast overthrown thera that rose up against 
 thee. . . . 
 
 " The enemy said, I will pursue, I will over- 
 take, I will divide the spoil : my lust shall be 
 satisfied upon them. I will draw my sword, 
 my hand shall destroy them. 
 
 " Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea 
 covered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty 
 waters." 
 
 It was the wind, the east wind; we are 
 told to-day that " the miracle of the Red Sea 
 has happened again." A surveying officer of 
 the British Government reports it as having 
 occurred to bis own observation. " A wind 
 
THE RED SEA 183 
 
 arose so fierce that within a few hours it had 
 driven the entire waters of Lake Menzahieh 
 out of sight beyond the horizon, leaving all 
 the sailing vessels resting on the sandy bed." 
 " This," says the journal reporting Major- 
 General Tulloch's statement, " answers to the 
 description in the Bible ; and the miracle 
 turns out to be a phenomenon of nature." 
 
 Equally logical, and far truer, it would be 
 to say, Every phenomenon of nature turns out 
 to be a miracle of the will of God. 
 
 It was an east wind, the Mosaic story tells 
 us, simply ; but it was the Lord's wind, and 
 held his purpose in it. That was the faith 
 it taught Moses and the Israelites ; that was 
 what they believed about it. And it enabled 
 them, looking forward with joy and certainty 
 to God's further leading and salvation, to 
 sing on : — 
 
 " Thou, in thy mercy, hast led forth the 
 people thou hast redeemed : thou hast guided 
 them in thy strength to thy holy habitation. 
 . . . Thou shalt bring them in, and plant 
 them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in 
 the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for 
 thee to dwell in; in the Sanctuary, O Lord, 
 which thy hands have established. 
 
184 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 " The Lord shall reign for ever and ever!." 
 Verily, is not this the Song of Moses and of 
 the Lamb, sung in the Revelation of all things 
 by them who have gotten the victory, and 
 stand upon the sea of glass mingled with fire, 
 and who have in their hands the harps of 
 God? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HUNGER AND THIRST OF THE 
 WILDERNESS 
 
 In the joy of their deliverance, in the awe 
 of the might of the Lord which had built up 
 the sea of peril to be a wall of safety to them, 
 and in it had cast to utter annihilation the 
 evil power and threat and tyranny of their 
 past, — in the strength of the Song of Moses, 
 — the Israelites went on their way. 
 
 But they had yet to pass the wilderness. 
 They had to learn to believe God in long de- 
 lays, in weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and 
 pain, as they had believed Him when with 
 his sudden outstretched arm He had wrought 
 visibly and mightily in their behalf. They 
 had to come to the faith that in every little 
 thing, — in their daily bread and the supply 
 of water for their thirst, in strength for their 
 march, in place and provision for their rest, 
 in the very washing of their garments, — God's 
 care and ordering were with them, his mean- 
 
186 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 ings were spoken to their souls. It was to 
 be a continual sacrament. So they were to 
 be trained to feel Him, to lean upon Him, to 
 follow Him, to listen to Him. By these things 
 they were to " be ready " for the glorious and 
 tremendous manifestations of Presence and 
 Authority that in their hour should come. 
 The rough and barren way through the desert 
 of Sin (place of the cliffs) was to be trodden 
 in dependence and trust, till in the majestic 
 solitudes of Horeb they should come to the 
 foot of its great peak of Sinai, from whose 
 flame and smoke the Voice of Him should 
 break forth whose silent guidance of light and 
 cloud had been their sign and stay by night 
 and day ; whose word and answer to all their 
 askings — even their murmurings and rebel- 
 lions — had thus far been in gift, defense, 
 satisfying ; the meeting of their outward needs 
 with instant helps. They had been cared for 
 like little children, that they might be led up 
 into the strength of manhood. 
 
 The Lord always " spake unto Moses " in 
 the sense of his inner truth. " Say unto the 
 children of Israel, ... ye shall eat flesh, . . . 
 ye shall be filled with bread ; ye shall know 
 that I am the Lord your God." When they 
 
THE HUNGER AND THIRST 187 
 
 found the " small, round thing," left by the 
 dew, lying " upon the face of the wilderness," 
 and knew that they were to be saved from their 
 hunger, they said, " It is — What is it f " 
 For " manna " is of the words " man hu," 
 meaning just this question. " And Moses said 
 unto them. This is the bread which the Lord 
 hath given you to eat." In all things, " It is 
 the Lord," was the lesson of their living. 
 God never left Moses to his own struggles and 
 devices, or to think that he was so left. He 
 had said, " Surely I wiU be with thee ; " and 
 at every fresh need came the word, " / will 
 do this for you." "/ wiU. rain bread from 
 heaven for yftu." " / will stand before thee 
 there, upon the rock in Horeb ; and thou shalt 
 smite the rock, and there shall come water 
 out of it, that the people may drink." And 
 Moses believed the Lord, and the people be- 
 lieved Motees. 
 
 In the wilderness of the world to-day, — in 
 the crowding and rushing of wonders, — the 
 very gifts of God by his marvelous power, — 
 where is Moses, to stand up and say of each 
 successive revelation and benefit, " Behold, 
 this is given to you by the Lord your God ; " 
 it is He who calls forth for you the hidden 
 
188 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 secrets of the earth, and the life of it, for your 
 strength and using ? And where is the people, 
 in whatever material dullness yet held and 
 hindered, to confess and give praise at each 
 new finding, and to " lay up before the Lord " 
 a sacred reserve and memorial, " to be kept for 
 their generations ? " 
 
 Whatever the blindness, the forgetfulness, 
 the time-serving, the self-seeking, of the He- 
 brew children, they were yet as children in their 
 hearts, learning the faith of the Lord. 
 
 Faith was the one thing God was deter- 
 mined to give them ; it was the one thing 
 insisted on ; it was the one thing in which 
 failure, recusance, apostasy, was not tolerated ; 
 was not pardoned, tiU bitterly atoned for. 
 
 In the further experience of their pilgrim- 
 age, after they left Mount Sinai, we have exam- 
 ple and record of this, to which we shall come 
 in due order. But first, intermediate between 
 their early leadings and disciplines and the 
 graver tests of their believings and obedience, 
 with the fearfid judgments of their presump- 
 tions and disloyalties, we pause, as they did, 
 before the Mountain of Manifestation, the 
 place of the utterance of the Law, — the com- 
 mands for their common living, — delivered 
 
THE HUNGER AND THIRST 189 
 
 out of heights inaccessible, that burned with 
 lightnings and sounded with great thunders. 
 
 In this Giving of the Law, see also the ever- 
 lasting significances. 
 
 The " Thou shalt " of the obligations be- 
 tween man and God, and the " Thou shalt not " 
 of things forbidden between men and men, are 
 the orders of continual, lowly, primitive obser- 
 vance : they do not reveal, nor foretell ; they 
 are simply and uncompromisingly, Do, — and 
 Do Not : but they are spoken down into our 
 earthly plan and condition out of the everlast- 
 ing Majesties and the ineffable Awf ulness ; out 
 of the Being and Law of God himself, and his 
 own Action : they are tremendous with issues 
 which Almightiness itself acknowledges, and 
 towards whose truth and justice it rules itself. 
 
 And yet, — mark where it is put, in the 
 middle of the Decalogue, — in the heart of 
 the law stands the " one commandment with 
 promise ; " the one gently given, as touching 
 human hearts ; it alone has no " shall " nor 
 " shall not ; " it appeals to our affections, — 
 our love of kindred, land, home; it alone 
 does foretell, and offer motive, — the " days 
 long in the land," and with our own ; it is the 
 beginning of the law of our dearest life, — it 
 
190 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 is the link between our worship of God and 
 our just relation with our fellow men ; it has 
 the statutes for the one on the one side, and 
 for the other on the other; it is the lovely 
 clasp that holds our spiritual and our earthly- 
 together ; it is, as it were, the " Lamb in the 
 midst of the Throne." This, also, because 
 of the deep and infinite Law of God's own 
 Nature. 
 
 " In the third month . . . they were come 
 to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the 
 wilderness ; and Israel camped before the 
 mount : and Moses went up unto God." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 A MOUNTAIN is a high place. It is the lift- 
 ing up of something of the earth toward the 
 heaven. The heaven comes down and broods 
 upon the mountain ; in clouds, in light and 
 glory ; with awful stillness, and with awful 
 voices. The thunder and the avalanche are 
 there, — the great Eest, and Strength, and 
 Peace are there also. They who walk in spir- 
 itual high places feel the call and the help of 
 the hills. It is natural to climb into them ; 
 to carry thought and seeking into their great 
 altitudes and deep solitudes. The prophets 
 found the presence of God in the mountains ; 
 they prophesied of the coming of the Lord 
 and his dwelling with his people, as to be upon 
 the mountains ; " in his holy mountain," where 
 He would " bring " his people, and " make 
 them joyful in his house of prayer." 
 
 Christ spoke the word of Life first from 
 a mountain ; he watched and prayed in a 
 
192 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 mountain - top ; lie was transfigured upon a 
 mountain ; he met his chosen, after his resur- 
 rection, upon a mountain of Galilee. He led 
 them out, at last, " as far as Bethany," on the 
 farther slope of the Mount of Olives, to say 
 his last words to them, to lift up his hands 
 upon them with his blessing, and "while he 
 blessed them" to be "parted from them and 
 carried up into heaven." The mountains of 
 the earth reach very near the unseen heights 
 of the celestial. 
 
 " The Lord called unto Moses out of the 
 mountain " of Sinai. He spoke to him there 
 the things that he should tell the people. It 
 was the handing down of faith — of sure be- 
 lieving — through the heart and mind and by 
 the speech of a man filled with his own be- 
 lieving by the instant utterance of God, — to 
 the acceptance of the men who waited far 
 below ; who could not bear the thunders of 
 God's speaking, nor the lightnings of his 
 Presence. And how was it that this belief 
 conveyed itself so absolutely, so unquestioned, 
 to the minds of the dull, fearful, obstinate 
 Israelites ? "Why did not they begin to say, 
 " How do we know this thing ? How shall 
 we receive it, hearing it only from this man 
 
THE MOUNTAIN 193 
 
 Moses ? " Why was it left for a people ages 
 onward, between whom and this first one 
 leader and believer stretches all the line of 
 teachers, apostles, prophets of both Old and 
 New Testimonies, to demur, and ask in a 
 proud unsatisf action, " Where is the proof of 
 these old say-sos ? " 
 
 The Children of Israel had begun to be- 
 lieve in a Ood already manifest in their 
 own lives. They had learned this alphabet 
 of faith ; they had spelled some syllables of 
 heavenly language that sets signs in the 
 things of earth. They were ready for fur- 
 ther message in the same speech. They Tcnew 
 what had been done for them by the hand of 
 God, strengthening with a more than mortal 
 might the hand of Moses. They knew, even in 
 their limit and ignorance, what was only man- 
 mighty, and what was God-Almighty. They 
 felt the power of the Holy Ghost, though the 
 Holy Ghost had not been named to them by 
 that Name. It is the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost that condemns — so long as they are in 
 it — the unbelievers of this generation. 
 
 "Ye have seen," said the Lord, '■'■what I 
 did. . . . And how I bare you on eagles' 
 wings, and brought you unto myself." Now 
 
194 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 I will give you plain commandment, for these 
 lives of yours in which you know me. " And 
 if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my 
 covenant," — keep and cherish this faith and 
 knowledge of my meeting and abiding with 
 you in the life of your soul and body, — " ye 
 shall be a peculiar treasure unto me. All the 
 earth is mine ; ye shall be to me a kingdom of 
 priests, a holy nation." 
 
 And Moses came and told these words of 
 God to the people ; and aU the people an- 
 swered together, " All that the Lord hath 
 spoken we will do." 
 
 " And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I 
 come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the 
 people may hear when I speak with thee, and 
 believe thee forever." 
 
 " And Moses told the word of the people 
 unto the Lord." 
 
 Did not the Lord know? Was it in hu- 
 man words that Moses repeated the respon- 
 sive vow of the Israelites to Him? Or did 
 he only lift up his full heart-consciousness, 
 thrilled with the Divine message and its an- 
 tiphon, before his God, with a " Thou seest : 
 Thou hast heard " ? We cannot say ; we can- 
 not sound those Sinai mysteries ; we do not 
 
THE MOUNTAIN 195 
 
 know the mystery of our own prayers. We 
 may say words ; perhaps that is for our own 
 self -defining and understanding ; that we may 
 realize what it is in us that we do "lift up 
 unto the Lord." 
 
 God always chooses a man when He would 
 speak with men. He takes a man apart, 
 and tells him what He would have all people 
 know. And the men who already believe 
 God to be in their lives recognize his messen- 
 gers and their errands when they come. 
 
 Belief can come of belief no other way. 
 We may say, " We know our Moses ; we 
 have trust in him. We can see that he is 
 on a height, where he can discern more than 
 we ; where great speech comes to him that we 
 cannot hear for ourselves, but only from his 
 mouth. We are the children of Abraham ; 
 we believe Moses and the prophets." That 
 suffices for them who will receive Moses; to 
 those who will not, it will not avail though 
 one of their own kindred should arise from 
 the dead. In the last proving and behind 
 all, it is God himself whom we must believe. 
 "He that is of God heareth God's voice." 
 He only. Without Him, we cannot even rec- 
 ognize his Son. " He that believeth on the 
 
196 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Son hath life. He that believeth not, is 
 condemned already." 
 
 How are we to get this life, then ? 
 
 That was what the young ruler — it was 
 also what the tempting man of the law — 
 asked of Jesus of Nazareth. And the an- 
 swer to each was, " Keep the Command- 
 ments." When you have done that, you wiU 
 have entered in. When you have done that, 
 and have not found entrance, you may stand 
 and cavil at the gates. 
 
 But it must be a keeping that from the out- 
 side letter shall search into, find, and obey, 
 the inmost heart. The heart of the Com- 
 mandment is the Heart of God. It is with 
 heart, and mind, and strength, that He will 
 be sought, and found, and loved. And the 
 neighbor — against whom is to be done no 
 wrong — is to be found also, and loved, and 
 served, in the heart of living, as another self. 
 If you think you have done all by not doing 
 him ill, try the other side of the command- 
 ment, and divide with Mm your good. 
 
 There are but two commands in the whole 
 Two Tables. Upon the essential soul of these 
 hang aU the law and the prophets. 
 
 Again, — for human conduct, as in the Di- 
 
THE MOUNTAIN 197 
 
 vine Ordering of human life, — the Law was 
 made known by Moses ; the heavenly grace, 
 the fulfilling truth, came by Jesus Christ. 
 
 We, to-day, may read the pages of the Old 
 Law with the pages of the New waiting, 
 folded beneath our fingers. The Children of 
 Israel, in the Wilderness, had only the two 
 tables of stone. 
 
 How did they read, or hear them ? 
 
 How did Moses, the Mediator into whose 
 heart and hand they were given to deliver, 
 apprehend them both in their present power 
 and in the potentiality of their yet further 
 unfolding under a more glorious ministration ? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE TEN SAYINGS 
 
 "Sanctify the people, to-day and to-mor- 
 row, and let them wash their clothes, and be 
 ready against the third day. The third day 
 the Lord will come down in the sight of all 
 the people, upon Mount Sinai." 
 
 Put away all defilement ; make at least the 
 outer raiment of your life clean. Then ye 
 may come up to the foot of the holy moun- 
 tain ; then the Lord God, descending in his 
 glory upon its top, will meet you there. " The 
 third day ; " after the day of sanctifying, and 
 the day of making clean. Even the com- 
 mandment should not be given till the people 
 had done that which they already knew. The 
 primal commandment was in their hearts from 
 the beginning : they knew the clean from the 
 unclean. Come clean of all gross, known 
 wickedness, before the Lord your God; then 
 He will tell you further. 
 
 And Moses believed and carried the word : 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 199 
 
 the people of Israel also, again, believed the 
 word of Moses. 
 
 This indeed was the inclusive Command- 
 ment : Put away all wickedness, and come up 
 before the Lord your God, and He wiU come 
 to you, and speak with you. The ten precepts 
 are the divided words, — the setting forth in 
 analysis of what God has to say and to require. 
 They are so called in the ancient Scripture ; 
 the Words of the Covenant, — of the meeting 
 together of God and man ; the Words of the 
 Testimony, — the practical attestations of eter- 
 nal truth ; the particular rules of the life by 
 which men may be alive forever. 
 
 It was no new thing, no arbitrary imposi- 
 tion, this inmost Truth of Life, and its con- 
 dition ; no afterthought introduced into the 
 economy of God's government; it was what 
 had been from the beginning ; it was the law 
 of the abiding of men with the Lord, and their 
 continual creation from the divine. The or- 
 dering of all act and motive from this inmost 
 reality and command is what the Decalogue 
 — the Ten Words — sets forth, item by item, 
 in plain, categorical distinctness. 
 
 Moses saw and believed the absolute, inte- 
 gral truth. The people must be led to it by a 
 
200 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 fractional understanding and acceptance, and 
 an external obedience. 
 
 The Lord commanded Moses to go down 
 among the multitudes at the mountain foot, 
 and to keep them there. " Let not the priests 
 and the people hreah through to come up unto 
 the Lord, lest He break forth upon them." 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is not to be scaled 
 by temerity, nor taken by violence. The aw- 
 fidness of God's Presence is not to be con- 
 fronted unprepared, or with assurance.. We 
 may not seize with naked hand even the mate- 
 rial forces of his creation. We are set at safe 
 distance from his sun, which energizes earth 
 with its vitality. Heat and light are appor- 
 tioned to us ; we may not think to reach and 
 touch their intense origination. The Lord 
 wUl show himself to us as we can bear ; as 
 He can make us ready to receive Him. He 
 will give us that of himself which shall bless, 
 and not consume us. The fire of hell is the 
 consciousness of God in the evil and unfitted 
 soul. 
 
 " And God spahe all these words." 
 
 So sayeth the Record, without intermediate 
 explanation. And thereafter follow immedi- 
 ately the Ten Great and Divine Sayings. 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 201 
 
 How did the people hear them ? 
 
 " All the people saw " (and heard) " the 
 thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise 
 of the trumpet " (some clear, marvelous sound 
 that rang through all), "and the mountain 
 smoking; and when the people saw it, they 
 removed, and stood afar off." 
 
 Even this was as a " breaking forth " upon 
 their f earf ulness, their weak unworthiness. It 
 was with them, and yet more awfully, as with 
 Peter, when he cried out at the wonder-wgrk- 
 ing of the Lord, " Depart from me, for I am 
 a sinful man ! " 
 
 Infinite Power searches human conscience 
 and makes it afraid. How can a man see 
 God, and live ? 
 
 The Israelites believed, but with a mortal 
 terror. They had only come as far as "the 
 mount that burned with fire." Mount Zion, 
 the City of the Living God, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, the home of the " innumerable 
 company of angels and the spirits of just men 
 made perfect," was yet, in its lovely glory, to 
 be revealed. They said to Moses, "Speak 
 thou with us, and we will hear; but let not 
 God speak with us, lest we die." 
 
 And Moses said unto the people, " Fear not : 
 
202 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 God is come to prove you," — to show you what 
 you may be, — to reveal to you your own na- 
 ture, — to establish you in his truth, and in 
 everlasting agreement with himself ; " that his 
 fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not." 
 
 Not terror would He cause in them, nor in 
 any hearts of men ; not dread of a pursuing 
 vengeance or retribution, but a holy fear, ie- 
 forehand, that should keep them from offend- 
 ing ; a true reverence, awe, worship. They 
 were not to be afraid ; but they were to be 
 possessed in all their souls with devout appre- 
 hension of the Greatness that is infinite .: of 
 the Goodness so large and high, the Tender- 
 ness so deep and strong, that they are awful. 
 
 The people remained afar off, and Moses 
 drew near; "unto the thick darkness where 
 God was." 
 
 The law was " ordained in the hand of a 
 mediator." It had to be so. The people 
 could not come up into the mount ; they were 
 afraid, and strange. They were separate from 
 God. That was why the law itself had to 
 be ; it was " added because of transgression." 
 Men need the Law, and the Mediator, because 
 they have departed from the Promise. 
 
 The law came to bring back, and to insure, 
 
THE TEN S'AYINGS 203 
 
 the promise ; the promise was " long before, 
 confirmed of God in Christ," — in the son- 
 hood. " The law could not disannul it." It 
 is by the Promise that we recognize the Law. 
 It is the hope born in us — the " inheritance 
 of promise " — - that confesses to the command- 
 ment. Need we ask, then, " Shall we believe 
 the Mediator ? " And " Where is his author- 
 ity?" Is not his authority the very law it- 
 self ? Is it not " holy, and just, and good ? " 
 If nothing of the wholeness, justice, goodness, 
 is in us, whereby to see that, we may indeed be 
 afraid, and beg Moses to put his own person 
 between us and the Lord. 
 
 If God live in us, we shall understand his 
 saying. It will vouch for itself. It is one 
 with our own vitality. Upon Mount Sinai, 
 and in his children's hearts, God is One. 
 " And a Mediator is not a mediator of one." 
 He is sent to show forth the oneness which 
 needs no mediation. 
 
 The great Gospel Mediation is the restoring 
 and glorifying of the Promise ; it is the gift of 
 it again, and in its fullness, " by faith of Jesus 
 Christ." It is the everlasting confirmation of 
 that oneness with God in Christ, which is be- 
 fore and above the law. It is the Atonement. 
 
204 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 The Children of Israel had lapsed away 
 from all this, since its beginning in Abraham ; 
 so that they had not come into their inherit- 
 ance. They needed an outward compelling; 
 a code of righteousness, specifically set down, 
 of the obligation between man and God, and 
 between man and his fellow. " The Law was 
 a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ." The 
 Law stands forever, because it is of the Truth. 
 Truth is not of the Law. Christ, when he 
 should come, would not indeed destroy, but 
 he would needs fulfill. He would open up the 
 great beauty of the perfect rightness, of the ut- 
 termost meaning and requirement of the truth, 
 which is the Life. 
 
 Toward this, through the wilderness, with 
 their Ten Words on the Two Tables, which 
 were to be laid up forever in the Ark of the 
 Testimony, the Hebrew people were to begin 
 their forward spiritual march, not knowing all 
 the light into which it was to lead them ; not 
 witting of the far-o£E Coming of their King, 
 the Immanuel, — " God with us," — of the 
 Regeneration. 
 
 Neither did Moses know it all ; but he be- 
 lieved the Lord, and all the words the Lord 
 gave to him, them he gave straightway to his 
 people. 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 205 
 
 Moses did not even live to come into the 
 earthly Canaan ; long after him, the Judges 
 and the Kings and the Seers successively and 
 together wrought out the wonderful signifi- 
 cant story of the Chosen Nation in the Prom- 
 ised Land ; but when the Son of Man walked 
 there with his disciples, giving them his New 
 Testament, and in the vision of that other 
 mountain put on before them his exceeding 
 glory, the Prophet of the Exodus, and Elias, 
 witness for Jehovah before the kings, stood 
 also in shining garments beside their Lord, 
 and talked with Him of that which He should 
 accomplish at Jerusalem. 
 
 Truly the work and the word were one ; and 
 the human history was one, and the long, slow 
 centuries of its time - unfolding were as no- 
 thing. 
 
 The Ten Sayings of Moses were the Two of 
 Christ. 
 
 Believe in the Lord God, the Leader of 
 your life out of the house of bondage. 
 
 Have no other gods but Me : look to no 
 power but mine. 
 
 Make no image or likeness of anything to 
 yourselves, — no hewn or graven form for 
 beauty or reverence in the place of my Beauty 
 
206 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 aaid Worship ; no sensuously imaged, and lim- 
 ited thing, no pictured vision, no representation 
 to yourselves of anything in the tangible or 
 intangible, in the high or the low, or in the 
 hidden secrets of my creation, — to seek or to 
 serve apart from Me ; to bow down to in your 
 will and your desire, and your giving of your- 
 selves in soul and purpose. I am a jealous 
 God. I wiU have you give yourselves to no- 
 thing short of Me. For in Me only is your 
 life. It is your own life that I am jealous for. 
 I have made you for myself, and I will have 
 you, that I may give you all. If you worship 
 these things instead of Me, your iniquity shall 
 follow you, and your children, where my loving- 
 kindness should have been ; the unequalness 
 that you make of your life shall be handed 
 down into and visited upon the lives of the 
 third and fourth generations. 
 
 My Name is in all things ; all things de- 
 clare Me : receive all things in My Name, and 
 profane it not, nor take it to your own vain, 
 separate purpose. 
 
 Keep holy time with Me ; keep my Rest 
 of the Spirit that I keep in and after all my 
 work. Kest ye on every seventh day, to re- 
 member this : it is my Sabbath with you. 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 207 
 
 These are the Commandments that concern 
 you with Me. 
 
 Hold ye in all honor and love the relations 
 in which I have put you with each other ; in 
 families, and in your human kind ; for ye are 
 all a family in the earth. Be loyal, upright, 
 each one in your place and name ; do justly ; 
 live purely ; that father and mother, tribe and 
 race, be not shamed, but ennobled ; so that 
 land and lineage, home and kindred, given you 
 of the Lord, may endure, and be lifted up of 
 Him forever. 
 
 Kill not ; hurt not ; spoil not each other's 
 life in any way. To wound life, to deprive it, 
 is to take it, by just so much. 
 
 Be not unclean : but keep your very body 
 holy. 
 
 Take nothing from your neighbor ; neither 
 possession, nor time, nor opportunity, nor 
 praise, nor rightful pleasure ; take nothing to 
 yourself that is not rightly yours. 
 
 Bear no false witness, nor say any malicious 
 word, nor consent to any unjust reproach; 
 neither cherish any secret uncharitableness ; 
 for that is to bear false witness in your heart. 
 
 And desire covetously nothing that is your 
 neighbor's. 
 
208 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 These are tlie Commandments that concern 
 you with each other. 
 
 And the two are one ; for they are the Law 
 of Life flowing forth from My Life into yours. 
 And that is Love. 
 
 How else than upon such inmost principle 
 did Moses receive and record and publish the 
 Ten Sayings ? 
 
 Within that " thick darkness " and mystery 
 and fear, — behind the cloud and the smoke 
 and the lightnings, — where the leader of the 
 Israelites went up serenely at God's call, 
 knowing that the shining peace of his Pres- 
 ence was at the heart of it, and listened for the 
 Voice that came to him from out the invisible- 
 ness of the Central Glory, — what had God 
 to say and show to him but the interior word, 
 the inspiring verity, that is behind aU law and 
 constitution, out of which all rule is expounded 
 and all system built? Was it possible that 
 Moses should be taken into less than the whole 
 counsel of God, which should illuminate to 
 him the types and statutes that he was to de- 
 liver to the people with strenuous command 
 for their observance ? 
 
 Common men may live under exterior, tern- 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 209 
 
 porary system and be safe, without knowing 
 why ; but they to whom it is given to devise 
 and order have had the inner light upon that 
 which represents ; the light of the unshaka- 
 ble and everlasting. The servants who draw 
 the water know. 
 
 We are not told in the narrative how or 
 how far this inspiration was then given. We 
 are not told that at this first time Moses him- 
 self, even, went in behind, to the heart of the 
 " thick darkness " where the Glory was. But 
 he was received within the fear ; close to 
 God's side, as behind the bodily danger. He 
 was able to come " near the thick darkness " 
 that appalled them who were afar off, and to 
 know that in that very darkness was the safe 
 and loving Presence of the Lord. We find 
 simply the declaration that the Commandments 
 had been spoken unto all Israel from the 
 height of Sinai and from out its tremendous 
 environment, and that these Ten Sayings were 
 the form and translation of the awful utter- 
 ance. 
 
 Perhaps while to the people the mountain 
 flamed and smoked, and " it thundered," " an 
 angel spake" to the hearing inward ear of 
 Moses, and the great conception of the Perfect 
 
210 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Law was formed within his soul. We are not 
 told that the people heard a single enunciated 
 word. But the Law was ; and it was given 
 there and then ; it entered, somehow, into the 
 spirit of the Prophet and the life of the nation. 
 On Sinai God came down, and made known 
 his will; and from that hour it was handed 
 down to the generations. 
 
 Li the quietness beyond the elemental tu- 
 mults, the Lord greeted Moses in the spirit, 
 and went on to show him. His own sublime 
 meanings and definite requirements. At the 
 foundation, and in the heart of all, were the 
 vital principles and decrees of the Ten Say- 
 ings. 
 
 The whole being of Closes was possessed 
 with the majesty of the Divine word, the 
 mighty sense of intimacy and nearness within 
 the very shadow of the Highest. This expe- 
 rience was of itself both revelation and mes- 
 sage. The command of God was in his feeling 
 of it. 
 
 " Thou shalt say thus unto the children of 
 Israel," it came to him as it were in audible 
 speech, " Ye have seen that I have talked 
 with you from heaven." 
 
 Therefore, ye shall not make any gods of 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 211 
 
 silver with me, nor unto yourselves any gods 
 of gold. 
 
 Ye shall make an altar unto me, but it shall 
 be an altar of earth ; the earth that I have 
 created and formed ; the earth that is alive 
 and fruitful with my imparted life. There- 
 on ye shall sacrifice — • make holy to me — 
 the gifts of earth, thy sheep, thine oxen ; and 
 wherever I record my name / loill come to thee, 
 and I will bless thee. 
 
 If thou wilt make me an altar of stone, it 
 shall not be of hewn stone ; it shall be of the 
 stone that I have made in the earth. Thou 
 shalt not lift up thy human tool upon it. 
 
 These, in their meaning, almost in their 
 literal word, were the commandments of the 
 Lord spoken to Moses, that he might deliver 
 again to the people. And thereafter the in- 
 struction went on, — the " judgments " of 
 righteousness in detailed ordinance, which 
 should be the practical keeping of the Law of 
 the Ten Sayings. 
 
 In every particular, the exposition and ap- 
 plication were shown to the mind of Moses, 
 and shaped and framed themselves in his deep 
 thought and communing with his God. It 
 was a long, intense study and listening ; a 
 
212 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 taking in and assimilating that of the Eternal 
 Wisdom which concerned his people. Apart 
 from all interruption and disturbance, alone 
 with the Supreme, the time of this first seclu- 
 sion, whose duration is not precisely indicated, 
 went by in a rapt absorption. The rule and 
 method of a divine governing in the earth, in 
 the least, daily affairs of common men, was 
 organizing itself to the Prophet's high per- 
 ception. He took a power in his hand, and 
 an authority in his consciousness, from the 
 Most High himseK and none other, where- 
 with to return, full-commissioned, with the 
 glory of heavenly things in his face, to the 
 congregation. And at the end of the Com- 
 mandment came again the Promise ; the 
 promise of the Covenant ; the Coming-unto, 
 — the Going-with, — the Leading. 
 
 " Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to 
 keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into 
 the place which I have prepared. Be-aware 
 of him, and obey his voice ; provoke him not ; 
 for he will not pardon your transgressions ; 
 for my name is in him. But if thou shalt 
 indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, 
 then I wiU be an enemy unto thine enemies, 
 and an adversary unto thine adversaries." 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 213 
 
 ..." I will not drive them out before thee 
 in one year, lest the land become desolate, 
 and the beast of the field multiply against 
 thee. By little and little I will drive them 
 out from before thee, until thou be increased, 
 and inherit the land." 
 
 Man's salvation shall not be in a hurry, 
 before he is ready to be saved. God will be 
 tender with his wheat, even in the -uprooting 
 of the tares. 
 
 The enemies of the Hebrew pilgrims were 
 the Amorite and the Hittite, the Perizzite and 
 the Canaanite, the Hivite and the Jebusite. 
 They were to be cut off, and the people ruled 
 by God were to rule in the Promised Coun- 
 try. But who can help seeing what those 
 wild, idolatrous tribes, holding no covenant 
 with the One God and his Righteousness, stand 
 for and represent in the great history of the 
 earthly and the heavenly resolving its issues 
 through all the ages, as enemies to be over- 
 come and displaced before the onward march 
 of a humanity redeemed and pledged to an 
 unswerving allegiance to the Divine, and or- 
 dered and led on by the Jehovah- Angel ? 
 
 Is any less, or different, conquering in the 
 Divine Might carried on in the individual hu- 
 
214 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 man spirit, from before whom the Lord drives 
 out its enemies, that He may lead it into its 
 larger, happier life in the Loyal Land? Is 
 it not the same beautiful Patience that deals 
 with us gradually in our weakness, our partial 
 knowledges, our besetments with old, unvan- 
 quished sins, even ; driving out our evils " by 
 little and little," according to the increase of 
 our spiritual power to possess ourselves, lest 
 in the sudden " desolation of the land " the 
 animal nature, like the " beast of the field," 
 be left to rise up anew in the yet feeble soul, 
 and strengthen itself afresh against us ? 
 
 Was it not in the same tender pity that the 
 Lord Christ refused a " sign " that might have 
 forced the faith of a " wicked generation," and 
 told them of the man out of whom a terrible 
 possession of an unclean spirit seemed to have 
 gone, until the house of his life was " empty, 
 swept, and garnished ; " and then returned, 
 with seven worse devils, to " enter in and 
 dwell there " ? 
 
 And who can doubt that the spirit of Moses, 
 consciously or unconsciously, was impressed 
 upon and dominated by something far greater 
 than the vision of a purpose and hope for the 
 establishment and well-being, in merely natu- 
 
THE TEN SAYINGS 215 
 
 ral things, here, in a small space upon this 
 present earth, of a few generations of a few 
 chosen tribes, themselves of a mixed good and 
 evil nature and action, in the place of a few 
 others only a little more blind and rude and 
 sensual than they? How could it have been 
 but that the soul of the seer was swept by the 
 grand conviction, of which this passing story 
 of the Israelites was only one little illustration, 
 that there is a Lord God of the heaven and 
 the earth, that He alone rules in the creation 
 and in the affairs of men, and that only the 
 soul, or the people, that follows Him and keeps 
 his commandment, can come to and possess 
 its inheritance in all that He has prepared 
 for the believing and obedient ? Not as chil- 
 dren of Israel or of Abraham, only, were these 
 Hebrews to be saved from their enemies and 
 blessed with the great possession and the sat- 
 isfied life of the Land of the Beyond, but as 
 children and heirs of the Almighty Father. 
 To drink milk, and to eat honey, was this all 
 the end of the wandering and warfare ? Or 
 was it to belong to God, — to join the human 
 to the Divine, — to live out his thought, to 
 receive his word, to represent Him, each man 
 in his own place where the Lord would put 
 
216 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 him, in the certainty of the absolute blessed- 
 ness of that nation — so made a nation — 
 whose lawgiver, whose ruler, whose counselor, 
 defender, upholder, provider is Jehovah of 
 hosts ? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 
 
 And God said again to Moses, " Come up 
 unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, and Nadab, 
 and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel ; 
 and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone 
 shall come near the Lord." 
 
 Early in the morning Moses " rose up, and 
 builded an altar under the hill, and twelve 
 pillars, — according to the twelve tribes of 
 Israel." An earth -altar, as the Lord had 
 commanded ; a raising up of the very matter 
 of the earth itself to the praise and worship of 
 the Maker. And here the young men of Israel 
 brought their sacrifices, the " peace-offerings," 
 from their flocks, to make sign of pact and 
 unity with God in holy covenant. And Moses 
 "took the book of the covenant," — the tables 
 of stone being not yet given, — in which he 
 had written " all the words of the Lord," and 
 " read in the audience of the people ; and they 
 said, All that the Lord hath said we will do, 
 
218 EVEXTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 and be obedient." And Moses "took the 
 blood," — tbe emblem and reality of offered 
 life, — " and sprinkled it upon the people, say- 
 ins. Behold the blood of the Covenant." Ye 
 are made of one blood with God, — of one 
 life with Him, — " by all these words " which 
 He hath spoken and promised, and to which 
 ye have solemnly declared allegiance. 
 
 And so, with Aaron and his sons, and the 
 seventy elders, he went up into the mountain 
 that was still covered with the cloud where 
 God was. 
 
 "And they saw the God of Israel; and 
 imder his feet as it were a paved work of sap- 
 phire stone, and as it were the body of heaven 
 in his clearness." 
 
 Through the cloud they saw into the in- 
 effable shining, that ti-ansformed the craggy 
 height into the seeming of a " paved work " of 
 blue, transparent gems, clear and wide and 
 bright as the transparence of the firmament. 
 And they ate and drank — as a solemn Com- 
 munion — in that Presence of the Lord, these 
 " nobles of the children of Israel ; " and " He 
 laid not his hand upon them." 
 
 But unto Moses He called with further sum- 
 mons, " Come np to me in the mount, and be " 
 
FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 219 
 
 (abide)' "there; and I will give you tables of 
 stone, and a law and commandments which. I 
 have written ; that thou mayest teach them." 
 
 " That I have written." And " upon tables 
 of stone." The Word, — the Law, — that I 
 have put into all my doing and creating, and 
 made everlasting. 
 
 " Written with the finger of God." This 
 was what was said later, of the two tablets 
 given into the hands of Moses at the end of 
 the great Forty Days. Was it a literal script, 
 graven on the faces of the scales of rock, by 
 the Divine Hand, in a visible lettering ? Or 
 did Moses, by the same inspiration that had 
 spoken to him all the Will of the Lord, and 
 seeing how in the very foundations of the 
 earth — the stones of its material building — 
 lay the eternal sign and declaration of the 
 same Will and Truth that were now given in 
 holy spoken commandment to his people, lift 
 reverently, from that illumined pavement be- 
 neath the feet of God the two smooth tables, 
 significantly ready, iipon which, in' God's name 
 and as God's witness, he inscribed the Ten 
 Sayings, to take them down for the keeping 
 and reminding of Israel, in a form that should 
 not perish through all the generations? Be- 
 
220 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 fore the Face of God, — with the Divine Voice 
 in his heart, and the Finger of God thus point- 
 ins him to what he should do, — would not 
 Moses feel that Finger as it guided his, and de- 
 clare truly that the writing was of the Lord ? 
 
 What else is inspiration, miracle, or any 
 power, but the thought and act of God, hu- 
 manly or in nature made experience or sign? 
 
 " If I, with the finger of God, cast out 
 devils," said Jesus Christ, "no doubt the 
 Kingdom of God is come upon you." 
 
 Moses forgot himself, utterly, in his yield- 
 ing to the Lord. If a man can do that, God 
 will use his heart, his brain, his hand, for his 
 own work. The kingdom, — the power, — of 
 God has come upon him. And the man, claim- 
 ing nothing for himself, will but simply say 
 truth, " It is the Lord." 
 
 Is there any difficulty in receiving this? 
 And is the story any less sublime ? 
 
 The whole trouble with crediting the Bible 
 narrative is that men do not recognize, in 
 themselves and in all that tridy and purely 
 comes to them, this word and act of God. 
 They do not stand in the attitude of Moses ; 
 hence what Moses saw and knew, and declared 
 simply in the strong, natural language of type 
 
FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 221 
 
 and feeling, . they know not how to receive. 
 They make a thing extraneous, and then quar- 
 rel with the improbability of the extraneous 
 circumstance. This — not the clear, spiritual 
 interpretation — is the begging of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "And Moses went up into the Mount of 
 God." " And a cloud covered the mount. 
 And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount 
 Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days ; " the 
 measure of time that stands for measurement 
 of the periods of creation, by that Word which 
 was from the beginning with God. " And the 
 seventh day," — the day of fulfillment and rest 
 that the Lord ordained to keep with his peo- 
 ple, — " he called unto Moses out of the midst 
 of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of 
 the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of 
 the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
 And Moses went into the midst " — into the 
 heart — "of the cloud, and gat him up into 
 the mount," " into the glory : and Moses was 
 in the mount forty days and forty nights." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE TABERNACLE 
 
 Within the cloud, the Tabernacle. 
 
 Behind the thick darkness, the Eternal 
 Light. 
 
 Beyond the veil, the manifest Presence of 
 the Most Holy. 
 
 Moses entered into that within the veil ; 
 Aaron, his sons, and the elders waited and 
 worshiped without. There is a worship that 
 yet must wait below ; that does not attain to 
 the intimate communion. Moses found out 
 what it is to " be " with God. He learned 
 the experience of that which David sang long 
 after : — 
 
 " He shall hide me in his pavilion : in the 
 secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me : he 
 shall set me up upon a rock." 
 
 He learned that which Job remembered of 
 the " former days " when he dwelt in the 
 light, and God's " visitation preserved his 
 spirit." 
 
THE TABERNACLE 223 
 
 " O that I were as in months past, as in the 
 days when God preserved me : when his can- 
 dle snined upon my head, and by his light I 
 walked through darkness : as I was in the days 
 of my youth, when the secret of God was 
 upon my tabernacle." 
 
 Rapt into this joy, this nearness, the splen- 
 dor of its inmost truth — the truth that such 
 a nearness could be — took possession of the 
 spirit of the Hebrew leader. It was not for 
 him alone to learn and realize. It was to be 
 a great revelation. It concerned all men. It 
 concerned first this people of Israel, through 
 whom God would make known that it is in 
 Him and with Him his children live ; that He 
 makes tent and dwelling-place with the gener- 
 ations, and in the secret experience of every 
 living man. It was the doctrine of the Abid- 
 ing Word. 
 
 How should Moses interpret this great 
 thing to the people ; this hidden fellowship 
 with the Almighty which neither Aaron nor 
 all the priests and elders could understand? 
 With what sign should he show them this be- 
 yond, ^- this within, — this calm and safety 
 behind the mystery and the wonders and the 
 terrors, — shut off as they were by the cloud 
 
224 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 and thick darkness of their ignorance and 
 sin? 
 
 Filled with the glory and the demand, — 
 forgetting time, forgetting himself, and the 
 waiting multitude, — he lapsed into his long 
 sojourn upon Sinai, watching and listening, 
 with all his being, for what God would show 
 and say. 
 
 And the Lord did show and tell him all. 
 The beautiful pattern of a visible teaching 
 began unfolding itseK before him, traced to 
 his thought as by an illumining finger. A 
 plan was evolved to his comprehension ; a rep- 
 resentation was given him that should sig- 
 nify to all the people this lovely mystery, this 
 abiding of God in their midst, this possible 
 approach of his souls to himself. 
 
 The vision of a typifying Tabernacle arose 
 and grew before his inward seeing. 
 
 Of the purest things of light and precious- 
 ness it should be made. 
 
 Of the ofEerings " given willingly with the 
 heart " it should be fashioned. 
 
 Every man should bring of his own, of his 
 best. Gold, and silver, and brass ; for purity, 
 for value, for enduringness. Tine linen, and 
 beautiful color ; curtains of light, like the cur- 
 
THE TABERNACLE 225 
 
 tains of the firmament, for a tent^ through 
 which the Presence should glow; in hues of 
 the wonderful refractions into which the splen- 
 dor of heaven divides itself through the weav- 
 ing and texture of the earthly. 
 
 Oil for the lamps of the Lord ; spices and 
 incense for fragrance, which is the sweet feed- 
 ing of true perceptions, and the upward waft- 
 ing of gladness and thanksgiving. 
 
 Precious stones and crystals, each filled with 
 a separate radiance, alive with its own, one 
 light from the All-Glory. 
 
 Wood of the Arabian acacia, perfect of 
 growth, firm and strong ; precious with gum 
 distilled and stored in its veins, drawn by its 
 clean life from the elements of the rank earth. 
 
 All the signs and tokens of the heavenly in 
 the material ; all shining, and strength, and 
 sweetness, and righteous relations of form and 
 measure and number ; all sureness, and pure- 
 ness, and permanence : these to be chosen and 
 wrought out to a sacred beauty, a divine dis- 
 closure. No tool of heathenism to be lifted 
 up upon the work ; no spirit of heathenism to 
 be in the thought or use of it, but a hallowing 
 of the Name of the Most High, as He him- 
 self has written it in things. Nothing of idol- 
 
226 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 atry, — that is a stopping short at the sign, — 
 but worship, reaching through the sign by the 
 worth-ship that is set in it, and finding the 
 Most Holy. 
 
 It should be a building for and to the Lord ; 
 an annunciation and a witness that God him- 
 self is at the heart of things, and will there 
 be recognized. That He inhabits his creation ; 
 that from the burning bush to the soul of man, 
 aU. is the Temple of the Holy Ghost ; that 
 " by the things that are made and visible are 
 clearly shown the things that are "invisible, 
 even the Eternal Power and Godhead." That 
 so we ourselves dwell in spirit with spirit, and 
 not alone as material creatures in a world of 
 matter. 
 
 This knowledge is Re-ligion ; the binding 
 again together of the Spirit and the flesh, the 
 temporal and the eternal. It is the Resurrec- 
 tion of the Body, and the Life Everlasting. 
 
 This conception was the central experience 
 of the life of Moses ; his most interior appre- 
 hension and belief. It may have been so inte- 
 rior that he did not at the first comprehend it 
 aU himself ; that does not say that it was not 
 in him, to grow to comprehension more and 
 more. We feel even before we know. It was 
 
THE TABERNACLE 227 
 
 his inspiration ; the reality of his commission. 
 It was what the Tabernacle and the Ark of 
 the Covenant meant to him, and should mean 
 to the Hebrew nation and to the world. The 
 things, the words, were to be a perpetual en- 
 shrinement and expression of the one ineffable 
 Mystery ; the sublimely simple, vital Fact of 
 all being and existence. 
 
 Unless this had been in the deep heart of 
 Moses, there could have been no Jewish law, 
 no ceremonial ; any more than without the 
 moving of the Spirit of God there could have 
 been in the beginning a creation. 
 
 The Tabernacle was type of the Incarna- 
 tion. 
 
 " If the ministration of death," — of the per- 
 ishing, — " graven in stones," — in the mere 
 things of the earth, — " was glorious, how shall 
 not the ministration of the Spirit be rather 
 glorious ? " 
 
 " The Law was our schoolmaster, to bring 
 us to Christ." And the Christ is Immanuel : 
 God with every one of us. 
 
 The doctrine of the Tabernacle is the secret 
 of the Father with his humanity. It was 
 shadowed forth by Moses : it was fulfilled in 
 Jesus, born in Bethlehem, Christ the Lord. 
 
228 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Herein is the great Unity of the Old and 
 the New ; it could never be destroyed, but 
 must be forever made more manifest. 
 
 The Tabernacle was, then, the sign of the 
 Indwelling. God was in the midst of his peo- 
 ple ; in the midst of the heart-life of every one 
 of his children. 
 
 The Ceremonial was for representation of 
 approach to this Holy Presence ; of direct in- 
 tercourse with the Divine. It was the way 
 and form of worship. 
 
 To the last beautiful particular of the things 
 of the Sanctuary, to the perfect illustration in 
 substance, shape, color, workmanship, fitting, 
 and use, of every sign with which the people, 
 on their part, were to come before their God, 
 drawing near to him, and making language 
 of the "gifts and creatures," which He had 
 " sanctified with his Word and Holy Spirit," 
 that they should be language, and that lan- 
 guage should be born of them ; in all these 
 details, the vision and the plan plainly speci- 
 fied themselves to the open intuition of God's 
 servant. 
 
 The holy garments for the priests ; every 
 vestment and ornament, — the ephod, the 
 
THE TABERNACLE 229 
 
 breastplate, the robe, the girdle, the mitre ; 
 the onyx stones graven with the twelve names 
 of Israel, six on one side and six on the other, 
 to be borne on the shoulders of Aaron before 
 the Lord ; the wreathen chains, with rings 
 and ouches, by which the jeweled breastplate 
 — a separate signet-stone for every tribe, with 
 again the graven names — should hang from 
 the onyx fastenings upon the bosom of the 
 priest, that he should " bear the names of the 
 children of Israel in the breastplate of judg- 
 ment upon his heart, when he goeth into the 
 holy place, for a memorial before the Lord 
 continually;" the mystical Urim and Thum- 
 mim, — glory and holiness set as by precious 
 gems in the breastplate, that they should " be 
 upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before 
 the Lord," and that of the heavenly light and 
 perfection should come counsel and judgment 
 when he asked them of God for the people in 
 any matter ; the alternate bells of gold and 
 pomegranates bordering the robe, sounding 
 sweet chimes of call and permission to go in 
 and out before the Most Holy, and betokening 
 the fruit-bearing of a f uU and sweet obedience 
 that must follow every caU and privilege ; the 
 band of gold for the forefront of the mitre 
 
230 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 upon Aaron's forehead, inscribed with the 
 declaration of the meaning of all meanings, 
 the conclusion of aU ordinance, — ^^ Holiness 
 to the Lord ; " the sweet-compounded incense 
 to be burned upon the altar, sending up as to 
 the throne of God the odors " which are the 
 prayers of saints," — a perfume never to be 
 used for their own pleasure, but always offered 
 for the pleasure of the Lord, and always 
 accompanied by the prayers of the congrega- 
 tion at the time of morning and evening in- 
 cense ; — aU this garb and ritual took grand 
 array and presentment before the inspired 
 imagination of !Moses, and became already in 
 his thought a glorious, completed system of 
 visible annunciation that should be continually 
 made to the generations of Israel in their 
 solemnly commanded observance. 
 
 Heart and brain were glowing; fervid, as 
 from a quickening flame ; intense with eager- 
 ness to go down, and proclaim, and institute 
 the sacred work ; to possess the whole congre- 
 gation with the same divine ardor and energy; 
 to satisfj' the people, and show them the great 
 light they had been groping for ; to begin the 
 Revelation that was to make known and realize 
 at last the whole thought and purpose of God 
 with men. 
 
THE TABERNACLE 231 
 
 He longed to declare to Bezaleel the son 
 of Uri, and to Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, 
 the gifts and calling of Jehovah to them es- 
 pecially, — that He had " filled them " with 
 his own Spirit, " in wisdom, and in under- 
 standing, and in knowledge, and in all manner 
 of workmanship," and that " into the hearts 
 of all that are wisehearted " He had " put 
 wisdom, that they may make all that I have 
 commanded." 
 
 Filled and thrilled was the soul of Moses 
 with all this ; with the deep and holy under- 
 standing that in the things of creation God 
 had hidden his own secret word of wisdom 
 and beauty, and in the hearts of men the dis- 
 cernment that should meet and recognize, use 
 and sanctify all things in the Spirit. He took 
 the two tables of stone, " written with the fin- 
 ger of God," and knew that God for that time 
 and for present commandment had " made an 
 end of communing with him ; " and he listened 
 only for the word of the Lord that he should 
 go down. 
 
CHAPTER Xn 
 
 THE GOLDEN CALF 
 
 The word came. Was it what we in our 
 ignorance call presentiment, or in our super- 
 stition second sight, when the Spirit tells us 
 suddenly something in the spirit of which our 
 senses can as yet know nothing ? 
 
 " Get thee down," the command was spoken ; 
 inwardly, we must belicYe, as all the other 
 instruction and intercourse had been given ; 
 for surely it is as Spirit with spirit that the 
 Lord must speak, — " Get thee down ; for thy 
 people have corrupted themselves." They 
 have turned aside from me, and made an idol, 
 and " have worshiped and sacrificed there- 
 unto, and said. These be thy gods, O Israel, 
 which have brought thee up out of the land 
 of Egypt." 
 
 It was a clear-seeing. It showed itself all 
 at once, over against his own sublime joy, — 
 the thing he had to go back to ; the blind- 
 ness and " stifB-neckedness " he would have to 
 
THE GOLDEN CALF 233 
 
 encounter, and upon which he would have to 
 pour his precious revelation of the truth. 
 
 " They will not see ; they will not receive ; 
 they will not even have waited for me these 
 forty days and forty nights," he thought, as 
 indeed they had not ; even Aaron and the 
 elders had not " tarried " where they were 
 bidden, but had gone down at the summons 
 of the impatient multitude, to yield to its re- 
 bellious importunity ; only his own minister, 
 Joshua, had remained steadfastly near, in the 
 mountain solitude. 
 
 The refractory people had already been on 
 the verge of mutiny, apostasy, idolatry; this 
 came back to the mind of Moses with a quench- 
 ing of his exulting zeal ; in the high tension of 
 his spiritual faculties, his very vision projected 
 itself with his thought, and he beheld the con- 
 gregation adoring the molten image which their 
 hands had made. " The Lord said unto him," 
 the text tells us, and tells us true. In the 
 spirit, with the Lord, he looked and felt with 
 the Lord's own sight and knowledge ; it was 
 " thought-transference " from the all-knowing 
 mind of God. 
 
 So that, turning from the instant flash of 
 keen impression, he put himself at one with 
 
234 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 the Lord himself, and shared his anger, feel- 
 ing with a mighty convulsion of his whole 
 heing some small sense of that which must be 
 in the indignation of a Perfect Righteousness. 
 
 " Let me alone, that I may consume them," 
 he heard God say. " And I will make of thee 
 a great nation." Not with impulse of a self- 
 ish ambition, a hope in his own opportunity 
 through the misdoing of others, did this suggest 
 itself ; but rather, we must think, knowing all 
 the self-abnegation of Moses, in a steadfast, 
 determined loyalty to the grand light and com- 
 mandment he only had received, even if he only 
 should believe in and live for it ; in a faith 
 that the truth should stand, and yet grow in 
 the earth, though all Israel should desert and 
 repudiate it ; that there should yet be a nation 
 whose God should be the Lord ; that God was 
 " able of these stones to raise up children unto 
 Abraham." All alone, if that must be, he 
 would hold fast; all alone he would cherish 
 the revelation ; God himself would provide ; 
 He would do the rest. 
 
 And then he shared, as he had shared the 
 anger, the swift Divine Compassion ; one with 
 the wrath, as the shining light is one with the 
 threatening peal ; only separate to human ear 
 
THE GOLDEN CALF 235 
 
 and eye that can never receive the instant 
 whole, or know how even the consuming flash 
 is out of the quick heart of Love, and is in- 
 tense for life, and not destruction. 
 
 The Spirit of God pleaded in Moses back 
 to God himself, ready to be pleaded with : 
 "Remember thy promise and thy covenant, 
 Lord," he prayed ; " the seed of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Israel, that thou swarest should be 
 as the stars of heaven, and the land that thou 
 saidst they should inherit forever. Turn from 
 thy wrath, and forgive even this evil to thy 
 people." 
 
 And the Lord — who commands the for- 
 giveness of seventy times seven offenses — 
 " repented of the evil which he thought to do 
 unto his people." 
 
 Did Moses rebuke Jehovah ? Did he teach 
 Him his own lovingkindness and tender mercy ? 
 No : but he entered into the very counsels of 
 the Most High ; into justice and judgment, 
 long-suffering and redemption ; finding them 
 each in Him, and finding them all as one. 
 
 The human wrath, that forgets forgiveness 
 for the moment, stirred Moses passionately 
 when he came down with Joshua into the 
 
236 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 camp, and saw the image, and the dancing, 
 the wild orgie of a heathen demonolatry, and 
 Aaron his brother, the high priest of the Liv- 
 ing God, in the midst of it all, tolerating, coun- 
 tenancing, with such futile half-control and di- 
 rection as he might. " The people were set 
 on mischief," he told the angry prophet, who 
 had dashed down the two tables of the Law, 
 significantly broken at a crash, — for what was 
 a holy and perfect law to such a people as 
 this, outraging it beforehand? And to the 
 stern deniand of his brother and commander 
 that he should declare what had brought it 
 about that he had permitted this gTeat sin, 
 Aaron weakly answered: "Thou knowest 
 them; they would have gods. I bade them 
 bring their gold, and I cast it into the fire, 
 and there came out — this calf ! " 
 
 After the fires of Sinai, and the visible 
 glory of God, — this ! Could Aaron more 
 keenly, more absurdly, have satirized himself ? 
 
 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, 
 and sent forth out of his great, indignant soul 
 a strong voice in few, short words : -^ 
 
 " Who is on the Lord's side ? Let him come 
 to me ! " 
 
 And all the sons of Levi came. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CLIFT OF THE EOCK 
 
 Then followed the terrible slaughter of 
 kinsman by kinsman, throughout the camp of 
 the Israelites, at the hands of the sons of Levi, 
 by the command of Moses, until there had 
 "fallen of the people that day about three 
 thousand men." 
 
 An awful expurgation of idolatry at which 
 we shudder when we read, and question 
 whether this were human wrath and cruelty or 
 the ordaining judgment of God. And if it 
 were of God, can the God of the Old Testi- 
 mony and of the New be one ? How can we 
 reconcile it ? In what light can we receive it ? 
 
 I think it must be in the light in which it 
 came to Moses. We are studying what he 
 believed. God is One, but He is Infinite. 
 Men are small, many, separate, and diverse. 
 Men live in successions, of personal growth 
 and of the world's history. One man — one 
 time — does not behold, nor live, the whole. 
 
238 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 eternal Truth. And yet we need have no 
 trouble in discerning how each true soul has 
 had a grasp of something which is of the eter- 
 nal, the perfect. 
 
 Moses had hold of God; the God whose 
 manifest work in man is of the holy against 
 the unholy ; not against the man, but against 
 the evil that would destroy man. The bad, 
 the false, must be done away. He who would 
 have the wicked eye, the guilty hand, plucked 
 out, cut off, that the living soul might be saved, 
 spoke the same word in the wilderness of 
 Arabia, by the order and act of his servant 
 Moses, that He spoke by his Christ on the 
 mountain in Galilee, in his sermon of the true 
 blessedness and the absolute righteousness ; 
 and again in the selfsame unflinching words 
 by the Lake of Gennesaret, just after his 
 heavenly Transfiguration and his tender heal- 
 ing of the lunatic boy, when his disciples 
 " disputed by the way " as they went down, 
 about a selfish greatness. Greatness, he told 
 them, is service and sacrifice. Evil and of- 
 fense must be purged out. It is he who will 
 endure, and relinquish, and submit to the dis- 
 cipline of God, who shall come out into the 
 life everlasting. " Every one shall be salted 
 with fire," he told them. 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 239 
 
 " Who is on the Lord's side ? " is the ques- 
 tion put to all souls in great test hours. On 
 the Lord's side, even against yourselves, when 
 yourselves need cleansing. 
 
 Bodily life has been of little account 
 throughout history, either sacred or profane. 
 Something grander, more real, has always 
 swept it aside. Even savagery and torture 
 have done their work, however brutally, in 
 some intended conquering of the brutal ; of 
 cowardice, sloth, of beastly, low content : these 
 have been subjugated to ideals of courage, 
 prowess, fortitude, honor, as honor might be 
 held. 
 
 Moses lived in his own time, and God 
 worked in it with him, as He works in ours 
 with us. Who shall say that the slaughter 
 of the idolatrous Hebrews, corrupters of their 
 brethren, enslavers of them to old, base super- 
 stitions and impurities, was work of pitiless, 
 malignant cruelty, and our own war of eman- 
 cipation was a struggle, a noble sacrifice, for 
 the Right against the Wrong ? Judge history 
 and Providence alike and fairly all the way 
 down, you who would cast aside the whole 
 record and motive of a grand new establish- 
 ment of Faith in the world, in place of igno- 
 
240 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 rant sensualities, because of pain and conflict 
 and bloodshed, through which in the crude 
 nature and handling of the human, — the very 
 human that it was given to lift up above pas- 
 sions and cruelties of hate and vengeance, — 
 it had to come. 
 
 Life marches on by paths of death. We 
 submit to it in the progress of nations, in the 
 initiatives of science, in all that makes a grand, 
 final, universal gain, or aims at such, for the 
 enlarging interests of humanity. We must 
 read the Exodus as we read the passing chap- 
 ters of the swiftly unrolling chronicles of our 
 own century. Men must die ; but man must 
 live. And we may leave the individual — 
 even our own personal, thinking, doubting, 
 fearing, hoping, trusting individuality — to 
 Him who cares for the sparrow that falls, 
 and for every hair upon every head, however 
 smitten. Who " spared not his own Son, but 
 freely gave Him up for us aU." For every 
 man is still a part, and shall so survive, of the 
 very, whole Humanity for which man suffers. 
 What is to be saved, to be glorified, to be 
 lifted up and made complete in God, but this 
 very aggregate of individualities ? If the drop 
 were lost, where were the ocean ? 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 241 
 
 It surely was not mere wrathful vengeance, 
 mere passion of indignation sating itself with 
 destruction, that had moved Moses to this 
 terrible execution. " Consecrate yourselves 
 this day to the Lord," he had told the Levites, 
 called to be the avengers, " that this day He 
 may bestow upon you a blessing." 
 
 He made the people do, in their tribes and 
 by multitudes, what every soul must do in for- 
 swearing sense and sin. The dearest, most in- 
 timate things must be cast off, cut down, the 
 moment they are known to be sins, idolatries. 
 And in the day that this is done, the Lord 
 will fill the life, so purged and consecrated, 
 with his blessing. 
 
 Moreover, the prophet went back once more 
 into the mountain, seeking out his God, with 
 a great compassion and repentance for his peo- 
 ple urging upon his heart. Already the holy 
 mystery of atonement was moving between 
 man and God. " I will go up unto the Lord : 
 peradventure I shall make an atonement for 
 your sin," was the word with which Moses left 
 the living with their dead upon the morrow. 
 
 And before the Lord he came with broken, 
 sobbing words : " Oh, this people have sinned 
 a great sin, and have made them gods of 
 
242 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 gold. Yet, now, if thou wilt forgive their 
 
 sin " No words fill up the pause ; the 
 
 ordinary, concise, explicit scripture suddenly 
 fails ; the voice stops ; the break was filled 
 by a mute surging of the human pain toward 
 the Infinite Pity ; by a down-flow of that Pity 
 into the very heart-life of the man who prayed. 
 It was as if "He who spared not his own 
 Son " because " He so loved the world " — He 
 who puts our prayers into our hearts because 
 the answer is already in his own — made 
 Moses say, with low, tender, utterly self-im- 
 molating entreaty, "And if not, blot me, I 
 pray thee, out of thy book, which thou hast 
 written." 
 
 It was the divineness of an intercession 
 which can only be that of the Spirit with It- 
 self in the "breathings that cannot be ut- 
 tered." 
 
 Was there not forgiveness, patience with 
 passing ignorance, a promise of redemption, 
 even in the words that came to Moses in the 
 Lord's reply? Was there not in them the 
 mercy that sees how men sin against their own 
 half-understandings, — how as " against the 
 son of man they may blaspheme," — nor yet 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 243 
 
 mean, nor know, any sin or blasphemy against 
 the Supreme and Holy Spirit? Was there 
 not the pleading of the Cross, — the "for- 
 give them, for they know not what they do," 
 — uttered as from God's heart to the leader 
 of his people, in the sentence we may seem 
 to hear gently, not vindictively pronounced, 
 " Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will 
 I blot out of my book " ? 
 
 Has man ever, in any willful daring, reached 
 to the very Me of the Almighty, so — delib- 
 erately and consciously — to sin? Is there 
 not a depth in the Infinite Heart that cannot 
 be sinned against by any delusions or way- 
 wardnesses of ordinary tempted earthliness ? 
 Does not God so reserve in himself the right 
 to pardon ? Is not this the " Lamb in the 
 midst of the Throne," — the Tenderness in the 
 bosom of Almightiness, — which bears forever, 
 and yearns over forever, the losses and wan- 
 derings of his children while they keep away 
 from Him ? 
 
 " Therefore" now go, the command pro- 
 ceeded; "lead the people imto the place of 
 which I have spoken unto thee : behold, mine 
 Angel shall go before thee." 
 
 " I will not leave you comfortless ; I will 
 
244 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 come to you." So said the Son, also, when he 
 had been rejected, and men waited to crucify 
 him, and thrust him out of his own world, — 
 the world that in him " God so loved." 
 
 " Lead my people to the place " where I am 
 waiting for them. Mine Angel shall show you 
 all the way. " Nevertheless, in the day when 
 I visit, I will visit their sin upon them." 
 
 That which their sin has been, — which they 
 know not now, — then shall they feel and 
 know ; to feel and know it is salvation. It 
 is even so that I will visit, and I will save." 
 
 " And the Lord plagued the people, because 
 they made the calf, which Aaron made." 
 
 This, then, here and always, is the word of 
 the Lord : I will smite, I will wound, I will 
 chastise, for sin. — The hecanse is in the New 
 Testament : " For whom the Lord loveth, he 
 chasteneth ; and scourgeth every son whom 
 he receiveth." " As many as I love, I re- 
 buke and chasten ; be zealous therefore, and 
 repent." 
 
 " 1 will send an angel before thee ; . . . I 
 will not go up in the midst of thee." 
 
 There was the difference. Their sin had 
 not sent the Lord away from their life and its 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 245 
 
 guidance ; they were still his people, his chil- 
 dren ; stiU He would go before them by his 
 Angel ; but in the heart of them, in their 
 midst, his life with their life, to their know- 
 ledge and joy. He would not abide. " Lest I 
 consume thee," He told Moses. There was 
 mercy in the very penalty. The people who 
 had made idols to themselves could not bear 
 God in their midst. They had of their own 
 will and deed put off the promise. The Tab- 
 ernacle and its beauty were not yet for them. 
 Every man had to stand in his own tent door 
 when Moses went out into the tabernacle, 
 which he had " pitched without the camp." 
 
 The ineffable Presence met him there ; the 
 people saw the sign of it as a cloud, as they 
 had seen it upon the mountain ; it " stood as 
 a pillar at the door ; " but Moses had entered 
 in, and the Lord talked with him, "face to 
 face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." 
 
 Face to face ; directly ; without blind or hin- 
 drance, even of sign, but thought to thought, 
 word to word, understanding to understand- 
 ing. We see afterward how this must be 
 meant. It was not vision, to mortal eye, of a 
 Divine Countenance in awful glory ; God told 
 him, presently, that this could not be. " Thou 
 
246 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 canst not see my face ; there shall no man see 
 me, and live." But to the pleading of Moses, 
 half bewildered between his own strong, real- 
 izing faith and the sentence of blindness upon 
 his people, — the refusal to them of that which 
 they had refused ; to his almost expostulating 
 prayer, " See, thou sayest unto me. Bring up 
 this people ; and thou hast not let me know 
 whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast 
 said, I know thee by name, and thou also hast 
 foimd grace in my sight. If I have found 
 grace in thy sight, show me now thy way," — 
 to this beseeching the Lord answered, " My 
 Presence shall go with thee, and I will give 
 thee rest." 
 
 And Moses said again unto the Lord, " If 
 thy Presence go not, carry us not up hence. 
 For wherein shall it be known here that I and 
 thy people have found grace in thy sight ? Is 
 it not in that thou goest with us ? " 
 
 Moses desired with a great longing the con- 
 tinued manifestation ; that the gl«ry should 
 not be taken away from the tabernacle, but 
 that God should continue openly " in the 
 midst " with his people. 
 
 "I will do this thing also that thou hast 
 spoken," the Lord assured him. But He 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 247 
 
 would do it in his own way. He would make 
 it evident before the nations that Israel was 
 his own nation, " separated," as Moses had 
 said, by their covenant with Him "from all 
 the people that were upon the face of the 
 earth." 
 
 " Thou hast found grace in my sight, there- 
 fore I will do this that thou hast spoken." 
 
 Still Moses wrestled and urged. He was 
 like Jacob, in the wrestling by which he be- 
 came Israel, when he declared, " I will not let 
 thee go, except thou bless me." StiU he said, 
 " I beseech thee, show me thy glory." 
 
 And He said, " I will make all my goodness 
 pass before thee." " I will be gracious, and 
 show mercy." He was giving Moses the true 
 life-sign ; something beyond any visible won- 
 der ; something that should be to him unfail- 
 ing testimony of daily abiding, and no tran- 
 sient splendor; He was taking him into yet 
 diviner, simpler mysteries than any he had 
 fully known. 
 
 Then it was that He said, " Thou canst not 
 see my face ; " earthly sight may not have 
 that vision, and endure. "But I will take 
 thee with me, and hide thee in a place by me ; 
 thou shalt stand fast upon a rock." Was not 
 
248 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 this abiding sense of word and presence the 
 Eock upon which the Christ would build his 
 church ? 
 
 " And it shall come to pass, while my glory 
 passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of 
 the rock, and will cover thee with my hand as 
 I pass by ; and I will take away mine hand, 
 and thou shalt see my back parts ; but my 
 face shall not be seen." 
 
 The things I shall have done will show me 
 to thee ; in a safe rest under my hand I will 
 cover thee ; in a place made for thee in the 
 Everlasting Might I will hold thee, and my 
 glory shall pass by ; thou shalt wait, and 
 trust ; and when my hand is lifted, thou shalt 
 know that it has been I, and by the afterward 
 thou shalt discern me, and shalt learn that I 
 have been, and will be always, near. 
 
 Is not this what God says in the making of 
 his history with men ? 
 
 Whatever happens, — in the imperfect con- 
 ditions and the delusions, transgressions, and 
 passionate throes and outbursts of a nature 
 evolving, individually and in the race, from 
 lowest beginnings of sense and impulse to 
 highest knowledges and affections, — thou, 
 Believing Soul ! art xu the clift of the Eter-: 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 249 
 
 nal Rock, covered, for thine own safety, — 
 hidden from that which is too great for thee, 
 
 — until the hour of my revelation shall have 
 come ; until the things that I do, which thou 
 knowest not now, thou shalt know in the here- 
 after. Be still, now, and know only that I am 
 God! 
 
 How long it may have been after this that 
 Moses found himself called of the Lord to go 
 up again into the mountain, bringing the two 
 new-hewn tables of stone to receive a second 
 time the commandments, for the people, — 
 bidden to listen also to a repeated teaching 
 concerning the Covenant and the Tabernacle, 
 and take a fresh permission and authority for 
 instituting the beautiful system of sign that 
 had been profaned beforehand and put in 
 abeyance by the idolatrous sin of the congre- 
 gation, — we do not know ; but we can un- 
 derstand what the putting off, and the pause, 
 must have meant. 
 
 They who could make and worship a golden 
 calf — a sign of their own, and a thing only 
 
 — were not fit and ready to receive and use 
 the holy signs which God would set for them to 
 learn himself by. They would have stopped 
 
250 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 again at the material ; we know they did so 
 stop, after all, in their ceremonies and tradi- 
 tions, in the external oblation, in the blood of 
 animal sacrifice that reached not to the offer- 
 ing of human hearts, in the mint, anise, and 
 cummin of small, perfunctory service. What 
 use to build at once the lovely tabernacle that 
 would be to them only another work of their 
 own hands, with its blue and its scarlet, and 
 fine-twined linen, and gold and brass ? What 
 better would it be to worship these than the 
 image of molteii metal that had " come out 
 of the fire " when Aaron cast their foolish 
 trinkets into it? Where would be the Eeal 
 Presence of the Lord to them ? 
 
 The joy of Moses in its revelation and in the 
 tokens that should show it forth, was quenched 
 against the deadness and hardness of a gross, 
 ignorant fetichism. The Truth must wait. 
 The Holy cannot be given to the unclean. 
 
 There was a blank of common life, a space 
 of excommunication, between message and 
 message, glory and glory, uttered and opened 
 for their souls by the Spirit of the Lord. 
 
 But at last, and again. His time came. 
 
 " Be ready, and come up in the morning. 
 Present thyself to me in the top of the mount," 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 251 
 
 God said to the heart-discouraged, soul-believ- 
 ing Prophet. " No man shall come up with 
 thee, nor be seen in the whole mount. Let 
 not even the flocks and herds feed before it." 
 
 Into that awful solitude, that beautiful 
 Mystery, Moses climbed again. He left his 
 very own mortal, as it were, behind him, and 
 went up in the pure spirit, forgetting earth, 
 to Jehovah. Telling the story over to his peo- 
 ple afterward, he says, and repeats at further 
 points of the narration, '■'■ I fell down before 
 the Lord." 
 
 Self-relinquishment. That is the true wor- 
 ship, — the only attitude of recipiency. It is 
 at once the oifering and the obtaining. Reli- 
 gion is simply the laying of life — each thing 
 and thought of life as it comes — down before 
 the Lord. Sorrow, anguish, fear, anxiety ; 
 repentance, renunciation of evil, longing for 
 cleansing and absolution ; hope, motive, pur- 
 pose, pleasure, success ; little common an- 
 noyances or satisfactions, — everything, — 
 brought to Him, laid open before Him, to help 
 or heal, to use, to sanctify with the Divine 
 sympathy and permission, — his gladness to 
 be acknowledged in our gladness, his pity in 
 our pain, his commandment in our wish and 
 
252 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 intent, — this is just all of it. This is Moses 
 in the mountain ; this it is to " fall down be- 
 fore the Lord." 
 
 " O come," the beautiful Psalm sings to us, 
 " let us worship and fall down ; let us kneel 
 before the Lord our Maker. For He is the 
 Lord our God ; and we are the people of his 
 pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O wor- 
 ship the Lord in the beauty of holiness," whole- 
 ness ; " let the whole earth" our whole life in 
 the earthly, " stand in awe of Him. For He 
 Cometh, for He cometh, to judge the earth ; " 
 to set the earthly right in his sight, and in 
 harmony with the heavenly ; " and with right- 
 eousness to judge the world, and the people 
 with his truth." 
 
 Certainly Moses upon Sinai, and King Da- 
 vid in Jerusalem, believed the same thing, re- 
 joiced in the same command and keeping. 
 
 The Lord gave his words into the heart of 
 Moses, whose heart lay open before Him. 
 
 " Write thou these words," He said. Make 
 record of them. " For after the tenor of these 
 words I have made covenant with thee, and 
 with Israel." 
 
 And again the vision and the hearing lasted 
 
THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 253 
 
 forty days and forty nights. The whole being 
 of Moses was again filled and illuminated, 
 while he " neither ate bread nor drank wine," 
 but hearkened to the Lord, by whose word, 
 and not by bread alone, men live ; and " wrote 
 upon the tables the words of the covenant, 
 the ten commandments." 
 
 At last, with the complete grand thought 
 rebuilded in him, ready to be detailed in a 
 careful order of law and observance to the 
 people, " in all things after the pattern showed 
 in the mount," he descended once more with 
 the stone tables in his hands, with the shining 
 in his face, and the heavenly intelligence ray- 
 ing from his temples, into the camp upon the 
 plain, at the far-stretching foot of the solitary 
 steeps of Sinai. 
 
 Aaron and the people were afraid, for the 
 shining of his face, for the glory of God was 
 in it ; he had to veil himself to speak with 
 them ; and afterward, whensoever he went in 
 to speak unto the Lord, he went " face to face " 
 with the tender, enfolding, penetrating radi- 
 ance; but when he came out with the com- 
 mands for Israel, he " put the veil upon his 
 face again." 
 
 So Christ, coming down from the glory that 
 
254 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 he had with the Father before the world was, 
 did veil himself with mortal flesh, that he 
 might lead aU flesh by the " new and living 
 way, into the holiest." 
 
 The Clift in the Kock is the Human Heart 
 of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 
 
 In the Book of Numbers account is given 
 of a seditious questioning which Miriam and 
 Aaron brought up between themselves in re- 
 gard to Moses their brother, with whom they 
 were associated in the deliverance of the He- 
 brew people, and in prophetic gifts of inspira- 
 tion from the Lord. They took exception all 
 at once, ostensibly, because Moses " had mar- 
 ried an Ethiopian woman." They judged him 
 in his ordinary, human relation ; perhaps in 
 some human weakness, or folly, as they deemed 
 it ; and they said, " Is Moses indeed, — this 
 man Moses who is not in all things above 
 other men, or even wise in his own life-order- 
 ing, — chief over us all in the very counsels 
 and authority of God ? Hath the Lord spoken 
 only by him ? Hath He not also spoken by 
 us? And the Lord heard it." 
 
 It was a private whisper, doubtless ; the 
 mere initial breathing of discontent.; Moses, 
 
256 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 apparently, suspected nothing of it. But it 
 was a disloyalty that spoke loud in the ears of 
 the Lord ; He heard it plain in their hearts 
 before it was even a word on their tongues. 
 And He himself answered it. 
 
 " Now Moses " — the record says, — " was 
 very meek, above all the men upon the face of 
 the earth." 
 
 In the commonly understood meaning of the 
 word, Moses was not " meek." He was quick 
 to resent injustice and disobedience : witness 
 his smiting of the Egyptian taskmaster; wit- 
 ness his anger and his dashing down of the 
 tables of the violated Law at his coming down 
 from Sinai among the idolaters. Neither had 
 he any shy self-distrust. He had no hesitancy 
 in putting himself forward when his place was 
 forward : he had no doubt of his call to the 
 forward place. But he was grandly self-for^ 
 getful ; too self-effaced to be falsely modest, 
 or afraid. He was not abashed before the 
 Lord upon Mount Sinai ; he was not cowed 
 by the reproaches or rebellions of the hosts 
 whom he had to control. He simply moved 
 so in the strength of the Lord, so spoke in the 
 utterance of his commandment, that his own 
 personality was lost in the higher dignity of 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 257 
 
 his office. It disappeared in a Divine glory. 
 He wist not that his face shone. 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord, with whom I have 
 talked face to face for you ; " that was his 
 commission and credential. Aaron and Mir- 
 iam, standing a little farther down, saw their 
 brother as they saw themselves, in a separate, 
 human individuality; a man visited of God, 
 and so great among his fellows. They could 
 not conceive of him, nor have conceived of 
 themselves, as absorbed, discharged of self, by 
 the possession of the Supreme Spirit. Neither 
 on the Mountain of the Law, nor on the 
 Mountain of Transfiguration, could they have 
 stood beside him; because they could not so 
 lose and abnegate, themselves as to perceive 
 pure Deity, or be transfigured into the Lord's 
 likeness at His appearing. They could not, 
 as to their selfhood, be "put into a clift of 
 the rock, and covered with God's hand as He 
 passed by." 
 
 But as the voice of their hearts had come 
 to the ear of the Lord, so his voice in answer 
 made itself heard in their ears and under- 
 standings. Truly they were prophets also, 
 and to them the word of the Lord should 
 be spoken ; of conviction to their reason, of 
 
258 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 rebuke to the jealous, self-seeking in their 
 souls. 
 
 " In the pillar of the cloud " — " in the door 
 of the tabernacle " — came the Presence, and 
 the summons sounded forth : — 
 
 " Come out, ye three ; hear now my words. 
 If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord 
 will make myself known unto him in a vision, 
 and will speak unto him in a dream. My ser- 
 vant Moses is not so. With him will I speak 
 mouth to mouth, and not in dark speeches; 
 and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold ; 
 wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak 
 against my servant Moses ? " 
 
 That is all the written story of it ; the word 
 and the visitation came. Somehow, they knew 
 — " suddenly " — the mind of the Almighty ; 
 and their own thought shrank away and per- 
 ished before the reproof of his anger that 
 " was kindled against them." In their souls 
 they felt the condemnation and the scorch ; 
 what matter the sound or the sight by which 
 the accusal and chastisement were conveyed? 
 Doubtless the souls that are mainly true — 
 that have really at all received the vision — 
 are sooner convicted and deeper humbled than 
 the unenlightened can be. It is they who 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 259 
 
 have believed, and seen, and heard, who know 
 at once when the Lord " comes down in the 
 pillar of the cloud, and stands before the door 
 of the tabernacle," as He is wont to come and 
 stand; and it is they who hear their own 
 names, when like Aaron and Miriam they are 
 called of Him to come forth. The word that 
 He hath already spoken to them judgeth them 
 in that day. 
 
 And Aaron and Miriam were judged, while 
 Moses spoke not a word. Perhaps brought 
 simply face to face with him in the Cloud- 
 Presence that rested about the three, it was 
 sufficient. Treason confesses itself before the 
 calm eyes of righteous power. They were 
 convinced of their sin ; they knew that the 
 displeasure of the Lord was upon them. " The 
 cloud departed from off the tabernacle ; " and 
 when Aaron looked upon Miriam, lo, " she 
 was leprous, white as snow." 
 
 The same thing had happened to her that 
 happened to Moses long ago, when he had put 
 his hand, that had held the rod of the power 
 of God, into his own bosom. 
 
 And Aaron prayed unto Moses against the 
 .punishment of their sister. "Let her not be 
 as one dead ! " he entreated. 
 
260 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 " And Moses cried unto the Lord." 
 Power, — authority, — to accuse or to justify, 
 — these he assumed not. The Lord was ever 
 behind his act ; his own word was simply a mes- 
 sage. Only once do we ever find him speak- 
 ing as from himself ; that was afterward, at 
 the rock of Kadesh, in a moment of unguarded 
 anger; and for that he humbly received the 
 instant rebuke and sentence of his God, as un- 
 questioningly as if it had been given through 
 his soul and lips for any other sinning Israelite. 
 He accepted the eternal working of truth and 
 justice into his own life as uncompromisingly, 
 as wholly, without resistance or remonstrance, 
 as for Aaron or Miriam, for Korah, Dathan, 
 and Abiram. Indeed, for others he would in- 
 tercede ; beg himself off he never would. 
 Now, he prayed for Miriam. 
 " Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee ! " 
 But the Lord commanded her to be shut out 
 for the seven days of uncleanness, and after 
 that to be received again. So she was shut 
 out from the camp for seven days ; and her 
 people waited for her, and moved not from the 
 place until she was restored. 
 
 Sin ; penalty, in the divine order ; restora- 
 tion, in the same order. They learned, proved, 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 261 
 
 believed all that. And they learned, proved 
 and believed the might of loving human inter- 
 cession that prevails with the merciful human 
 heart of God. 
 
 After this, came the sending forward of the 
 spies into the Promised Land, which the Chil- 
 dren of Israel had almost reached, touching 
 in their northward approach its very borders. 
 And then came fear, distrust, complaining, 
 rebellion again. 
 
 They had found that lovely country of south- 
 ern Palestine very good ; they had gathered 
 and brought back in trophy the great grapes 
 of Eshcol. But they had seen the sons of 
 Anak, and been terrified ; " we were in our 
 own sight as grasshoppers," they said ; " and 
 so we were in their sight." And all the con- 
 gregation, like spoiled, disappointed children, 
 "lifted up their voice, and cried; and the 
 people wept that night." And they murmured, 
 as men murmur to this day under their hin- 
 drances and denials, and before the hard de- 
 mands of life. 
 
 " Would to God we had stayed in Egypt ! 
 Would to God we had even died on our way ! 
 Let us choose a captain to lead us, and go 
 back!" 
 
262 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 When Caleb and Joshua urged the old, 
 strong faith in God, and the fearless following 
 of Him to the end, the congregation threat- 
 ened them with stones. It is what unbelief 
 always does. It seizes the hard, stolid facts, 
 and hurls them at the heads of those who de- 
 clare " the Lord is with us ; " so that in the 
 soul of any Moses who still sees the glory, 
 the voice of God himself seems saying " How 
 long wiU this people provoke me ? And how 
 long wiU it be ere they believe me, for all the 
 signs which I have showed among them? " 
 
 " I will smite them and disinherit them, and 
 win make of thee a greater nation and might- 
 ier than they." This word that Moses heard, 
 yet again, in the one chamber of his nature 
 where he abode as on God's side and in God's 
 sympathies, feeling, as he believed, the very 
 indignation of the Lord, — has it not been 
 heard since, over and over again, in the fierce 
 theologies that set the chosen and saved over 
 against the evil and ignorant and rebellious 
 and condemned ? "I will destroy them all, 
 and make of you mine inheritance ; " have not 
 they who counted themselves on the Lord's 
 side thought that they heard plainly this 
 declaration of his judgment and awarding? 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 263 
 
 Have not many of them in complacent content 
 praised God for this " election " ? 
 
 But Moses, with his tender human heart, 
 that was most truly God's heart in him, prayed 
 against the thought. He reminded God, as it 
 were, of His own long-suffering ; he argued 
 as with Him the scoff of the heathen nations 
 if they shoidd behold the promise fail ; he 
 pleaded earnestly, " Pardon the great iniquity 
 of this people in the greatness of thy mercy." 
 
 Was the conflict of feeling, — the argu- 
 ment, — the entreaty, — really and literally 
 between the mind of Moses and the Mind of 
 God, as for the moment opposed concerning 
 this matter ? Or was God's Spirit at work 
 in Moses upon both sides of the question 
 on which hung a national life and the integ- 
 rity of a Divine Covenant, balancing against 
 national lapse and unworthiness and the just 
 indignation of an insulted Holiness and Good- 
 ness ? Were God's own Reason and Mercy 
 convincing and persuading his disheartened 
 and offended minister to His own patient, for- 
 bearing steadfastness in behalf of His weak 
 children, — prevailing with him to a new 
 faith, a generous, enduring hope, a mighty 
 persistence for Israel rather than a desperate 
 
264 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 breaking -off and abandonment, and an im- 
 petuous resolve to take upon himself, single- 
 handed, the work and purpose of the Lord, 
 trusting to Jehovah to make his everlasting 
 promise good, even by the raising up of a new 
 nation in his prophet's own posterity ? 
 
 Did not the Faith of Moses struggle, pos- 
 sibly, in the strength and help of the Lord, 
 through this wrench of disappointment, this 
 humiliation for his people's sin, and hopeless- 
 ness through their forfeiture, to a new ex- 
 pansion, a broader light, a higher -grasp than 
 ever of the eternal and invincible good-wUl of 
 God ? Have we not, in the result and show- 
 ing of this experience, another article in the 
 grand Belief of Moses ? Did he not appre- 
 hend, and trust, after all, with a firm confi- 
 dence, that " God wotdd have all men to be 
 saved, and come to the knowledge of his 
 truth"?. 
 
 Nevertheless, there had to be the interval 
 of loss. God will not even pardon in the 
 hurry that negatives the splendor of his right- 
 eousness. " I have pardoned according to thy 
 word," He says to Moses, " but as truly as I 
 live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory 
 of the Lord." 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 265 
 
 Nothing less than this shall be my salvation. 
 There shall be no partial favor, nor sparing, 
 I will save you Hebrew people, that all people 
 may be saved. I am leading you, that all 
 peoples may at last be led. I will not indulge 
 you in your cowardice and rebellions ; I will 
 only bring you into the land, and I will only 
 glorify the whole earth, with my absolute 
 righteousness, in you and for you, and for all 
 men,' which is my glory. And this, as I live, 
 shall come to pass. Therefore, depart again 
 from these very borders of your almost ob- 
 tained possession in my name. These men 
 who have seen my glory and have not believed, 
 shall not come into this Canaan. They shall 
 perish in this wilderness. 
 
 So God's anger and his mercy spoke with 
 each other in the inward hearing of Moses. 
 So they revealed themselves to his spiritual 
 perception. 
 
 " Very well," do you say ? " That was how 
 Moses saw things. That is all you can prove ; 
 and it proves nothing beyond itself, — th&,t 
 Moses thought so. Suppose we, to-day, do 
 not see and think in precisely such fashion ? 
 Are we over-ruled by Moses ? Are our own 
 persuasions of no account ? " 
 
266 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Possibly not ; possibly yes, in their own de- 
 gree. That was Aaron and Miriam's question. 
 All depends upon what we call persuasion. 
 Persuasion is a through and through, positive 
 thing. It must needs be of somewhat. It 
 can scarcely be of a negative. If a man 
 reckons it a persuasion, when he only thinks 
 himself persuaded that there is nothing to be 
 persuaded about, he simply has no witness to 
 bring. Moses had. And it is of testimony 
 that we are considering. 
 
 But again may not a man, through obliquity 
 or partiality of understanding, be persuaded 
 of a mistake ? Undoubtedly. Here comes in 
 the qualification for witness. And we have 
 the test right here. 
 
 " My servant Moses is not so," — a prophet 
 of dreams and visions only, — " who is faith- 
 ful in all my house." 
 
 " He that doeth the will, shall know of the 
 doctrine." 
 
 " We speak that we do know, and testify 
 that which we have seen." 
 
 Verily, the transplendenee of the New Tes- 
 tament lightens all through the literal story 
 of the Old. He that doeth always the things 
 that please the Father, hath the revelation and 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 267 
 
 the authority from the Father. He is the 
 Sent unto men ; he is Lawgiver and Inter- 
 cessor. 
 
 The stories of the Old Scripture concerning 
 calling, obedience, and inheritance of promise, 
 — or of disloyalty, perversion, forfeiture, — 
 are the parables of history which are one 
 with, and repeated in, the spiritual parables of 
 the New. Read after this n,arration of the 
 self-seeking of Miriam and Aaron, and their 
 punishment in the forbiddance to their enter- 
 ing into the Promised Laud, the teaching of 
 our Lord concerning the heavenly marriage 
 of things and spirit, — of act and life, — to 
 which God bids his children in the sonship, 
 and to which they refuse to come, seeking 
 each his own, and the fancied getting of his 
 own, rather than the beautiful, great Will of 
 God, and his preparing for them. 
 
 " The King prepared a marriage for his 
 son." A uniting of life and circumstance 
 with love and spiritual understanding ; of the 
 outward with the inward, which is perfect life, 
 and the place and condition of it, to which 
 his Providence continually leads us. The 
 Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, 
 with life and sweetness and satisfying of the 
 
268 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 whole nature of men created in the image of 
 their God, human and divine, is only reached 
 by faithful following ; by a coming to the call, 
 a ready answer to the bidding ; which, " if we 
 will hear his voice," is always " Now." 
 
 In the creation of things, and the gift of 
 spirit, God prepared this marriage festival for 
 the two, which, made one, should be a per- 
 petual rejoicing. But his children would not 
 see ; would not care for the grand whole ; 
 would be engrossed with the little, tangible 
 thing of the moment, — the pair of oxen, the 
 bit of land, yes, even the wife, taking her as a 
 mere earthly good, and for companionship in 
 the material ; not comprehending the full, true 
 gift in anything. So the early generations of 
 men refused and lost their sohship ; slighted 
 the great Bidding ; went astray after their 
 own small imaginations and covetous inven- 
 tions. And God took his bidding back. 
 
 He changed it. Still He sent forth his 
 angels — of birth and welcome into his earth, 
 the beginning of his Kingdom — of material 
 ministering and sustaining, — and the world 
 — of life — was full ; " the wedding was fur- 
 nished with guests, both bad and good." 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 269 
 
 Now follows what in the parable, to careless 
 reading, seems almost like a harsh injustice. 
 He had " compelled " them in (how often we 
 hear a man say, " I did not ask to be bom " !) ; 
 and his house was full, of wild, ignorant, un- 
 tutored human creatures, — in the mass, and 
 each one also, both bad and good. 
 
 He comes and speaks to one — of many — 
 who has not on the wedding garment. He' 
 calls him " friend." 
 
 He asks the poor, bad, unappareled human 
 soul, " How canaest thou in hither, not hav- 
 ing a wedding garment ? " Aad the soul has 
 nothing to say. Not even, " I was compelled 
 hither." For the first time, his want con- 
 demns him. He sees he is not fit to be there 
 at all, in the King's House. 
 
 What does the condemnation mean ? We 
 learn elsewhere. " This is the condemnation, 
 that they love darkness rather than light." 
 
 "Bind him, hand and foot," — in the body 
 and the bodily life, — " and cast him " — let 
 him loose — " into the outer darkness. There 
 shall be " — there in the willful darkness there 
 must be — " weeping and gnashing of teeth." 
 
 It means nothing less than the word of God 
 
270 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 — in all patience, in all compassion, — for 
 He waits and suffers with us — to the misled 
 world : " Go and learn. Ye are all called, 
 but ye are not all yet chosen. Ye have not 
 yet chosen Me. Go into the outside life of 
 darkness that you have made, and learn your 
 need of light. Only then can the light come, 
 which is none the less waiting, even at the 
 heart of the very darkness." 
 
 It means nothing less than the very mean- 
 ing of all the travail of this present evil world, 
 that would have its own blind way ; nothing 
 less than the e^rnal answer to the awful ques- 
 tion about good and evil. Evil is the putting 
 off of good. It is the seizing of the little aud 
 low, to the exclusion of the large and high. 
 The good waits till the evil has done with it- 
 self, and is self-rejected. 
 
 Aaron and Miriam were not to enter into 
 the Promised Land. The heads of the tribes 
 that were sent up to see the land were never 
 to come in and dwell there. They were still 
 to serve and follow in the wilderness, accept- 
 ing penalty and delay. They were to die in 
 their long wandering, and leave their bodies in 
 the desert. The seven days in which Miriam 
 was shut out from the camp were the days of 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 271 
 
 her purification. The forty years of patient 
 pilgrimage and penance were the purification 
 of the tribes. These things were types of all 
 shutting out from an immediate Canaan of 
 mere pleasantness, while men are purged and 
 made ready for the final entering in to the 
 eternal satisfying ; to the Marriage Supper of 
 the joined Earth and Heaven ; the Eedemp- 
 tion, which is the Manifestation of the One 
 Will done in both forever. 
 
 Up and down the wild, barren Arabian 
 stretches of desert and mountain wilderness, 
 which, after all, only measured from south to 
 north a fourteen days' journey direct from 
 Sinai to Palestine, the Hebrew people wan- 
 dered and encamped, leading their nomadic 
 life for forty years longer. What was it all 
 most like but the drifting of our human expe- 
 rience up and down the earth and along the 
 ages of it, between the first Giving of the 
 Commandments of Life and the entering into 
 its full fruition? With the very heaven al- 
 most within our reach — with only such a little 
 distance between the Bidding and the Reward, 
 if we would follow the direct way — we wind 
 and tangle our paths in a blind bewilderment ; 
 
272 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 we make our long tarryings in a few scanty 
 feeding-places ; we grow old and pass away 
 without ever having come to the full faith of 
 the heavenly nearness, to the sure, realizing 
 vision of the glory that waits close by. It is 
 like being lost in storm and darkness, toiling 
 exhausted up and down within short step and 
 call of one's own door, and perishing in the 
 night at the threshold of one's home. 
 
 The Israelites were seized with a pang of 
 compunction for their own folly, — a convic- 
 tion of their own loss. How much of it was 
 pure repentance seems very doubtful. Per- 
 haps even then, if there had been repentance 
 enough, there might have been remission and 
 restoration enough. "We have sinned," they 
 said. " But we are here, and we will go up 
 unto the place which the Lord hath prom- 
 ised." 
 
 We will obey ; we will dare the giants ; we 
 will conquer and inherit! It was like the 
 spoiled child's cry, in very tempest of rage and 
 resistance, " I will be good ! Give me the 
 thing you meant to give me, and have taken 
 from me ! " 
 
 But that is not the repentance which pre- 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 273 
 
 vails. " They presumed to go up into the hill- 
 top ; nevertheless, the ark of the covenant of 
 the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the 
 camp. Then the Amalekites came down, and 
 the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and 
 smote them, and discomfited them, even unto 
 Hormah." 
 
 The intervening time, after that driving 
 back, was a time of teaching. The signs and 
 ordinances were given ; the atonements and 
 the punishments were declared. The burnt 
 offerings — the endurance and yielding of 
 sacrifice — and the glad free-will offerings, 
 were instituted; the beautiful reminders of 
 the fringed borders of their garments, and the 
 ribband hem of blue, were appointed, to be a 
 remembrance of all the commandments of the 
 Lord and a sign of their loyalty to them ; gar- 
 ments being that clothing of life in the exter- 
 nals of daily living, which, to its last details — 
 its every separate thread as in a fringe, and in 
 the color of the heavenly that should rest upon 
 and mark it — was to be made " holy unto 
 their God." For, the word of the ordering 
 ends, in the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, " I 
 am the Lord your God, which brought you 
 
274 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 out of the land of Egypt, to be your God : I 
 am the Lord your God." 
 
 Yes, even in the punishment, the discipline, 
 the putting off. Even in the wilderness of 
 the waiting, and the hard, slow learning. 
 
 " Though I make my bed in hell, He is 
 there also." 
 
 In all these things, "the Lord spake unto 
 Moses, and Moses unto the Children of Is- 
 rael." In all these things, in the very heart 
 of Moses, as well as in his utterance to the 
 people, the authority, the claim, was not that 
 of any man, or of any human assertion. It 
 was that of the " Thus saith the Lord." And 
 the credential, given of God himself concern- 
 ing his representative, was the one warrant, 
 upon the only basis and condition, " This man 
 is my servant ; faithful in all my house." 
 
 Like unto this was the yet more intimately 
 divine commission and authority announced at 
 the Jordan, when the Holy Ghost came down 
 from heaven like a dove and rested upon the 
 Son of Man. "This is my beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him." 
 
 It was all the claim of Christ himself. " I 
 do nothing of myself : He that sent me is 
 
SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 275 
 
 with me : the Father hath not left me alone : 
 for I do always the things that please Him. 
 Which of you convinceth me of sin? The 
 works that I do bear witness of me. If I do 
 not the works of my Father, believe me not. 
 But if I do, believe the works." And this, in 
 order that "ye may know and believe" the 
 great truth of God's Life in his Humanity, 
 — " that the Father is in me, and I in Him ! " 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE REVOLT OF KOEAH 
 
 It was in the time of this training of the 
 wilderness life that the last desperate rebellion 
 and presumption arose, and was fearfully pun- 
 ished. 
 
 And here we come to the inquiry as to what 
 Moses believed, and leads us to believe, about 
 Divine Judgment and Chastisement. 
 
 Keeping in mind always that what we are 
 after is the interior faith, whatever may or 
 may not have been the outer fact or event, we 
 come face to face, at this next point of the his- 
 tory, with the whole great question of what are 
 the direct and personal judgments of God 
 upon transgression and evil life. The evidence 
 of Moses as lawgiver, interpreter, prophet, 
 sharer in spirit of the counsel of the Almighty, 
 is of extreme consequence, let the story of his 
 agency, under such faith as moved him stead- 
 fastly, be what it may. 
 
 Moses certainly believed that aU things are 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH ■ 211 
 
 of the Will of God. Whether we m our later 
 time have so advanced upon Moses as to have 
 gotten beyond the Will of God, is the question 
 of to-day which assails the positions of faith 
 and compels her to the reconstruction of all 
 her lines. 
 
 Does God have his way in the whirlwind 
 and the storm ; are the Clouds the dust of his 
 feet as He presses on to his purpose ; or have 
 whirlwind and storm broken loose, in the 
 strength of their committed law, from the im- 
 mediate Divine Intent, and are men subject 
 and accountable to the elements only, behind 
 which is no Heart with a present, personal 
 love, no instant Thought of Fatherly care, 
 no Righteousness ordaining and controlling, 
 through the causes and processes, that which 
 happens in the probative, formative experience 
 of mankind upon this little planet of the 
 Lord's — or indeed is it the Lord's — making ? 
 
 It seems as if it might be worth while to 
 leave all the detail of cause and effect, to for- 
 get for a little the chemistries, geologies, biol- 
 ogies, and atmospheric forces, and our own 
 latest sagacities about them, and see what sig- 
 nificance we can find in the simplicity of the 
 attitude and act of a man who took things at 
 
278 EVENTS OP THE EXODUS 
 
 fountain head and at first hand, before God 
 had so far fulfilled his gradual revelation to 
 his children as to show them in part his won- 
 derful handling of his creation, and so expand 
 their understandings with his supreme reasons 
 and methods in the course of things, that they 
 might be able, at last, to " comprehend, with 
 all saints, the breadth, and length, and depth, 
 and height ; and to know the love which pass- 
 eth knowledge, and be filled with all the full- 
 ness of God." 
 
 If this is begging the question. Saint Paul 
 begged it grandly for the Ephesians and for 
 us, when he stood between the knowledges of 
 the Old and the New, and answered magnifi- 
 cently beforehand the very scoffs and doubts of 
 a half-comprehension to which this nineteenth 
 century has attained, and in which it halts, 
 dazzled with itself, and bewildered by the vast- 
 ness not yet penetrated, saying, " This must 
 needs be all. The mind of man can no farther 
 go." If the mind of man were to be the final 
 measure, this would be the conclusion assur- 
 edly ; but we have, beyond, the mind of God. 
 And God is giving us an all-round education. 
 
 Is it quite impossible to conceive that in 
 the earlier time, — when the thing for men to 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 279 
 
 learn first of all and inclusively was that " the 
 earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," 
 and that " He ruleth by his power, forever," — 
 cause and effect may have been set in closer, 
 swifter, visible connection, and time and event 
 been brought in both spiritual and physical 
 conjunction, so that a sin and its consequence 
 may have been shown in illustrated relation, 
 in such manner that the history should stand 
 for 'a sign to the generations ? It seems at 
 least that Moses believed in this order and 
 sure connection ; and that he so relied upon 
 its truth in the dealing of the Almighty, that 
 when sin raged openly and rebellion became 
 defiant, he expected the natural convulsion to 
 follow, and dared in the sublime courage of 
 his conviction to say the word before the peo- 
 ple which he heard inwardly from the Lord, 
 and to invoke and command, in the Eternal 
 Name, the Eternal Justice. Is it so strange a 
 thing to human nature to cry out, even now, 
 from a depth below its paralysis of deadened 
 credence, " "Why does not the earth open, and 
 swallow up this corruption, — these horrors of 
 evildoing and the evildoers ? " 
 
 Moses does not ask " Why not ? " but de- 
 clares that it will come to pass; and appar- 
 
280 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 ently it did. If we must have an exhaustive 
 rational philosophy for every happening, leav- 
 ing God no choice in ordering, need we find 
 it difficult to conceive a law which we often 
 admit is mysteriously indicated, between spir- 
 itual and moral insanities and excitements, 
 and manifest disturbance in outward nature ? 
 Crimes and disasters seem epidemic and coin- 
 cident ; the lesson of the revolt and destruction 
 . of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram is more than 
 hinted again in the juxtapositions of modern 
 ferment and outrage and presumptions with 
 correspondent awfulness of human slaughter 
 and agonies. They, indeed, upon whom the 
 tower of Siloam falls are not sinners above all ; 
 nevertheless, without repentance, men shaU 
 always likewise perish. The natural shall suf- 
 fer the wrath of the natural : the sowing to 
 the flesh shall have the reaping of corruption. 
 It was the Spirit of the Holy against which 
 Korah and his compeers rebelled. " Ye take 
 too much upon you," they said to their spirit- 
 ual leaders. " All the congregation are holy ; 
 every one of them ; the Lord is among them ; 
 wherefore lift ye up yourselves above the con- 
 gregation of the Lord?" They could not 
 recognize the lifting up that was of the Lord, 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 281 
 
 They fell back upon the general truth, as men 
 do now, that the Lord shuts no one out ; that 
 He is present to all, reveals himself to all; 
 and so they would have nothing of degrees, 
 or of appointment ; they wanted neither lead- 
 ing nor help ; they would not be commanded. 
 They flung aside the vital argument and evi- 
 dence that the more they were of the Lord, 
 the more surely they would recognize his mes- 
 sages ; the more intuitively - they would yield 
 to the larger inspiration, through whomsoever 
 it might come. 
 
 " Our faith is as good as yotirs ; we are not 
 bound to your opinions or declarations ; we 
 are able to think for ourselves," very often 
 means, when traced and sifted to its motive 
 centre, " We will have no more faith than 
 we like ; we will think, or not think, as we 
 please." It is the escape into irresponsibil- 
 ity; it is taking refuge from the special in 
 the catholic ; from the personal in the vague. 
 " God is with us all ; with one as much as 
 another ; therefore as individuals we need not 
 trouble ourselves." 
 
 "When Moses heard it, he fell upon his 
 face." Down, — prone upon the earth, he 
 went ; overwhelmed with the abasement of his 
 
282 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 brethren ; overwhelmed with the failure of his 
 long labor with them. He threw himself as 
 at the footstool of the Almighty, in penitence 
 for them ; in a despairing indignation also ; 
 in a shame of hopelessness and defeat. 
 
 What did God say to him, lying there ? 
 What did the troubled earth itself, perhaps, 
 murmur in his ear ? Did some premonition 
 of the coming earthquake thrill him as he lay ; 
 and did God at the same moment utter in his 
 soul of prophecy, " Fear not ; I wiU judge for 
 my chosen " ? 
 
 How long it was before he stood upon his 
 feet again, and " spake unto Korah and unto 
 all his company," the text does not narrate. 
 That awful, silent interview with his God, and 
 with God's majestic force in nature, is as secret 
 as the audiences on Mount Sinai. It is all 
 left in the little blank between the fourth and 
 fifth verses of that strange chapter of visita- 
 tions. But what he said when he did rise and 
 look upon them was this : — 
 
 " Even to-morrow the Lord will shew who 
 are his, and who are holy ; and wiU cause him 
 to come near unto him ; even him whom he hath 
 chosen will he cause to come near unto him." 
 
 Must there not have been a solemn light 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 283 
 
 upon his face, an ineffable vibration in bis 
 voice, as the words were uttered ? 
 
 " This do " was his grand, calm ordering. 
 "Take your censers, Korah and all his com- 
 pany; and put fire therein, and put incense 
 in them before the Lord to-morrow; and it 
 shall be that the man whom the Lord shall 
 choose, he shall be holy. Ye take too much 
 upon you, ye sons of Levi." 
 
 Their own words, weighted with a stern, 
 grave fitness of rebuke, he turned back upon 
 them. 
 
 " It is he whom the Lord doth choose." It 
 is not the man who presumeth, and chooseth 
 himself. Wait upon the Lord; ofEer Him 
 your fire and incense ; see what He will do 
 with it ; and see whom the Lord will have, to 
 receive his word, and to do his bidding. He 
 will not let you mistake, if you seek Him, and 
 not yourselves. Ye have already been chosen, 
 to do your part. 
 
 "Is it a smaU thing that the God of Israel 
 hath separated you from the congregation of 
 Israel, to bring you near to himself to do the 
 service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to 
 stand before the congregation to minister unto 
 them ? Seek ye the priesthood also ? " 
 
284 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Moses believed, with his whole soul, that 
 disobedience to God is discontinuity of his 
 plan for us. That only some convulsion of 
 life can re-locate the broken lines, and restore 
 to the path of righteous law the beneficent 
 working of his purpose. The people of Israel 
 were living in the midst of mystery and sign ; 
 in the close, awful manifesting of the corre- 
 spondence of the natural with the spiritual. 
 There are such periods in the dealings of God 
 with men. The nearer the two realms come 
 to conjunction at any crisis of earth history, 
 the more apparent is the intimate, mysterious 
 relation and interaction of the moral and the 
 physical. It was so in the dispensation of the 
 Exodus ; it was so every here and there in 
 the experience of the Hebrews, when their pro- 
 phets and kings lived and worked contempo- 
 raneously. It was so in the time of Christ's 
 coming into the earthly. Saint John tells us 
 with tremendous power how it shall be when 
 the Son of Man shall appear at last in full 
 revelation of God ; when the two kingdoms 
 of form and spirit — of life and its embodied 
 operation — shall be absolutely conjoined, in 
 the Eternal Truth and in its instant evidence. 
 It is the angel standing with one foot on the 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 285 
 
 sea and the other upon the land, — touching 
 alike the tangible and the intangible. 
 
 This way it was that Moses stood, from the 
 beginning of his mission when he put his shoes 
 from off his feet, baring himself of common 
 insulation in things of sense, to receive and 
 interpret through all the visible the vast reali- 
 ties and meanings of the invisible. With one 
 hand upon the rod of Almighty Power, and 
 the other holding his brethren in human sym- 
 pathy, he was simply God's channel for reach- 
 ing down into the daily consciousness of a 
 certain family of his children, chosen for the 
 experience, such communication of his contin- 
 ual relation with the souls and lives of men, 
 and the unity of Ms thought and act with them, 
 as should send down to all posterity an instance 
 and reminder, overliving all intervals of dark- 
 ness and doubt, and pointing through waiting 
 ages to a consummation in which the Lord's 
 tabernacle shall be with men forever, the 
 government upon his shoulder, and the whole 
 earth filled with the knowledge of his power 
 and presence, the acknowledgment of his rule 
 and righteousness, in every least and greatest 
 thing. 
 
 If we take this high, strong ground of essen- 
 
286 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 tial faith, we shall find no very disturbing 
 unlikelihood in any marked, occasional coin- 
 cidence between moral and physical event. 
 Nearly or remotely we shall recognize such law 
 and connection as irrefragable ; we shall feel 
 as Moses felt, when his whole spirit was intense 
 with deeply apprehensive sorrow for the blind 
 dereliction of his brethren, and keenly open to 
 the premonitions of the disaster it must bring. 
 "We shall not find it hard to suppose that his 
 bodily senses, strung to a corresponding acute- 
 ness, were able to perceive the approach of 
 the concomitant external catastrophe ; and we 
 may feel that he could know better than we may 
 know, how much and surely the one thing had 
 to do with the other ; that he could at least, 
 at that immediate juncture, forefeel and have 
 presentiment — with sure prophetic instinct far 
 beyond the feebler hint we call presentiment 
 — of how awfully the one might be about to 
 answer with its sign to the other, and declare, 
 through their mysterious correlation, its tre- 
 mendous judgment. The bolt strikes where 
 the conditions concur. Possibly we know 
 more of terrestrial causes and operations than 
 Moses knew ; but do we stand closer to the 
 celestial? And from which side may the 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 287 
 
 more searching and inclusive perception and 
 evidence come ? 
 
 Are such interpretations "fine-drawn," " far- 
 fetched " ? Very well ; so are the insights and 
 outsights of microscope' and telescope ; yet w6 
 delight in confessing to their revelations. No 
 matter how far off, or how far in, a thing may 
 be, since it is there, and we can find it. 
 
 The sin was there; the earthquake was 
 there ; the solemn warning and prophecy were 
 uttered between them. Was it a jumbled, 
 accidental juxtaposition, a rushing together of 
 things in pure confusion, — or were the calm, 
 strong, ordering Will of God, and the hand 
 of his unabdicated Power, as manifest in the 
 sequence and logic of the event as we should 
 suppose such Will and Power, once estab- 
 lished, and acting through particulars to gen- 
 erals, and from vast generals to wonderful 
 minute particulars, would continue to be ? If 
 the Will and Power were not there, what was, 
 and where are they? And how much of God's 
 own work in the universe is done behind his 
 back ? 
 
 In the strong sense of his belief, and in his 
 steadfast looking to the Lord for His own 
 
288 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 token of judgment, — not vengeance, for what- 
 ever the unswerving law of God may do, it 
 can but be the mighty operation of his truth, 
 and the justifying of all question and per- 
 plexity between right and wrong, — Moses 
 called the rebellious leaders to him, and com- 
 manded them with a siunmons before the Lord. 
 " Be thou," he said to Korah, — for the other 
 men had refused to come up, — " be thou and 
 aU thy company before the Lord, thou, and 
 they, and Aaron, to-morrow; and take every 
 man his censer, and put incense in them, and 
 bring ye before the Lord every man his cen- 
 ser, two hundred and fifty censers ; thou also, 
 and Aaron, each of you his censer." 
 
 And they did as Moses said. Rebels as 
 they were, they dared not yet in act rebel. 
 They could murmur and accuse before the 
 man Moses ; but when the man was fiUed with 
 the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, 
 it was Jehovah's own look that blazed upon 
 them through his servant's eyes; it was the 
 voice of Almightiness that commanded by his 
 lips. 
 
 Each man took his censer, — who shall say 
 with what misgivings and secret shakings of 
 evil purpose ? — and Korah gathered them all. 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 289 
 
 in the way of their wont, before the door of 
 the tabernacle, where Moses and Aaron stood 
 augustly, reverently, waiting. 
 
 " And the glory of the Lord appeared unto 
 all the congregation." 
 
 Out of the shining of the Excellent Glory 
 came a word to Moses and to Aaron. They 
 were in the exaltation of the Spirit, and they 
 heard things which man may no otherwise 
 hear. They were not afraid. They were 
 waiting, serenely, to see what God would do. 
 They believed surely that He would do some- 
 thing. He always had. They brought all 
 their questions to Him for his decision. They 
 neither ruled nor governed in their own names. 
 " See what the Lord will shew," said they to 
 the people. 
 
 Whatever premonition of awfulness in the 
 showing might have been in them, they thought 
 not of any safety to themselves, any choosing 
 of securer place. The Lord knew his own ; 
 the Lord would judge, and make manifest. Is 
 there anything like the sublimity of this faith 
 now living and acting among men of power ? 
 Does any man invoke God's righteousness and 
 the declaration of his truth in the affairs of 
 nations, and stand up in his might, waiting 
 
290 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 for that which He will say? And yet the 
 Lord has not departed from the earth. 
 
 " Separate yourselves from among this con- 
 gregation, that I may consume them in a 
 moment." 
 
 To what in Moses and Aaron did this in- 
 spiration of warning appeal, — making sug- 
 gestion of sparing ^hem only, and of sending 
 swift, consuming wrath upon the whole unruly 
 host ? Was it a word of test, showing them 
 what their own hasty, uncompromising indig- 
 nation might have been, and how a human 
 wrath might deal with sin, if it could handle 
 the weapons of Omnipotence ? 
 
 Again Moses turned from personal feeling 
 and took share with God himself. Again he 
 fell upon his face, and with God "repented 
 him " of the evil that would not yet repent of 
 itself. Again he took side not with the anger, 
 but with the mercy of the Lord. 
 
 " O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, 
 shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with 
 the whole congregation ? " 
 
 It is in the prayers He gives men to pray 
 that the Lord reveals his intent, larger than 
 their first fear or appealing. 
 
 " Speak unto the congregation," the answer 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 291 
 
 came, commanding Moses and Aaron. Give 
 them all the warning I have given you. " Say, 
 Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, 
 Dathan, and Abiram." 
 
 It was the demand again, " Who is on the 
 Lord's side this day ? " 
 
 And Moses and the elders went over to 
 where Dathan and Abiram were, and from the 
 doors of their tents turned to the people. 
 
 And Moses said, " Depart, I pray you, from 
 the tents of these wicked men, and touch no- 
 thing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their 
 sins." -'■Sins," take notice, was the word, — 
 not punishment. 
 
 So in the yet untroubled light of the clear 
 day, while there was no threat in the air, the 
 congregation divided itself slowly away, and 
 left the three chiefs, with their wives and 
 their families, standing before, their open 
 tabernacles. 
 
 And Moses, borne away by the Spirit in 
 him, having returned, we may suppose, to his 
 own place, at the door of the Lord's tent, 
 spake with a terrible investment of authority. 
 Slow of speech he was, and the weighty sen- 
 tences must have fallen from his lips with an 
 awful deliberation. 
 
292 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 " Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath 
 sent me to do all these works. They are not 
 of my own mind. 
 
 " If these men die the common death of all 
 men, or if they be visited after the visitation 
 of all men ; then the Lord hath not sent me. 
 
 " But if the Lord make a new . thing, and 
 the earth open her mouth, and swallow them 
 up, with all that appertain unto them, and 
 they go down alive into the pit ; then ye shall 
 understand that these men have provoked the 
 Lord." 
 
 More slowly still must those last solemnly 
 accusing and condemning words have come, as 
 Moses stood in the environing Light of the 
 Great Presence before the tent of his congre- 
 gation ; and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram re- 
 mained apart, motionless, silent, as men deaf, 
 dazed, confounded, not comprehending the 
 tongue in which their Prophet spake, nor see- 
 ing the vision that he saw ; not knowing, in- 
 deed, if they had understood, which way to 
 turn, or where the danger might strike, if any 
 were to befall. 
 
 A brief, breathless pause, — a human hush 
 and a hush of nature that had doubtless been 
 slowly creeping over all things, as it does be- 
 
THE REVOLT OF KORAH 293 
 
 fore a dreadful voice or convulsion of nature 
 comes, — and then, the rolling, the upheaval, 
 the opening chasm, the forth-leaping fire, — 
 and in the rending shock and reeling confu- 
 sion, while " all Israel fled " further and fur- 
 ther into the wilderness, Korah and all his fol- 
 lowers, their families, their homes, their goods, 
 went down, perished, and disappeared from 
 among the host of their kins-people forever. 
 
 Does this seem like fable ? 
 
 If it be fable, what yet more tremendous 
 reality does it stand for ? 
 
 The sure dealing of God with sin — the 
 absolute destruction of evil, with whatever it 
 may involve — was at any rate a vital point 
 in the Belief of Moses. 
 
 Was Moses a deluded man, or a deluder ? 
 Or were the truth and the power of God 
 manifest in him ? 
 
 Centuries later, the Christ of Nazareth bore 
 witness, in direct word, and in parable, to the 
 Former Testimony. 
 
 " I have not come to destroy the Law or the 
 Prophecy, but to fulfil." 
 
 " Ye have Moses, and the prophets ; if ye 
 believe not them, neither would ye believe 
 though one rose from the dead." 
 
294 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Is Moses obsolete? Then is Christianity 
 obsolete, and of no effect ; and the . word of 
 the Lord is come to pass, and the rising from 
 the dead also has been in vain. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE BUDDED EOD 
 
 A SWIFT plagiie among the rebel hosts 
 followed the destruction of Korah and his im- 
 mediate fellow conspirators. Fourteen thou- 
 sand and seven hundred were swept away. 
 These are awful numbers. We stand aghast 
 at catastrophes in our day, of fire and flood, 
 crash and explosion, when hundreds perish ; 
 we can hardly take into our imagination the 
 devastations in far lands, by earthquake or 
 rushing overflow,' or pestilence, when whole 
 regions of country are depopulated. And yet 
 these things doi happen. The Lor(^ seems to 
 account nothing of earthly existence or human 
 suffering, when He stretches forth his hand, 
 — - or permits the tremendous operation of his 
 Law — whichever way may be chosen to ex- 
 press the working of his Will and Method, — 
 to purge, and purge, and do away the evils out 
 of his earthy and make great, new departures 
 in it. 
 
296 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Concentrated in a history of forty years of 
 desert life and wandering, in the experience 
 of a people of twelve great families held mar- 
 velously together in a nationality that survived 
 exile, oppression, deprivation, weariness, dis- 
 heartenment, homelessness, — all the forces of 
 a divine control and compulsion illustrated 
 themselves as in an intense, representative 
 rush of event ; gathering to a focal point of 
 time within the memory of children born in 
 Egypt and surviving to reach Canaan, an 
 awful, beautiful showing and sequence of 
 Omnipotent purpose and dealing with men 
 through the disciplines and providings of their 
 life-sojourn between the dim, low, unevolved 
 Past of their being and the glorious fulfillment 
 in the Land that Is to Be. 
 
 For what said Ezekiel, when long after, in 
 the Babylonian captivity, he told over to Is- 
 rael, as with the voice of the Lord, the story of 
 this dealing and " leading " in the wilderness ? 
 What meaning, speaking by Divine command, 
 and instant inspiration, did he make of it ? 
 
 " As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with 
 a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm, 
 and with fury poured out, will I rule over 
 you. . . . and I will bring you into the wilder- 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 297 
 
 ness of the people, and there will I plead" 
 — mark the word — " with you face to face. 
 Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the 
 wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead 
 with you, saith the Lord God." 
 
 The word is reiterated. To " plead " is to 
 " entreat ; " to " entreat " is both to " man- 
 age " and to " beseech," — to " draw " toward 
 an end. AH God's management, or dealing, is 
 an entreating, a beseeching : a drawing of men 
 unto their best and only real good, in himself. 
 
 " And I will cause you to pass under the 
 rod, and I will bring you into the bond of 
 the covenant : and I will purge out from 
 among you the rebels, and them that trans- 
 gress against me. . . . For in mine holy 
 mountain, in the mountain of the height of 
 Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the 
 house of Israel serve me : there will I accept 
 them. ... I will accept you " (the speech 
 changes tenderly here into the second person) 
 " with your sweet savour, . . . and I will be 
 sanctified in you. . . . And ye shall know 
 that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you 
 into the land of Israel, into the country for the 
 which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your 
 fathers. And then shall ye remember your 
 
298 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 ways, and all your doings, . . . and ye shall 
 loathe yourselves in your own sight for all 
 your evils that ye have committed. And ye 
 shall know that I am the Lord, when I have 
 wrought with you for my name's sake, not ac- 
 cording to your wicked ways, nor according 
 to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, 
 saith the Lord God." 
 
 And then comes the prophecy of the devour- 
 ing flame which " all flesh shall see that the 
 Lord hath kindled ; " the " flaming flame " 
 from the south unto the north that " shaU not 
 be quenched " till aU is burned away that the 
 Lord wiU have burned away. 
 
 "Ah, Lord God!" cries Ezekiel, . « they 
 say of me. Doth he not speak in parables ? " 
 
 How else, in phrase or event, has the word 
 of the Lord ever been spoken ? 
 
 Did not David, rehearsing in his seventy- 
 eighth Psalm the whole story of that old wrath 
 of God "against the disobedient and rebel- 
 lious," when He " smote down the chosen men 
 of Israel," and " slew them until they sought 
 him, . . . and remembered that God was their 
 Eock, and the high God their Eedeemer," — 
 did not David begin, " I will open my mouth 
 in a parable : I will utter darh sayings of old 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 299 
 
 I . 
 ■which we have heard and known, and our 
 
 fathers have told us " ? 
 
 "For," he goes on presently, "He" (the 
 Lord) " established a testimony in Jacob, and 
 appointed a law in Israel, which he com- 
 manded our fathers that they should make 
 them known to their children : that the gener- 
 ation to come might know them : . . . that 
 they might set their hope in God, and not for- 
 get the works of God, but keep his command- 
 ments." 
 
 And then, from the dividing of the Red Sea, 
 through all the giving, and leading, and re- 
 straining, and punishing, and bringing in to 
 the inheritance ; through the backslidings and 
 provocations and idolatries even there, where 
 He established them ; through the captivities, 
 the judgments of sword and fire, to the fresh 
 smiting of their enemies, and the choosing of 
 the tribe of Judah ; to the calling of David 
 from feeding the ewes to the shepherding and 
 feeding of the Lord's people, — the Psalm 
 chants on the chronicle, to the summing up, in 
 one sweet striking of the sure keynote of all ; 
 the one solution and reconciling of both mercy 
 and judgment : — 
 
 " So He fed them according to the integrity 
 
300 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 of his heart ; and guided them by the skilf ul- 
 ness of his hands." 
 
 How should it not be a parable ? And how 
 should not the Lord's Love in it be a Consum- 
 ing Fire ? 
 
 •"o 
 
 It was just after all this terror and desola- 
 tion, — after Aaron, bearing fire from the al- 
 tar in his censer, had stood between the living 
 and the dead till the plague was stayed, — 
 that another parable — a gentle one, a sign of 
 beauty, yet carrying with it the supreme de- 
 claration of Almighty Will, and an absolute 
 quenching of murmurs and querulous discon- 
 tents — was shown, in simple object lesson, to 
 the congregation. 
 
 " Let every one of the princes of Israel, ac- 
 cording to the twelve tribes, bring his rod," 
 was the command that came to Moses ; " and 
 write thou every man's name upon his rod ; 
 and lay them up in the tabernacle of the con- 
 gregation before the testimony, where I wiU 
 meet with you." 
 
 And Moses spoke to the children of Israel, 
 and their princes came, and brought each his 
 rod, the sign of his rule, as they were bidden ; 
 " and the rod of Aaron was among their rods." 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 301 
 
 Whose sceptre shall rule ? And by what 
 right is the rule given ? 
 
 The whole question of authority in human 
 affairs was under test. Priesthood, or king- 
 hood, or any leadership, — what is to give real 
 claim or commission in either? What shall 
 be the seal and token of divine right ? Is it 
 birth ? Is it the might of the strong ? Is it 
 craft and cunning wisdom, that which we have 
 learned to call diplomacy, from doubleness ? 
 
 It is something that the Lord himself will 
 show ; that He has shown in all history, when 
 the need, and the hour, and the man, converg- 
 ing along the lines of a sure ordination, arrive 
 together. 
 
 It is something which has the Divine in it ; 
 no dead dynastic authority; no ecclesiastical 
 election or impositioQ ; no grasp of self-will, or 
 any plot, or state-stroke ; but a living reality, 
 which asserts itself by life ; which puts forth 
 from within its beautiful, fitting purpose. 
 
 It is a short story, this of the laying up of 
 the twelve rods, and what came of it ; it is told 
 in only nine verses of a chapter in the Book 
 of Numbers. This is the end of it : — 
 
 " Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in 
 the tabernacle of witness. 
 
302 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 " And it came to pass, that on the morrow 
 Moses went into the tabernacle of witness ; 
 and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of 
 Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and 
 bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds. 
 
 " And Moses brought out all the rods from 
 before the Lord unto all the children of Is- 
 rael ; and they looked, and took every man his 
 rod." 
 
 There was neither demur, nor appeal. Dead 
 sticks were they all, save one ; and each man 
 took his own dead thing and went away. 
 
 But Aaron's rod, alive from the Lord, and 
 consecrate to Him, was laid up again before 
 the testimony, for a token ; that the people 
 might no more murmur nor dispute, lest so 
 doing they should die. For God is not will- 
 ing that any man should perish, but that all 
 should come to the knowledge of the truth. 
 It is the truth that judgeth them ; that saveth 
 also, in the end. 
 
 It is long before men learn that ; that the 
 very judgment is salvation. The Israelites, 
 smitten, scared, trembling, seeing the unwa- 
 vering Justice in which they were held, cried 
 still unto Moses, — 
 
 " Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish. 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 303 
 
 Whosoever cometh anything near unto the 
 tabernacle of the Lord shall die : shall we be 
 consumed with dying ? " 
 
 The Budded Rod has told us its inner, true, 
 lovely story. Must we go back, — shutting 
 our inward sense and vision of its truth, — and 
 with our blind common sense argue the mate- 
 rial side of it ? To accept God's Why, must 
 we always stipulate with Him that we shall 
 compass his How ? Must we prove the process 
 of his teaching by our own comprehension ? 
 To comprehend, — to get all round a fact or 
 act, — is an altogether different thing from 
 understanding it. The very word understand 
 implies an attitude of , humble faith, a recep- 
 tion from above ourselves, through signs be- 
 yond our own powers. Yet undoubtedly we 
 may satisfy our minds in this attitude, by some 
 argument of rationality that shall meet the 
 cavil which stops short in ignorant refusal ; 
 and calls itseK reason. We may go deeper 
 into the infinite reason than the feeble investi- 
 gation which stops at what seems to its first 
 touch a hard surface of circumstance. 
 
 Let us look at this happening, then, in the 
 relation it holds to the faith of a great na- 
 
304 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 tion, to the spiritual certainties of a great soul. 
 For it is the Intuition of Reality, and Belief 
 that comes of it, that we are searching for and 
 tracing out. 
 
 How came Moses and the Israelites to be- 
 lieve this? 
 
 Something happened, which shut the mur- 
 muring lips of the disaffected chiefs. Some- 
 thing beyond their cavil or dispute ; a thing 
 to which they yielded instantly, as to a sign 
 from heaven. And this recorded thing is not 
 a piece of myth, or a fabrication invented in 
 an after day, and loosely circulated in the 
 world like other fable. It was a thing of 
 which the token was kept sacredly, from the 
 moment on ; the live tradition of which passed 
 down from father to son, a part of a positive 
 inheritance ; a trust in their hearts and hands 
 as from the Most High. 
 
 Some one has answered to the question, 
 " Where is the proof of Christianity? " " The 
 Jews." The Jews, to this day, prove Christ 
 and the Bible. Scattered, but not perished, 
 they endure, a separate people, to hold the 
 Testimonies. They are themselves the living 
 and authentic record of their Belief. 
 
 And their Belief is more than they. It 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 305 
 
 holds what they have not even yet confessed 
 to, nor understood ; the central declaration 
 of the Personal Christ, — the Divine-Human 
 Presence, the Jehovah-Angel, who had been 
 always with them, — and the fulfilling attes- 
 tation of his Coming in the Flesh. By the 
 witness of their Seers, God had already " set 
 his king upon his holy hill of Zion," while 
 Judah was yet a nation and a reahn ; and 
 while yet her thousands filled the land, his 
 open manifestation was to be. 
 
 " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
 nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until 
 Shiloh come ; and unto him shall the gather- 
 ing of the people be." 
 
 "Thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou 
 be little among the thousands of Judah, yet 
 out of thee shall he come forth unto me that 
 is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth 
 have been from of old, from everlasting." 
 
 But this something that truly happened 
 as to Aaron's rod, — the memory and sign of 
 which, yet vital and sacredly laid up among 
 the Hebrew people, bear evidence of a con- 
 vincing proof to them, — was it just what it 
 seemed to be, or have the Jews believed, in 
 
306 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 this and in other matters, what nobody else can 
 literally and rationally accept ? Was the Bud- 
 ding of the Rod, perhaps, a piece of Oriental 
 jugglery ? Was Moses a pious trickster ? 
 
 What, then, was or is " Oriental jugglery " ? 
 For that also survives, and is in the first place 
 to be explained, before we sneer it — or any- 
 thing we choose to class with it — away. Has 
 wise, modern, Occidental literalism ever found 
 out its secret, or determined its method ? 
 
 There were magicians in Egypt in the time 
 of Moses ; there were casters-out of devils in 
 Israel in the time of Christ ; there are Indian 
 wonder-workers in the East to-day. 
 
 And what about it all ? Ah, here we are in 
 the mystery at once. The Occult is in every- 
 thing. Everything is occult. Men stumble 
 against great secrets, and get from some un- 
 known live wire a strong, sudden thrill ; from 
 some hidden cause a marvelous result ; and 
 then they go to work, and rightly, with slow, 
 careful Science, to trace relation, to experiment, 
 to compare, and by earnest, laborious process to 
 demonstrate and declare law after law. Have 
 they ever got the whole, — the inclusive cen- 
 tral Principle and Power? They come so 
 near that we are awed, — half terrified ; we cry 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 307 
 
 with the Israelites, " Whosoever cometh any- 
 thing near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall 
 die ! " And in our daring, our tampering with 
 sense diyorced from spirit, we are in danger 
 of some terrible perishing. Our blindness, our 
 peril, is just this : we catch the skirts of Mys- 
 tery, but we do not see her outstretched hands. 
 We do not let her lift us to herself, and make 
 us one with her. The difference between jug- 
 glery or magic, and miracle in God's name, 
 is precisely here. Jesus Christ asserted it 
 when he turned back the blasphemy of the 
 Pharisees upon themselves, with the demand, 
 " If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom 
 do your sons cast them out ? " He recognized 
 the fact that wonders were wrought, even by 
 the very unknown Power of God, without any 
 oneness with the Spirit of God. Is that the 
 way we are inventing and contriving now, and 
 glorifying ourselves with our half knowledge, 
 when the full flood of light and power only 
 waits the confession of faith to be poured upon 
 our uplifted and rejoicing humanity ? " But 
 if I" Jesus Christ goes on, in an ineffable 
 majesty of utterance, " with the Finger of 
 God east out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of 
 God is come upon you." 
 
308 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Jugglery, Occultism, Science, — call it what 
 you will, — • touches Reality ; feels that it is, 
 draws from it some partial signs, and thinks 
 itself conquering and possessing the Unseen, 
 the Unfathomable. Faith lays her hand rev- 
 erently in the Hand of God, and by his per- 
 mission and command takes power from Him 
 and does his behest among the things of the 
 earthly. Jesus Christ meant something when 
 he said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mus- 
 tard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Be 
 thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, 
 and it shall be done." But we have not come 
 to it yet. We have not come to the faith — 
 the might of the spirit — which is the condi- 
 tion. Faith is not temerity, is not self-seek- 
 ing, is not curious, idle intrusion and tempting, 
 nor rash, wild, ignorant interference. It is not 
 taking the kingdom of heaven by whim, nor 
 by force. Is it yet upon the earth? When 
 the Son of Man cometh, shall He find it await- 
 ing him ? 
 
 Had Moses a beginning of this faith and 
 its power, or was he a cheat, and a presumer ? 
 Must not his life be the answer ? And does 
 it not simply offer us the alternative of be- 
 
THE BUDDED ROD 309 
 
 lieving in a moral impossibility, or in an ex- 
 ceptional natural phenomenon ? 
 
 See how it was with this man in everything. 
 From the hour when he learned the lesson of 
 his leprous hand, which he drew forth as from 
 the hiding and assumption of its new power 
 in his own bosom, until at Kadesh, where we 
 shall next see him, he stood on God's side and 
 condemned himself for his momentary claim 
 of self-authority, Moses was utterly, uncom- 
 promisingly, to his most secret thought, sur- 
 rendered to the divine ordinance ; drawing his 
 very will, and the brave tenacity of it, from 
 the "Thus shalt thou say," --"Thus shalt 
 thou do," — of Jehovah. He, himself, was a 
 Rod in the hand of the Lord. He undertook 
 nothing, planned nothing, contrived- no cun- 
 ning expedient, of his own impulse, or shrewd- 
 ness, or desire. He simply " fell down before 
 the Lord," and took his command and empow- 
 ering from Him. He believed in all he did, 
 for he knew he did nothing from himself. In 
 this again was he type of the Son, who " doeth 
 that which he seeth the Father do," and " al- 
 ways the thing that pleaseth Him ; " and whom 
 therefore " the Father showeth all things that 
 himself doeth." Of whom, by his prophet 
 Isaiah, the Almighty One saith : — 
 
310 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 " There shall come forth a Rod out of the 
 stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of 
 his roots : and the Spirit of the Lord shall 
 rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and under- 
 standing, the spirit of counsel and might, the 
 spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
 Lord ; and shall make him of quick under- 
 standing in the fear of the Lord ; and he shaU 
 not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither 
 reprove after the hearing of his ears : but 
 with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
 and reprove with equity for the meek of the 
 earth : and he shall smite the earth with 
 the rod of his mouth " (the power of his word 
 shall move all things earthly), " and with the 
 breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 
 And righteousness shall be the girdle of 
 his loins " (the restraint and control of his 
 strength), "and faithfulness the girdle of 
 his reins " (the binding of his desires). 
 
 Is not this, indeed, the Christ, and the full 
 sonship of humanity ; when its life and power 
 shall be " laid up " as a rod " in the taberna- 
 cle of the Lord," and shall be found bringing 
 forth buds, and blooming blossoms, and yield- 
 ing almonds? 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 the transgression at kadesh 
 
 Thirst. 
 
 Terrible thirst came upon them again. 
 
 The Forty Years were counted. Once more 
 the Israelites were come up to the very borders 
 of Canaan. There, at Kadesh, Miriam died, 
 and was buried. 
 
 Aaron and Moses, Caleb and Joshua, re- 
 mained, the living leaders of the host, to bring 
 it unto its great, glad inheritance. They of 
 the past generation, who sinned, and strove, 
 ^vho reproached God and threatened his chosen 
 ministers with stones, when at the first time 
 they reached this wilderness-border, and stood 
 almost within the boundary of the Promised 
 Land, — who had been turned back into a 
 prolonged desert-wandering for their unwor- 
 thiness, — had perished gradually by the way, 
 and a new people had grown up. Were they 
 purged of their old faithlessness and rebellion? 
 Were they ready now to follow at the com- 
 
312 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 mands of the Lord, and enduring all hard- 
 ship, resisting and conquering all foes, to 
 march in to this beautiful southern Syria where 
 Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had dwelt, and 
 retake it to themselves from the rude, sensual, 
 pagan tribes who had been inhabiting it, to 
 possess it in the name and in the service 
 of the Living God, and make of it a Holy 
 Land ? 
 
 The pain of thirst came upon them, and 
 they forgot and despised all. They cared not 
 for the great grapes of Esheol, which were so 
 near if they could only bear a little longer ; 
 for the wells and fountains that a short way 
 further on in that south country between 
 Beersheba and the Desert had beeii found 
 springing forth, or had been digged, by Abra- 
 ham and by Isaac, and that still poured forth 
 their waters. They just stopped short, in 
 their old, blind, obstinate way, and hankered 
 back through all the forty years of teaching, 
 promise, and probation, after the life of the 
 tribes in Egypt, when their fathers had not 
 been called forth from slavery and dull com- 
 fort to the heroism and patience of faith, and 
 the sure fulfillment of the covenant of God. 
 They asked bitterly why they might not rather 
 
THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 313 
 
 have died in the wilderness, with their fathers 
 and brethren, and ended their miseries as they 
 did. Why had they come all this way further, 
 to perish ? 
 
 " You have given us nothing," they said to 
 Moses ; but truly the word was spoken blas- 
 phemously up to God. " Wherefore have ye 
 made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us 
 into this evil place ? It is no place of seed, 
 or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates ; 
 neither is there any water to drink. And 
 Moses and Aaron went from the presence of 
 the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle 
 of the congregation, and they fell upon their 
 faces ; and the glory of the Lord appeared 
 unto them." 
 
 The Lord was patient. He was long suf- 
 fering with their discontents and their short- 
 sightedness ; with their mistaken despair, and 
 their reproach of his goodness. 
 
 The same Lord, who in this Land of His 
 spake afterward by his Son, — "If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me and drink," — 
 who even visited them with brief bodily nqed 
 to follow it with bodily satisfying, and sc 
 show them the perfect type of spiritual fam- 
 ishing and refreshment, — said now unto 
 
314 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Moses, — " Take the rod." " Lay hold of 
 My Power." " Gather the assembly together. 
 Speak to the rock before their eyes. It shall 
 give forth his water. Thou shalt bring forth 
 to them water out of the rock. So shalt 
 thou give the congregation and their beasts 
 drink." 
 
 It was as if He had said, " Behind my hard 
 refusal is the waiting, living good. Believe, 
 challenge it, and call it forth. It shall come 
 to you abundantly." 
 
 " And Moses took the rod from before the 
 Lord, as the Lord commanded." 
 
 But in the impetuousness of his indignation, 
 in a swift, fierce impatience of the unman- 
 ageable temper and stolidity of his people, he 
 could not graciously work God's graciousness 
 for them. If God was not angry with them, 
 he was. He took to himself, in the moment 
 of roused displeasure, — of resentment that 
 stirs in the very doing of undeserved good, 
 and embitters it, — the offense, and the out- 
 raged beneficence of power. 
 
 " Hear now, ye rebels ! " he shouted, as he 
 lifted up the rod before them. " Must we 
 fetch you water out of the rock?" And 
 twice, with vehemence, exaggerating and tran- 
 
THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 315 
 
 scending the act commanded, he smote the 
 face of the cliff before which they stood. 
 
 The beautiful, hidden water gushed forth ; 
 the people drank, and the beasts ; they were 
 once more glad and thankful. 
 
 But Moses, deep in his true heart, heard 
 the rebuking voice of the Lord : 
 
 " Thou hast sinned. Thou hast not sancti- 
 fied Me, in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
 Thou shalt not take this people into the land 
 which I have given them." 
 
 That which maketh manifest is Light. Be- 
 cause the Light was in the soul of Moses, his 
 own quick condemnation came. " The "Word 
 that I have spoken unto them, the same shall 
 judge them in that day," saith the Lord. 
 
 " This is the water of Meribah " (of striv- 
 ing), God spoke with his own Thought into the 
 thought of Moses. " The children of Israel 
 strove here with the Lord, and He was sancti- 
 fied in them." ' 
 
 It was a question between the people and 
 their God ; it was not between the congrega- 
 tion and Moses. God's mercy and his gift 
 settled it. " He was sanctified in them." He 
 stooped to their ignorance ; he forbore with 
 their insolence. He showed them once more 
 
316 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 that He was God. " I will be glorified in the 
 midst of thee ; and they shall know that I am 
 God." ..." I had pity for mine holy name, 
 which the house of Israel had prbfaned." . . . 
 " When I have brought them again . . . and 
 gathered them . . . and am sanctified in them 
 in the sight of many nations ; then shall they 
 know that 1 am the Lord their God, which 
 caused them to be led into captivity among the 
 heathen : but I have gathered them unto their 
 own land, and have left none of them any 
 more there." 
 
 " I will sanctify my great name, and the 
 heathen shall know that I am the Lord, when I 
 shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. . . . 
 
 " Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, 
 and ye shall be clean ; from all your filthiness, 
 and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. 
 A new heart also will I give you, and a new 
 spirit will I put within you . . . and I will 
 put my spirit within you, and cause you to 
 walk in my statutes, . . . and ye shall dwell 
 in the land that I gave to your fathers ; and 
 ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." 
 
 That is the writing of the prophet Ezekiel 
 in the Name of the Lord : its whole burden 
 and motive is, " I will deal with my people, 
 
THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 317 
 
 both in judgment and mercy, so that they may 
 know that it is I, and that I am the Lord 
 their God." 
 
 The Revelation of himself in all their life ; 
 his abiding with them, his providing for them, 
 his ruling of them ; these are his age-long 
 lessons to his people ; this is the history of 
 God with man in the earth. That they may 
 come to the eternal life, which is the knowing 
 me, their God : that the " Will may be done 
 on earth as it is in heaven. This is the sauc- 
 tifieation, and redemption ; this is the " new 
 heaven and the new earth " that we are to 
 look for ; the making of which is the " long- 
 suffering of the Lord," that we " account sal- 
 vation." / 
 
 And as by the flash of truth in a single 
 word, Moses knew all this, and was humble 
 in the sight of God. He Was one with God 
 in his rebuke, and rebuked and humbled him- 
 self. " I shall not lead this people in ; it is 
 not his will; I am not worthy." In a full 
 acceptance of his sentence, he submitted ; no 
 whit changed or shaken in his faith ; no hair's 
 breadth wavering in his loyalty and service. 
 " I will lead them to the Land ; but I shall not 
 go over into this Canaan," 
 
318 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 Was this condemnation? Was it penalty, 
 — an angry punishment ? Was it not rather 
 a closer divine fellowship, a more absolute 
 belonging to the Most High? Was Moses 
 not altogether at one with the Lord, even 
 against the fault in himself that he would, 
 with all his heart, the Lord should destroy ? 
 
 He might not enter the land on earth that 
 was to be divided to the tribes : he might not, 
 after all, have part or lot in it : whether or 
 not, was not his certainty strong that he should 
 yet enter the Canaan of God ? And would 
 the story of Moses have been complete, — 
 would the Faith of Moses have been utterly 
 proved, — had not this last test, this last re- 
 nunciation of self and acceptance of Grod's 
 thorough work and will with him been per- 
 mitted to his true, unswerving spirit ? 
 
 Moses believed as we ought to believe. 
 That it is not God's will to hurt for the sake 
 of hurting, or of taking vengeance ; but rather 
 it is his love which will not stop short of 
 hurting, if by hurting He can heal ; it is 
 his avenging of us against our evils, and not 
 his own avenging against ourselves, when He 
 chastises. His rebuke is our conviction of 
 his truth ; it is our bringing - back to his 
 
THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 319 
 
 righteousness. " There is no longer any con- 
 demnation to them who are in Christ ; " who 
 are in the relation of children to the Father ; 
 who submit, and acknowledge, and accept ; 
 who confess and forsake, and rejoice in the 
 faithfulness and justice that will " cleanse from 
 all unrighteousness." 
 
 The moment a soul takes this attitude, it is 
 redeemed ; the sin is no more in it ; it has laid 
 hold of the divine equity, and " iniquity has 
 no more dominion over it." It is " not under 
 the law, but under grace." The very chas- 
 tisement is grace. There is a tenderer un- 
 derstanding between the spirit chiding itself 
 through an inmost apprehension of the chid- 
 ing of the Lord, and the Lord of that spirit, 
 than any mere partial orderliness of life, 
 which seems blameless, can bring. There is 
 greater joy over the sinner who repents, than 
 over the ninety and nine who know not that 
 they need repentance. There is a more ex- 
 alted beatitude in the sweet denial that is 
 borne from a Love that denies Itself in the 
 withholding, and bears penalty with the peni- 
 tent, than in the easy permission of our own 
 way, that would never open to us the deep 
 experience of God's most intimate dealing, 
 
320 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 
 
 the beautiful force of his most stringent lead- 
 ing. 
 
 Transgression, — Repentance, — Reconcile- 
 ment: in the mystery of God's plan for his 
 souls upon this earth, these three things have 
 to be ; through them only do we come to the 
 knowledge of what is in his heart for us, and 
 of how in his very heart we are held, and 
 live. 
 
 To be fully Prophet of Israel, Moses must 
 needs know these ; must fail, must judge him- 
 self with God's judgment, consent to the right- 
 eous consequence of his misdoing, and with 
 his contrition and consent be swept into the 
 very bosom of Almighty sympathy, identified 
 with the accusing holiness. For " who is he 
 that condemneth " in us, but the " Chpst who 
 died, nay rather who is risen again, who is 
 even at the right hand of God, who also mak- 
 eth intercession for us ? " 
 
 At Horeb, Moses had been called to be 
 Seer; at Sinai to be Lawgiver; at Kadesh, 
 he entered into the supreme experience that 
 makes a man the redeemed son of God. 
 
 Between Moses and Jesus of Nazareth, this 
 was the difference. This is the essential prov- 
 ing of the transcendent nature of the Christ. 
 
THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 321 
 
 Made flesh for us, — partaking of our human- 
 ity, — sharing its pain, — He yet " knew no 
 sin," therefore no repentance. His suffering 
 for sin was on the God-side, — as God suffers. 
 He bore our iniquities as God bears. He was 
 not redeemed, but Redeemer ; He was not for- 
 given, but Forgiver. He entered into death 
 with us, that we might enter into life with 
 Him. 
 
PART V 
 
 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SERPENTS OF PIKE, AND THE SERPENT 
 OF BRASS 
 
 In the latter days of any period, the action 
 of its history accelerates, intensifies; events 
 crowd ; significances deepen. We look for 
 some near, great end, instinctively, when 
 things so happen. We recognized the em- 
 phatic " signs of the times." 
 
 We are told, in tremendous figures, how this 
 shall be in the latter days that are to come 
 upon the present earth ; on the brink of the 
 great Entering In of the Race to its final in- 
 heritance. 
 
 So with the Israelites in the last days of 
 their Wandering, in their yet prolonged pil- 
 grimage around the desolate ridges of Seir, it 
 was as if the things they had yet to learn, — 
 the interpretations that must yet be given, — 
 
324 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 the experiences needful to complete to them 
 lesson and warning, and to show them their 
 help and remedy, — followed in very rapid 
 sequence, and with augmenting weight of im- 
 port. 
 
 We come to one of these — whose type 
 touches the very quick of human penalty and 
 pain, and reaches over into the very Gospel of 
 a deliverance yet to be wrought out — shortly 
 after the departure from Kadesh, and the death 
 and burial of Aaron at Mount Hor. 
 
 Once more the contumacy of the people was 
 conquered, and their critical need was met, 
 by a manifestation of direct power from God, 
 made through a command to his minister ; a 
 doing and happening the legend and memorial 
 of which, as that of Aaron's Rod, continued as 
 history and sign in the Hebrew nation down 
 through the generations, until all signs and 
 events of the Old Testimony were confirmed 
 and fulfilled, in an interior and supreme signi- 
 ficance, by the New. 
 
 Edom had refused to give Israel passage 
 through his border. The whole host, therefore, 
 had moved again southward, coming to Mount 
 Hor. There Aaron had died, in the moun- 
 
SEEPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 325 
 
 tain ; Eleazar, his son, had been solemnly in- 
 vested with his office ; and the people had 
 mourned for Aaron thirty days. 
 
 Then King Arad, the Canaanite of the south, 
 had come upon them, and Israel, praying and 
 fighting, " vowing a vow unto the Lord," had 
 conquered, and destroyed the Canaanitish 
 cities at Hormah. 
 
 After that, journeying on "by the way of 
 the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom," — 
 their march directed to the head of the Gulf 
 of Akabah, the eastern Eed Sea arm, where 
 they would bend again northward, around and 
 beyond the mountains of Edom, — " the soul 
 of the people was much discouraged because 
 of the way." And again their discouragement 
 found its invariable vent in speaking " against 
 God and against Moses." 
 
 " Wherefore have ye brought us up out of 
 Egypt to die in the wilderness ? For there is 
 no bread, neither is there any water ; and our 
 soul loatheth this light bread." 
 
 " And the Lord sent fiery serpents among 
 the people, and they bit the people ; and much 
 people of Israel died." 
 
 They were bitten of evil and poisonous crea- 
 tures ; their own ingratitude and obstinacy 
 
326 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 and unbelief came back upon them in the visi- 
 tation of mean, creeping, stinging, deadly crea- 
 tures of the ground ; as they had assailed and 
 wounded with bitterness and burning reproach, 
 they were themselves assailed and wounded; 
 in their bodies they realized what the sin of 
 their spirit and speech had been. They were 
 made to feel what they could feel ; that they 
 might learn the wrong of their wrong-doing, 
 the just displeasure of their God, and beyond 
 that, his long-suffering patience, his help and 
 healing. 
 
 This is what the memory and the legend 
 must have conveyed, as it passed on from lip 
 to lip, from thought to thought, and men grew 
 to some beginning of understanding of what the 
 way of the Almighty had been with them. It 
 is only put down in the Record as bare fact ; 
 but it was fact which had living truth in it, 
 and by the living truth was opened up at last. 
 
 " Therefore the people came to Moses, and 
 said. We have sinned, for we have spoken 
 against the Lord and against thee ; pray unto 
 the Lord, that he take away the serpents from 
 us. 
 
 " And Moses prayed for the people." 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 327 
 
 Take away the serpents. It was the true 
 prayer, if only it reached inwardly enough. 
 Take away the discontent, the repining, the 
 reviling, out of our hearts. 
 
 Did Israel pray this? Doubtless Moses 
 prayed it for them. Doubtless, deep in his 
 soul, he longed and besought in their behalf 
 the availing deliverance ; that they might be 
 turned from their own groveling and sensual 
 desires, that could only sting their peace ; that 
 were of the ground, and ate the dust of the 
 ground; that, stealthy and sinuous, haunted 
 their unwilling feet in the desert pathway, 
 and smote them unawares through their own 
 feebleness. Strength in the Lord would have 
 enabled them to crush their enemies' heads ; 
 long afterward it was said of the faithful, and 
 promised to them who should go forth in the 
 name of God and his truth, " They shall take 
 up serpents ; they shall cast out devils ; if 
 they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt 
 them." 
 
 Doubtless this truth was in the soul of 
 Moses ; and from it his inspiration came. The 
 truth in any man is a hold upon all truth, 
 upon all righteous and beautiful law in the 
 universe, of spirit and of things ; it discerns 
 
328 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 the unknown by a divine instinct ; it grasps 
 help and remedy not yet demonstrated; it 
 goes beyond and anticipates the slowness of 
 science ; and hence comes miracle, -^ the show- 
 ing beforehand of what in the Day coming 
 shall be the common and the everyday. 
 
 " How shall I lift this people up from the 
 ground?" the prophet questions with anxious 
 wrestling in himself. " How shall I make 
 them look up, and not down ? " The wisdom 
 of that aphorism is as old as Moses. 
 
 " It is in their low life of sense that they 
 fall, and are hurt ; how can I make them see 
 the higher, that they may abide in it, and be 
 safe ? " 
 
 In our day, they are coming back to this 
 same quest, inventing " Christian Science ; " 
 making a theory and a new departure out of 
 an age-long principle; discovering what has 
 been told and shown from the beginning; 
 separating, as the manner of a limited truth- 
 seeking is, one great verity from its harmony 
 and co-working with all verities, and denying 
 and asserting in its name, on the one hand 
 all natural and appointed human experience in 
 the flesh, and on the other a human supremacy 
 from which the flesh — even the flesh in which 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 329 
 
 Christ himself suffered — must, for a time, 
 hinder us. 
 
 The thought of Moses sprang forward, up- 
 ward, touched with a heavenly foreknowledge. 
 " They must see the serpent itself lifted up ! " 
 was the word that flashed into his conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 There are two serpents : the serpent of the 
 dust, and the serpent of the heavenly light. 
 There are two knowledges : the knowledge of ■ 
 sense, and the knowledge of the spirit. In the 
 one, man is hurt, and dies ; in the other, he 
 is healed, and lives again. 
 
 " Make thee " (for a sign) — came the or- 
 daining perception, taking form and plan with 
 him, as every spiritual teaching did — "a 
 fiery serpent;" a glowing, shining image; 
 " and set it upon a banner-staff ; it shall come 
 to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he 
 looketh upon it, shall live." 
 
 Not only should the poisonous serpents be 
 taken away, but the flesh that had been bit- 
 ten and poisoned should be healed. Not only 
 should sin be removed, but the poison it had 
 left in life should be withdrawn also. The 
 forgiveness of the Lord is, in the end, an 
 absolute remission. " I will heal their back- 
 
330 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 slidings: I will love them freely; I will for- 
 give their iniquity, and I will remember their 
 sin no more." 
 
 " Whether is easier," saith the Son of Man, 
 " to say. Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, 
 Arise, and walk ? But that ye may know that 
 the Son of Man hath power on earth," — even 
 in the earthly condition and against the earthly 
 retribution — " to forgive sin, Arise, take up 
 thy bed," — that on which thou liest helpless 
 through thine own unwisdom and misdoing, 
 
 — " and go unto thine house." Return where 
 thou wast meant to abide. 
 
 " Who is a God like unto thee, that pardon- 
 eth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression 
 of the remnant of his heritage," — the rem- 
 nant in his children, — in every child of his, 
 
 — that is true, that is savable, that is still of 
 himself ? 
 
 " He win turn again, he wiU have compas- 
 sion on us ; he will subdue our iniquities ; and 
 thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of 
 the sea." 
 
 Which promise and confidence the Christ 
 also redeemed and confirmed with a verity, by 
 direct and visible act. " Go," he commanded 
 the evil spirits that infested the maniacs ; and 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 331 
 
 as in their frenzy they had besought permis- 
 sion of him, " they went into the herd of 
 swine ; " they took to themselves their own 
 low nature and affinity in the unclean, pro- 
 hibited beasts ; " and behold, the whole herd 
 of swine ran violently down a steep place into 
 the sea, and perished in the waters." 
 
 Before the eyes of the multitude, and for a 
 heavenly assurance, it was done ; the divine 
 remission was dramatized ; the evils were re- 
 manded to their proper habitat, and with that 
 which they could wholly defile, were utterly 
 destroyed. 
 
 For the devils have nothing to do with man, 
 the element of the Divine in the human being ; 
 they belong to, and can possess only, the de- 
 basable sense -nature which is nevertheless 
 given to the man clean, to be ruled and kept 
 from debasement, and so sanctified and lifted 
 up to God. In the last event, the man shall 
 be saved; the devils and their work must 
 perish from the man, even though they should 
 leave no individual life-consciousness behind, 
 but God should have to resume his own dis- 
 honored essence, and do with it as He will. 
 
 Looking back from the New Testament, we 
 read the signs of the Old in the light of their 
 
332 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 spiritual fulfillment. It was they who could 
 reach forward and inward, could forefeel and 
 insee the coming Gospel, who prophesied it 
 in word and deed, beyond even their own en- 
 tire interpreting. The Redemption of Christ 
 was in the heart and hope of Moses, when he 
 lifted up the shining Serpent, a celestial omen, 
 in the wilderness. Even so the Son of Man 
 — the holy, healing Power and Wisdom — 
 should be " lifted up ; that whosoever believeth 
 in him should not perish, but have eternal 
 life." " Look unto Me and be ye saved, all 
 the ends of the earth," saith both parable and 
 Scripture. 
 
 We have our Lord's own word that his 
 Father meant the sign. In all God's creation 
 and providence there is nothing without a 
 meaning. And the Meaning and the Will are 
 the essential force that makes unity of law 
 and demonstration in thiibgs visible and invis- 
 ible ; compelling even remotest outward issues 
 in their sure accordance. 
 
 Moses helieved when he fashioned the image 
 of pure, enduring metal, — the " fine copper, 
 precious as gold," — and raised it up in the 
 sun, so that its brightness smote like live flame 
 upon the vision of the people. The people, 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 338 
 
 through him, believed, — so far as their need 
 and perception went at the moment ; and ac- 
 cording to their faith it was done unto them. 
 
 Is there anything here to stumble at ? 
 
 Do we stumble to-day at wonders as great, 
 except that we think we have learned some- 
 thing of the wherefore and the conditions, and 
 how to apply and connect them ? Do we 
 scoff at the power that runs along the lines of 
 trolley and telephone, by which we are trans- 
 ported from place to place, and talk across 
 distances which distinguishable sound cannot, 
 without the new medium, traverse ? 
 
 But suppose that sometime, through cata- 
 clysmal changes, depopulations, relapses from 
 civilization, breakings-up of interchange and 
 understandings, destruction of records, these 
 knowledges and appliances should be lost ; 
 and that only in a few surviving chronicles 
 of a dim elder time should some brief, unex- 
 plained statement be handed down to a far 
 posterity, — where would be the faith on the 
 earth to believe that once men traveled by 
 an invisible force, and sent words around the 
 world on hanging or on buried wires ? We 
 are living in miracle all the time; we are 
 getting to take it very coolly and of course. 
 
334 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 We do not even stagger at mind - healing, 
 faith-cure, thought-transference, hypnotic con- 
 trol; only we do not any longer call these 
 things miracle. Moses, with his brazen ser- 
 pent, acted in advance of what we more or less 
 accept in modern discovery. Who knows if 
 we are not working backward, after all, toward 
 the simplest truth, the most direct potency? 
 In our more complicated life and motive, 
 there is more of illusion, and scheming insin- 
 cerity to disentangle from our facts, than 
 there was in the facts and the time of the 
 Exodufe. If the day of miracle is over, it is 
 so to our vitiated apprehension, that will not 
 recognize any work above our own, or that 
 which we might do on the lines of accounted 
 cause, if we could but have the handling. We 
 think we understand so much, that we refuse 
 to wonder. But God quietly works on his 
 marvels, and every happening is a word, and 
 every showing a sign, of which we fail to get 
 the spiritual utterance and correspondence. 
 Down the centuries, with an echo from the 
 mystical Past and a trumpet ring into the 
 unsounded Future, comes the Voice, — "I 
 have told you earthly things, and ye believed 
 not : how shall ye believe if I tell you 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 335 
 
 heavenly things ? " Ye have discharged faith 
 from your practical life ; how shall I lift you 
 up into the everlasting meanings ? 
 
 Laid up in every one of these old stories 
 of a past and simple time, is the essential 
 application to all human experience, the vital 
 prophecy of inherent law. It is what they 
 have been made into story for. From the 
 Garden of Eden to the Fall of Jerusalem, a 
 great allegory is written out in a history that 
 is not only one of a race, but of the Eace of 
 the races. And forever it repeats the same, 
 in form after form. 
 
 There are the two wisdoms : the low and 
 the high ; that which creeps, and that which 
 is raised up in light. When man, bitten with 
 the poison of the sensual serpent, craves only 
 the one and turns away from the other, God 
 says, in his lovingkindness, " That way is 
 death to men. I will not let them reach on 
 through earthly knowledge, to an earthly tree 
 of life, and stay in sense forever. They must 
 die in the flesh, that they may be born in the 
 Spirit. The life of the flesh shall he short- 
 ened. I will hem them round, to deliver 
 them. Their knowledges also shall be bound. 
 Every now and then they shall be destroyed. 
 
336 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 They shall hold in themselves the elements 
 of destruction. There shall be periods, and 
 periods. Men shall learn, and lose. They 
 shall discover, and forget, and begin again. It 
 shall be. Thus far and no farther, tiU they turn 
 to Me with aU their hearts ; till they look up 
 to Me, who am showing them my truth, and 
 believe my heavenly things that I am telling 
 them by my earthly. For the heavenly is in 
 the earthly, and the earthly by the heavenly." 
 
 And God will have his way. 
 
 At last the angel shall stand " with one foot 
 on the sea," — the ungraspable, the image of 
 the intangible, the spiritual, — " and one upon 
 the land," — the positive, solid, material, 
 earthly ; and shall " lift up his hand to 
 heaven, and swear by Him that liveth forever, 
 who created heaven and the things that there- 
 in are, and the earth and the things that 
 therein are, and the sea, and the things which 
 are therein, that there shall be time " — limit 
 and incompleteness — " no longer ; but that 
 the mystery of God shall he finished, as He 
 hath declared to his servants the prophets." 
 
 " There is nothing covered that shall not 
 be revealed ; neither hid, that shall not be 
 known." 
 
SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 337 
 
 " What I do thou knowest not now ; but 
 thou shalt know hereafter." 
 
 The works of God are speech and language ; 
 his meanings wait ; but all is sign, miracle ; 
 in all a revelation hides itself. In all there is 
 harmony, order, concurrence. The outward 
 could never be but for the inward ; the in- 
 ward cannot fail of expression through the 
 outward. 
 
 We shall believe the thing, when we find 
 the thought that was within it. Christ him- 
 self explained the Brazen Serpent; He will 
 open all Scripture to us when He comes in the 
 Spirit, as He did on the Easter Night when 
 He walked with his friends on the road to 
 Emmaus. He only is " worthy to open " the 
 seven-sealed Book, " written within and upon 
 the hack side" " and to loose the seals there- 
 of." 
 
 " The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Eoot 
 of David," — He who in himself joined the 
 Divine with the human, the essential Word 
 of God with the scriptured creation, — " hath 
 prevailed." " The Lamb as it had been 
 slain," — the Eternal Life that had tasted 
 death, — having the " seven horns " of power, 
 and the " seven eyes " that see all that the 
 
338 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 Father doeth, — whose vision and strength 
 are those of " the Seven Spirits of God sent 
 forth into all the earth," building his Great 
 Parable, — " He came and took the book out 
 of the right hand of Him that sat upon the 
 throne." 
 
 " And if any man will do bis will, he shall 
 know of the doctrine." 
 
CHAPTEK II 
 
 THE STORY OF BALAAM 
 
 Alongside of, and interwoven with the 
 story of Moses, the whole, single-hearted Pro- 
 phet of the Lord, we find, toward the close of 
 the record, that of the half, double-hearted 
 prophet Balaam ; a man of the Midianites, 
 visited by the Spirit of God, " having his eyes 
 open " to the vision of the true, having his ears 
 opened to the inward speech of the Almighty. 
 In this he was as Moses in Israel ; he was, 
 in the ideal apprehension of the One Living 
 God, as Abraham among the Chaldeans. But 
 there was in him an alternation and mingling 
 of heathenism with faith ; of common enchant- 
 ments with inmost illumination ; there was in 
 his purpose and act a vacillation and contra- 
 diction between his low Midianitish nature and 
 its affiliations, and his recognition of the holy 
 authority of the Supreme. Counsel 'came to 
 him from on high ; but it was met by earthly 
 consideration which temporized with and per- 
 
340 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 verted it. Errand was given him to do, and 
 message to say; he dared not refuse; the 
 power of the truth compelled him ; and yet, 
 after his reluctant acknowledgment and forced 
 obedience, he neutralized and profaned his 
 mission by counsel of his own with the chiefs 
 of his people, to the seduction of the Israelites 
 into sin that brought d6wn upon them again 
 the anger and the smiting of their God. 
 
 It is a strange history ; it comes to us as an 
 antithesis to the pure, loyal seeking and ser- 
 vice of Moses ; made a part, by its connection 
 of incident and consequence, of the narrative 
 of those, it is set over against them in a sharp 
 contrast which of itself, without any pointing 
 comment, defines the everlasting difEerence, 
 in essence and result, between the entire ren- 
 dering up of self to the Lord-, and the pro- 
 faning of the Divine by the intrusion and ad- 
 mixture of self-motive and time-serving with 
 the high, direct instincts of the heaven-visited 
 soul. 
 
 " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon " is 
 written between the lines in blazing charac- 
 ters all through the literal, brief text of the 
 account. Whether directly from the pen of 
 Moses, and in his words or not, it is a part of 
 
THE STORY OF SALAAM 341 
 
 the history of Moses, and an illustration by- 
 contradistinction of the great, thorough, un- 
 compromising Belief of the man called also 
 out of Midian by the Manifested Presence 
 and personal command which became to him 
 thenceforth the central reality and the unques- 
 tioned leading of his life. 
 
 If Moses had but halfway received and fol- 
 lowed, he might have been as Balaam ; there- 
 fore the story of Balaam concerns us inti- 
 mately in our study of the Faith out of which 
 unfolded the work of the Exodus, and the 
 destiny of the most distinctively representative 
 people of the earths 
 
 It also interests us, incidentally, because in 
 it appears one of those forms of circumstantial 
 assertion over which circumstantial judgment 
 has stumbled; has made much of as a stum- 
 bling-block, and seized eagerly as excuse for 
 discarding all trust in Biblical authenticity; 
 but which, looked at in tbe interior light of 
 witness, becomes yet one more evidence of 
 the central grasp of Scripture utterance, upon 
 that which transcends utterance, and can only 
 be expressed by vehicle of figure. The figure 
 is simply so close, so true, that we hardly 
 know — and need hardly trouble to know — 
 
342 LAST BAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 whether fact of outward occurrence figured 
 it to them who needed outward occurrence to 
 learn by, or was represented in parable to con- 
 vey a living truth of parable. 
 
 Suppose we read straight through, by inner 
 light, — by the X-ray which pierces shell of 
 outer substance, — the recital of what hap- 
 pened in and to this " Balaam," (pilgrim or 
 lord of the people), " son of Beor," " brought 
 from Aram" (the high exalted place) " out of 
 the mountains of the East." 
 
 The children of Israel, after their first bor- 
 der battles in which they conquered Sihon 
 king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, 
 set forward through their lands, and pitched 
 in the plains of Moab by Jordan-Jericho. 
 
 And "■ Moab was sore afraid," and was 
 distressed because of the children of Israel. 
 " And it was said among the elders of Midian, 
 This company will lick up all round about 
 us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field." 
 And Balak, the king of Moab, sent, in his 
 fear and distress, to him who was known as a 
 prophet, Balaam, dwelling at Pethor, near the 
 Euphrates, to come and curse the invaders : 
 " for," he says in his message, " I wot that he 
 whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 343 
 
 thou cursest is cursed." And the elders, carry- 
 ing the price of divination in their hands, and 
 the words of the message of the king on their 
 lips, went the long desert way and found Ba- 
 laam. 
 
 Now, remembering how it was when Moses 
 sought the Lord, inquiring of Him, and how 
 his implicit sincerity received the word and his 
 unswerving action followed, observe and com- 
 pare Balaam's invoking of the prophetic inspi- 
 ration which he undoubtedly believed in and 
 received, and the quality of his obedience to 
 the heavenly vision. 
 
 "Lodge here this night," he says to the 
 messengers of the king. " I wiU. bring you 
 word again, as the Lord shall speak to me." 
 
 And in the night-time Balaam turned his 
 thought and asking to the presence of God, 
 and opened his heart before Him. And God, 
 searching his heart, found there more than it 
 understood of itself, and made the demand of 
 him which set him to face and declare, straight 
 to the point, its workings. " What men are 
 these with thee ? " With what concern of 
 men come you before your God ? 
 
 "They are the messengers of Balak, king 
 of Moab, who hath sent word to me, A people 
 
344 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 is come out of Egypt, and covereth the face 
 of the earth ; curse them for me, and perad- 
 venture I may overcome them and drive them 
 out." 
 
 Instantly, in the clear presenting of the 
 thing before the Lord, the speciousness and 
 half - covered persuasion of his doubt melted 
 and scattered from his mind as a thin mist 
 before a strong sun-ray, and the plain word 
 sounded through his consciousness : " Thou 
 shalt not go with them ; thou shalt not curse 
 the people ; for they are blessed." 
 
 Blessing and cursing are of the Lord, and 
 his righteousness ; they are not to be traded 
 with ; they are not to be asked for of man by 
 men, and a price offered. Balaam was prophet 
 enough, truly, to discern this utterance of the 
 Spirit of the Lord ; to have it take immediate, 
 vital hold of him. For the time, it possessed 
 and ruled him ; in the strength and compul- 
 sion of it he rose up in the morning, and said 
 to the princes of Balak, " Get you into your 
 land : for the Lord refuseth to give me leave 
 to go with you." And so they went away. 
 
 But King Balak had not done with him. 
 Another company of princes, more in number 
 aiid more honorable, came to Pethor, and 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 345 
 
 spoke to Balaam yet more urgently. They 
 promised him, as the Tempter promised Jesus 
 in the wilderness, " very great honor," and to 
 do for him whatsoever . he should say ; if he 
 would only — using the power from God for 
 his own will — " curse for them this people." 
 
 And Balaam answered, out of the noble, 
 loyal God's-heart of him, "IfBalak would 
 give me his house full of silver and gold, I 
 cannot go beyond the word of my God, to do 
 less or more." And then, out of the little, 
 human, hesitating, covetous heart of himself, 
 he added, with a hope of escape, of compro- 
 mise even with the Almighty in the matter, 
 " Tarry ye here, I pray you, this night also, 
 that I may know what the Lord may say unto 
 me more." 
 
 Self -persuaded, he lay down to quiet and 
 soul-question. Self-persuaded, he let a voice 
 speak to him, and called it the voice of the 
 Lord. 
 
 " If the men come to call thee, rise up and 
 go with them ; but yet the word which I shall 
 say unto thee, that shalt thou do." 
 
 He would put himself into the midst of 
 temptation. He would go with it a little way. 
 And then he would hearken — through the 
 
346 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 confusing tumult of men's urging and his own 
 desires — for what God would say. 
 
 He would not listen for it now, wholly and 
 finally, while he was alone with God. He 
 would drift with circumstance, and let circum- 
 stance decide him. When ever did a man 
 do that, and not be led by circumstance into 
 sin? 
 
 He rose up in the morning, relieved by his 
 postponed, left-open decision, and saddled his 
 beast, and went with the princes of Moab. 
 
 "And God's anger was kindled against him 
 because he went." 
 
 Does not this statement of itself show clearly 
 that the vision of the night and the so-called 
 voice of the Lord in it, were not true vision 
 and a certain word, but wrested to the man's 
 own wish and motive? Can we otherwise 
 interpret and reconcile the sequent declara- 
 tions ? 
 
 God's anger — which is his opposing love, 
 — was kindled ; and his angel " stood in the 
 way " of Balaam, " for an adversary against 
 him." 
 
 " He was riding upon his ass ; " a mere 
 stolid, stupid beast of burden. And yet the 
 Lord used the ass to prevent the prophet. 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 347 
 
 " The ass saw the Angel of the Lord stand- 
 ing in the way." She felt a supreme compul- 
 sion, and a fear, as of a sword drawn against 
 her. "And she turned aside out of the way, 
 and went into the field." 
 
 Balaam had committed his cause to circum- 
 stance, and here was circumstance. The Lord 
 had not left him yet. He " prevents and fol- 
 lows ; " if we will have circumstance to rule 
 us. He will meet us with it. He will shut us 
 in on every side. Nevertheless, if we will 
 persist against everything, He leaves us our 
 freewill. If we treat his defense as obstacle. 
 He will sometimes let us beat it down. 
 
 Balaam smote the ass, — God's circumstance, 
 — to turn her into his own way. But the crea- 
 ture presently was between two walls, " in a 
 path of the vineyards," and again the angel of 
 the Lord stood there ; again the fear and the 
 compulsion seized her. She thrust herself, 
 terrified, against the wall, pressing obstinately 
 in resistance to her master's urging ; and Ba- 
 laam's foot was crushed. 
 
 Now there are especial promises, in figure, 
 through the Bible, for the guiding and defense 
 of the foot of man, if set in God's way. 
 " The steps of a good man are ordered by the 
 
348 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 Lord." " I will give mine angel charge over 
 thee, that thou dash not thy foot against a 
 stone." 
 
 Balaam was out of the way, and out of 
 charge. Or rather the angel had now, of ne- 
 cessity, a different charge concerning him. His 
 foot was crushed ; his going disabled. For 
 all that, he still struggled against rebuke and 
 hindrance, and again he smote the ass, and 
 forced her forward. But they came to " a nar- 
 row place, where there was no way to turn, to 
 the right hand nor to the left." And there was 
 the angel of the Lord again, leaving the man 
 alone, but working through the terrors of a 
 beast. And the ass fell down upon her rider. 
 The very means of progress utterly failed. He 
 was lamed, and the ass would no longer bear 
 or obey him. All his intents were crossed, his 
 powers defeated. 
 
 And yet he would not understand, nor sub- 
 mit. The voice of God had been silenced in 
 his soiil, and he could not even see His sign. 
 He only struggled the harder with his thwart- 
 ing circumstance., He smote the poor ass yet 
 more severely. 
 
 And then a cry broke forth from the animal, 
 such as spoke like syllabled words to the con- 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 349 
 
 sciousness of her master. Whether in speech 
 asinine or human, this is what she said, and 
 what Balaam understood. " What have I 
 done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me 
 three times ? " 
 
 Did never animal, before nor since, cry out 
 with such appeal as that, from the cruelty to 
 the love and debt of its owner and tormentor ? 
 Was never human spirit touched, before nor 
 since, by such an utterance, either to fresh 
 brutality of rage, or a sudden pity and re- 
 morse ? 
 
 Balaam was not subdued, but incensed. 
 The stubborn beast had gotten too much the 
 better of him. " Thou hast mocked me ! " he 
 shouted. " If I had a sword in my hand, I 
 would kill thee ! " And so he would. 
 
 The poor ass moaned forth another remon- 
 strance. " Did I ever do so before ? Could 
 I help it to-day ? " And Balaam's heart re- 
 turned to him, as the question pierced it to its 
 true feeling. 
 
 "Nay," he acknowledged. "Until now 
 thou hast been faithful. Perhaps, now also, 
 it is faithfulness." 
 
 Then, at th^ first honest repentance, the 
 first tenderness of a true conscience, the Lord 
 
350 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 drew Ms servant toward himself again, and 
 " opened his eyes." 
 
 And Balaam saw in his hindrance the angel 
 of the Lord ; and that the sword was not in 
 his own hand, to slay the instrument, but in 
 the hand of the angel, to prevail against his 
 sin. " And he bowed down his head, and fell 
 flat upon his face." 
 
 Balaam also, after all, was a Believer. " I 
 have sinned," he said to the Presence that 
 made itself known to him. " I knew not that 
 thou stoodest in the way against me. Now, 
 therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me 
 back again." 
 
 Now, there was no need to go back. Now, 
 with his changed and restored purpose, he 
 might go forward, in the fear and service of 
 the Lord. 
 
 " Go with the men," said the angel ; " but 
 speak only the word that I shall speak unto 
 thee." 
 
 " So Balaam went with the princes of Ba- 
 lak." 
 
 And to Balak the king, he said, " I am 
 come unto thee : have I any power at all to 
 say anything? The word that God putteth 
 into my mouth, that shall I speak." 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 351 
 
 And Balak took him into the high places of 
 Baal. And then the prophet conformed him- 
 self to the customs of the heathen by a sacri- 
 fice ; but he made the sacrifice after the ordi- 
 nance of Israel, and in his heart he offered not 
 unto Baal, but unto God. 
 
 And then he left Balak standing by the 
 burnt sacrifice, and " went to an high place," 
 alone, to meet the Lord. 
 
 " And the Lord put a word into his mouth," 
 and he came back, and blessed Israel. " For 
 how shall I curse whom God hath not cursed ? " 
 he said. " Who can count the dust of Jacob 
 or the number of the fourth part of Israel?" 
 Though I die for the saying, " let me die the 
 death of the righteous, and let my last end be 
 like his ! " 
 
 StiU Balak — with a strong patience that 
 testified to his absolute confidence in the power 
 of this man who withstood him, either to bless 
 or to curse in the truth of the Most High — 
 entreated and urged : — 
 
 " Come with me to another place, whence 
 thou mayest see them ; the utmost part of 
 them, hut not all. Perhaps then thou mayest 
 curse them for me." 
 
 It is always under a hoodwink that men 
 
352 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 endeavor or persuade an evasion of the irrefra- 
 gable. Perhaps Balaam even then had a lin- 
 gering feeling, as a child has when he entreats 
 and teases, that God had possibly not said aU ; 
 that there was still something for the Lord 
 to be reminded of, and to consider, as there 
 might be for a man before he should pronounce 
 irrevocably. Would He think how terrible 
 were those numbers of Israel? Might they 
 yet be cursed — or crossed — in this present 
 threat and attempt, if only in this ? 
 
 And they went up to the top of Pisgah. 
 There they offered again, upon seven altars. 
 And again Balak stood by the burnt sacrifice, 
 and Balaam went away again, to meet the 
 Lord. 
 
 " And the Lord put a word into his mouth," 
 and he came back to the king with a second 
 message : " God is not a man, that he should 
 lie ; neither the son of man, that he should 
 repent ; hath he not said, and shall he not 
 do it ? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not 
 make it good ? — Behold, I have received com- 
 mandment to bless : and he hath blessed, and 
 I cannot reverse it." 
 
 Then Balak begged him, " Neither curse 
 them at all, nor bless them at all." He would 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 363 
 
 be content now, if only things might be left as 
 they were. But Balaam's unaltered answer 
 was, " Told I not thee. All that the Lord speak- 
 eth, that must I do ? " Balak was nearly wild 
 with his disappointment and despair. " Come 
 yet to another place," he besought; and "he 
 brought Balaam unto the top of Peor." 
 
 Again, — the third time, — the seven altars, 
 the seven bullocks, and the seven rams. 
 
 But the third time, Balaam went away with 
 a soul cleared from the last cloud of pagan 
 confusion or doubt. It would not be merely 
 " a word in his mouth " that he would have 
 now from the Lord. It would come to him 
 by the way of his heart, in his deepest, because 
 single, convictions. 
 
 " He went," not as at other times, " to seek 
 enchantments," outward signs ; some fresh 
 wording or token to modify the divine sen- 
 tence as he had understood it before. " He set 
 his face toward the wilderness ; " a place empty 
 of all but God ; and there he had a vision of 
 " Israel abiding in his tents, according to his 
 tribes ; and the Spirit of God came upon him." 
 
 He went back to Balak, and for the last 
 time " took up his parable : " — 
 
 " The man whose eyes are open, which saw 
 
354 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 the vision of the Almighty, which heard the 
 words of God, hath said, How goodly are 
 thy tents, O Israel ! " In them are the ahid- 
 ing and the countenance of the Lord. " God 
 hath brought Israel forth out of Egypt. He 
 hath the strength of an unicorn. He shall eat 
 up the nations. . . . Blessed is he that bless- 
 eth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee." 
 
 Then Balak was very angry, and smote his 
 hands together. Yet the power of the truth 
 was upon him, and the Presence of God by 
 his prophet awed and restrained him from 
 violence. 
 
 " Flee to thy place ! " he cried out to Ba- 
 laam, as if he would say, "lest I do thee a 
 mischief." " I thought to promote thee to 
 great honor ; but lo ! the Lord hath kept 
 thee back from honor." 
 
 Even the heathen king believed thus far, 
 and bore discomfited testimony. 
 
 " Spake I not to thy messengers the same 
 thing?" demanded Balaam. "How could I 
 do otherwise? Said I not, If Balak would 
 give me his house full of silver and gold, I 
 cannot go beyond the commandment of the 
 Lord, to do good or bad of my own mind; 
 what the Lord saith, that will I speak ? " 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 355 
 
 " And now, I go unto my people : come, I 
 will tell thee what this people shall do to thy 
 people in the latter days." 
 
 Balaam dared now to go on and speak the 
 whole truth to this king, who asked for the 
 truth, only praying that somehow it might be 
 truth in his favor. 
 
 " The man whose eyes are open, . . . which 
 heard the words of God ; and knew the know- 
 ledge of . the Most High, which saw the vision 
 of the Almighty, — he hath said : — 
 
 " I shall see him, but not now : I shall be- 
 hold him, but not nigh: there shall come a 
 Star out of Jacob : a Sceptre shall arise out 
 of Israel. . . . And Israel shall do valiantly. 
 Out of Jacob shall come He that shall have 
 dominion." 
 
 Meanwhile, there shall be destruction. "Am- 
 alek was the first of the nations ; but his latter 
 end shall be that he perish forever." " The 
 Kenite shall be wasted, until Asshur shall 
 carry thee" — even thee, Israel — "away cap- 
 tive." ..." Alas, who shall live when God 
 doeth this ! " 
 
 After this solemn uplifting of the curtain 
 of the mystery of time, — this grand and aw- 
 ful glimpse of what Israel had been chosen 
 
356 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 for, both to do and to endure, to receive and 
 to f(Jrfeit, unto the Coming of the One King 
 upon the earth, for the ruling of the One 
 Sceptre over the nations, — Balaam " rose 
 up," calmly, unafraid, unhindered, " and went, 
 and returned unto his place : and Balak also 
 went his way." 
 
 Our judgment of Balaam must still remain 
 twofold. Seeing him one way, he is sub- 
 lime ; another way, he is despicable. Because 
 he had two ways. He was neither single-eyed 
 nor single - hearted. In conscience and in 
 vision, he was astigmatic. Looking back pres- 
 ently, and reading his word and act by closely 
 following events, we shall discover the deep, 
 even self-deluding duplicity of his " counsel " 
 with the king, by which he afterward contra- 
 vened the Lord's message, prompting the se- 
 duction of Israel to evil, blasted and cut short 
 his own career, and sent down his name in 
 obloquy and reproach, through the Hebrew 
 generations and the Christian Church, to this 
 our day. 
 
 Never spake the Son of Man a greater 
 " verily " than when he said, " If thine eye be 
 
THE STORY OF BALAAM 357 
 
 single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall 
 be full of darkness. If the light that is in 
 thee be darkness, how great is that dark- 
 
 ness i 
 
 !" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE VEXING OP THE MIDIANITES 
 
 " And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
 Vex the Midianites, and smite them." And 
 again, " The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
 Avenge the Children of Israel of the Midian- 
 ites : afterward shalt thou be gathered to thy 
 people." 
 
 Why all this smiting and slaying ? Why 
 all this bloodshed and despoiling? Why such 
 driving out and extermination of whole peo- 
 ples, and taking by violence of their lands ? 
 
 Again and again the same terrible, dismay- 
 ing questions confront us. Unable to answer, 
 unable to look further than the mere passing 
 occurrence, — stopping at the accounts of these 
 particular casualties as if they were excep- 
 tional in human experience, and God were 
 bound especially to justify them, — men are 
 in haste to revolt, and to fling reproach and 
 discredit upon a record claimed to be Divine ; 
 upon the chronicle of events said to have 
 
VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 359 
 
 been ordered and appointed in all their suc- 
 cession by the will and wisdom of the Al- 
 mighty ; and upon all else, consequently, which 
 the Sacred Writing sets forth and sustains. 
 
 But why find fault with the Bible and with 
 Bible times, and not with the whole world and 
 all its construction, its ages and its history? 
 Do not the same questions confront us every- 
 where? Is there anything different in the 
 story of the Israelites and their breaking away 
 from Egypt, and their conquest of their fore- 
 fathers' old home in Canaan, from that of one 
 nation after another that has broken from ser- 
 vitude, want, or barbarism, and subdued what- 
 ever stood in its way to a fairer possession, a 
 broader rule and privilege, a possibility of a 
 civilization and development which indeed it 
 knew not of itself to anticipate or determine, 
 but to which it has been led by the same won- 
 derful, irresistible Power and Providence that 
 worked for and with those old twelve tribes 
 of Hebrews, and established by them a nation- 
 ality and an order of life into which the very 
 Son of Man — the outcoming and perfect Hu- 
 manity — could be born from the Father into 
 his waiting world ? Is our own American his- 
 tory any less strange, or any more free from 
 
360 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 the human conflicts and partial wrongs that 
 accompany every partial phase of progress in 
 the grand expansion of the forceful germ of 
 soul-life from its first hiding in the earthly to 
 its final evolution into a majestic completeness 
 and its inheritance of an everlasting kingdom ? 
 Science bows to the facts it finds, and bends 
 to them its conclusions, accepting process, and 
 confessing " the survival of the fittest." Shall 
 Faith do less, — Faith which defines the fittest 
 with a larger interpretation, looks deeper in 
 for causes, further on for issues and consum- 
 mations ? 
 
 We can but repeat, and insist on with our- 
 selves to remember, that these things- must be 
 looked on in the light of a supreme event, the 
 fulfilling of an eternal purpose. The earthly 
 has to be disregarded ; to be rent, trampled 
 upon, destroyed. Every partial and evil thing 
 has to be swept away, even with a sword ; to 
 be washed from the spirit of humanity, even 
 with the body's blood of the human. Our 
 " Why? " reaches down,, and back, and up, to 
 the very core of law and creation, — to the 
 very original, utmost, eternal thought and im- 
 pulse of the Nature which creates and con- 
 ducts, — and demands of that an answer to re- 
 
VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 361 
 
 ceive and understand which would burst all 
 limit in us, and make gods of us at once, 
 knowing the good and the evil. 
 
 We are not the makers, but the made ; we 
 can only experience, and watch, and wait what 
 God will do with us ; saying. He deals with 
 us as Righteousness must deal with sinfulness, 
 as Completeness must deal with incomplete- 
 ness. 
 
 He leaves it greatly with our own continual 
 choice, the way we will compel Him to take. 
 The instant man renounces sin, — single, in- 
 dividual disobedience in the least or in the 
 greatest of his individual heart and life, — 
 that instant all the God -force in the world 
 will be turned from cursing to blessing. For 
 cursing is crossing ; it is one and the same 
 thing. The lines conflict ; at the collision 
 point the judgment fires break forth. 
 
 It is always corruption and the evil thing 
 that is warred against. When the Israelites 
 themselves yielded to corruption, they were 
 plagued and destroyed ; when an evil nation 
 first corrupted and then withstood them, the 
 Lord conquered with the remnant of his peo- 
 ple, and the wicked perished. The enemy, all 
 through Holy Writ, in story and psalm, in 
 
362 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 command and prophecy, is the Evil ; that is 
 to be triumphed over and brought to nought. 
 That is what the men of the Bible were 
 taught, by all the lessons of their lives, singly 
 and as a nation, to know; that is the Be- 
 lief built of their experience, and registered 
 "aforetime for our learning." 
 
 What has been, will be ; until all comes 
 into the final, beautiful subjection and liberty 
 to which everything struggles and tends. If 
 we found in the Bible stories of a people who 
 never strayed nor sinned, who never killed 
 nor destroyed, nor seized with the strong 
 hand, we should say. This is not a history of 
 men as we have ever known them, or known 
 of them ; it is a fable of Arcadia, a dream of 
 heaven. 
 
 That such life may come, and not be a 
 dream, or a vision of the tmattainable, but a 
 sure, divine reality, God lets men go through 
 all that must at last show them how the self- 
 struggle can never come to the divine satisfy- 
 ing, but the self-surrender to the- holy shall 
 bring down the baptism of the Holy, and all 
 the created be filled full of the glory and glad- 
 ness of the Creating. 
 
 Even through the din of strife and above 
 
VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 363 
 
 the shrieks of carnage, comes the Promise of 
 the Time of the True. " They shall not hurt 
 nor destroy in all my holy mountain." 
 
 Nevertheless, this may not be attained by 
 any external abrogation ; by any outward con- 
 sent of multitudes ; it cannot be legislated 
 for, nor arbitrated for, nor compelled. It can 
 only arrive through individual purgation of 
 evil, individual fealty to the true : then there 
 shall be multitudes as one man, and one man 
 shall be as a multitude. When law is in the 
 single soul, there will be no need of senates, 
 nor legislatures, nor Supreme Courts of Jus- 
 tice. 
 
 " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, 
 that I will make a new covenant with the 
 house of Israel ; not according to the covenant 
 that I made with their fathers in the day I 
 took them by the hand to bring them out of 
 the land of Egypt ; which my covenant they 
 brake, though I was an husband unto them. 
 But this shall be the covenant that I will 
 make with the house of Israel. After ^ those 
 days, I will put my law in their inward parts, 
 and write it in their hearts; and I will be 
 their God, and they shall be my people. And 
 they shall teach no more every man his neigh- 
 
364 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 bor, and every man his brother, saying, Know 
 the Lord : for they shall all know me, from 
 the least of them unto the greatest of them, 
 saith the Lord : for I wiU forgive their ini- 
 quity, and I wUl remember their sin no 
 more." 
 
 That last clause, with its " for," is the in- 
 tent and reason of all. Forgiveness and resto- 
 ration, — not retribution and vengeance, — 
 are the final purpose. That I may at last 
 forgive, I will see to it that they shall learn. 
 Covenant after covenant there shall be, — for 
 " those days " and for the after days ; they 
 shall have the law of my own Heart in their 
 hearts, at the last, and my perfect Love shall 
 have its way with them ; for " I will forgive," 
 saith the Lord ! 
 
 Close by the borders of the Promised Land, 
 the Israelites had been dwelling in the land 
 of the idolaters. The king of Moab, looking 
 abroad upon the outspread tents of their hosts, 
 said of them that they covered the face of the 
 earth, abiding over against him ; and he trem- 
 bled before the threat of their approach. He 
 could get no curse against them, to strengthen 
 him to try to drive them out, but only an 
 
VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 365 
 
 assurance from the prophet whom he entreated 
 that the strength of the Lord God was with 
 Israel, and the " shout of a king among them." 
 
 But the double man, Balaam, had not left 
 him without a suggestion that craftily hedged 
 the commandment of the Almighty with in- 
 sinuation of a way around it. Even in his 
 refusals of the curse, there had lurked precur- 
 sively the subtle hint of what undoubtedly, 
 according to subsequent Scriptural allusions, 
 Balaam more or less openly advised : — 
 
 "jETe hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, 
 neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." 
 
 " There is the secret ; Israel is upright ; 
 you may not prevail against him by the 
 sword ; you may hinder him by beguiling." 
 
 Behind whatever words were used was this 
 evil counsel. The Midianites were strong in 
 iniquity. And of that cunning speech it came 
 to pass that they took allurements for their 
 weapons, and Israel fell. He sinned with the 
 strange people : he joined them in their hea- 
 then sacrifices; he threw himself headlong 
 into the surging temptations ; and " the anger 
 of the Lord was kindled against him." 
 
 We may suppose that the doubleness of 
 Balaam reached even to the sophistry with 
 
366 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 himself that it was well for Israel to be tested. 
 If the trial were withstood, this people would 
 have thoroughly merited their favor with Je- 
 hovah, and nothing then could hinder their 
 triumph. Where was any resisting of the 
 Lord in this ? If, on the other hand, Israel 
 stumbled, and was overcome, where was the 
 disloyalty on his part in having so declared 
 and predicted ? He had but stated the truth 
 about God's dealing, the condition of his 
 blessing. He had only said, " In righteous- 
 ness is the safety of this people ; the com- 
 mandment of their God is their stronghold." 
 
 This seems, indeed, upon the face of the 
 narrative, to have been all ; and yet after 
 the Israelites had fallen in sin and been pun- 
 ished with slaughter and plague, and been 
 brought back to their work and their war, 
 " avenging the Lord of Midian," Moses, pass- 
 ing sentence on the captives, brought indict- 
 ment thus, against the wickedness and its in- 
 citer: "Behold, these caused the children of 
 Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to com- 
 mit trespass against the Lord." And Micah, 
 the prophet of an after age, urging against in- 
 iquity and oppression and false balances and 
 lies, cries out, " O my people, remember now 
 
VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 367 
 
 what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what 
 Balaam the son of Beor answered him, that 
 ye may know the righteousness of the Lord." 
 
 Away on again, in the exhortations of Peter 
 and Jude the Apostles, and in the words of 
 the Spirit himself to the churches, heard of 
 Saint John the Divine, the same old example 
 of warning is recalled and repeated : — 
 
 " The Lord knoweth how to deliver the 
 godly out of temptations, and to reserve the 
 unjust unto the day of judgment to be pun- 
 ished : chiefly them that walk after the flesh 
 in the lust of uncleanness. . . . Presumptuous 
 are they, self-willed ; . . . spots and blem- 
 ishes, sporting themselves with their own 
 deceivings while they feast with you, .... 
 beguiling unstable souls : having an heart ex- 
 ercised with covetous practices ; cursed chil- 
 dren, which have forsaken the right way, and 
 are gone astray, following the way of Balaam 
 the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of un- 
 righteousness," 
 
 " Woe unto them ! for they have gone in 
 the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the 
 error of Balaam for reward." 
 
 " I have a few things against thee " (church 
 of Pergamos), " because thou hast there them 
 
368 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught 
 Balac to cast a stumbling block before the 
 children of Israel." 
 
 That same Voice had spoken this, in the 
 Life upon the earth : — 
 
 " Woe unto the world because of offences : 
 it must needs be that offences come, but woe 
 unto him by whom the offence cometh ! " 
 
 " If any man cause to offend one of these 
 little ones, it were better for him that a mill- 
 stone were hanged about his neck, and he 
 were drowned in the depths of the sea." 
 
 Balaam may hide his motive from himself ; 
 he can never hide it from the Spirit of all 
 Truth. 
 
 Among the many perishings, then, that have 
 come, and that must come because of sin, and 
 to make room for righteousness, the Midianites 
 perished. 
 
 Balaam, the son of Beor, perisbed also with 
 them, slain with the sword. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CAMP IN MOAB 
 
 The children of Israel encamped in the 
 plains of Moab. 
 
 They were not led over Jordan with an im- 
 petuous rush, to seize possession, at first sight 
 and possible reach, of the beautiful land to- 
 ward which they had made pilgrimage for 
 forty years. It was not to be a heedless pour- 
 ing in, as a wild horde, clutching at that 
 which was to be theirs only under a Divine 
 ordering, for a Divine end. They were to be 
 under law and commandment still. 
 
 That an eager, enthusiastic multitude of 
 men, strong in the great numbers that had 
 terrified King Balak, and swayed by a hope 
 and impulse that had, thtough whatever lapses 
 into discontent, urged them onward for nearly 
 haK a century, should have bowed to the con- 
 trol of their leader at the supreme moment 
 of approaching triumph, is alone a sufiicient 
 evidence of the mighty, realizing Belief of the 
 
370 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 man himself in the God of his nation, and His 
 continual inspiration and direction in eyery 
 step and doing of its people. 
 
 This waiting, just over Jordan beyond Jer- 
 icho, to receive the final reminders and ad- 
 monitions of their Prophet Commander, and 
 to learn his plan and prospectus for their 
 future life and government, — this orderly 
 acquiescence in delay, so simply set down 
 without comment or argument, is one of the 
 chief of those inherent proofs which establish 
 the testimony, not of mere literal fact, but of 
 the reality behind the fact, that we are seek- 
 ing. It was truly a Prophet and a People 
 bound together, and moved or checked, only 
 by that which they believed in as a Divine 
 Will, made known under divinely imposed 
 conditions, who dwelt expectant in these plains 
 along the borders of the Salt Sea and the 
 River, until God's word should come to them 
 to make their advance. 
 
 Moses had a great deal to say to his people. 
 It would seem that he had begun with his 
 Deuteronomy, or Repetition, as he talked with 
 them by the way, during the last days of their 
 slow approach through the desert country, all 
 along from the Gulf of Akabah, under the 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 371 
 
 mountain ridge of Seir, toward the Dead Sea 
 and the Jordan ; and that he only concluded it 
 here, in this final encampment ; for we have 
 the two separate statements, in the closing 
 words of the Book of Numbers, repeated from 
 a little further back, and the opening ones of 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, — that " these were 
 the commandments and the judgments which 
 the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses 
 unto the children of Israel in the plains of 
 Moab, by the Jordan near Jericho ; " and 
 " these be the words which Moses spake unto 
 aU Israel on this side Jordan in the wilder- 
 ness, in the plain over against the Red Sea, 
 between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and 
 Hazeroth, and Dizahab," — all of these named 
 places being either indistinctly traceable as 
 once inhabited localities, or as known stations 
 of the Israelites in their pilgrimage, in the 
 desert of Paran or of Zin, stretching down 
 from Canaan between El Tih and Mount 
 Seir; thus indicating the territory traversed 
 in this last journeying, and the scene of the 
 long, retrospective teaching. 
 
 It was a careful recapitulation ; a grand 
 summing up of history and law ; 'a living over 
 of the past, and a shaping forth and dictation 
 
372 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 of the future ; a gathering together into a 
 sublime unity of all the dealings of the Lord, 
 and the assertions of his truth, and the requi- 
 sitions of his righteousness, which had filled 
 the life of Moses, now nearing to its close, 
 and had been his august and sacred errand, 
 not only to the Hebrew people, but through 
 them to the coming generations of mankind. 
 It was a review of faith and purpose which 
 declares them reiteratively and distinctly, 
 re-presenting them in the strong light of an 
 already large fulfillment, and reaching on by 
 them into a glory of realization that means far 
 more to the world and its ages than just the 
 coming of certain tribes of men into a certain 
 corner of the earth for a temporary possession. 
 It is like the review under the latter light, and 
 at the pass of Jordan, of every human history 
 and soul. 
 
 It reaches back to the days in Horeb, where 
 the Israelites had sojourned until " the Lord 
 God spake unto them, saying. Ye have dwelt 
 long enough in this mount ; . . . Go, • . . 
 and possess the land which the Lord sware 
 unto your fathers ; " the days in which they 
 had increased so mightily, and had become 
 " as the stars of heaven for midtitude." " The 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 373 
 
 Lord God of your fathers," parenthesizes 
 Moses grandly and tenderly in his reminding, 
 " make you a thousand times so many as ye 
 are, and bless you, as he hath promised you." 
 
 He sketches over again the government 
 which he had constituted for them then ; the 
 appointment of the Judges from among, and 
 over, the tribes. 
 
 " Hear the causes between your brethren," 
 had been his charge to them ; " and judge 
 righteously between every man and his bro- 
 ther, and the stranger that is with him. Ye 
 shall not respect persons in judgment ; but 
 ye shall hear the small as well as the great ; 
 ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for 
 the judgment is God's : and the cause that is 
 too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will 
 hear it." 
 
 " I commanded you at that time," he says, 
 " all the things that ye should do." 
 
 The departure from Horeb, the going 
 through " all that great and terrible wilder- 
 ness " between Horeb in the south and the 
 mountain of the Amorites on the north ; the 
 search into the Land, and the finding of the 
 sweet, grape-laden valley of Esheol ; the bring- 
 ing down of the fruit to the camp by the 
 
374 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 mountain ; the rejoicing with which the people 
 cried, " It is a good land which the Lord our 
 God doth give us ! " — all this Moses touched 
 upon, calling back the story of the fathers to 
 the minds of the children who, after the forty 
 years more of wandering, had now come, with 
 the. fathers' story and its lessons in their 
 hearts, to the borders of the Land again, in a 
 closer and surer approach. Now, he was tell- 
 ing them, they were to enter in ; but they 
 were to remember the old unbeliefs and the 
 rebellions, that they should not fall into the 
 like themselves. 
 
 "Notwithstanding" that the Land was 
 found to be so good, and notwithstanding 
 their great gladness, he goes on, speaking of 
 the history of Israel as one in all the genera- 
 tions, " ye would not go up ; but rebelled 
 against the commandment of the Lord your 
 God, and murmured in your tents, and said. 
 Because the Lord God hated us, he hath 
 brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to 
 deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to 
 destroy us." 
 
 Not only indeed was it the old evil of a past 
 generation, yet inherent and latent in that to 
 which the memory then came down ; it was 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 375 
 
 the same old evil that has lurked and lasted in 
 the world till now; the age-long impatience 
 of the human heart, that on the veryedge of 
 its inheritance turns from it ignorantly, blindly, 
 willfully, because of the remaining pain and 
 peril of the way ; distrusts and rebukes the 
 Lord, and lets fear blot out his promise, and 
 the remembrance of all He has done so long 
 " in the wilderness." The pathetic reproach 
 of Moses falls upon all the complaint and re- 
 bellion of men against immediate difficulty, as 
 it fell upon Israel : " Thou hast seen how the 
 Lord thy God bore thee as a man doth bear 
 his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye 
 came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did 
 not believe the Lord your God." 
 
 So, then, he repeats to them, the Lord was 
 angry; and though they pleaded against his 
 sentence with a selfish repentance, He woiild 
 not hear them, but suffered them to rush into 
 their own punishment as the only thing that 
 could really convince them, rebelling as they 
 were even in their declared contrition ; and 
 they " went presumptuously up into the hill " 
 against their enemies, who " came out against 
 them, and chased them, as bees do," stinging 
 and destroying them, and compelling their re- 
 treat, " even unto Hormah." 
 
376 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 " Then we turned," he says, patiently iden- 
 tifying himself with his people in all the pen- 
 alty of their error, — " and took our journey 
 into the wilderness by the way of the Red 
 Sea ; " the journey that was to consume the 
 life of all the men of war who had sinned in 
 that disobedience, to destroy them from among 
 the host. " And we compassed Mount Seir 
 many days," is his simple statement of the 
 long wandering until again the Lord said, — 
 as He says at last after whatever perverse 
 or disciplinary pilgrimage, — " Ye have com- 
 passed this mountain (wilderness) long enough. 
 Turn you northward." 
 
 Go you my way, now. And all the way, as 
 I shall tell you. So the command came by 
 the mouth of Moses to the people at Mount 
 Seir. And here begins something different in 
 the commanding ; something that gives us, if 
 we look for it, an insight into the very thing 
 in the counsel of the Most High that has been 
 made a stumbling-block against the faith of 
 his Providence ; the why of a destruction and 
 a saving that seem arbitrary, partial, un-God- 
 like, to a partial human comprehension. We 
 must remind ourselves again that we are read- 
 ing about God's leading of them that believe 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 377 
 
 in Him ; and not only of that, but of hia 
 bringing men to believe in Him. To that be- 
 lieving He had first led, through pains and 
 oppressions, slaveries, judgments, temporal ob- 
 structions, even the sons of Abraham ; in that 
 belief He was now showing them himself as 
 the God of the covenant ; of the close-coming, 
 and abiding ; the God of the Tabernacle, who 
 makes his tent among the habitations of men ; 
 who works with them and for them, according 
 to his intent and promise from the beginning. 
 
 He was training a people — not so much 
 better as yet than the rest — out of all the 
 multitudes of the earth ; that there might be 
 salvation in the earth ; that the knowledge of 
 himself might begin again in it, in the pure, 
 primal, and eternal way. He was dealing, for a 
 time, as only with a handful. He was mahing 
 leaven, to be hidden in the full measures of 
 meal, that all might be leavened. That is al- 
 ways the way of the coming of the Kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 We are not told what He was doing at the 
 same time for the debased Canaanites ; how 
 the very thrusting them from their possessions, 
 the slaughter and despoiling of this generation 
 of them, might be like his chastisements of the 
 
378 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 wilderness upon his own chosen nation, who 
 knew Him best, though as yet only a little, 
 and whom He was leading by cloud and fire, 
 through one whole generation also of suffering 
 and loss, to their sure and beautiful inheri- 
 tance under his love and law. We can see — 
 human records can tell — but one side at a 
 time ; yet, indeed, when all the stories shall 
 have been lived and told, we shall know that 
 God has been all around ; that He is, in truth, 
 the God of the whole earth. 
 
 The Canaanites were to be dealt with as the 
 God and Father of aU knew best how to deal. 
 Their idolatries, their low and sensual tribal 
 life and custom, were to be broken up and 
 swept away. A new march of men toward the 
 everlasting Light was to be made way for. A 
 believing host was to come in ; the Name and 
 service of Jehovah were to be established upon 
 the earth. Not a perfect, nor a deserving peo- 
 ple, were these Hebrews; it was a race yet 
 fiUed with its own evils and ignorances ; but 
 where do we learn, in all the material and 
 spiritual evolution of the universe, that the 
 perfect thing leaps into full development across 
 any chasm of the unattained and the opposing ? 
 It is only the wexi that -takes place, and dis- 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 379 
 
 places ; but it does take its own place and turn, 
 making the step onward. That which was 
 behind may seem to perish, as to circumstance ; 
 the life that was in it passes forward, God 
 knows how. He who caused the fragments to 
 be gathered up into the twelve baskets-full, — 
 typic number for an entire saving, — has way, 
 and time, and place, for all. 
 
 In the course of the Israelites northward, 
 lay the lands of other peoples. The children 
 of Jacob were not the only inheritors of gift 
 and promise. The divine idea had not been 
 altogether lost out of Edom and of Moab. The 
 children of Esau possessed it in the one ; the 
 children of Lot in the other. A bruised reed 
 might the one be ; and smoking flax the other ; 
 but the Lord will not break, nor quench. He 
 will " bring forth," from the least remnants, 
 his " judgment unto truth. He shall not fail, 
 nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment 
 in the earth ; the isles " — the small, sepa- 
 rate, feeble places — " shall wait for his law." 
 Their time shall come ; meanwhile, his germ 
 of truth is there, and He will shield it. 
 
 " The Lord spake unto me," says Moses, 
 "saying, Command thou the people. Ye are 
 to pass through the coast of your brethren the 
 
380 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 children of Esau, which dwell in Mount Seir ; 
 they shall be afraid of you ; take heed to your- 
 selves : meddle not with them. I will not give 
 you of their land, no, not a foot's breadth. I 
 have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a pos- 
 session. . . . And when we passed by from 
 our brethren the children of Esau, ... we 
 turned, and passed by the way of the wilder- 
 ness of Moab. And the Lord said unto me, 
 Distress not the Moabites, neither contend 
 with them in battle. I will not give thee of 
 their land for a possession ; because I have 
 given it unto the children of Lot for a pos- 
 session." 
 
 " Contend not with your brethren ; despoil 
 them not ; for my word is with them also." 
 Do we not hear that command in these days 
 also, defending way and place, given of the 
 Lord, of every feeblest form of faith, — of 
 every least lingering of heavenly motive in 
 any human character ? 
 
 Overbear and cast out the militant evil; 
 there God is with you ; but move gently and 
 peacefully among them that have God's word 
 as well as you. Yes ; even " buy meat of them, 
 that ye may eat ; and water that ye may drink." 
 They, in my name, can give you something; 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 381 
 
 they have the bread and the cup for you, be- 
 cause ye belong to Me ; they also shall have 
 their reward. 
 
 Moses goes on : " Now rise up, said I, and 
 get you over the brook Zered." 
 
 The thirty and eight years were complete, 
 since the sentence of wandering, and the de- 
 parture from Kadesh-Barnea. " All the gen- 
 eration of the men of war was wasted out 
 from among the host, as the Lord sware unto 
 them." 
 
 And the Lord said, " Thou art to pass over 
 through Ar, this day ; when thou comest nigh 
 over against the children of Ammon, distress 
 them not, nor meddle with them. I will not 
 give thee of the land ; I have given it unto the 
 children of Lot. . . . Rise up, and take your 
 journey, and pass over the river Arnon: be- 
 hold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the 
 Araorite, king of Heshbon, and his land ; be- 
 gin to possess it, and contend with him in bat- 
 tle. This day will I begin to put the dread of 
 thee and the fear of thee upon the nations." 
 
 Yet Moses, by that same just command of 
 God, gave the king of Heshbon opportunity. 
 It was test; after that, as it had been done 
 
382 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 with Pharaoh, should be shown the deliverance 
 the Lord had for his people. 
 
 " Give me meat, for money ; give me wateir, 
 for money ; that we may eat and drink. I 
 will pass through on my feet, — as in Sin and 
 in Ar ; do as they did unto me ; until I shall 
 pass over Jordan into the land which the Lord 
 our God giveth us." 
 
 Then the fellowship and the brotherhood 
 broke down, and the enmity began. The king 
 of Heshbon refused. " God hardened his 
 spirit, and made his heart obstinate," as He 
 had done with Pharaoh. Because they would 
 have it so; because by the law of life and 
 spirit, God could do no other with either for 
 the time. 
 
 And so the terror set in again ; the cities 
 were taken, and the people perished ; " the 
 men, and the women, and the little children." 
 
 Are they not perishing every day? Yet 
 God careth for the sparrows. 
 
 Almost to the point they had then reached, 
 encamped in the river margins opposite to 
 Jericho across the Jordan, — on the literal 
 brink of the accomplishment of the protracted 
 hope of a generation, — Moses had here brought 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 383 
 
 his reminiscences of the long way ; calling the 
 people continually to observe and acknowledge 
 the hand of the Lord God in all their leading. 
 It was still, and always, " The Lord said unto 
 me," and " so I spake unto you," and " so I 
 commanded you," and "so it came to pass," 
 and " the Lord delivered into our hands " the 
 kings, and the cities, and the people. 
 
 Og, the giant, king of Bashan, the last of 
 the terrible men, was last contended with and 
 overcome, close upon the Jordan borders of 
 the Promised Land ; and all the cities of the 
 plain, and the land along the river Arnon, 
 and Mount Gilead, and their cities, fell into 
 the hands of the army of the Israelites ; and 
 Moses had divided them among the children 
 of Heubeu and Gad and Manasseh, as the first 
 possessions and outworks of the new kingdom 
 of the tribes. There these brotherhoods were 
 to leave their families and their cattle, and go 
 over with their other kinsmen as men of war, 
 to conquer and possess, until all should be es- 
 tablished beyond Jordan ; and to this emprise 
 and end Moses commanded and appointed 
 Joshua, the Man of Might. "I said unto 
 him," repeats he in his narrative now so nearly 
 ended, " Thine eyes have seen all that the 
 
384 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 Lord your God hath done unto these two 
 kings : so shall the Lord do unto all the king- 
 doms whither thou passest. Ye shall not fear 
 them; for the Lord your God he shall fight 
 for you." Not the man Joshua, in whatever 
 might and courage he showed strong, heroic, 
 should have the battle on his hands ; a man's 
 strength might break down, — a mortal fear 
 might come upon the mortal spirit; but the 
 Lord God behind and with the man whom 
 He had chosen — the Infinite Power and the 
 Unfailing Will — should go forth and do his 
 own work among the people of the earth. 
 Moses really put nothing into the hands of 
 Joshua ; he burdened him with no awful, 
 lonely responsibility ; he only put Joshua him- 
 self into the hands of God. 
 
 And then came the great outburst of his 
 own human longing and entreaty. After all, 
 might he not even enter in to behold the 
 " good land beyond the Jordan " ? Just once 
 to see it in its fair outstretch, its grand heights 
 and beautiful valleys ? "I besought the Lord 
 at that time," he says, " saying, I pray thee, 
 let me go over, and see the good land, the 
 goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the 
 Lord would not hear me : He said unto me, 
 
THE CAMP IN MOAB 385 
 
 Let it suffice thee ; speak no more to me of 
 this matter. Get thee up into the top of 
 Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and 
 northward, and southward, .and eastward ; and 
 behold it with thine eyes : for thou shalt not 
 go over this Jordan." 
 
 As a man speaking with a man, Moses 
 heard the Lord's word in his spirit. Does it 
 matter whether there was an audible sound in 
 the air about his ears, or not? We are not 
 reading an altogether literal story of physical 
 signs ; the phrases of a physical condition and 
 understafiding are of necessity used ; but what 
 we are learning is the high, wonderful, near 
 experience of a great, believing human soul 
 with its God. And Moses was so close with 
 his Maker, his whole thought and being were 
 so given into Divine control, that not only was 
 he absolutely sure of what God said to him, 
 but absolutely in acquiescence with the true 
 and holy judgment made known to him. The 
 " Let it suffice thee " was the " Peace be 
 still," to all selfish perturbation. There the 
 whole " matter " between Moses and Jehovah 
 was laid down. It was like the " Woman, 
 what have I to do with thee," that the Christ 
 spoke even to his mother. It was no harsh, 
 
386 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 repulsing refusal, but a calm, supreme bidding 
 into a still and perfect trust. 
 
 " Cliarge Joshua, and encourage him," the 
 voice went on to say. " Strengthen him ; for 
 he shall go over before this people, and he 
 shall cause them to inherit the land which thou 
 shalt see." 
 
 When a man's life is altogether possessed 
 and informed by the Heavenly WUl, his own 
 will cannot be a pain and cross against it ; he 
 goes over, whole-souled, into the Divine pur- 
 pose, and is at one with the Eight and the 
 Best. As soon as he knows definitely what 
 must be, he no longer desires, with vehemence 
 and struggle, any other. Moses was not only 
 in the hands, but in the Heart, of God. He 
 yielded himself, and rested there, content. 
 His life was " hid," and safe, like the life of 
 the Only Begotten. K he might not cross 
 " this Jordan," ke should yet be lifted over 
 some mightier, more mysterious Kiver, into 
 some yet grander, appointed place. 
 
 " So we abode," he says quietly, " in the 
 valley over against Beth-Peor." 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Patiently, exactly, in every full and mi- 
 nute particular, Moses now rehearsed to the 
 waiting host the laws and ordinances that God 
 had given him for the people, by which they 
 should live in His grace and favor, which are 
 the harmonies of human obedience and the 
 Divine wisdom. 
 
 " This ye shall do," — This ye shall not 
 do," — he commanded them, all the way 
 through the possible crises of circumstance, 
 both large and small. Was ever a law-giving, 
 was ever a framing of national constitution, 
 like this marvelous ordaining in comprehen- 
 siveness and detail? 
 
 With all that was temporary, with all that 
 concerned only a rough half -civilization, — 
 that recognized extremest brutal possibility, 
 and denounced such sin as we shudder even to 
 hear denounced, — where has there ever been 
 a legislation that went so straight to the cen- 
 
388 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 tral right in all things, and declared such an 
 enforcement of every rule of justice, purity, 
 and truth, for justice, purity, and truth's own 
 sake? for the sake of the knowledge of the 
 One Holy, Just, and True? "That thou," 
 says Moses to the Hebrew commonwealth, 
 " mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, 
 The Lord Thy God." 
 
 Is it possible in the face of this sublime 
 word and authority — before this pattern of 
 a government announced and accredited from 
 the Highest — to fail of the conviction and 
 confession that so, finally, after men have 
 tried all their poor, halfway hedgings and 
 penalties, their petty policies and expediences 
 for material interests, and have found that the 
 larger the expansions and complications of 
 such national life and so-called order, the more 
 miserable and the more hopeless are the par- 
 tialities and the confusions, — we must return 
 to the simplicities of the Law of God, to the 
 enactment of ordinances in his Name only, 
 and to the " Thus saith the Lord " as the first 
 and final argument in all doirig and relation 
 between man and man, between peoples and 
 their organized controls, and between group 
 and group of the separate powers and publics 
 of the earth ? 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 389 
 
 Until somewhere in time and place and 
 history shall arise a Moses who shall lead a 
 yet larger, nobler Exodus out of our own false 
 traditions, our Egyptian corruptions and sen- 
 sual wisdoms, into a desert of purifying, and 
 through it to a new commonwealth of Israel, 
 must we not look back to the Moses who be- 
 lieved in God in the face of the Pharaohs, and 
 in a remote age and an unready generation so 
 antetyped the Christ himself as to prepare for 
 Him an expectant nation ; and, looking back, 
 must we not own that what he saw and be- 
 lieved could have been none other than the 
 vision and the truth which the Father giveth to 
 the Son, — which cometh only from the Father- 
 hood through the Sonhood, and which hath 
 spoken continually to the world through all the 
 prophets ? Must not this old Insight and Be- 
 lief of Moses be our hope and assurance that 
 forever in the world is something which 
 through the dark urges on into the light, and 
 in the fullness of time shall be another Di- 
 vine Coming in the Flesh, and a Reign in the 
 earthly that shall lift it up into the heavenly ? 
 
 The ceremonial law is very particular and 
 extended ; manifold and exact ; it takes much 
 
390 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 wording, much length of rehearsing and record- 
 ing. It became, as all formality and detail 
 must become, so much the life of the Jewish 
 people, so much their rallying point and foun- 
 dation of faith and polity, that its externality 
 has been the obvious thing in their history ; 
 that which other peoples, looking on and read- 
 ing the record, have come, like the Israelites 
 themselves, to regard as the chief thing in 
 their nationality ; its faith, its bond, its wit- 
 ness of their especial claim ; the matter to be 
 discussed and judged, as to its absolute truth 
 or error, its perfect, inclusive wisdom or its 
 partial, faulty, time -answering expediency; 
 whether indeed it were of any divine origin 
 at all, or only a clever human statecraft ; so 
 to decide definitely, one way or the other, the 
 verdict of after ages, whether these men of 
 the twelve tribes were actually the chosen of 
 Jehovah, to hold and show forth his truth 
 in the world, or only one of the old, early, 
 half -blind races of the earth, groping their 
 own sense-hindered way toward the far-off, 
 universal light that is yet to come. The be- 
 lief of the world has been hampered by this 
 criticism of form, instead of going straight to 
 the great, essential conception itself, which was 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 391 
 
 then already living in men's souls, and whicli 
 gave to even harsh and cumbersome ritual and 
 observance a quickening vitality. Even in the 
 mere story, that which is all along centrally 
 important, and so given by the word of Moses, 
 has been overlooked, or not even reached, 
 through this stopping to find fault with, or to 
 try to justify, the temporary outworks that 
 protected it. 
 
 All through the Book of- Deuteronomy, or 
 Recapitulation, if we pause to note, we find 
 this first, interior reality behind all law in- 
 sisted on. The grandest sayings are the 
 simplest and the briefest. That upon which 
 Moses built his wonderful order and economy 
 is the selfsame upon which Christ declared 
 to Peter that He was building his church, — 
 the inmost revelation and close-coming of God, 
 by his truth and his righteousness, to the 
 spirits of his children. 
 
 ' " What nation is there so great, that hath 
 statutes and judgments so righteous as all this 
 law, which I set before you this day ? For 
 what nation is there so great, who hath God 
 so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in 
 all things that we call upon him for ? " 
 
 " Hearken unto the statutes and the judg- 
 
392 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 ments : keep them and do them : keep thy 
 soul diligently, lest thou forget the things 
 which thine eyes have seen, and lest they de- 
 part from thine heart." 
 
 " Your eyes have seen what the Lord did. 
 Ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God 
 are alive every one of you this day." 
 
 " That day that thou stoodest before the 
 Lord in Horeb, the Lord said unto me, Gather 
 me the people together, and I wUl make them 
 hear my words, that they may learn to fear 
 Me all the days that they shall live upon the 
 earth, and that they may teach their children." 
 
 " And the Lord commanded me at that time 
 to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye 
 might do them." 
 
 The doing of the statutes, the learning of 
 the judgments, were to be the keeping near 
 and alive to God. Statutes and judgments 
 are not ceremonies and sacrifices ; these were 
 but expressions and reminders ; statutes and 
 judgments are righteousness and truth, — the 
 goodness and the knowledge of the life with 
 God. This was what Moses believed in. 
 Form was only an outgrowth. Outgrowth 
 changes. The seed principle remains the 
 same. 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 393 
 
 " Take heed to yourselves," he says, warn- 
 ing them against excess and literality in form ; 
 " ye saw no manner of similitude on the day 
 that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of 
 the midst of the fire. Take heed unto your- 
 selves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord 
 your God which he made with you, and make 
 you a graven image, which the Lord thy God 
 hath forbidden thee. . . . When ye shall cor- 
 rupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or 
 the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil 
 in the sight of the Lord your God, — I call 
 heaven and earth to witness that ye shall soon 
 utterly perish, . . . and the Lord shall scat- 
 ter you, and ye shall be left, few in number, 
 among the heathen, and there ye shall serve 
 gods, the work of men's hands," — the things 
 men love and worship, — " which neither see 
 nor hear," — nor have any soul of life in 
 them. 
 
 " But ii^from thence" (even,) " thou shalt 
 seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, 
 if thou seek him with all thy heart, and with 
 all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation, 
 and all these things are come upon thee, even 
 in the latter days " (the eleventh hour days), 
 " if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt 
 
394 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 be obedient unto his voice, he will not forsake 
 thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers 
 which he sware unto them. — For ask now of 
 the days that are past, . . . did ever people 
 hear the voice of God speaking out of the 
 midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and 
 live ? " 
 
 Fire and terror men had seen, and felt; 
 awful power had come upon them, had made 
 them afraid, and they had perished; but Is- 
 rael had heard God out of the midst of the 
 awf ulness, as by a word out of a human heart ; 
 and they had lived. " Unto thee it was 
 shewed, that thou mightest know that it was 
 the lyord," — this manifested, speaking, near- 
 coming Commander and Friend, — " he is 
 God : there is none else beside him. Out of 
 heaven," — out of the ineffable, the unap- 
 proachable, — " he made thee " (in the spirit) 
 "to hear his voice, that he might instrvct 
 thee J' and upon earth," — in the elemental 
 sign, — " he showed thee his great fire ; and 
 thou heardest his words out of the midst of 
 the fire. . . . Know, therefore, this day, and 
 consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is 
 God, in the heaven above and upon the earth 
 beneath ; there is none else. Therefore keep 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 395 
 
 his statutes and commandments, that it may 
 go well with thee." . . . 
 
 " The Lord our God made a covenant with 
 us in Horeb ; . . . not with our fathers, but 
 with us, even us, who are all of us here alive 
 this day. The Lord talked with you" — with 
 this very present genieration of you, who have 
 been born and grown to your manhood since 
 that day ; for what the Lord speaks once, He 
 speaks forever, — can we not hear the word of 
 Moses, thus declaring, sounding down to " us, 
 even us," of this late, doubting, questioning 
 time ? 
 
 " The Lord talked with you, face to face, in 
 the mount, out of the midst of the fire, saying, 
 I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee 
 out of the land of Egypt," — the old earth 
 and time of darkness and ignorance of me, — 
 " from the house of bondage," — to material 
 things only ; and " Thou shalt have none other 
 gods before me." 
 
 " Who can think that the belief of Moses, 
 and the word of God from Sinai, are not truth 
 and message to this day? Surely it is not 
 less of us than of those people waiting and lis- 
 tening under that burning mountain long ago, 
 that the Lord says unto his prophets, striv- 
 
396 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 ing with the unbelief of the ages, " O that 
 there were such an heart in them, that they 
 would fear me, and keep all my command- 
 ments, always, that it might be well with 
 them, and with their children, forever ! " 
 
 Surely it is no less than the whole spiritual 
 commonwealth of human kind that is con- 
 cerned to heed that last " Hear, O Israel," 
 after the second solemn enunciation of the Ten 
 Sayings by the borders of the Jordan : — 
 
 " The Lord our God is one Lord : 
 
 "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
 with all thy might. 
 
 " And these words, which I command thee 
 this day, shall be in thine heart : 
 
 " And thou shalt teach them diligently to 
 thy children. — And when thy son asketh thee 
 in time to come, saying. What mean the testi- 
 monies, and the statutes, and the judgments, 
 which the Lord our God hath commanded 
 you ? Then shalt thou say unto thy son. We 
 were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt ; and the 
 Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty 
 hand. — And he brought us out from thence, 
 that he might bring us in, to give us the land 
 which he sware unto our fathers. And the 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 397 
 
 Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to 
 fear the Lord our God, for our good always, 
 that he might preserve us alive, as at this day. 
 And it shall be our righteousness " (our Tight- 
 ness before God ; and our well-being with all 
 things) " if we observe to do all these com- 
 mandments before the Lord our God, as he 
 hath commanded us." 
 
 " For this commandment which I command 
 thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, nei- 
 ther is it far off. It is not in heaven, that 
 thou shoiddest say. Who shall go up for us to 
 heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear 
 it, and do it ? Neither is it beyond the sea." 
 It is beyond no sea, of time, or separation, or 
 change, or decays of governments or faiths, or 
 nations. " But the word is very nigh thee, in 
 thy mouth, and in thine heart, thou that may- 
 est do it." " The Lord thy God will circum- 
 cise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God with 
 all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou 
 mayest live." 
 
 Was that not the promulgation of the King- 
 dom? Is not Israel yet encamped upon the 
 Jordan, just outside the Country of her Prom- 
 ise ? Has not God been leading her, down the 
 years, through the wilderness, through the 
 
398 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 strifes, into the very sight and nearness of 
 what may be, whenever our willingness shall 
 meet his own good purpose? Has not the 
 same word been uttered all along: "If ye 
 will enter into life," — as men or as a people, 
 — "keep the commandments"? Is not the 
 same promise written for the believers of the 
 New Testimony that was given to them of the 
 Old ? That there should be made of them, 
 through faith in God, and life by his word, 
 " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
 an holy nation, a peculiar people," to " shew 
 forth the praises of him who hath called" 
 them "out of darkness into his marvellous 
 light?" 
 
 " Blessed are they that do his command- 
 ments ; that they may have right to the tree 
 of life," — " whose leaves are for the healing 
 of the nations," — " and may enter in through 
 the gates into the city." 
 
 "That great city, the holy Jerusalem, de- 
 scending out of heaven from God," from the 
 "new heavens" into the "new earth," when 
 aU shall be accomplished ; when " the taber- 
 nacle of God shall be with men, and he will 
 dwell with them ; and they shall be his people, 
 and God himself shall be with them, and be 
 
THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 399 
 
 their God." When He that is upon the throne 
 shall say, "Behold, I make all things new." 
 And when they that have overcome, in the 
 name and strength of their God, shall inherit 
 all things. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ENTERING IN 
 
 The Faith of Moses had been fully unfolded 
 to his people. Whether he felt, distinctly, its 
 everlasting reach or not, we find and feel in it 
 the vital truth of the life of the world, and the 
 sublime prophecy of which the great Entering 
 In of all tribes and kindreds and nations to 
 one perfect Home and Commonwealth is at 
 last to be the mighty and holy fulfillment. 
 
 But did the Leader of Israel die without 
 some sight of the final heavenly consumma- 
 tion, any more than without that of the neap- 
 ing earthly accomplishment ? 
 
 When he had spoken all these last words, 
 and had sung his great song, and gone up into 
 the top of Pisgah, was not his vision more than 
 of the little land of Canaan between the Jor- 
 dan and the sea ? Was it not rather like that 
 of John, when the Spirit carried him away to 
 a " great and high mountain," and showed him 
 the city that had the " glory of God ; " with 
 
THE ENTERING IN 401 
 
 its wall of twelve foundations, of burning pre- 
 cious stones, and its twelve gates, " every sev- 
 eral gate of one pearl," one immaculate purity, 
 by which alone the tribes should enter ? "Was 
 not the feeling of what God had prepared for 
 his own people, when He should have made 
 all people his own, that which touched him, if 
 only half aware, as he looked forth from the 
 south unto the north, and away to the shining, 
 wave-bound west, and heard the Voice, say- 
 ing, "This is the land which I sware unto 
 Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob " ? 
 
 It was not long, at least, before he knew. 
 " Thou shalt not cross over this Jordan," was 
 soon to reveal itself to him as an infinite prom- 
 ise, — beyond all ever given to the patriarchs, 
 — veiled behind a brief and small denial. 
 
 We know of him once more in such fashion 
 as signifies, with the grand simplicity of all 
 spiritual assertion, whither he had "entered 
 in" from that lonely peak of Nebo, where 
 men said "the servant of the Lord" had 
 " died," " according to the word of the Lord." 
 
 We are told of him as standing upon an- 
 other mountain afterward, within the precincts 
 of this same typical Holy Land, with the shin- 
 ing of the Eternal Light in his form and gar- 
 
402 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 ments, when his Lord, in a vision, assumed for 
 a little space the glory he had always with the 
 Father, and when from out the unseen, his 
 two prophets who had passed alike mysteri- 
 ously from the earthly, as without the mortal 
 change, into the near heavenly, with similar 
 close and swift transition came beside Him to 
 hold wonderful converse ; to part, even to his 
 disciples' sight, the veil that keeps men blind, 
 and permit the effulgence of the inner, vital 
 sphere to break forth and flash upon them its 
 supreme disclosures. 
 
 Are they not like grand stepping-stones, 
 from point to point of our long crossing to- 
 ward the eternal hope, — these mountain sum- 
 mits of vision, lifting themselves at their se- 
 rene, waiting distances, to give, each successive 
 one, a nearer and yet nearer glimpse and 
 approach for our apprehension and realizing ? 
 Horeb, — Pisgah, — that sacred " mountain 
 apart" of the Transfiguration, near Csesarea 
 Philippi, — the hiU in Galilee of the resur- 
 rection meeting, — Olivet, of the palms and 
 hosannas, and of the Ascension, — the " great 
 and high mountain " of the Apocalyptic pre- 
 monstration, — they are the heights in time 
 upon which the glory of the eternities has 
 struck with its illumination. 
 
THE ENTERING IN 403 
 
 Moses believed in the Kingdom of God 
 upon the earth ; in the direct ruling of the 
 Supreme in every heart and life, and in all 
 the affairs of men ; that there could be no com- 
 munity nor nationality except such as should 
 be formed by such ruling, and through the 
 living, inspiring Wisdom ; no government but 
 by the immediate, practical, particular Will of 
 God. He believed beforehand in the Lord's 
 Prayer. 
 
 What else did the Son of God himself de- 
 clare, — but that this Kingdom of Heaven was 
 real, integral, at hand? What else was the 
 Gospel of a new birth and life for individual 
 souls and for the race ? 
 
 What else was the vision of the Apocalypse, 
 
 — that last showing from the mountain top of 
 spiritual insight and prophecy, — but the scene 
 of the " gathering in of all things in Christ," 
 
 — in a sonhood of all humanity to God the 
 Father ; a dwelling in the one re-joined and 
 manifested sphere, the many mansions and 
 the holy City of the peoples redeemed unto 
 God out of all the earth, and abiding in his 
 Light, having no need of the sun or any lesser 
 dispensation, no need of any control but the 
 guidance of God's look and word, of any 
 
404 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 leadership or organization but of Divine Will 
 and its sweet, sure, heavenly forces; where 
 there shall be no more pain in human hearts 
 nor contradiction in human lives nor clashing 
 nor discord nor war any more among men, 
 but the leaves of the tree of life, — every fresh 
 forth-putting of an infinite growth and pro- 
 gress, ■^- shall be for healing and for peace, 
 and " God himself shall wipe away all tears 
 from off all faces " ? Where the glory and 
 honor of the kings and the nations of the 
 earth shall be brought in before the One King 
 and to the joy of the One Nation, and nothing 
 shall enter that defileth or maketh a lie, but 
 only they who are written in the Lamb's Book 
 of Life? 
 
 Toward this, in the first dispensation, Moses 
 lived, and thought, and prayed, and wrought. 
 He brought his people, by the power that was 
 given into his soul and act from God, to the 
 beginning of such a life — representatively — 
 in a new land. He established a theocracy ; 
 the only government that ever immediately 
 acknowledged and referred to God as its au- 
 thority upon the earth ; and such vitality from 
 above was in the institution, that broken up 
 as its form and centrality have been, a son of 
 
THE ENTERING IN 406 
 
 Judah is a Jew to-day, a Hebrew is a child of 
 Israel, and Jerusalem and the return of the 
 believing people to their God and to his reign 
 over them in his Holy Place are the living 
 hope and expectation that yet survive, to make 
 at least perpetual sign of that which shall be, 
 and which they who confess to the Word al- 
 ready made flesh among us, acknowledge and 
 rejoice in, — amidst all the hindrances and 
 haltings and confusions of a yet but half re- 
 deemed condition, — as a thing begun, a glory 
 surely to be perfected, an utterance gone forth 
 from Him who hath spoken nothing that shall 
 return unto Him void. 
 
 Was it not a fit time for Moses to enter in 
 
 — not to the little place and continued author- 
 ity there which to men might seem his earning 
 and reward, — ^ but to the central grand Reality 
 from which all his inspiration had been drawn, 
 
 — to those " things in the heavens " of which 
 the " pattern " had been " shown him in the 
 mount," and symbolized by him for the sons 
 of Israel ? 
 
 " He was not ; for God took him." He 
 never came down among the people from that 
 peak of Nebo. The mortal of him " died there, 
 
406 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 and the Lord buried him." What was that 
 death and burial ? How shall we dare to say ? 
 We may at least feel that it was something as 
 grand, as significant, as his life had been. 
 
 Moses, — Enoch, — Elijah, — and the Son 
 of God who was also the Son of Man ; these, 
 according to the record, passed away from 
 earth leaving no earthly behind them ; no 
 body to decay, no vestige as of a destruction. 
 What does such a record mean? For the 
 record is there ; it has been conceived of and 
 believed, to claim the least for it ; it is an 
 idea, a thought, a vital thing. What shall we 
 do with it ? 
 
 Saint Peter, on the day of Pentecost, made 
 glorious answer, declaring the resurrection : — 
 
 " Whom " (Jesus of Nazareth) " God hath 
 raised up, having loosed the pains of death ; 
 because it was not possible that he should be 
 holden of it." 
 
 There is a law of life over death ; a law by 
 which that which is temporal gives place, in 
 a quiet, natural order, to that which is eternal. 
 That which is transmutes into the thing that 
 shall be ; that which has been all alive with 
 
THE ENTERING IN 407 
 
 God hath in it no element of the perishing. 
 The body is more than the garment; death 
 is swallowed up in life. " Thou hast made 
 known unto me the ways of life," says David, 
 and Peter quotes him: "My flesh also shall 
 rest in hope, because . . . thou wilt not suffer 
 thy Holy One to see corruption." 
 
 Gently, swiftly, the spirit may detach itself 
 from the flesh ; so much may be spirit that -the 
 flesh may fall to invisible particles of its ori- 
 ginal matter, — who can tell ? We know the 
 gradual^ loathsome process that has to be hid- 
 den away out of our sight. God knows other 
 processes. Men may have all been meant 
 to die by a translation ; here and there it has 
 been possible, perhaps, to show the beautiful 
 palingenesis. Saint Paul touches the possi- 
 bility in his wonderful theory of the resur- 
 rection. " We shall not all sleep ; we shall 
 be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye : the dead shall be raised incorrupt- 
 ible and we shall be changed." Need this 
 be interpreted as a double resurrection, at a 
 literal trumpet sound, at a fixed and general 
 Last Day? Have we not possibly mistaken 
 the sublime reach of its meaning ? What was 
 dead shall disappear — shall be dissipated. 
 
408 LAST BAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 
 
 dissolved into new. life ; the spiritual, the in- 
 corruptible, shall be raised up, and instantly. 
 Is there any vrrenching in such a reading? 
 
 " No man knoweth of his sepulchre." 
 
 We must leave it there. Augustly, solemnly, 
 as he had lived, communed with Deity, and 
 given messages to men, the man Moses de- 
 parted from the earth, and was lifted up. 
 The heavens closed about him, and the earth 
 showed no grave. 
 
 Even so was the Son of Man lifted up. 
 
 And He shall draw all men unto Him. 
 
CLOSING NOTE 
 
 If in the foregoing pages, which represent 
 successive studies, made at somewhat varying 
 intervals, of the intrinsic meaning of the 
 Transactions of the Pentateuch, there seem 
 possibly some superfluous repetition of sug- 
 gested thought, let it be remembered that 
 Holy Scripture itself inevitably and constantly 
 reiterates. It is all a Deuteronomy. In the 
 final analysis there are but a few essential 
 verities that can even appear to stand sepa- 
 rately. At the heart of all is the absolute 
 Unity which we seek by any research into 
 Truth. There are but two great command- 
 ments, on which hang all the law and the 
 prophets ; and these two are like, the one to 
 the other. The deeper we investigate, the 
 more. nearly single we find all cause and law. 
 The Bible teaches with " line upon line, pre- 
 cept upon precept, here a little, and there a 
 little," of the same great things, presented 
 and re-presented in all utterance and experi- 
 ence. That the Bible does this, as our life 
 
410 CLOSING NOTE 
 
 does it, is unmistakable proof that like life it- 
 self it is of the everlasting Word and Work 
 of God. Receiving over and over, in manifold 
 repeated ways, the selfsame grand and beauti- 
 ful perceptions, — arriving over and over again 
 at the same central points by different con- 
 verging approaches, — we recognize, as we 
 could no otherwise, the interior facts of being 
 to which all human history and cognition give 
 evidence and refer. In the witnessing of two 
 or three, or many demonstrations, is each tes- 
 timony emphasized and the whole revelation 
 rounded and established.