^^ PRINCETON. N. J. ^ 
 
 Library of Dr. A. A. Hodge. Presented. 
 
 Division. 
 Section,,,, 
 Niwiber 
 
 .,.8..3...45... 
 
THE 
 
 DESERT PATHWAY 
 
 BY THE / 
 
 KEY. WILLIAM KOBERTSON, 
 
 OF HAMILTO>J, SCOTLAND, 
 
 " And He led them forth by the right -vray, that they mi^ht go to a city of 
 habitation.*' — Psalm cvii, T. 
 
 " Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples ; and they are 
 ■written for our admonition, upon -whom the ends of the world are come." — 
 1 Cos. X, 11. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 R0i3ERT CARTER & BROTPIERS, 
 
 530 BROADWAY, 
 
 18 6 3. 
 
6TKKE0TYPKD BY PRINTED BY 
 
 Smith & McDocGAL. E. O. Jknkinb, 
 
 82 «fc S4 Beekui.in-st X) North ■William-st. 
 
DEDICATORY. 
 
 This book pretends to naught but a few simple 
 thoughts written down in an interval of retirement, 
 during which it has pleased God to withdraw the 
 writer into a path of silence and trial. In such a 
 time I have been led, perhaps naturally, to seek to 
 glean somewhat among the abundant lessons and 
 consolations in the great desert-track of God's 
 chosen people. It is a story whose interest never 
 waxes old. For, at the outset of their pilgrimage, 
 the Israelites found the wilderness a void : by their 
 passage through it, they made it the wondrous path- 
 way of God forever. And so, spiritually, each one 
 in all the pilgrim multitudes He has been leading 
 since has but trodden in their steps. If, therefore, 
 in the following pages, while my quest^has been one, 
 I trust, not unfruitful to myself, I have, at the same 
 time, gathered up aught that may contain help and 
 profit to those especially who, taking up their cross 
 daily, are, in the desert-way, following their Lord, I 
 shall feel I have not missed my aim. May I also 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 add, that, in thus sending my book forth, it will 
 help me to realize the grateful thought, that, in 
 particular amongst the flock to whom I am united 
 by very dear and very solemn bonds, my ministry is 
 not altogether without a voice ? 
 
 So I commit the volume to Him whom I fain 
 would glorify, whether in weakness or in strength. 
 And, in its publication, I dedicate it to one who by 
 her true companionship has lightened for me the 
 withdrawn way wherein I have been constrained to 
 go, and in the example of her own faith and pa- 
 tience has also taught me, better than I knew, the 
 reality of many of those things which I have written. 
 
 Manse of Hamilton, 
 January, 1863. 
 
 *^* In my impressions of what may be called the scenery of the 
 Desert, I have derived much of their coloring from the well-known 
 book, " Sinai and Palestine," — by that most accomplished and elo- 
 quent of English travellers. Professor A. P. Stanley. 
 
(Rj&Ut^Ut$ 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. — Speaking to the Heart ^ 
 
 11. — The Pilgrim Meal 16 
 
 III.—" Under the Cloud" 26 
 
 lY. — "Through the Sea" 38 
 
 v.— 'The Song of Moses 55 
 
 VI. — The Bitter made Sweet 68 
 
 VII.— The Palms and Springs of Elim "TT 
 
 VIII. — Food from Heaven 85 
 
 IX. — The Smitten Rock » 100 
 
 X.— On the Hill, and in the Plain 113 
 
 XL — Division of Labor. 12*? 
 
 XII. — The Inaccessible Glory 139 
 
 XIII.—" The Voice of Words" 152 
 
 XIV.— The Similitude of God 164 
 
 XV.— The Pattern in the Mount 1'79 
 
 XVI.— The Molten Calf 1^^ 
 
 XVIL— Within the Clift 211 
 
 XYIIL— The Veiled Face • • • • 223 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 XIX. — The Sin of Str.4noe Fire 245 
 
 XX— The Graves op Lust 261 
 
 XXI. — Miriam's Humiliation 279 
 
 XXIL— Seen but Lost 291 
 
 XXIIL — Between the Dead and the Living 313 
 
 XXIY. — Thirty-seven Years' Silence 327 
 
 XXY.— The Unadvised Lips 336 
 
 XXVL— The Mountain Bier 344 
 
 XXVIL— The Brazen Serpent 358 
 
 XXVIII. — Israel's Keeper 369 
 
 XXIX. — Death at tHE Threshold 380 
 
 XXX.— Fording the Dark "Waters 393 
 
I. 
 
 "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak 
 comfortably to her."— Hos. li. 14. 
 
 It is a well-known thought that, if a man 
 had disclosed to him his future of a few 
 weeks or years forward, he could not, in 
 many cases, look into it and live. The dis^ 
 asters of the path- sickness, bereavement, 
 loss of means, sudden death of himself in 
 the midst of hopes and manhood,— these and 
 such like discoveries, into which his feet 
 advance, would utterly overwhelm him, and 
 bring the prayer to his lips, " God ! spare 
 me that way of the wilderness and the 
 flood!" And yet, strangely, it is not less 
 true that, after a man has passed through 
 some space of such a desert path, encoun- 
 tered manifold trials, like his blessed Master 
 has been '' stricken, smitten of God, and 
 
8 SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 
 
 afflicted,'' he not only comes to endure the 
 hardness patiently and well, but looking 
 back from point to point as he goes on, and 
 specially, from the last height of all, when, in 
 his soul, patience has had its perfect work, 
 he sees the way he' could not in prospect 
 have borne, in retrospect a very path of 
 light; goodness and mercy marking it with 
 their golden footprints, and such blessing- 
 gathered from it as he never could have 
 reaped had his path been that of mere earthly 
 sunniness and peace. He therefore thanks 
 God fervently at last, for the thing that would 
 have scared him, had God beforehand, like 
 the prophet's scroll, unloosed the tale. 
 
 Moses was an eminent illustration of what 
 I say. How could he have stood the sight 
 of the one hundredth part of those trials and 
 sorrows which darkened his leadership of 
 Israel through the desert — the forty years 
 long of the fire and burden of a whole nation 
 borne on his heart — the miseries, and failures, 
 and deaths, that strewed the awful line of 
 march ! Had that future, even in a few of its 
 
SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 9 
 
 scenes, been unveiled to him, his heart would 
 have died within him. But God led him on, 
 so to speak, blindfold, till, from height to 
 height, he began to realize in his courageous 
 soul the high argument whereby the Mighty 
 One was dealing with him ; and, on the 
 crowning ridge of Pisgah, in the end, not 
 only do we conceive of Moses as casting his 
 gaze forward into the Canaan he was not to 
 enter, but equally as looking back upon the 
 windings of the far desert road he and the 
 hosts he led had come, beholding the track, 
 that, at his start from Egypt, would have 
 seemed so dark and terrible, literally shining 
 and blessed with the footsteps of God. Trav- 
 ellers tell us there is a faint shado^7 of this 
 spiritual reality in nature, when, on their 
 climbing upward the steep mountain path, 
 they find the way rough, and frowning, and 
 perilous ; but, when again they look back on 
 it from the plain, they see it wind in and out 
 among the cliffs like a thread of silver. So 
 Moses, on Pisgah, got the clue of silver in 
 his hand, and ran the eye back with amaze- 
 
10 SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 
 
 ment along its beauteous stream. Could God 
 otherwise have spoken, or done, or blessed, 
 as He had in that Desert Pathway ? Were 
 its lessons not more strange and precious 
 even than the rest of the promised land, 
 immediately after the Red Sea, would have 
 l)een ? Did tlie man of God not give thanks 
 now, — did he not rejoice in all his tribula- 
 tion, — did he not extol God's way as the 
 "right way," — and did he not, like Simeon in 
 ages after, breathe out the contentment both 
 of his life and his death, and say, ''Lord, now 
 lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for 
 mine eyes have seen Thy salvation ?" 
 
 Now, it is quite plain, my reader, if you 
 once admit the thought of this, the manner 
 of God's dealing, — it becomes quite plain 
 why lie not only leads but "allures" His 
 people into the wilderness. It is that He 
 may speak comfortably to them, or rather — 
 for that is the literal reading — " speak on 
 their heart'' It is that, isolating them in 
 silence and solitariness. He may drop His 
 deepest and tenderest voice, slowly and for- 
 
SPEAKING TO THE HEART. H 
 
 ever, 07i their heart For it needs one to be 
 drawn into the cold, hard, and hidden rock, 
 ere he can find the sweetest of the honey ; it 
 needs one to be drawn into the wiklerness, and 
 to be alone and in its silence, ere he can hear 
 the sweet thrilling whisjiers of his blessed 
 Lord spoken in the ear of his soul. That 
 was signally the case with Israel, when God 
 allured them, and brought them out of Egypt. 
 In the grossness and weariness of their bond- 
 age, in the din of Egyptian cities, in the 
 blind swarm with which they hurried every 
 day, absorbed, to do their task, then to eat, 
 drink, and again to lay themselves down to 
 sleep, had God come to them with His mes- 
 sage there, they could have heard, it is true, 
 but never understood, — they might have 
 gazed up with dull eye, but only to drop to 
 their material life again. And had they been 
 transferred at a single step, so to speak, into 
 the good land, — slaves of Egypt to-day, con- 
 querors of Canaan to-morrow, — the sudden 
 leap into such a change of life would have so 
 besotted them with luxury and pride that. 
 
12 SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 
 
 had God spoken to them there again, His 
 accents would have been drowned. But the 
 intermediate desert journey met God's great 
 condition. He held them there, surrounded 
 with awfulness, and so utterly dependent on 
 Him, that He could draw near and speak to 
 their heart ; He could wean them into spirit- 
 ual understanding ; He could touch chords 
 within them that never else would have 
 vibrated; He could speak to them "Alone 
 with them alone." And was it not so in all 
 the olden time, vfhen God was wont to throw 
 His shadow palpably on human paths, — with 
 Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, 
 David, and all the prophets ? His chosen 
 spots were in desert silence. He allured them 
 apart, that there, the veil being rent. He 
 might speak to them heart to heart. Was it 
 not so in the touching appeal of Jesus once, 
 when, with all the coming and going. His dis- 
 ciples were distracted, and He said, " Come 
 ye yourselves apart into this desert place, and 
 rest a while '?" as if, in that quiet, they would 
 feel dropped into their souls His deep words, 
 
SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 13 
 
 as the silvery pebble is seen dropping to the 
 depth, not of the disturbed, but the clear 
 and silent pool. ILij it not been so with the 
 Church of Christ in her noblest seasons, when 
 she has put fortli her most heavenl}- virtues — ■ 
 in persecution or peril ? She has been made 
 to " forget her own people and her father's 
 house ;" she has been allured, that is, and 
 brought into the wilderness; and so ''her 
 Lord has greatly desired her beauty." He 
 has spoken in the thrill of His love to her 
 heart. Is it not so with each Christian life 
 now, whom God tempers in His fiery way ? 
 The stir and noises of the world hinder us, so 
 that in the manifold sound of outer things, 
 when all is well, we lose the hearing of the 
 heavenly voice altogether ; but God merci- 
 fully withdraws us where we must hear, — 
 through death, sorrow, suffering. He makes 
 solitude about the soul ; lover and friend He 
 puts far from us into darkness ; He makes us 
 feel alone ; and then, in that awful condition, 
 when there is silence, and the way is dark, 
 and the burden of the solitary life is very 
 
14 SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 
 
 heavy, He draws nigh, He stoops down close 
 upon us, as if coals of fire were on His lips, 
 He speaks to the very heart. " Did not our 
 hearts burn within us," cried one of the dis- 
 ciples, after they had journeyed with the 
 unknown Lord to Emmaus; "did not our 
 hearts burn within us, as He talked with us 
 in the way ?" So the hearts burn whom God 
 leads apart and speaks to in the desert road. 
 They awake to God as never otherwise they 
 could have done. They exclaim, as Jacob 
 did, " Surely the Lord is in this place, and I 
 knew it not." And again, the desert awful- 
 ness and beauty breaking on them, as on him, 
 "How dreadful is this place! This is none 
 other but the house of God, and this is the 
 gate of heaven!" 
 
 I mean, then, in the chapters following, to 
 retrace some of the memorable footprints 
 made in the old Desert Pathway along which 
 God led His people Israel by the hands of 
 Moses and Aaron, — to sec how, in each, there 
 stands up some symbol of His dealing with 
 the great multitude He has led spiritually 
 
SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 15 
 
 through the wilderness since, — to note how 
 these lessons gleam back on us, full of fresh 
 and solemn application yet, — and to gather 
 this, above all, that, if we are being "led of 
 the Spirit into the wilderness," we have at 
 each step the Saviour voice, " Fear not, I am 
 with thee : be not dismayed, I am thy God." 
 I trust to exhibit to the fainting pilgrim some 
 discoveries of the grace of God reserved for 
 him alone, — to cheer him with new light 
 streaming down to us from that old, old 
 story, — and to show him, as we travel in the 
 ruins of the past, that " the wilderness and 
 the solitary place is glad — that the desert 
 does rejoice, and blossom as the rose." 
 
11. 
 mxt gi(0vim Pal 
 
 This famous meal, known by the name of 
 the Passover, was ate, as a solemn pledge, at 
 the very threshold of the Israelites' escape. 
 The whole population was gathered to the 
 banquet; and, as the preparations for flight 
 were complete, and the memorable night 
 wore on, you can conceive what a picture 
 each slave hut, in its silent interior, dis- 
 closed. — the table spread, the lamb slain and 
 roasted with fire, the blood sprinkled on the 
 door-posts, the inmates standing up in eager 
 circle, equipped for instant journey, and, as 
 the light fell on their swart faces, their awe 
 of an unseen Presence, their listening for 
 a dread signal, and an occasional whisper 
 through the group, marking the deep-hushed 
 scene. No one there, I believe, felt doubtful 
 or afraid ; on the contrary, each was eager 
 
THE PILGRIM MEAL. 17 
 
 for the hour of his deliverance to strike, for 
 his hateful chains to fall off, and for the word 
 to be given that he might go free. Accord- 
 ingly, they stood impatient by the board God 
 had commanded to be spread ; and when at 
 last a note of sorrow from the Egyptian 
 dwellings round them woke on the midnight 
 air, and that note increased until it rose, as 
 from the whole land, into an exceeding great 
 and bitter cry, you can imagine with what 
 haste and exultancy they stooped to the pre- 
 pared meal,, and ate it for their flight. Moses 
 and the other leaders were already in the 
 way, summoning them to flee ; so were the 
 bitter Pharaoh and his counsellors, bitter no 
 longer, but utterly subdued at last ; so was 
 all Egypt, smitten terribly by the death, in 
 one hour, of its first-born, " from the first-born 
 of Pharaoh that sat on his throne, to the first- 
 born of the captive that was in the dungeon, 
 and all the first-born of cattle." No marvel, 
 therefore, that in the Israelites, hope ran high, 
 and that they took God's pledge in the mid- 
 night banquet eagerly. Their chains were 
 
18 THE PILGRIM MEAL. 
 
 off; the path out of their dark and long 
 bondage was free ; the sorrows of the past 
 were gone ; and, from this point, they were 
 to go forth, a nation and a name in the earth. 
 Yet it was a solemn point, that pilgrim meal, 
 had they for a moment realised it all. They 
 knew only the gladness and the safety of the 
 moment ; but were they not really standing 
 at the gateway to the dread desert-path ? — as 
 they broke and ate of the slain lamb, and as, 
 pilgrim-wise, they then crossed their blood- 
 marked thresholds out, was it not really but 
 an entering on that long and unknown path 
 of God that, ere it was done, would see the 
 youngest of them a gray-haired and worn 
 man, and the whole of that generation laid in 
 pilgrims' graves? Yea, was there one in 
 Goshen, that night of escape, who guessed 
 what a few hours of flio:ht would brins^ forth 
 — who could see but a stone's-cast down " the 
 dim and perilous way" he was about, as 
 God's pledged follower, to tread? And 
 which of them then had forethought so far, 
 that, from the passover table, he could even 
 
THE PILGRIM MEAL. 19 
 
 guess the vast measure of the path, as, in 
 God's plan, it stretched through the wilder- 
 ness before him ? Had the boldest Hebrew 
 realised a dream of that, his high-toned confi- 
 dence would have perished like lighted flax. 
 I therefore say, that, while the Israelites, by 
 the blood upon their doors, and by their feast 
 of the slain lamb, were pledged in pilgrimage 
 to God, they began that pilgrimage not 
 knowing, or rather in most blind mistaken- 
 ness as to, whither it would lead. Ah, it was 
 to be their first lesson in the Lord's way, that, 
 unbound of Pharaoh, they were to be bound 
 of God, and carried, not whither they would, 
 but whither they would not. 
 
 Now, my reader, Christ is our Passover 
 sacrificed for us ; and, amidst all the applica- 
 tions that may be made of the type in the 
 Hebrew lamb slain in Egypt, and the anti- 
 type Christ slain on the cross, there is this 
 especially for us at present — that no one can 
 enter, as a true pilgrim, into the pathway of 
 God, save through that preparation feast, the 
 crucified Christ. It was the one condition 
 
20 THE PILGRIM MEAL. 
 
 prescribed to the Israelites, the doors sprin- 
 kled with blood, the lamb slain and served 
 upon their boards ; only through that gate 
 of sacrifice did each man issue forth, an 
 equipped follower and favorite of Heaven. 
 So, only througli the blood of Jesus can any 
 one find safe entrance on the path we speak 
 of He can not else claim one help or bless- 
 ing as he goes on ; in his sorrow, he can not 
 claim God's consolation ; in his darkness, he 
 can not look up for light ; in his pain, he can 
 not draw down the hands of healing. And 
 with no pity so deep can we be moved, surely, 
 as with the pity that awakes in us when, look- 
 ing on a sufferer who has no hope and no 
 root of faith in Christ, we see him toss in his 
 distresses, and even while he cries for mercy, 
 the reality of God's grace a fable to him, and 
 the bright pages of the Word of God a blank. 
 Let no one, therefore, flatter himself, that, in 
 the day when he is tried, he can appropriate 
 to himself those comforts of the living God 
 which he only grasps who has entered on the 
 shadowed way through Christ. Christ is the 
 
THE PILGRIM MEAL. 21 
 
 first step, as He is the last. " No man," He 
 says himself, " cometh unto the Father hut 
 by me." 
 
 But what I wish to bring out more par- 
 ticularly is — the deep and awful pledge 
 given to God by any one who begins by 
 coming unto Him through Christ. I believe 
 that, by hundreds who have most earnest 
 desires to be saved, and saved by the blood 
 of the crucified Jesus, this is not considered 
 as it ought to be. They, like the mass 
 of escaping Hebrews, are ardent only to 
 be free — to pass the great line by which 
 a Yv^eary and detestable past shall be fiung 
 off, and a new world of life and safety 
 shall be begun for them ; but, in that ardor 
 for the one chief mercy — to be saved — 
 they forget, or do not know, the dread 
 consequences they accept, the pledge they 
 give, the desert pathway that is to follow 
 after. Had the veil been but lifted for a 
 moment to the fugitives from Egypt, how 
 their meal at parting would have been 
 sobered ; and, to the soul approaching Christ, 
 
22 THE PILGRIM MEAL. 
 
 and seeking Him in all sincerity, as that 
 without Whom it feels it cannot live and 
 dare not die, but did a glimpse of the 
 -way of sacrifice and trial appear beyond, 
 how, like the young man in the Gospel 
 scene, it would shrink back sorrowfully, 
 and perhaps, altogether turn away ! Mean 
 you, then, to make choice of Christ as the 
 portion of your soul? Learn it is no light 
 compact, but a binding of the very heart 
 to Him and to His bitter cross, fo7^ ever. 
 How can it otherwise be ? The very na- 
 ture of the case implies that, if we pledge 
 ourselves to Christ, we cannot hold by 
 Him and hold by the life we have hith- 
 erto lived in the world also. Who could 
 dream of such a monstrous union ; or 
 who, dreaming of it, could effect it for 
 a moment ? No : the moment we take so 
 great a step as to choose Christ, the poles 
 of our life necessarily shift ; we get a new 
 axis to revolve on ; and just as, if the 
 poles of this our globe shifted into new 
 sockets, there would be immense and fear- 
 
THE PILGRIM MEAL. 23 
 
 ful change — seas would be thrown from 
 their beds to overflood continents and hills, 
 old shores would sink, and new ridges and 
 a new earth, breaking from the depth, 
 would come to light — so the moment any 
 life clasps hands in pledge with Christ, 
 the balance of the old is gone, the way 
 that has been submerged and broken up, 
 the brightness and beauty that were re- 
 joiced in perish, and the new heavens and 
 the new earth of God's way must come. 
 Think of these things solemnly, my reader. 
 Seek not Christ in light, unreflecting mood, 
 as so many, seeking mere ease and safety, 
 do : seek Him in that lofty, deep-forecast- 
 ing spirit that, while it plights itself to 
 Him in an hour of joyful banquet and 
 sweet communion, sees written next step 
 beyond, " Strait is the gate, and narrow 
 is the way that leadeth unto life." Did 
 not the saints find it so in early times ? 
 Happy was their first finding of their Lord ; 
 but, ere long, they discovered also how 
 true, that they must follow Him " into 
 
24 THE PILGRIM MEAL. 
 
 prison and to cleath'^ — that the disciple 
 was not greater than his Lord, nor the 
 servant than his master — that it was their 
 part, from which none might shrink, to 
 drink of the cup of which He had drunk, 
 and to be baptized with the baptism 
 wherewith he had been baptized. And 
 though our modern time is changed, so 
 that the way for us is not now the fiery 
 way of persecution and death, yet does 
 not all true experience of taking up with 
 Christ tell that the strait gate and the 
 narrow way is still the condition of the 
 cross — that the cup is still one of bit- 
 terness, and the baptism one of fire, and 
 that the Lord Jesus, thorn-crowned and 
 sorrowful as of old, stands in the bleed- 
 ing path, repeating, as he did then, "If 
 any man. will come after Me, he must deny 
 himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
 Me." That first step in Christ, therefore, 
 must be a step in which the A^ery life is 
 given. Be thoroughly convinced of that, 
 my reader, ere you go further in the strange 
 
THE PILGRIM MEAL. 25 
 
 pathway of God ; for it is written at the 
 altar where you first eat of the flesh of 
 the Son of man, and drink of His blood — 
 " Whosoever findeth his life shall lose it, 
 and whosoever losetli Ms life for My sake 
 shall find it" — John adds — "unto life eter- 
 nal." 
 
 2 
 
III. 
 
 In two or three marches, the flying thou- 
 sands of Israel had quitted the green land of 
 Goshen. They had taken leave of its sunny 
 sward and the shade of its leafy boughs, and 
 now, in their vast multitude, were hanging on 
 the edge of the wilderness. With its dreary, 
 uncharted world before them where to choose, 
 it was a moment big with helplessness and 
 uncertainty. But the gloom, we may sup- 
 pose, that did not fail to gather for a time on 
 the prospect, was as rapidly dispelled ; for as 
 they moved on, a sailing Cloud, to which the 
 silent air had given birth, was seen to shape 
 itself into a mighty pillar, to take place in the 
 very van of the host, and, as it reached in its 
 column higher than the eye could follow, to 
 reveal itself as the tent, as the rolling gar- 
 ment of the Present God. And not only in 
 
27 
 
 the day-time, when the heat was great, and 
 the throng either travelled languidly or rested 
 altogether, — not only then was the cloud as a 
 cool shadow thrown across the camp, but in 
 the night, when the fugitives were afoot to 
 benefit by the cooler air, but, without guide, 
 would have stumbled in the black wastes, 
 then the cloud became luminous with fire, 
 and glowed against the dark in lambent 
 beauty. In this cloud was the half-hidden, 
 half-revealed Presence that was to be with 
 the desert wanderers to the end. It never 
 deserted the camp in its worst days — it rested 
 over it when it slept — it went before it to 
 mark the way when it awoke — it hung over 
 the next spot where it should pitch and again 
 repose. And not only so, but when, as in 
 the case of the pursuit of Pharaoh, to appear- 
 ance death was in the front of Israel, death 
 also in the rear, it went behind instead of 
 before, coming as a dread blind between the 
 Egyptians and their prey — to the latter burn- 
 ing through the night with flame, to the for- 
 .mer showino; a side of thick smoke and dark- 
 
28 '*' FNDER THE CLOUD/' 
 
 cess. So that the God4nhabited cloud was 
 at once a guide nnd a shield ; it showed the 
 hosts of Moses the way wherein they should 
 go — to an eye that could have pierced on 
 through all the weary stages of the desert, it 
 was, so to speak, a continuous avenue or 
 vista, shrouding, safe and sacred, the long 
 line of march the escaping people were to 
 take ; and it was also a veil of angry fire to 
 all enemies without, either darkening and 
 confounding their way with vapor of smoke, 
 or shooting forth tonges that made them 
 shrivel and perish. As we shall see pres- 
 ently, in the case of Pharaoh and his furious 
 chase, it was but needed that God should look 
 out on him from the cloudy screen, fasten on 
 him the eyes that are as a flame of fire, and 
 at the one glance, the trouble both of fear 
 and of destruction fell on him and his. No 
 marvel, then, this Cloud was a banner such 
 as displayed to the camp of Israel noble 
 things. It was as a break in the silent 
 heaven of the providence of God, letting 
 them palpably behold, in specimen or glimpse, 
 
"UNDER THE CLOUD." 29 
 
 the vast overshadowing Presence that, above, 
 around, beneath, bore them in the hollow of 
 its hand. Just as in any exquisite machinery 
 of human workmanship, such as in the stately 
 steam-vessel moving gloriously on upon the 
 waters, you find not the secret of its so calmly 
 traversing the wave, till a door is opened for 
 you, and you get a glance into the multi- 
 tudinous shafts plying in its depths — so the 
 heaven of divine working was around the 
 desert ; but the Israelites understood and 
 knew not till, in the pillared cloud, a lattice, 
 so to speak, was opened, and through that 
 they saw flashes of the mighty God, Who was 
 over all, blessed for ever. 
 
 Who now can doubt that of that shadow 
 we have, at this moment, the reality ? If 
 there was one lesson more than another, my 
 reader, taught the disciples by their Lord ere 
 He left the earth, it was this lesson of His 
 Saviour-presence that was to be. It was the 
 lesson He gave them deliberately to study in 
 the forty days betwixt His resurrection and 
 ascension. He lingered during that time ixx 
 
30 
 
 earthly scenes, but not as He had been. He 
 went and came mysteriously among' His fol- 
 lowers. He was now in the midst of them, 
 flesh and blood ; He now vanished from 
 before their eyes, as a spirit. He hovered on 
 the boundary between the two worlds : one 
 moment gleaming on the darkness of the 
 earthly side, next moment fading away into 
 the brightness of the heavenly side ; and the 
 latter more and more, that He might draw 
 the eyes of observers, such as the disciples 
 were, on and up ; train them to look, not at 
 the seen, but the unseen ; teach them to con- 
 ceive a better, nobler Presence than the old 
 presence of the body ; further off, yet nearer ; 
 more spiritual, yet more true ; extending 
 from them up to the throne of heaven, yet 
 close, in its tenderness, to their very hearts ; 
 till, when the lesson was fairly read, and the 
 great idea had seized a hold upon them that 
 could not die, their Lord passed finally away 
 from material sight. His last words on Beth- 
 any, " Lo, / am loitli you alivay, even unto 
 the end of the world." And was it not this 
 
31 
 
 Saviour-presence that was deepened in tliem 
 in the fire of Pentecost? Was it not this 
 made their light and safeguard in their thou- 
 sand perils after ? And has the reality not 
 been snatched up by all holy, suffering hearts, 
 by all weary lives, by all followers of Christ 
 since, who, in their pathway on the earth, 
 have gone on " enduring as seeing Him who 
 'is invisible," that there is this Saviour-pre- 
 sence, vast as the span of heaven, yet revealed 
 to us near as, yea, nearer than, the pillared 
 cloud of the desert, on the right hand and on 
 the left, sleepless in the night, as in the day, 
 going with us where we go, dwelling with us 
 where we dwell, and breathing such a voice 
 into the ear as, " Fear not : for I have 
 redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy 
 name ; thou art Mine. When thou passest 
 through the waters, I will be with thee ; and 
 through the rivers, they shall not overflow 
 thee: when thou walkest through the fire, 
 thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the 
 flame kindle upon thee." I ask if any 
 redeemed soul would not give up all, a thou- 
 
32 " UNDER THE CLOUD.'^ 
 
 sand times, ere it would give up this living, 
 real, face-to-face Presence of its God ? How 
 could it, wanting this Presence, live ? — how 
 could it die ? 
 
 I am aware that, when we speak thus, it 
 is ready to be asked by some. How can 
 we know at all times we are guided and 
 shielded by the holy Presence? How can 
 we be sure that each day's step we take 
 is a step beneath the cloud — that each 
 day's course, even when we design it as 
 best we can, is not a wandering of our 
 own into the wilds, but a clear stage for- 
 ward in the way led for us by the foot- 
 prints of God ? The Hebrews saw the cloud, 
 as it rose or again settled on their path, 
 and could be, therefore, under no mistake ; 
 but how can we, without some sign, be 
 always confident, and not fear rather that 
 we often make a guess-work of our life, 
 even when we speak of casting all upon, 
 and being guided in all by, our Saviour- 
 God ? I answer, that it is in this great case 
 as in the faint figure of a common earthly 
 
" UNDER THE CLOUD.'' 33 
 
 case. For example, where there are the 
 bonds of deep affection, as in the love of 
 child and parent, it is well known how an 
 atmosphere of sweet instinct, so to speak, 
 breathes between the two; there is such 
 a union and communion of the two lives, 
 that the child will instinctively feel a pre- 
 sence round it even when the parent is 
 not there — will more than guess, will hiow^ 
 the parent's v/ill — will catch the voice, the 
 light, the influence, the love of the pa- 
 rent on its face and heart, and will be 
 led by these without words, and come 
 through such training, such feeling forth 
 of its child love and obedience, to do, ulti- 
 mately and surely, just the very thing the 
 /" parent would desire. The same is true of 
 two friends whose hearts are one : inter- 
 course between them is of such a sort, that 
 the one is instinctively led by the other, 
 feels the shadow of his influence, goes by 
 the principles his life sheds forth, and, out 
 of deep heart-intimacy, does, beyond mis- 
 take, the very things his living voice, if 
 
tC TTXTT^,:,T, mTTT:, ^t /^ttt^ " 
 
 34 "under the cloud 
 
 by his side always, would inspire. Simi- 
 larly with those even divided from us by 
 death, but whose spirit we have drunk: 
 you know it in the case of beloved ones, 
 v^hose wishes we sacredly fulfil long after 
 they are in their graves — whose power over 
 us is deeper, dead, than when they lived : 
 you know it even in the case of writers, 
 the genius of whose books we have breathed 
 until they have become a very part of us, 
 and, as we obey the moulding of their 
 thoughts, we speak of them rightly as 
 
 " Those dead, but sceptred kings, 
 Who rule us from their urns." 
 
 What are these but shadows from the inti- 
 macy between redeemed souls and Christ? 
 I may not hear His voice, nor see the 
 cloud, as the Hebrews saw it, on my path ; 
 but I live, as my daily sustenance, in the 
 air of His love — I am familiar with His 
 Way, and Word, and Life — I put forth sails 
 to catch the breathing of His Spirit — by 
 earnest prayer, I bring down His hands 
 
" UNDER THE CLOUD." 35 
 
 to mine, that tliey may grasp the helm — I 
 steer by the chart of His blessed Book — in 
 holier ordinance and sacrament, I climb, 
 ever and again, to the watch-house of the 
 topmast, that I may see, yet more and 
 more, " the King in His beauty, and the 
 land that is very far off;" and, in all that 
 acquainting of my soul with God — that 
 travelling to and fro between the springs 
 and heart of my life and His — that dwell- 
 ing of my soul under the shadow of the 
 Almighty — I cannot hut be in the right 
 way — I cannot but interpret to myself, 
 without words, but instinctively, as the very 
 readiest motions of the heart, what the 
 blessed Lord would have me do — I cannot 
 but move, in the blackest day and the 
 sorest perplexity, as certainly and as safely 
 as if I heard an articulate voice talk to 
 me, and say, " This is the way ; walk ye 
 in it." I grant that an unprayerful strange- 
 ness between the soul and Christ, an ac- 
 quaintance with Him rarely and briefly made 
 and coldly entertained — I grant, at once, 
 
36 "under the cloud." 
 
 tliat tliat never will or can give security that 
 a man's way, in any given circurastances, is 
 God-ordered and right, however he may speak 
 of following God's guidance and being re- 
 signed. The words, on such a one's lips, are 
 simple mockery. But not so with him the 
 very breath of v/hose existence is, "For me 
 to live is Christ." He dwells beneath the 
 cloud. To him that Saviour-presence is more 
 palpable than earth, sea, or sky. These are 
 the shadovrs — that the substance. In the day- 
 time of his distress, it lies over him a cool 
 covert from the heat ; in the night-time, when 
 a thousand terrors beset the soul — oh, in the 
 night-time of grief, by reason of the very 
 background of the darkness, the lustrous Pre- 
 sence in the cloud becomes a fire ! The dark- 
 ness round the sufferer is made as the light. 
 Who would have seen and felt that glow of 
 Christ's love, but for the blackness first, and 
 the bitterness of the night of fear ? Would 
 the bereaved have leaned on Him so near, if 
 their other stays had not gone ? Would the 
 ey^s have seen His beauty so intense, if the 
 
^' UNDER THE CLOUD." 37 
 
 other faces of their love had not perished ? 
 Ask the sorrowful, all whose help and hope 
 in man have died ; ask the poor martyr, go- 
 ing to the stake ; ask the saint, living long 
 years, and at last dying on the rack ; ask the 
 pilgrims and soldiers of God, who in all ages 
 have upheld sinking causes, have contended 
 one against a thousand, and have held life 
 cheap, that truth might triumph — and what 
 say they, in their sore and evil hour ? Is 
 there mistrust upon their brow ? On the con- 
 trary, is the eye not bright, the brow calm, 
 and the gaze upward, fastened on the Saviour- 
 cloud ? Have these not dwelt secure ; and, 
 from the very depths, have they not cried, not 
 in pitifulness, as we would often think, but in 
 victory, '^ God is our refuge and strength; He 
 is a present help in all trouble ?" We cannot 
 explain these things, my reader, save by the 
 deep reality of that Immanuel Who is the 
 Guide at once and the Shield of the pilgrim's 
 pathvray — in a pillar of cloud by day, in a 
 pillar of fire by night. 
 
ly. 
 
 The story of the passage through the Red 
 Sea marked itself so deeply in the traditions, 
 in the poetry, in the whole sacred life and 
 memory of Israel, that not only in the back- 
 ground of the Old Testament annals does its 
 impress remain the grandest and most majes- 
 tic ; but, transfused through those rich reli- 
 gious hues we borrow to this day from the 
 Hebrews' Bible when we want the very 
 expression of the heart, this great event has 
 had its fame spread throughout the Avorld. 
 The passage was designed of God to be, as it 
 were, the last clear step of His people from 
 bondage into freedom, — from the crushing- 
 confines of Egypt into the broad desert, — 
 from the namelessness of Goshen into the 
 rank and triumph of a God-guided nation. 
 It was as if, in the bed of the Red Sea, He 
 
 83 
 
"THROUGH THE SEA." 39 
 
 drew the deep line — by the force of His own 
 right arm He made the Israelite hosts to 
 cross ; He then closed the gap ; to the last 
 spent force of Egypt, as it hastened up in pur- 
 suit, He said, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but 
 no further!" and there, breaking the bond 
 between it and Israel for ever, He parted the 
 enslaved past from the noble future, and in 
 witness thereof to the Israelites, as they clus- 
 tered on the thither side. He showed the 
 Egyptians, terrible in their wrath and oppres- 
 sion no longer, but mere corpses, dead on the 
 sea-shore. 
 
 This great event, which so started them on 
 their wilderness history, was deliberately 
 thrust by God in the Israelites' way ; for we 
 read that in their first flight there was the 
 nearer road to Canaan through the region of 
 Philistia, by which they might have traversed 
 the distance in a few days' journey. But 
 God, of set purpose, led them not in that 
 direction ; because the Philistines were fierce 
 and warlike, and the newly emancipated 
 slaves, unpractised in the use of arms, would 
 
40 "THROUGH THE SEA." 
 
 have been scattered in their terror before 
 them, and at the very ontset lost. Therefore, 
 avoiding the route so direct and short, the 
 great Guide of Israel led the multitude in a 
 wide circle, their faces away from Canaan 
 altogether, down among the sandy flats by 
 the Red Sea shore, and southward along its 
 wave. What mxeant this bewildering devia- 
 tion — this gratuitous placing of a deep, 
 impassable flood between the fugitives and 
 the good land ? Was it not folly and mad- 
 ness in the leadership of Moses? Did not 
 Pharaoli and his people think so, when it was 
 reported their escaped bondsmen were blindly 
 entangled in the wastes about Migdol and 
 Pi-hahiroth — when, summoning their chariots 
 and horses, they made after them in chase — 
 and, when coming in sight of their vast wan- 
 dering crowd, they beheld them in the very 
 mouth of danger, the Red Sea in their front, 
 cliffs and mountains frowning to meet them 
 in the south, and now the Egyptians hanging 
 in an armed cloud upon their rear ? What 
 palpable misguiding of the miserable fugi- 
 
"THROUGH THE SEA." ' 41 
 
 tives was this ? and was there not some reason 
 in their complaint, when, looking here at the 
 short road to Canaan denied them, and look- 
 ing there at the complicated dangers they 
 had literally courted and rushed upon instead, 
 they cried bitterly to Moses, and said, " Were 
 there no graves in Egypt, that you brought 
 us out to die in this wilderness?" 
 
 Yet, my reader, in a few hours how deeply 
 would these murmurers own the care and 
 wisdom of their God ? What was it but an 
 instance of the contrast we have rife at this 
 day — the short-sightedness of man, the far- 
 sightedness of God ? Natural guidance would 
 have led the Israelites by the near way 
 through Philistia, but the shock of arms they 
 must in that case have met in their passage 
 through its defiles was the very last thing 
 they could sustain; had they but seen war, 
 they would have turned and fled; whereas 
 the other path was suited much more to what 
 they could bear : the barrier of the sea, the 
 long round, the hills hemming them about, 
 and the hot pursuit of Pharaoh bristling in 
 
42 *' THROUGH THE SEA." 
 
 their rear; even all these were really less 
 formidable to them, because God had been 
 for many days working great wonders in the 
 land in their behalf ; some confidence, there- 
 fore, was developed in them, that His arm 
 was not shortened nor His ear heavy; there 
 was expectation that the marvels He had 
 done in the past, in this great crisis He would 
 excel now; and, as they hurried on, bewil- 
 dered and in terror, they still were less dis- 
 mayed than had their ranks been broken by 
 some bloody onset in the Philistine desert. 
 When the waters parted at their feet, and 
 made a way for them to cross, and when, 
 crossed over, they saw these same waters 
 close, a grave above their enemies, they felt 
 this guidance of their God right, and sang a 
 song of thanksgiving. So with us in the 
 desert way ; one path branches off, quick, 
 and apparently the best ; but that way lies, 
 we shall say, the heart-wound of family 
 bereavement, and a certain nature is not 
 practised yet in God's grace, or of strong 
 faculty enough to bear that pain, and it is, 
 
"• TPIROUGH THE SEA. 43 
 
 therefore, turned aside into the long path of 
 personal sickness instead ; tedious days elapse, 
 broken health makes whole years what seems 
 to us a track of waste and misery, and death 
 in haunting shapes shuts us in ; but still we 
 are in a condition spiritually to endure all 
 this better than the other; and when God 
 opens at last the passage of deliverance, and 
 we go through the worst terrors dry-shod, 
 looking back we see how wise He, how fool- 
 ish we ; we praise His mercy that He put not 
 on us what we could not bear, but that He 
 put on us what, through His grace, and to 
 our own signal profit, we have borne. So, 
 again, some could not stand the swift desola- 
 tion that fell on Job ; God, therefore, leads 
 these about, trying them, and seeing what is 
 in their heart, through mingled fortune ; as 
 He did in the trial and tempering of David. 
 So again, we pray for one cup of life ; but in 
 that cup there may be the short, sharp shrift 
 of sudden death, which would be a sorry 
 case for some ; wherefore God gives into our 
 hands another cup, deeper and more bitter, as 
 
44 ^' THROUGH THE SEA." 
 
 we think, by far, for with it there comes slow 
 decline, a broken energy just when we were 
 keenest to be up with those who are passing 
 us in the race ; with it there come disappoint- 
 ments and the forcible bending aside of all 
 the aims we held dear in life ; but what then ? 
 it is all more profoundly answerable for us ; 
 the deep attractive colors of life gradually 
 pale ; death, as we near it, opens in a glorious 
 gateway, and we pass to the further shore, 
 owning the nobleness of God's manner, and 
 our song full of His name for ever. Hast 
 thou not, my soul, in secret thought, felt 
 the force of these tender outbreaks of God's 
 dealing ? how He tempers every wind to the 
 life it blows upon ? how the near and hasty 
 way that so invites us^ is not always His 
 chosen way, often the contrary ? how, while 
 we take the short earthly view. He takes for 
 us the far heavenly view ? how, while we 
 urge vehemently in one direction, whither 
 lie loss and death, He draws us in another 
 direction, '^ in a way we know not, in a path 
 we have not known," but whither, if we have 
 
" XHROUGH THE SEA. 45 
 
 some patience, some trust in God, some 
 iiplooking out of the darkness around us into 
 His light, lie victory, and an heart changed 
 and sanctified, and the gain at last of eternal 
 life ? Hast thou not, my soul, flown more 
 home to God in such meditations as these, 
 and cried, " This God is my God — He will be 
 my guide, even unto death !" 
 
 But vfe return to the passage of the sea. 
 It was evening as the first ranks of the long 
 Israelite train, appearing through the defiles 
 of Migdol, caught sight of its blue waters; 
 then slowly the multitude wound forward; 
 the low ground on the shore was blackened 
 with its numbers, and the eyes of all, we may 
 be sure, sought what was to be next. In the 
 westering sun, it must have been a striking 
 scene : in front, the deep, dark sea ; far across 
 it, against the eastern sky, the pearl lines of 
 the hills of Asia ; to the south, the gigantic 
 barrier of cliffs, forbidding all way in that 
 direction ; and then, behind, on the heights 
 which the Israelites had just passed, the 
 troops of Pharaoh gathering in an ominous 
 
46 " THROUGH THE SEA. 
 
 cloud. It looked like the very net of ruin ; 
 and as the light of day passed, and the short 
 twilight deepened quickly into darkness, of 
 course every fear was magnified, and the cry 
 of reproach against Moses rose throughout 
 the camp. He was not wanting in that ter- 
 rible hour. Yet what was his expedient? 
 Nought but that they should '' stand still, and 
 see the salvation of the Lord!" Was it not 
 like wild mockery to speak thus in face of the 
 tumultuous thousands ? Yet the heroic con- 
 fidence of the man may have struck a mo- 
 ment's calm ; when, strange to say, the order 
 next — straight, too, from the lips of God 
 Himself — was, '^ Speak to the children of 
 Israel that they go forward /" Were the two 
 admonitions not in contradiction? or, if not 
 so, how was the go forward to be obeyed ? 
 The feet of the people were already washed 
 by the lapping wave — were they to walk 
 blind and desperate into its depths? No, 
 neither blind nor desperate, certainly, but 
 with perfect trust in God even here. For, as 
 the first steps moved forward on the beach, 
 
'' THROUGH THE SEA. 47 
 
 God opened up their way. By His command 
 Moses stretched his rod over the deep, and im- 
 mediately there was heard the rising wind, and 
 the waters, as the Israelite feet came on, were 
 found to part. The awful march began ; the 
 sea stood up like walls ; and, as the Paschal 
 moon rose, throwing splendor on the storm, 
 the columns of Israel in silence traversed the 
 deep cleft cut for them, following Him 
 " Whose way is in the sea, and His path in 
 the great waters, and His footsteps are not 
 known!" By the dawn of next day, all was 
 over. The cloudy pillar had gone behind, 
 baffling the Egyptians in the night ; and 
 when, in foolhardy venture, they had rushed 
 after their escaping prey into the deep, God 
 took them at the dreadful vantage ; first 
 troubling them with His fiery glance, so that 
 their chariot wheels came off, and they drave 
 heavily; and then, when, dismayed, they 
 would have fled, turning the wind and sea 
 against them, so that, in the struggling day- 
 dawn, the whole host was overswept and 
 drowned. To the Israelites, on the other 
 
48 " THROUGH THE SEA." 
 
 shore, was it not all as a dream ? A few 
 hours ago, they had been deep-entangled 
 and helpless ; now, at the touch of God, the 
 whole elements of night and evil were broken 
 up and vanished round them like the shadovf s 
 of some dissolving view ; and while their 
 worst foes, the Egyptians, whom they had 
 seen and cowered from at nightfall, they 
 should now, save for a few scattered corpses, 
 see no more for ever, they themselves, out of 
 all that death and ruin, were lifted up, their 
 feet set upon a rock, and all their goings 
 established! It was a comment, more than 
 speech could make, on the two watchwords 
 given the host in the crisis of the night : 
 "Stand still, and see;" and again, "Go for- 
 ward!" 
 
 We have asked if these two watchwords 
 were not seemingly in contradiction. Not 
 with the Israelites, assuredly ; and in the holy 
 teachings whereby God has perfected His 
 people since, never ; but the contrary. As 
 for the Israelites, they had reached a point of 
 last perplexity, when heart or hand of flesh 
 
''through the sea." 49 
 
 could do no more. But it was God's way ; 
 and then it was they were adjured to " stand 
 still and see " — to cast their cause forward 
 upon Him, with eyes raised ardently to meet 
 His salvation ; while, in response to that 
 trust, came the command next, " Go for- 
 ward ;" hardly one step in obedience to 
 which had been taken — taken in the black 
 night — taken in the teeth of impossibilities, 
 as it would seem — taken in sublime and abso- 
 lute faith — when God justified the deed, a 
 path opened, and, as it opened, night and its 
 horrors gave back like rolling shadows, and 
 the God-guided host passed, not to safetj 
 only, but to victory. So, not otherwise with 
 those who have followed in the pathway of 
 God. There have been moments when, in 
 the straits of hard and perilous duty, they 
 have been arrested ; every frown has been 
 against them ; every menace has threatened 
 them ; and, in the solitude of an utterly help- 
 less, friendless hour, the spirit, shrinking, has 
 begun to ask if retreat would not be best. 
 But then has been the moment, in a strong, 
 
50 " THROUGH THE SEA. 
 
 pure conscience, to stand still and look up, 
 referring all to God. And never has such 
 confidence looked in vain ; for, from that 
 dark point of issue where the soul has 
 paused, the word has been, not retreat but 
 forward — deeper yet in difficulty, to closer 
 quarters in the battle ; and as the dauntless 
 step, to the world's amazement, has pressed 
 on, forthwith the network has unravelled — 
 God has made for it a way, deepening, bright- 
 ening, scattering, step by step, fear and dark- 
 ness in the light of victory. Thus the course 
 of all martyrs and confessors and holy lives, 
 who, in the face of an angry world, have 
 asserted the truth and purity of God, speak 
 to us strikingly. They have all had their 
 crises, when it was a time with them of soli- 
 tariness and fear; but, standing still, they 
 have appealed to God ; they will not go back, 
 but they will appeal to Him ; and, conscience, 
 truth, God's word, urging them, they will go 
 forward, forward, though it should be into the 
 very hungeringof the jaws of death, when God 
 has at that point unfolded glorious paths for 
 
" THROUGH THE SEA. 51 
 
 them, and the blackness and hostility of one 
 day changed into triumph for them and for 
 their cause the next. And so now, at this 
 hour, in the thickening of adversity, how 
 many souls are cast down as to the grave ! 
 " All these things are against me," they 
 exclaim, in the cry of Jacob. And certainly 
 there are cases, un exaggerated, of sickness, 
 or of earthly loss, or of spiritual despond- 
 ency, or of forlorn desertedness in life, in 
 which the horizon closes in like night ; every- 
 thing without is bleak and sorrowful, and 
 within there is as the last chill upon the 
 heart. Oh, how good then to hold thyself 
 still in God ; to gather up all the grace within 
 thee ; to bestir thy soul ; to revive its con- 
 fidence ; and, according to the watchword of 
 Moses, as he faced the blackening tide, to 
 " stand still, and see the salvation of the 
 Lord!" Yerily, thou follower of the Cross, 
 it is no vain or foolish confidence. The other 
 watchword, it is true, may startle thee : " (xo 
 forward^ deeper, that is, still in sorrow, appa- 
 rently down into the very billows of the 
 
52 " THROUGH THE SEA." 
 
 night; but it is the counterpart of the " Stand 
 still, and see ;" and if thou hast faith and 
 patience and courage to obey, thou art on 
 the very border of the opening way of God ; 
 before thy feet He will divide the waters, and 
 thou wilt pass through, not to be safe only, 
 but to be raised on a rock of brightness and 
 of praise for ever. 
 
 Learn, then, the value of the two watch- 
 words of the Red Sea. They deserve to be 
 woven on the Christian's banner, not less than 
 on Israel's, as the twin signals of his course. 
 Far from being in contradiction, they are one. 
 They are word and counter-word — they are 
 obverse and reverse of the one medallion — 
 they are strophe and antistrophe of one song. 
 What ! is it answer to our expectation and 
 our prayer, you say, as we stand still and see 
 the salvation of the Lord, that we are bidden 
 go forward, when it is our very standing 
 point, that further we cannot go — we are at 
 the waves' edge, and to press on is death? 
 Yes, it is answer ; but then, in that moment 
 we are elevated from our mere human energy 
 
*' THROUGH THE SEA." 53 
 
 to lean all on God ; and in the greatness of 
 that new state, we can " do all things through 
 Christ which strengtheneth us," as says St. 
 Paul ; the sea is gone, and our way is plain. 
 marvel of alternate trust and action, pray- 
 ing and doing, looking up to God and going 
 forward ! How many thousands have been 
 the victories written on the Cross that have 
 been thus achieved ! Look at that one glori- 
 ous record in the 107th Psalm. The wan- 
 derer in the wilderness is as he would die of 
 thirst ; he cries to God ; the way opens, and 
 he is in the city of habitation. The fettered 
 captive prays from his dungeon ; he is in that 
 hour free. The sufferer from his sickbed 
 sighs his pain ; and he is whole. The sailor, 
 tossing in the storm, stretches out his hands ; 
 and he is floating into the haven of rest. 
 What are these but the instant rescue of our 
 God ? Oh, never blench from this old simple 
 faith. " Out of the depths have I cried unto 
 Thee, God." ''The waters saw Thee, 
 God : the waters saw Thee : they were afraid: 
 the depths also were troubled. The clouds 
 
54 "through the sea." 
 
 poured out water : the skies sent out a sound : 
 Thine arrows also went abroad. The voice 
 of Thy thunder was in the heavens : the light- 
 nings lightened the world : the earth trem- 
 bled and shook." " Thou leddest Thy peo- 
 ple like a flock by the hand of Moses and 
 Aaron." 
 
V. 
 
 Could there be a greater contrast than be- 
 tween the breaking of that morning to Israel 
 on the Arabian shore, and the deepening of 
 the last night about them, as they still stood 
 on the shore next Egypt ? In the one case, 
 it was the picture of a great huddled multi- 
 tude, not knowing but their next step was to 
 be death ; fear and night came together ; and, 
 in despite of the glow of God's presence in the 
 cloud, and the fearless confidence with which 
 Moses walked and spoke, the scene Yras one, 
 wild, confused, and suggestive, everywhere 
 the alarmed gaze looked, of one terror worse 
 than another. In the other case, the morning 
 breaks in its eastern fairness ; not an Israelite 
 has been lost in the strange passage of the 
 night ; the migrating thousands are arrayed 
 on the white sandy slopes along the Asiatic 
 
 55 
 
56 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 edge of the Red Sea, and from thence, look- 
 ing back, they have the deep black gulf of 
 separation rolling its waters calmly at their 
 feet — beyond, the spot of last night's fear, still 
 enough now — ^behind that again, the long sil- 
 ver-hued ridge of hills screening the dread 
 land whence they had escaped. Who of them 
 could enough realise the change ? Look long 
 and earnestly, as they must have done, they 
 could not but think how beyond those hills 
 lay what they should never see again — the 
 teeming valley of the Nile, in which they and 
 their fathers had been slaves, the cities of its 
 wealth and old civilisation, the temples, and 
 the power, and the wondrous Egyptian life 
 that had flung on them such a shadow. Deep 
 now was the gulf between, and for ever. 
 Here the waters that divided ebbed and 
 flowed as the boundary line of God — ever 
 and anon a pale relic of the smitten hosts of 
 Pharaoh turning up upon the beach to tell 
 how utter was the severance ; and henceforth 
 Israel was to turn to scenes how different far ; 
 to the wide, free desert, where a builded city 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES. 57 
 
 there was none, where a human sound scarce 
 ever broke the silence, nature in its wildness 
 roamed at large, and far as eye could reach, 
 there was no check or bound to their going 
 whither they chose. It was just upon the 
 edge, then, of this new life and world, the 
 delivered people, in the glorious break of 
 that morning, stood ; and as they ran over all 
 that God had done for them, and specially 
 over the mighty redemption of the night, no 
 marvel that their hearts swelled in praise — 
 deep called unto deep — the deep grave of the 
 Egyptians murmuring before them to the 
 deep tumult of rejoicing and of awe within 
 their souls ; and Moses, standing forth at their 
 head, gave voice to the universal heart in his 
 memorable song. Nothing simpler, grander 
 than this ever came from human lips. As, 
 inspired of God, the strain rose and fell 
 throughout the camp, drowning even the 
 long dash of the sea, it celebrated God's 
 might and majesty, it told the tale of the 
 utter ruin of Pharaoh, it triumphed in the 
 freedom now of Israel, and then, turning to 
 
 3* 
 
58 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 the desert way before them, in some rapid 
 lines, it pictured how the fame of the Red Sea 
 passage would, in terrifying report, go scat- 
 tering the desert tribes ; how the great God 
 upon their side would make all their enemies 
 flee before them ; how He would lead them, 
 conquerors, into the good land ; and how, at 
 the end of that long way of victory, they 
 would build Him a temple in the holy mount, 
 and He would dwell in their midst for ever. 
 Such was the song of Moses in its swell of re- 
 joicing; in the prophet-glance he cast into 
 the future, first hinting at the dangers that 
 were yet to come, and then of the final glories 
 of the land of rest. We may question whether 
 yet the slave hearts about him rose to the 
 high startling ideas thus sketched as on a 
 background where they could but dimly 
 see ; but certain it is, they were one with 
 him in the burst of timbrels and of dance, 
 wherewith Moses and his chiefs, upon the 
 one hand, Miriam and the women, on the 
 other, sang the words, "Sing ye to the 
 Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES. 59 
 
 the horse and his rider hath He thrown 
 into the sea!" 
 
 Yet, my reader, is it not strange to re- 
 flect how passing was this outbreak of con- 
 fidence in God? Deep and earnest it was 
 at the moment, beyond a doubt; and as- 
 suredly, also, no greater stroke of power 
 and salvation could God well have wrought 
 in behalf of that multitude than, in the 
 dividing of the sea. He had just done. It 
 was a deed to be forgotten never ; to be 
 as a standard back in the memory, to which 
 even the faintest coward might always re- 
 fer, if peril caught him, saying, " If in such 
 straits God made me free, will He not 
 much more now?" And, as I say, for 
 the time, it did make its due impression: 
 the Saviour-God, in the greatness of His 
 might, was brought home; and, in the 
 hour of that splendid sunrise, when the air 
 and earth and sea were full of Him, Israel 
 OAvned Him in her heart, and her multi- 
 tudinous song rose like the chant of one 
 noble voice. But, alas ! the morning that 
 
60 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 had broken without clouds became a changed 
 and lowering day. Hardly was a single 
 stage made in the desert-journey, when the 
 high spirit that had sung upon the sea 
 border broke and fell ; the old mean life 
 swept up again over the rising of the 
 new; and we shall read with amazement 
 of the people God had led through the 
 sea forgetting that, forgetting how they had 
 struck their timbrels over it, and the cour- 
 age and anticipation that had been bred 
 in them in a few hours past and gone. 
 Was it not but like the opening of a veil ; 
 the bright glimpse of one moment a mock- 
 ery, and the curtain then dropped deeper 
 and heavier than ever ? 
 
 Strange, however, as w^e deem the swift 
 recoil that ensued thus ; from the noble 
 elevation of the song of Moses, to the base- 
 ness, afterwards, of a most irrational de- 
 spondency and repining against God; we 
 ought to be reminded, nay reader, that it 
 is only he who is without sin amongst us 
 who can cast the first stoi^e. ^or \\> 13 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES.' 61 
 
 notorious that many, old and experienced in 
 the way of God, who have not the raw igno- 
 rance and the un tutor el spiritual state of the 
 Israelites to plead, yet drop the memory of 
 most signal deliverances of God very quickly 
 from their hearts. In new trial they forget 
 the old salvation ; in the shadow of a new per- 
 plexity or grief to-day, they allow to fade and 
 die the blessing and the good hand of God 
 yesterday. For example, we suppose a pa- 
 rent who has watched with deep fear by 
 his child's sick-bed when life has just been 
 at its last ebb, and the cry to God has 
 been inarticulate in its brokenness ; the 
 merciful Physician has heard the cry, and 
 has healed and restored the child from 
 that lowest strait ; is it uncommon for the 
 very parent who has risen up, his treas- 
 ure in his arms, and blessing God, the 
 very next moment almost, when the ordi- 
 nary wave of family and other care comes 
 in upon him, to allow the old shade to 
 creep over his brow, the old fretting begin to 
 spoil his peice, and the old anxieties hurt 
 
62 'the song of MOSES. 
 
 his prayers and eat with distrust and mis- 
 ery into his very heart? Where is the 
 song with which he meant to praise God 
 for ever and ever ? Or, a man escapes a 
 time of calamity by a hair's-breadth of grace : 
 hundreds suffer around him in the loss of 
 means, or in the sweep of pestilence, or 
 in other like sorrow upon sorrow : he, by 
 God's mercy is preserved, and all he val- 
 ues on earth is safe. Yet, next time there 
 is a panic, is he fresh and strong in the 
 memory of the past? or is his fear not 
 up in arms, unreasoning as ever, as if 
 God's shield over him and his had never 
 been? Or, at some season we have had 
 a happy spiritual swell break within us — 
 prayers that have carried us, as on the wings 
 of eagles, home to God — so that with all 
 heaviness and fear dispersed in us, we have 
 been so light and up drawn heavenward, 
 that, with songs, our spirit has rejoiced 
 in God our Saviour. But, a day later, 
 there is some rapid sinking down to earth 
 again, the elasticity has run out, the pray- 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES. ' 63 
 
 ers are cold, and the soul that burned, 
 in a new despondency feels like lead. 
 Where then is the memory of our God? 
 where the impulse from the song of yes- 
 terday ? Is our faith not speechless, and 
 our hope in the Blessed One lost ? In 
 short, we might multiply cases wherein 
 there is this rapid, I ought also to say 
 shameful, change from light to dark, from 
 the song to the repining, from the ardent 
 vow to the memory blotted and gone. All 
 lives daily afford instances. Not a year or 
 stage do we proceed, but, glancing back, we 
 note the record of God's mercy, of His extri- 
 cating us from some strait, of His making even 
 our trials to give birth to praise. What then, 
 with a conscience, as we must have, of these 
 things — what ought they to be but as pricks 
 and goads in the memory, stimulating us 
 to faith still in that Lord who has never 
 failed His people, and has never let the 
 poorest of them perish? Yet, put but a 
 new cross upon our shoulders, and the old 
 deliverances vanish from us like a tablet 
 
64 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 wiped out and blank, and the untrue heart 
 sighs in the yoke of Christ as if He had 
 forgotten to be gracious. 
 
 Truly, what a sad comment are the lives 
 of many pilgrims of God thus on the faith 
 they hold ! — their standing at gaze so much, 
 where they ought to soar ; their dragging 
 broken-winged in the dust, where they 
 ought to mount to God with wings as do 
 eagles — to ran and not be weary, to walk 
 and not be faint. How should such an 
 inconsistency ever be ? If there is one life 
 in all the universe that should be a life, 
 not of occasional bursts at points where 
 God bestows some noted blessing, (for that, 
 after all, is but a poor merit,) but a life 
 of perpetual kindling into song — a bow, as 
 it were, always bent — an arrow always 
 ready for the flight — surely, surely it is 
 life redeemed in Christ. What deliverance 
 can exceed — what new trial can ever cast 
 a shadow on, or need one thousandth part 
 of the help again from heaven as was 
 needed in — the deliverance of the Cross? 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES. 65 
 
 Ah, it is here the secret of the Christain's 
 song lies, if only he can keep its deep 
 consciousness alive ! Nothing so removes 
 one beyond and out of the fluctuations 
 of mere feeling and event, as the soul con- 
 stantly going forth as a dove, and brood- 
 ing on the Cross. Let that be the habit 
 of the soul in all changes and chances, 
 and, whatever be the clouds sweeping in 
 the lower atmosphere, the upper sky shall 
 always be the serene noonday of light. It 
 is such a secret the poet makes a graphic 
 mention of when he says — 
 
 " Who carry music in tlieir heart 
 
 Through dusky ]ane and wrangling mart, 
 Plying their daily task with busier feet, 
 Because their secret souls a holier strain repeat." 
 
 It was such a secret that, like a sweet 
 under-song, ran through the vicissitudes 
 and chequered life of Paul, for he never 
 lost the thought within' him, "If God 
 spared not His own Son, but gave Him 
 up for us all, shall He not with Him also 
 
€6 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 freely give us all things?" The deliver- 
 ance of the Cross given, what more re- 
 mained that, in the day of emergency, 
 would not be given? The greater done, 
 would the less, though a thousand-fold re- 
 peated, not follow ? So that deep chord 
 vibrates in the pilgrim's heart yet — so 
 much so, that he weaves into its verse 
 even those things that are abhorrent to 
 flesh and blood: he sings that he "glo- 
 ries in infirmities," — that he ''rejoices in 
 tribulation," — that "when he is weak, then 
 he is strong." Who can accompany him 
 in melody so strange as that ? Yet, like 
 chinks of light through clouds, such are 
 the outbursts of him, even in his suffer- 
 ing, whose life is hid* with Christ in God 
 — til], at last, what has been so murmur- 
 ing half in secret all along his pathway 
 on earth gushes into light in heaven, the 
 soul no more able to contain it; for part 
 of the heavenly ^picture, as if caught from 
 the memory of the old Red Sea passage, 
 is — " I saw as it were a sea of glass 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES. 67 
 
 mingled with fire; and they that had got- 
 ten the victory over the beast, and over 
 his image, and over his mark, and over 
 the number of his name, stand on the 
 sea of glass, having the harps of God. 
 And they siiig the song of Moses the ser- 
 vant of God^ and the song of the Lamb /" 
 
YI 
 
 W\xt §ittn* W^At mvttt 
 
 The Israelites now fairly turned their 
 backs on Egypt, and entered the desert 
 world. One fancies that, under high impulse, 
 their first journey was performed with ease 
 and rapidity ; but, as the grateful sight of 
 the sea was lost, as the way grew harder and 
 stonier, as the sun burned more fiercely from 
 the blue depths above them, and the eyes of 
 the people, accustomed to the green relief 
 and soft umbrage of Goshen, ached with the 
 sight all round them of arid plains, and, in 
 the distance, desolate hills, languor crept over 
 the strongest energy, and, from song and 
 mirth, the march grew silent, gloomy, faint. 
 Water became the universal craving ; and 
 water, at the end of the third day, was found 
 in a cluster of wells enough to slake all 
 thirst ; but, miserably, just as the crowd 
 
 6S 
 
THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 69 
 
 hastened eagerly to drink, the water was dis- 
 covered to be brackish, so that the thirstiest 
 loathed the draught. It w^as God interposing, 
 as we are told after, to prove the temper of 
 the people, first, by the burning, footsore way 
 of three days, and at the close this bitter cup 
 to drink. But nobility of endurance under 
 God's good hand was yet to be awakened in 
 this multitude ; in such extremity of dis- 
 appointment as theirs, only the sheer animal 
 want found expression as the whole people 
 murmured against Moses, " What shall we 
 drink ?" God interposed again in mercy, 
 pointing out a tree to Moses, the wood of 
 which being dropped into the water, the 
 bitter was made sweet, and the parched hosts 
 of Israel, men and cattle, drank. Just when 
 the revulsion of their feelings must have 
 been back into a sort of gratitude and quiet, ' 
 God's message then came to them, showing 
 them thus far what His trial of them meant, 
 and if now, taught by that experience, they 
 would do and bear His will steadfastly, never, 
 even in the shelterless desert, would such dis- 
 
70 THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 
 
 eases come upon them as they had seen the 
 green valley of Egypt, not only not exempt 
 from, but rife withal. What a thrill of bless- 
 ing surely in the words, as they passed that 
 evening over the weary but now sated hearts, 
 "I am the Lord that healeth thee !" It was 
 the blessing of .Almighty God, ere they lay 
 down to repose beside the sweetened waters. 
 Was it an over-severe test to which God 
 put the many thousands of Israel ? We 
 would answer, Yes^ had it been that, while 
 He tried them, He looked that they should 
 stand fast in their own grace. But we answer, 
 Certainly not^ when we know that He meant 
 no burden on them heavier than He would 
 make them able to bear. The sweetening- 
 tree dropped into the waters is a proof of 
 this, that God, with His simple yet complete 
 Saviour resource, was to stop them ere they 
 reached the point of faintness and death. 
 Only He desired some glimmering of the 
 faith of this to be awakened in the difficult, 
 bondage-hardened minds with Avhich He had 
 to deal ; and while, at one point of deliver- 
 
THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 71 
 
 ance, as at tlie Red Sea, to call into play their 
 utterances of triumph and praise, (which was 
 comparatively easy,) at another point of 
 fatigue and misery, such as here in the desert, 
 to strike, if they would but answer, other 
 keys also of fortitude, of faith, of manly per- 
 severance in the way of God. In a word. He 
 would have blended these responses out of 
 the heart of Israel in one song — the deliver- 
 ance there, the patience and sorrow here — 
 for it is true that 
 
 "God fulfils Himself iu many ways I" 
 
 and, as the pilgrim of the Cross knows now 
 in examining his path. He wdll make all our 
 nature tuneable as a harp ; songs when we 
 are in the day, songs also in the night ; notes 
 struck when we rejoice, notes equally of 
 praise when we are in pain ; answers to the 
 finger of the living God when our cup of 
 blessing runneth over, and answers of an 
 unquenched faith not less when we are in a 
 dry and thirsty land where no water is. It is 
 thus God explores the riches, the variety, the 
 
72 THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 
 
 harmony of the nature He has given us, and, 
 in Christ, has redeemed. He would have it 
 all fully responding : the joyous ripple on 
 the surface, the grave music of the heart- 
 wound beneath. So has the poor sufferer, on 
 a lingering sickbed, often been, in spirit, like 
 a bird at heaven's gates ; so has the broken 
 life sighed, even in its death-hour praise, 
 "Unto Him Who hath loved us, and washed 
 us from our sins in His own blood, and hath 
 made us kings and priests unto God and His 
 Father." 
 
 Moreover, was the sweetening-tree dropped 
 into the wells not a characteristic mode most 
 eminently of God's grace ? For it is not 
 when we pray or fret against our lot, that He 
 gives us sweet instead of the bitter, but by 
 the dropping in of talismanic grace behind, 
 He makes the bitter sweet. That is, if a man 
 laboring in anxious work, or half broken by 
 the weight of some personal distress, instead 
 of seeking to throw off these for some state 
 softer, and to flesh and blood far more agree- 
 able, if he will go on steadily and courage- 
 
THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 73 
 
 ously, drinking God's cup deep enough, he 
 will pass the first bitterness and at last come 
 to the marvellous ingredient God infuses from 
 behind, making sweetness and exhilaration in 
 the very dregs. So Paul exhorts laborers in 
 the field of Christ, travellers in His way, " not 
 to be weary in well-doing," — not to be over- 
 come of the first draught of Marah, — " for, in 
 due season," up will gush the sweetness from 
 beneath; ''they will reap, if they faint not." 
 And he spoke w^th authority, for he himself 
 had singular experience of God's holy manner 
 in this respect, for he was embittered keenly 
 by what he terms a thorn in the flesh, against 
 the barb of which he prayed three several 
 times, if it might be snatched away ; but, 
 instead of healing up the rankling wound, it 
 is notable that God preferred using the arrow- 
 shaft that pierced His apostle as He used the 
 tree at Marah, as a medium, along which He 
 distilled a sweetening grace, so that there 
 ran into the suffering heart a life and blessed- 
 ness far better and infinitely richer than had 
 
 the wound been closed and healed. And 
 
 4 
 
74 THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 
 
 need I remind you of the example of exam- 
 ples in the garden agony of our Lord? As 
 He drank the unutterably bitter cup, He 
 prayed thrice that it might pass from Him, 
 nevertheless, since such was not to be, He 
 drank deep to the end, and found then the 
 ineffable sweetness flow in upon His whole 
 soul of God's will done. 
 
 Such the gracious mystery by which God 
 couched the sweet beneath the bitter. And 
 for us, my reader, it is surely not the mere 
 general assurance we need thus, that, sharp 
 as the appointments of our blessed Lord often 
 seem with us, if we but hold on, at the end 
 we shall find them richest truth and mercy. 
 No follower of the Cross but, after a few 
 stages in the w^ay of faith, readily discovers 
 that. But, for us surely, there is the deeper 
 certainty, that goes before as well as after 
 all experience, that we have the chosen 
 tree of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, dropped 
 behind into the waters of our life and soul. 
 Who believes in Him — who has Him held 
 fast within, the strength of his heart and his 
 
THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 75 
 
 portion for ever ? That man has a perpetual 
 antidote against all bitterness and sorrow. 
 Beneath the turbid and brackish waves of 
 this world flowing in upon him, he has in 
 Christ a well of living water springing up in 
 his own soul unto everlasting life ; and the 
 clear, curative up-gushing of the one sheds 
 back and repels every moment the bitterness 
 and foulness of the other. Just as in ordi- 
 nary circumstances, if we have some posses- 
 sion or resource within us we rejoice in, we 
 can, by retiring upon that, keep gloom at 
 bay, or greatly temper some stroke of evil ; 
 as, if we have sacred in our heart the love of 
 home and hearth, and expand in secret over 
 our beloved treasures there, we can brave 
 misfortune, we can find the wheels of hard 
 labor sweetened, we can bear loss and much 
 suffering otherwise with a smile; so, but in 
 the highest degree, the soul possessed of 
 Christ back in the very chamber of its life — 
 the Healing Tree there cast into its fountain — 
 what power can any inroad of evil have 
 against it? — what rush even of the waves 
 
76 THE BITTER MADE SWEET. 
 
 and billows of affliction can either hurt it or 
 destroy it ? — fast as the bitter thing comes in, 
 is it not changed, not only into bearableness, 
 but into very sweetness ? Is the Lord that 
 healeth it not in the very midst ? — does the 
 soul, so possessed, not hold the secret of a 
 smile, yea, a chastened rapture, in the cruci- 
 ble of pain ? — and is it not from these pale, 
 parched lips, across which the bitter draught 
 is pouring, we expect, and are sure, to hear 
 the w^ords, as Job uttered them, " Though He 
 slay me, yet will I trust in Him !" Oh, hide 
 this good Physician in the well-spring of thy 
 heart ; let Him enter and assume wliole pos- 
 session there at any price ; let Him be held 
 there by the dearest hold. From the sweet- 
 ened Marah of thy life, thus shall thy song 
 then be : 
 
 " Give all Thou canst — without Thee I am poor ; 
 But with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away. 
 
VII. 
 
 Like the light following the shadow, like 
 the blessing following the trial, Elim follows 
 Marah. It was one of those spots that are 
 well called desert islands ; because in their 
 green freshness, set diamond-like upon the 
 dark and barren bosom of the desert, they are 
 to weary travellers what the anchorage of a 
 sunlit island is to the mariner in trackless seas. 
 You can understand how pleasantly, in partic- 
 ular, the sight was greeted by the Israelite 
 thousands, as they wound over the ungenial 
 waste, and their eyes were lifted to behold 
 the dense palm-grove, standing with its 
 shaggy stems and broad drooping crowns, the 
 cool emerald grass beneath, through which 
 sparkled from many sources the gleam of run- 
 ning water : for was it not like a section cut 
 out of the far Egyptian vales, like a snatch of 
 
78 THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 
 
 the memories that in the desert now were 
 brighter and keener than ever — a snatch of the 
 old beauty and fertility transplanted suddenly 
 into their bare wilderness path, and here 
 flashing in their gaze ? We all know the 
 sentiment or feeling more or less, when, re- 
 viewing years or scenes past, we remember 
 only as sunbright what may have been cheq- 
 ered enough at the time, but what, as it re- 
 cedes from us, takes more and more only the 
 sunny color, till, if but one hour of that bright 
 past could be recalled into what we count our 
 gray and sombre present, and lived by us 
 again, it would stir our heart Avith deepest 
 gladness. So with the Israelites; they had 
 forgotten in much the cruel bondage — they 
 remembered only the green and pleasant Go- 
 shen of the past — and here, in the palm-grove 
 of Elim, was shred off, as it were, a fragment 
 from the sunny land, and set in their desert 
 track, that heart and eye might greet it 
 eagerly. And we cannot but be struck with 
 the exceeding tenderness of God's mercy in 
 the case. He had tried the people at 
 
THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 79 
 
 Marah — He now relaxed them in pure rest 
 and enjoyment at Elim. He unbent the bow, 
 lest the too long stretch should break it. Tie 
 lightened the burden, lest the neck should 
 fail under it; off the chord of austere dealing. 
 He went on to the key of lightness and re- 
 joicing; from the efforts to sustain these Isra- 
 elite hearts in new earnest virtues — the 
 ground of which they were merely breaking 
 up as yet — He receded for a time, leaving 
 them a space to breathe, to sink into simple 
 enjoyment and rest. In a word, from the 
 wells of Marah, He led them straight to the 
 springs and palm-grove of Elim ; and as, un- 
 checked, they scattered themselves down be- 
 neath the shade, or men and cattle drank 
 deep and long at the upflowing water, even- 
 ing crept softly on the scene, the air was full 
 of the glory of the sunset, the desert breath 
 no longer scorched like fire, but breathed 
 spicy scents : it was a spectacle of God-given 
 peace ! 
 
 Perhaps, from this point of view, one would 
 be disposed to say, " Why any Marahs at all ? 
 
80 THE pal:u^s and springs of elim. 
 
 why not one long unbroken string of Elims ? 
 Would the pilgrims' way not be purer, qui- 
 eter, happier ? Would the Israelites not have 
 rejoiced in and obeyed God more, had they 
 followed Him from one palm-shaded spot to 
 another ?" We answer, No ; because, while 
 Marahs are not certainly the choice of God's 
 love with any of His children — He would 
 far rather stud their pilgrimage for them 
 with the Elims of his kindness and mercy — 
 yet it is perfectly well known, Marahs, not 
 Elims, are the things most deeply suited 
 to the pilgrim's heart. What was the case 
 with Israel ? When a Marah happened in 
 the way, she murmured, it is true, and 
 often exceedingly provoked God, but ere 
 the controversy ended, this was the very 
 occasion of awakening some higher sense 
 of divine nobleness and reality in her heart ; 
 while, when a time with nothing but a 
 chain of Elims ran along her path, the 
 conscience that had been edged and fired 
 faded again, her better life became ener- 
 vated, and she went idolatrously after other 
 
THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 81 
 
 gods. In short, the very commonness of 
 God's mercy made His mercy and Him- 
 self forgotten. And what is the familiar 
 case with us? Give us a stretch of Ma- 
 rahs, with an Elim here and there inter- 
 spersed, and though we are embittered, 
 are we not, in the main, moved to wait 
 on, to seek after, and, at the Elim spots 
 when they come, with redoubled zest and 
 praise, to rejoice in, God ; but give us for 
 years a line of Elims only, and does the 
 spiritual fibre not grow weak, our thoughts 
 of God colorless, and our sense of Him 
 negligent and faint? The gifts and good- 
 ness of God, in short, are so utterly com- 
 mon in such a case, that their value escapes, 
 and although our footsteps teem with mercy, 
 we by and by see it not. I appeal to 
 every-day experience, in which especially 
 there is a quiet life of comfort going on 
 in its quiet stream— where is God, vividly 
 and from point to point, traced— where, 
 in any touch of kindness, from the begin- 
 ning to the end of the day, is God recog- 
 
82 THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 
 
 nised — rather is His bounty not so familiar 
 and unbroken that the eye, looking at it 
 always, runs into vacancy, and sees it not ? 
 Hence, an Elim no longer is the intense and 
 beautiful and God-ordained thing it should 
 be, unless it have a Marah for relief It 
 is as with the gleaming alabaster column ; 
 place it against a background of its own 
 white lustre, and to the dazzled eye its 
 fair outline and graceful proportions are 
 dissipated, so to speak, and lost ; but place 
 it against a background of shadow, and 
 the beauteous thing stands out distinct as 
 a shaft of light. So, in Elims relieved only 
 against other Elims full of the same unwa- 
 vering mercy, the lines get intermingled, 
 and the object, by reason of excess of light, 
 fades; an Elim now and again, on the con- 
 trary, relieved against the austereness and 
 the sorrow of a Marah, shines out vividly 
 upon us as the fingermark of God. One 
 Elim, isolated and relieved thus, has more 
 than the power and value of a thousand 
 cgming on us in a common ;*un, Such was 
 
THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 83 
 
 God's teaching to the pilgrims of the wilder- 
 ness of old. Such is His holy and most 
 blessed manner with those He leads in the 
 desert pathway now. A Marah depressing, 
 and perhaps overwhelming us now, an Elim 
 startling and rejoicing us again ; a deep sha- 
 dow in our dwelling to-day, a burnished beam 
 of light crossing it to-morrow ; a great grief 
 trying us and wearing us down one season, a 
 sudden visiting of God's peace and mercy 
 next season. Would the mercy bless us half 
 so well, if it had not followed loss and sorrow? 
 would the peace fall so deep, deep, if it did 
 not fall into a broken heart? Yerily it is 
 God's way, and a way of solemn mystery, if 
 our life is being exercised by it — swift change 
 from this to that — but always so, when we 
 come to understand God, that we are taught 
 to endure our Marahs with patience and con- 
 fidence, to hold our Elims with thanksgiving 
 and fear— in a word, to sorrow as those who 
 will one day rejoice, and again to rejoice as 
 those who may yet have a day of sorrow. So 
 are we tempered in the wise leading of our 
 
84 THE PALMS AND SPRINGS OF ELIM. 
 
 God, till we taste our last Marah here, and 
 reach our final and eternal Elim yonder ; in 
 the hundred earthly Marahs, " having had fel- 
 lowship with Christ in His suffering and 
 death," we shall then, as we never else would 
 have done, take home to us the vivid change 
 — in the Elim of heaven, the substance, of 
 which the brightest Elim on earth is but fore- 
 taste and shadow, " we shall have fellowship 
 with Christ in his resurrection and glory !" 
 
VIII. 
 |o0d fxmx ^mvtn. 
 
 By the short record in the Book of Num- 
 bers, it appears the Israelites once again 
 touched on the Red Sea, after leaving Elim. 
 They were by this time plunged in the con- 
 fusion and sterility of the desert hills— their 
 course along one of those broad, waterless 
 river beds, or valleys, with which the region 
 is everywhere scored here, as they painfully 
 wended over the stony soil, the way over- 
 shadowed on one side by towering cliffs, 
 white as marble, there by masses black and 
 calcined like ashes. Out of the heat, and 
 silence, and aridness, therefore, glorious must 
 have been the relief, when, in front of the 
 host, the rocks w^ere seen to part, and there 
 burst upon them the sparkling waters of the 
 Red Sea, with their silver foam rushing on 
 the beach. The broad passage-way seems to 
 
86 FOOD FROM HEAYEN. 
 
 be traced yet along the terraced slopes, dip- 
 ping now and again to the very wave, by 
 which the hordes of Israel wound in proces- 
 sion. Every voice must have greeted the 
 sight of that flashing sea. And there, beyond 
 its other shore, in dim haze, were seen the 
 hills again, behind which was hidden the land 
 of their fascination and terror. Strange 
 indeed must have been this haunting of their 
 former state, as thus skirting slowly, and 
 lingering by the blue pathway of these mem- 
 orable waters, they at length took a last look, 
 and wheeled away again into the shadow of 
 the wide wilderness. 
 
 We can readily conceive how natural the 
 next incident in their wondrous story. They 
 were traversing what is called the Wilderness 
 of Sin — no doubt one of those vast channels 
 scooped by ancient river torrents, but now 
 dry as the dust of summer. From the edge 
 of such a valley rose, in savage bareness and 
 confusion, hill on hill ; on one crag, the 
 bright caper plant, or such like, creeping ; in 
 other patches, dark green shrubbery, weaving 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 87 
 
 its color scantily on the rocks ; yonder, again, 
 a clump of dwarf palms or feathery tamarisks 
 nestling under a ledge ; but, stretching round 
 and above all, the herbless earth and the 
 unclad, desolate hills ; these last, as by shelf 
 and pinnacle they ascended against the blue 
 sky, in some parts showing masses bright red, 
 in others glowing deeply purple ; but all 
 naked of a single growth the vast multitude 
 beneath them could ever glean as food. What, 
 then, was the prospect of the people ? These 
 straits they were advancing into were deeper 
 yet — the gloom of the mountain shadows 
 deeper also — and the land evidently one of 
 silence, grimness, famine. Moreover, the 
 stores brought from Egypt were failing, or 
 failed. Can we marvel that the dread of find- 
 ing this desert a hungry grave crept on the 
 people's hearts ; that, in contrast to the scene 
 around them, the glimpse they had had of 
 the bright sea and the shore beyond it, woke 
 the memory of the- fleshpots of Egypt, and 
 that, stimulated thus, they upbraided Moses 
 and Aaron with a cry for food ? 
 
88 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 Perhaps the brothers felt in their own 
 hearts a shade of the popular fear ; it is just 
 possible; for it was no light matter, surely, 
 for them to lead those swarming columns 
 further in a way so dark, without help. At 
 any rate, they shrank back, letting their lead- 
 ership vanish, as it were, in the leadership of 
 God ; and then it was that Hand of Mercy, 
 that had wrought such wonders for the 
 people already, showed itself from behind 
 the veil once more. It rained food from 
 heaven. Quails and manna were the forms 
 in which the miraculous supply came ; the 
 former, blown by a strong wind from the sea 
 each evening in such clouds, that, as they fell 
 out of the darkened air, they are said to have 
 covered the camp ; the latter showered each 
 morning, soft as the dewftill, and deposited 
 like hoarfrost upon the sands, so that every 
 man going out filled his homer from these 
 mysterious scatterings of the storehouse of 
 God. Truly, God's glory, as it is said, was in 
 the gift ; for not only was it a striking scene 
 in the morning hour, as the people went out 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 89 
 
 to glean in the valleys — to look up from the 
 shadows, and to see the early sun break on 
 the white or red hill peaks far above, like the 
 fair light of the living God Himself ; but in 
 the scattered manna God made the bleak 
 desert teem with plenty. He was not only 
 present with His people, but He uncovered 
 to their eyes the very springs of their feai 
 and life ; He showed them that these springs 
 flowed direct from His hand ; so that, whether 
 reaping grown grain in Goshen, or picking 
 up manna rained in the desert, equally the 
 one divine Hand fed them with food from 
 heaven. 
 
 Does the world, my reader, not need— do 
 we, in the cold, atheistic moods that creep 
 over us, not need— to be kept constantly in 
 mind of that direct Hand of God ? Let us 
 look on the picture of any one day : Earth, 
 air and water bring us endless supplies ; com- 
 mon mercies, whereby we eat and live, are so 
 common, that we cannot move a step, if I 
 may say so, without trampling on the manna- 
 shower about us. Yet how banished out of 
 
 3 
 
90 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 this world of thick-springing mercy is the 
 Giver of it all! Instead of this earth in 
 which we dwell being looked on as a great 
 chamber filled with the ever-living, ever- 
 working God ; its grains, its rush of growth 
 and life, down to the minutest seed, shooting 
 at His touch ; its rich colors gleams from His 
 beauty ; its voices thrillings from His deep 
 Spirit ; how cold is the veil an unbelieving 
 or forgetful thought spreads over all, till we 
 see nothing but a face of law, and we snatch 
 the bounties by which we live, as if behind 
 the screen there were nothing but a blind 
 mechanism, and no God. It is surely shame 
 to our Christian teaching, that, in so element- 
 ary a thing, we should have to go back to 
 the manna lesson of the desert. Take up 
 the microscope of one who walks through 
 the world with that lesson well read in the 
 heart : in place of the fixed law, and the 
 close-drawn veil through which the dull eye 
 sees all dim and dead, how luminous the fire, 
 how ever-moving and revealed t: e Hand, that 
 break round us on the life of every step! 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 91 
 
 Just as, did you walk upon the sea sands, with 
 the unaided common eye, there are thousands 
 of objects your feet crush that are nothing to 
 you but as the dull stones and earth ; but, 
 furnished with the naturalist's microscope, you 
 can take up the shell, and see a rare revela- 
 tion in it, both of architecture and of life ; 
 or the slip of weed, and find it woven in its 
 fibres, such that no loveliness from earthly 
 loom can rival. The sands, in short, under 
 this new insight, are alive with marvels ; the 
 common path you walk is carpeted with 
 beauty. Even so, the microscope of that life 
 which leans on God. It looks with other 
 than a common sight. The veil of common 
 dullness shrivels from before it ; and, in every 
 daily step, and daily good, it sees the rare 
 glory, and the tender kindness, and the vivid 
 doing of the blessed Hand. It is the sweet, 
 reflective spirit of the poet, smitten by the 
 soft touch of God in the humblest way : 
 
 " To me the meanest flower that blows doth give 
 Thoughts, that do often he too deep for tears." 
 
 But the law by which God bestowed this 
 
92 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 gift of manna was noticeable and peculiar, 
 inasmuch as no one shower ever exceeded 
 one day's supply, except on the sixth day, 
 when a double quantity fell for a portion 
 against the Sabbath day's rest. Accordingly, 
 each Israelite gathered his daily homer ; 
 there was always certainty of enough for 
 that ; but always as rigid a certainty of no 
 more than enough for that. If any one tried 
 to store up beyond that measure, his heap, 
 from purity and wholesomeness, was turned 
 into base corruption. So some who made 
 the experiment, either out of grovelling cupid- 
 ity or distrust of God, found. The glittering 
 manna was fresh for to-day, but loathsome for 
 to-morroAv ; its rule was, each day its own 
 homer — no less, but also no more ; and pres- 
 ently, this pilgrim rule came into general 
 understanding through the camp. Each man, 
 as he filled his manna dish each day, was 
 reminded it was a pilgrim meal; realized 
 daily his dependence on the all-bounteous 
 God; and for forty years of wilderness life, 
 all Israel went forward on their journeys, fed 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 93 
 
 with this food from heaven, and breathing, 
 with a significance we have but a faint con- 
 ception of, that pilgrim prayer we yet know 
 well, " Give us this day our daily bread !" 
 
 Now, what but this pilgrim temper God 
 sought with such elaboration, yet simplicity, 
 to nurture in the desert of old, what but this 
 is one of the main and incessant aims of His 
 dealing with His people yet ? The rule of 
 the manna — is it not the invariable rule of 
 grace ? each day enough for its necessities, 
 but nought for superfluities — this present 
 hour, its measure clear and full, and to-mor- 
 row, hour by hour, its measure sure to come 
 also, but never to-morrow anticipated to-day ? 
 If we have the pilgrim's staff in hand, and 
 are going on in the pilgrim mind, we shall 
 speedily and rejoicingly discover this : that 
 God's grace is sufficient for us, that it flows 
 in an even and steady stream, never dropping 
 low to a dry channel, never swelling till its 
 banks are burst, but each moment revolving 
 to us, sure as God Himself, with that moment's 
 cup. What would we have more? Some 
 
94 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 unhappy hearts there are who cannot cease 
 hurrying forward in an anxious anticipation 
 into the future. Is it sickness that is slowly 
 coming on them ? — how are they to bear it ? 
 is their question. Are they threatened, or 
 have they wrought themselves into the belief 
 that they are threatened, with some loss or 
 sorrow ? — how are they to withstand in the 
 evil day ? Are they visited by the thought 
 of death ? — how are they to die ? in the 
 dreadful hour, how will the heart be held up ? 
 how will the silver cord be loosened in the 
 deep soul and let go ? Such terrors as these 
 afflict many travelling in the way of God 
 beyond all calculation ; they would fain have 
 assurance or supply of grace now, for the 
 hour of coming crisis then, like the Israelites 
 who would not trust God in spite of His own 
 words, but went out to fill their homers twice 
 over, so that they might not only be fed 
 to-day, but be secure against the morrow 
 also. And what but this same un-pilgrim 
 temper accounts for the creeping habits 
 whereby many now are by slow degrees 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 95 
 
 destroyed of this bitter world? For you 
 note many such begin to accumulate money, 
 and the other goods of this life, on the plea 
 of a wise provision against the future, and 
 that it is right, further, to reap the fruits of 
 one's honest industry — pleas there is no dis- 
 puting whatever, so long as that line, within 
 which alone they are justified, is not passed ; 
 but the misfortune is, that the habit, growing 
 on a man, far outruns, by and by, the pled 
 necessities ; gold, comforts, luxury, pros- 
 perity, are gathered, heaped up, literally, in 
 some instances, piled, for their own sakes; 
 and instead of the simple daily gift out of 
 God's hand, the soul turns in upon its own 
 full-fed state, and says, " Soul, take thine 
 ease ; thou hast much goods laid up in 
 store!" What is the result? Simply, that 
 the manna accumulation is followed by the 
 manna curse ; either the heart, overlaid by 
 the accretions of its wealth, like wood 
 changed by certain mineral droppings slowly 
 into stone, becomes gradually of one sub- 
 stance with that wealth — gold to gold, earth 
 
96 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, — or in 
 the midst of its stored means, there eats into 
 it the canker of unsatisfied longing, or the 
 fire-spot of poisonous care. 
 
 So God repeats the old manna tale ; and 
 when will we as pilgrims in His pathway, my 
 reader, learn the simple pilgrim trust ? What 
 assurance dearer, better, for me than that no 
 one moment will lack a God-given supply ? 
 I have the morsel that is enough bestowed to- 
 day ; but why should I embitter its eating by 
 a straining forward distrustfully into the mor- 
 row ? Suppose that the worst of my fears 
 should in reality fall out, will the proper 
 grace not flow forth to meet it ? — if I am on 
 a sick-bed, will a sick-bed's grace not fall 
 upon my heart sufficient ? — if I am to be 
 struck with calamity, will a measure sufficient 
 not first break the stroke, and then afterwards 
 pour into and salve the wound ? — if I am to 
 die, will dying grace sufficient not reach me ? 
 as the cold shade advances on me one way, 
 the light of Christ's nearness advancing on 
 me the other way, till the light dispels the 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 97 
 
 darkness, and the death-pillow I feared is to 
 me the Saviour's breast ! How intense the 
 simplicity of this pilgrim lesson — each day, 
 each hour, its own childlike trast in God ; and 
 how good if, in the Christian crowd, it were, 
 even in a measure, generally taken to heart ! 
 How, over all the tumult and distractions, the 
 anxieties and the strife, with which the move- 
 ment of our life goes on, this lesson would be 
 as oil poured upon troubled waters, as the 
 voice of Christ speaking in the streets again — 
 ^* Take no thought for the morrow ; for the 
 morrow shall take thought for the things of 
 itself!" 
 
 Walk, then, in the golden medium of the 
 manna rule. Distrust on this side is rebuked ; 
 for, far as your wants may extend, like the 
 running of a wave into some deep-bosomed 
 bay they break at last all round on the shore 
 of God's love, and at every point in the meet- 
 ing line, there is repeated, " My grace is suf- 
 Jicient for thee!" And presumption on that 
 side is rebuked ; for, rushing into wilful situa- 
 tions of difficulty or temptation, or whatever 
 
98 FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 it be, where an overplus of grace is needed, 
 you will then find that the promise of suffi- 
 ciency — for it is only sufficiency God pledges 
 — fails you, and is gone ; just as, in what are 
 called Artesian wells, the principle is, that the 
 stream rises to the level of its source, and up 
 to that mark, if you ascend, the crystal vol- 
 ume bubbles plentifully out, but, if you go 
 above that line, the sand is dry, and the 
 stream is lost. So God marks your life-level. 
 Keep within its limits, and all your well- 
 springs are aboundingly in Him ; transgress 
 beyond His way, and the supply vanishes, as 
 water does in sand. Thus, learning God, our 
 way fares on in Him evenly and happily — 
 each hour's lack having its enough provision 
 as the hour comes round ; and as we accept 
 this simple leaning on the heavenly grace, we, 
 who in the Lord Jesus Christ have now the 
 imperishable bread of life, like the Israelites 
 with their commemorative pot of manna 
 placed in their tabernacle before God, we 
 shall be taught daily in our prayers and our 
 praise to set forth before Him, as it were, the 
 
FOOD FROM HEAVEN. 99 
 
 replenislied vessels of our souls, saying, 
 " Our fathers did eat manna in the wilder- 
 ness, and are dead ; this is the bread which 
 Cometh down from heaven, that a man may 
 eat thereof and not die!" 
 
 "Lord, evermore give us this Bread!" 
 
IX. 
 ®ft^ MxtUtx §0!Ch 
 
 Notwithstanding that the face of the wil- 
 derness was each morning whitened by the 
 fall of the frost-like manna, to the Israelites it 
 had no look yet of kindliness or home. Every 
 step led them into regions more desolate and 
 gloomy; and the fear of thirst especially 
 grew into a fixed suffering, which went on 
 till, in the burning aridity of all things around 
 them, they could bear it no longer. Was it 
 the case that God's gifts and deliverances, 
 wonderful as they had been, were destined 
 always to keep them on the stretch of fear — 
 that, if He brought them through the Red 
 Sea, it was to plunge them in the depths of 
 the desert — that, if He rained manna on them 
 for food, it was to make the want of water 
 kindle in them a raging thirst ? Were they 
 to obtain their life and sustenance thus only 
 
 100 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. 101 
 
 in tantalising fragments ? — soon as God had 
 done a deed of relief for tbe.P, was He to 
 retire into silence and remoteness, till they 
 importuned Him wildly for something else ? 
 In a word, was He dwelling with them, or 
 was He not? Such, you may conjecture, 
 were the surmises floating through the camp ; 
 and all the more encouraged that the route 
 the people traversed lay continually along 
 those river-beds we have spoken of, the very 
 sight of which suggested the old rush of 
 water — here, by the deep-worn ruts — there, by 
 a side cleft in the rocks, where a hill stream 
 had poured into the main current — and then 
 again, by the fringes of shrubbery which grew 
 along the bank, their branches in such wise 
 that they might have been dipping into the 
 stream. But the stream was vanished, the 
 river-bed was dry, and instead of giving wa- 
 ter to the lips, its very parchedness every- 
 where, through the torture of contrast, drank 
 the pilgrim's spirit up. 
 
 Hence the murmur of the weary Israelites 
 ao^ainst Moses cauo^ht this time the added 
 
102 THE SMITTEN ROCK. 
 
 ferocity of thirst ; and, forgetful of the mer- 
 cies of their God, the fire of their misery and 
 fear broke out in threats as well as in re- 
 proach. It was a daring temptation of the 
 Most High God ; yet Moses turned to Him 
 with the complaint, as something not alto- 
 gether unworthy of pity ; and accordingly 
 the Lord, in silent patience, withdrew Moses 
 and the elders of the people with him into a 
 deeper winding of the valley, he with the rod 
 that had smitten the Nile to smite a selected 
 rock, they to be the witnesses of God's mira- 
 cle in the stroke ; and then, in the veiled re- 
 cess, as the cloud of Divine presence settled 
 on it, the touch was given to the stony mass 
 — one moment its granite face was cold and 
 hard — next, it had broken in twain, and giv- 
 en from its breast a leaping waterflood. The 
 dell woke to the unwonted music as the 
 stream dashed abroad, as it found a course in 
 the old dried water-mark, as it broke upon 
 the eager sands, as the drooping bushes quiv- 
 ered in its sparkle into new life — and as finally, 
 bursting into the open plain, it came, broad 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. 103 
 
 and cool and delicious, on the gaze of all the 
 camp; and the men and women and little 
 ones, with their jaded cattle, hurried to its 
 banks, stood in its rushing wave, and, in that 
 full tide of God's mercy, quenched their thirst 
 deep and long. Still the smitten rock under 
 Horeb poured its volume, and still the pil- 
 grim hordes drank. Surely, as the fiery faint- 
 ness and thirst went off their souls, and went 
 off the wa^te, there was, deep in each heart, 
 the rock of hard ingratitude broken, and the 
 gush of penitence and praise flowing forth. 
 
 So, is it not always seen that the sealed 
 fountain breaks not forth till the rock be bro- 
 ken ? The face of the rock in Horeb was un- 
 wetted by a single drop of moisture — it was 
 silent and arid in its strong seat — till the rod 
 of Moses broke it, and the waters rushed then 
 unrestrainedly into day. The heart never 
 yields its deepest outflow to God till, simi- 
 larly, it is smitten, and its hardness rent. We 
 have hundreds of examples not far to seek. 
 What is first conversion unto God, but such 
 an unsealing of the stony heart ? — cold, silent, 
 
104 THE SMITTEN ROCK. 
 
 barren the one while, in its natural state ; but 
 again smitten by the Spirit of power, and, at 
 His touch, penitence and faith, and love and 
 rejoicing and prayer, gushing from the broken 
 heart into light. Paul was touched in such a 
 way when he fell on the Damascus road, and 
 his fierce spirit, melted within him, poured 
 itself out ever after in a shining stream of 
 ministry for Christ. What again is God's 
 touch of affliction, or of sharp privation, or 
 of keen personal chastisement, or of such trial 
 as goes quivering like a lancet of fire into the 
 last nerve and tenderness of the soul — but as 
 the touch of the rod of Moses, light upon the 
 calm and stony surface of our ordinary life, 
 but having power to dissolve it to its last hid- 
 den depth, and to extract its burst of suppli- 
 cation and its surrender of itself in helpless- 
 ness to God ? My reader, we may thank God 
 ardently when He deals with us so. If our 
 lives went on as those of many do, in perfect 
 worldly calm — never pierced or sounded be- 
 yond the inch-depth of sentiment and quiet 
 feeling and quiet intercourse that serve us well 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. 105 
 
 enough in ordinary clays, and that keep society 
 in its comfortable round — there would remain, 
 alas, in the deep centre of each life the unbro- 
 ken rock, the dead and voiceless soul. We 
 should never ourselves know the soul's power 
 of response to God. An occasional movement 
 to pity or to tears in the world would not tell 
 us — neither would the flicker of a stray emo- 
 tion, such as we are all thrilled by now and then, 
 waken in us its awful speech. No, it needs the 
 deep of God's meaning to call to the deep of 
 our dormant soul — the rod to smite us — the 
 iron to enter — and then, although it be terrible 
 in the day of our affliction, the breaking up of 
 our peace, and the movement of our grief and 
 trouble be, as David cries, like the very " pains 
 of hell ;" yet it is the fountain from its hidden 
 plaoe called forth at last — the silent voice 
 finding vent — the life revealed, conjured out, 
 and in all its height and depth of prayer 
 uttering itself to God. Is it not infinitely 
 better so, than that it should go silent as the 
 stone, unconverted, unbroken, to the grave ? 
 Such a soul way have a capacity of life for 
 
106 THE SMITTON ROCK. 
 
 God, but that has never flashed into action ; 
 it may have a power of prayer in it, but that 
 has never come to light ; it may have possi- 
 bilities of earnestness and faith in it, second 
 to none, but these are restrained and dumb : 
 and what profit hath the natural heart thus, if, 
 stone-still, it goes to the dead as it has lived ? 
 Its money perishes with it — its heart-springs, 
 unopened in life, have the rock sealed on 
 them for ever. Whereas God's secret is with 
 the broken heart : He tries it and proves it, 
 that He may see what is in it — that it may 
 open at His touch — that it may yield its deep 
 outgushing at his feet. Who would not choose 
 that yielding of the soul to God, even at 
 a greater cost ? Terrible may be the rend- 
 ing of the rock, but in the yielding of its life 
 then, as face answer eth face in water, so, in its 
 lucent Avave, God sees ivliat is in it — He meets 
 there the image of His own grace and love ! 
 
 But under the shadow of the rock in 
 Horeb, we must learn greater things still. 
 St. Paul gives us his holy authority for it, 
 that " that Rock was Christ." And accepting 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. 107 
 
 this high reality accordingly — through the 
 dim sign of the desert looking, till there 
 grows out upon us the luminous and awfal 
 Christ — who ever won, we ask, to the pro- 
 foundest understanding and life of Him, save 
 through the Rock smitten and cleft in twain ? 
 For example, about our adorable Lord in His 
 ministry and work, there were and are many 
 things easij to be understood ; the wisdom 
 with which He spake as never man spake ; 
 the dignity, the holiness that clothed Him ; 
 the glory which He had in heaven, and whose 
 clouds in half- veiled radiance followed Him 
 on earth, and the glory which He noiv has in 
 heaven again; these, and such like things, 
 exalting, and, as with colors of light, setting 
 themselves into the portrait of One who is 
 our Saviour and God, we find easy to be 
 understood ; they commend themselves to the 
 apprehension of our intellect; they accord 
 with our preconceptions of what Christ ought 
 to be; they are a track so obvious, that, so 
 long as He is in this aspect before us, we 
 readilv can follow. But when the leaf is 
 
108 THE SMITTEN KOCK. 
 
 turned, and we meet the transcript of dark- 
 ness and humiliation and sorrow and death on 
 the other side ; when we must follow Jesus 
 in His human privations and pain ; stand near 
 Ilim in His tears ; catch some outbreak from 
 His agony of soul ; and trace Him finally 
 through smiting, scourging, insult, the very 
 dust, till, beneath the tree, the billows of His 
 sorrow roll on us, and we hear the nails 
 driven, and we see Him die ; ah, then the 
 hardness of the mighty problem staggers us. 
 The other aspect vfas that of the strong, calm 
 rock ; this aspect of humiliation and death is 
 the rock broken from the top throughout. 
 How can we understand here ? Intellect 
 shrinks and rebels against the problem, as the 
 many theories and questions of our own day, 
 whereby the death of the crucified Christ is 
 either pitiably made what it was not, or is as 
 pitiably dwindled into nothing, prove. Pride 
 of mind and learning, prejudice of foregone 
 conclusions, our own life and tone in the 
 world, on the mass of which, if we let down 
 the Cross, it would burn like fire ; all these 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. 109 
 
 hold US at the threshold of the Smitten Rock ; 
 they blind the eyes that they cannot see ; 
 they preoccupy and materialize the heart that 
 it cannot understand ; so that, to many, many 
 practically, the crucified Christ is less a reality 
 than some exploded fable. Yet where the 
 heart can be stripped down into very lowli- 
 ness of faith ; where the furnace of amazed 
 doubts and scepticisms can be passed through, 
 without the soul perishing in the passage; 
 where the life, humbled and changed, can be 
 brought as a little child to God; there, at 
 that cost, the Smitten Rock in its awfulness 
 is revealed ; the gateway of it is entered, and 
 there are found the deep, otherwise unsearch- 
 able riches of Christ flowing up evermore. 
 The last reserved spring of God's love is here 
 unsealed. The exaltation and the throne are 
 calm in their face as the solid rock ; but the 
 humiliation and the cross, in their pierced 
 bosom, gush with hid treasure, and the 
 believing soul, drinking eagerly, exclaims, 
 '' This is spirit, this is life !" 
 
 Only then through the body broken and 
 
110 THE SMITTEN ROCK. 
 
 the blood shed is the hidden life of Him Who 
 is our Saviour and our God reached. Thomas 
 was a memorable instance of what all, arriv- 
 ing at the pierced heart of Christ through a 
 painful quest, have been. He could see the 
 outer shape and features well enough ; but it 
 was the wounds of the Smitten Rock he 
 sought — the marks of the nails in the hands 
 and feet, and the mark of the spear in the 
 side — and not till he had thrust his finger into 
 these, not till he had, so to speak, entered by 
 the door of agony and shame and death over 
 again — the rent veil of the Redeemer's flesh — 
 did he sink down, thrilled through by the 
 power of Jesus, and exclaiming, '' My Lord 
 and my God!" A search up to that point 
 sorrowful and bitter ; but from that point a 
 burning apostleship, a soul knit to Christ, a 
 life charged with the quick current of His 
 grace. So with the seekers after Christ still. 
 If we would find Him in His inner chambers 
 where He dwells, strait is the gate, narrow is 
 the way; we must find Him through the 
 rock rent and the graves opened ; the old 
 
THE SMITTEN ROCK. Ill 
 
 must crumble round us, the whole world of 
 cherished things must perish ; and then, 
 through this heart-revolution, Christ is won ; 
 the wounds we dared to search stream with 
 life ; the riven rock we dared to enter gushes 
 with the streams of Go-d. Oh, the glad dis- 
 covery of Christ thus in the dry and thirsty- 
 world ! Strait is the gate and narrow is the 
 way, it is true ; but after the discovery, one 
 of the great apparent contradictions of grace 
 begins to take effect. " Take My yoke upon 
 you," says Christ; " for My yoke is easy and 
 My burden is light." Just as with Thomas! 
 Dark the preface, bright the volume ; hard 
 the entrance, blessed the interior rest ; terri- 
 ble the smiting of the stone, glorious its 
 upleaping wave. Did not the Israelites drink 
 and lave themselves, and drink and lave 
 themselves again ? So you have heard of the 
 patient tossing in fever, and in his dreams of 
 fire longing that he could lay himself down 
 in the bed of some flowing stream, that the 
 cold wave might flow for ever above his 
 head. Who knows not, that, in the hot fever 
 
112 THE SMITTEN ROCK. 
 
 of sin and of the world, this is realized, when 
 the Rock, which is Christ, is reached, when 
 the soul, having no rest hitherto, flees into 
 His wounds, o>nd the river of the water of 
 life pours deliciously on its fire and thirst ? 
 Or you have heard of the deceived wayfarer 
 in the desert hastening after the mirage, with 
 visions of a cool rippling water in his eye, 
 that, as he nears the spot, fade into the 
 treacherous sand and are gone. Who knows 
 not, again, that these visions are indeed real- 
 ised when, out of the falsity and vanity of 
 life, the soul that betakes itself to Christ finds 
 the true desert stream ; in Him a repayment 
 for the long way and the hard fare ; a moment 
 of deception, never ; so that, as the wearied 
 feet bathe, as the hands catch drops from the 
 flowing rock, as the head has its cold baptism 
 poured upon it, as the lips drink and drink 
 again, the refreshed, the rejoicing, the utterly 
 satisfied life breaks out in this way of yet 
 deeper craving : 
 
 " Rock of Ages, cleft for me 1 
 Let me hide myself in Thee I" 
 
©tt the ftill, aurt iw t\x^ ^Mn. 
 
 It was just beyond the shower of manna, 
 and the stream from the rock, that God 
 deemed the Israelites capable of the first 
 forth-putting of a new virtue. He had struck 
 on several keys in the Hebrew heart since the 
 flight from Egypt ; but this new key of cour- 
 age in battle He had, as we have seen, 
 refrained from strikino; ; He had turned the 
 multitude aside rather from the short way to 
 Canaan, knowing that the last thing the 
 timorous slave-mind could bear was to see 
 war. Now, however, they were well on in 
 the solemn pathway ; the hardships they had 
 passed had given them sinew ; the greater 
 events and the dangers yet to come demanded 
 sinew stronger still ; wherefore, at this point, 
 when they were hurrying through the broad 
 vale of Rephidim, God saw fit to touch the 
 
 113 
 
114 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 key that had hitherto slept, and the note of 
 battle sounded. 
 
 The first foes were the Amalekites, a fierce 
 Bedomn tribe, whose strongholds were the 
 elifis and hills lying to the north of the pass 
 through which the Israelites were making 
 way. Scattered about the heads of that pass 
 were thick groves, it is supposed, of palms 
 and tamarisks, beneath the soft gloom of 
 which many springs oozed through moss and 
 rushes, making the region, in the heart of 
 surroundings so scathed and sterile, a scene 
 unusually green. No wonder, therefore, if 
 the desert tribes claimed it as their choice 
 resort, and if the sight of the swarming 
 intruders kindled them with alarm and fury. 
 Accordingly, these men of Amalek, dropping 
 from their heights, assailed the rear ranks of 
 Israel, where the weary and the footsore 
 received the shock first. But the energy of 
 Moses speedily redeemed the time. To meet 
 the assault, he pushed back a picked band 
 under the brave leadership of Joshua ; and 
 while they, in compact and stern order, moved 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 115 
 
 on the plain, he himself, with Aaron and Hur, 
 climbed the watch-tower of one of those 
 rocky battlements girdling the valley and 
 rising in their dark red mass sheer from the 
 plain level. There he posted himself, the rod 
 of God, as a banner to the people, in his 
 hand. We read in the experiments of science 
 of the rod used, whereby, as it points upward, 
 the stream of electric fire is drawn from the 
 cloud. So this rod of Moses, so celebrated 
 to the people now — the rod that had charmed 
 the Nile, the rod that had divided the sea, 
 the rod that had smitten the rock — was 
 uplifted again in the hand of God's servant, 
 and, while he, as mediator for Israel, prayed 
 and held it pointed as his sign God-ward, it 
 became a conductor drawing fire from 
 heaven ; by its stem the flame of power 
 streamed to the warriors beneath ; so that, as 
 the rod was held strong and straight, Israel 
 prevailed ; as the hands of Moses grew heavy 
 and the rod drooped, Israel gave back, and 
 Amalek prevailed. What a deep interest on 
 that grand picture! All the hill sides and 
 
116 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 vantage points in the background covered 
 with the onlooking thousands; in the plain 
 the gleaming battle, half hidden by its dust, 
 turning now this way, now that ; and on the 
 foreground crag above, the figure of Moses 
 like a mighty seer, his rod held to heaven. 
 True, his strength gave way, and the staff 
 wavered ; but his kinsmen first propped him 
 with a seat of stone, and then on both sides 
 upheld his hands, and there, tremulous, but 
 steady, in the red flush of sunset, were seen 
 the raised brow and the pleading figure and 
 the shining banner of God, so that we can 
 imagine how the irrepressible shout of all 
 Israel rang out at last, and the Amalekites 
 were scattered. Moses on the hill and Joshua 
 in the plain — each looking to the other — as 
 the latter fought, the former invoked God, 
 and the latter, through the former, receiving 
 down Divine power to rest upon him ; thus 
 had these two gotten them the victory. 
 
 You would say that each of these leaders 
 had his noble function, the one distinct from 
 the other, yet botli combined to work out the 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 117 
 
 purposes of the Most High. Moses was not 
 for battle ; Joshua was not for prayer and for 
 holding the upraised staff of God ; each 
 could not take the other's place ; but each in 
 his own place wrought with the other for this 
 common achievement of the Amalekites' 
 defeat. Just as, in like manner, the states- 
 man's place is in the cabinet, the general's in 
 the field — they cannot exchange or usurp 
 one another's functions; but, putting forth 
 each his own talent, they co-operate in some 
 one great national deed. Or as the thinker's 
 post is his closet, that of the practical man 
 of science is in the workshop ; they would 
 make dire helplessness and confusion if they 
 changed places; but the thought and the 
 action going together in their respective 
 departments, they bring glorious inventions 
 into light. So in the kingdom of God, there 
 is the Spirit still saying as of old, " Sejparate 
 me Paul and Barnabas!" Each man has his 
 distinct work apportioned: here a stout 
 hearted missionary to brave a life of vicissi- 
 tude and peril ; there a quiet saint to be the 
 
118 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 light of his own and half-a-dozen neighboring 
 families at home; here one to dip deep into the 
 secluded study of God's Word ; there another, 
 through his wealth, or energy, or public turn, 
 to carry out that Word in practical power ; 
 here a preacher with the golden tongue of 
 eloquence to stir crowds ; there the poor 
 heart in its voiceless retirement, or the sufferer 
 on his sick-bed, to breathe apart the longing 
 and the ardency of prayer. Such is God's 
 happy arrangement, by which the meanest as 
 well as the loftiest talent finds its spot and 
 work ; each cannot pass from its own position 
 to the other's ; each need never envy or 
 despise the other ; for, assigned their several 
 parts by God Himself, some on the hill top, 
 some on the plain, they are all honorable alike 
 before Him ; they are all stones alike in the 
 great breakwater, whereby God arrests the 
 kingdom of the wicked one, and makes way 
 on the earth for that kingdom of victory, 
 *' which is righteousness, peace, joy in the 
 Holy Ghost." 
 
 But the question may arise, Who of the 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 119 
 
 two, Moses on the hill, or Joshua in the plain, 
 represented, if I may say so, the mightier 
 power of God ? We usually assign the greater 
 honor to the man of fearless action ; not to 
 the Moses looking on from a distance, even 
 though he may have sketched the plan of 
 battle, but to the heroic Joshua grappling in 
 the conflict hand to hand. Yet of these two 
 forces there is not a doubt God raised the for- 
 mer at Rephidim into higher conspicuousness 
 than the other. For Moses had the weight of 
 the whole day's crisis in his heart. On his 
 rocky platform he stood high and in direct 
 communication with God. There Avas the 
 glow of an impassioned attitude and grandeur 
 round him. He clasped the banner of the 
 Lord; his arms, as they rose or fell — ^his prayer, 
 as it swelled or died — moved either victory 
 or defeat; and finally, as he was helped to 
 lay a steady grasp on heaven, the Israelites 
 drove their enemies in flight. I say, there- 
 fore, that of the two forces, Moses and Joshua, 
 prayer and action, while each was essential to 
 the other, and each had its own noble honor, 
 
120 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 the former at Rephidim was made pre-emi- 
 nent. And so in the labors and conflicts of 
 the Church of Christ : it has not been so 
 much those who have been in the heat and 
 burden of the day, illustrious as are their 
 names and deeds, and their work such, that 
 without it God's kingdom must have been 
 stayed ; still it has not been so much these on 
 whom God has hung the weight of His 
 mighty issues, as on the far less known watch- 
 ers on the towers of Zion- — the saints who from 
 beneath the altar have unceasingly cried, 
 *' How long, Lord, holy and true" — the 
 souls that have been oppressed for Christ's 
 coming — the men of prayer and of deep holy 
 thought, and of familiarity with Heaven, who 
 have kept the doors open between this world 
 below and that world above, and have been 
 in that way as conductors of the heavenly 
 grace, bringing it down on the Church, and on 
 the cause of good against evil, as "rain on 
 the mown grass, and as showers that water 
 the earth." Shall we ever know the vast pro- 
 portion of power and result that have so de- 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 121 
 
 scended to us on the plain, from the silent 
 veiled hill-tops of prayer ? Suppose, at this 
 moment, the veil thrust back, and all those 
 who bow the knee at the blessed Name, and 
 what they do, revealed to us; how litth 
 would the hurry and the power put forth in 
 the arena of the Church's public activity ap- 
 pear! — how grand the power exercised from 
 closets, and from sick-pallets, and from the 
 high spots of prayer! And is this not so 
 specially, that not only the poor and the soli- 
 tary and the feeble and the sorrowful, may 
 ail take home, that, in their very helplessness, 
 if they but '^ pray without ceasing," they be- 
 come channels to the great Church, of God's 
 richest power? But is it not so specially to 
 check the strong and full-blooded and ener- 
 getic in the tendency there always is in the 
 world to lean to action more than prayer — to 
 check those who allow a kind of recluse place 
 to prayer, but who make by far the most im- 
 portant business to consist in the stir of work 
 — who, while they pray, feel its ef&cacy no- 
 thing, but while they da somewhat — spend 
 
122 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 money, preach, visit the sick and poor, or- 
 ganise schemes and efforts, feel that these are 
 all in all ? God would rebuke that spirit, and 
 teach that the nobler force of the two, after 
 all, is prayer : that, not only in the Church at 
 large, but in each soul, it is the force nearer 
 heaven — ^it is the side which receives light, 
 without which the other side of action is con- 
 fused and dark ; it is the side which is suf- 
 fused with grace, without which the other 
 side of action labors unanointed and poor ; it 
 is the side of fire from God, without which 
 the other side of action, after all its effort 
 and battle, must, without real result, ulti- 
 mately faint and die. Let the weakest, then, 
 rejoice in this certain strength of prayer ; 
 and let the strongest, as he wages action in 
 the name of Christ, get him, ever and anon, 
 from the dust-cloud of the plain, up to the 
 hill-top of prayer, alone with God. 
 
 But it is noticeable also, that while Moses 
 loftily upbore the staff of God, he OAved his 
 power to do so to the end to the help of two 
 much inferior men. Aaron and Hur beside 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 123 
 
 him, first propped his exhausted frame upon 
 a stone seat ; then with their hands they up- 
 held his failing arms. If they had not been 
 there, or if they had allowed Moses to droop, 
 the cause of Israel would have been lost. 
 And who, then, unsustained, can go alone to 
 God ? Let his hands be consecrated by holi- 
 est work, and his heart "full of faith and 
 power," who can venture for one hour to 
 plead with God, isolated and alone. Even 
 the Lord Jesus, in the mighty floodtide of 
 His sorrow, shrank from going into the 
 garden darkness alone: He took three dis- 
 ciples to watch with Him, and far, far be- 
 neath Him as they were in their poor, rude 
 life. He would fain have seen their faces near 
 Him praying in the moonlight, he would 
 have leaned upon their shoulders as He 
 poured out His own soul to God. And, after 
 Christ, the great leaders in His cause in all 
 time — have they not turned eagerly to their 
 brethren, even the feeblest, for the help of 
 prayer ? When in some arduous hour there 
 has passed a cold shiver over them, and 
 
124 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 when they should have been strongest they 
 have suddenly sank back weakest, has it 
 not been because the breath of prayer 
 round them has chilled and died ? And 
 when, on the contrary, they have mounted 
 into courage with the crisis, and in their 
 high calling communed no more with flesh 
 and blood, but have been as those inspired, 
 has it not been that the glow of prayer 
 round them has become a flame, and its 
 hundred upholding arms as very buttresses 
 of strength ? That cause, therefore, is the 
 strongest which is deepest bathed in oth- 
 ers' prayers — that life rises noblest that has 
 most praying hands stretched towards it, 
 bidding it God-speed. The pole and frame- 
 work of the desert tent are, in themselves, 
 strong, and look well fixed; but let one 
 gust of wind come and they are over- 
 turned; whereas, stretch out cord by cord, 
 fastening the framework all round to the 
 earth — each cord is in itself slim and weak, 
 but the network of the whole holds the 
 strong erection fast, so that even in the 
 
ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 125 
 
 sweeping storm it still stands secure. So 
 let the chiefest in the ranks of Christ — let 
 the lofty doer of His Avord — let the pa- 
 tient sufferer of His will — feel the blessing, 
 nay, the necessity, of being held up each 
 day in the hands of prayer ; the words 
 that go up to God for us may be from 
 very ignorant lips, and in a poor and fal- 
 tering form, but even by that aid it is we 
 stand fast in the Lord : and high as well 
 as low learn the lesson, that, in suffering 
 in rejoicing, in good in ill, in life in death, 
 no man is, before God, alone ; but we are 
 all "members one of another." Be it so, 
 then, my reader, that, whether in battle 
 in the plain, or our several hill-spots of 
 prayer, while we each in the measure of 
 our strength hold up the ensign of our 
 God, we all turn to one another humbly 
 and unashamedly for the help we need — 
 and thus giving and receiving help, that 
 we all not less often look up to the heav- 
 enly hill- top, where, crowning the ten 
 thousand watch-heights of earth, there is 
 
126 ON THE HILL, AND IN THE PLAIN. 
 
 the place of Him before God, of Whom 
 Moses was but the shadow — that glorious 
 High Priest, in Whose might we over- 
 come, Who bears aloft there the shining 
 staff of His Cross, the true Jehovah-Ms si^ 
 and Who, in virtue of its prevdency with 
 the Father, " ever liveth and maketh in- 
 tercession for us!" 
 
XL 
 
 I SUPPOSE the encampment of Israel lin- 
 gered in a grateful quiet, for some time after 
 the battle of Rephidim, beside the coveted 
 palm groves which, as we have said, were 
 scattered in the valley. It was a famed oasis 
 of the desert ; at least, in our later times, it 
 is known far and wide for its palms, and tam- 
 arisks, and pleasant brooks, and green sward ; 
 and with some reason it is believed, that, in* 
 the eye of Moses, it was not only such a 
 cherished spot, but by the desert tribes was 
 regarded, moreover, as the chosen recess of 
 their gods, who wandered in the cool glades 
 below, or had their dwelling on the vast, sun- 
 scorched pinnacles of rock above. There it 
 was, then, withdrawn from the heat, and yet 
 with the red sun glorious on the great peaks 
 round them, the Israelites rested at peace. 
 
 127 
 
128 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 It was a breathing space between their past 
 scenes of trial, and the dread scenes that next 
 awaited them on Sinai, and the pause must 
 have been memorable and deep. 
 
 It was in this interval there took place by 
 the way an event of beautiful and touching 
 interest. The fame of Israel's escape out of 
 Egypt, and all the signs of God round it, had 
 pierced to Midian, quite on the other side of 
 the wilderness ; and journeying thence, 
 Jethro, the aged priest of Midian, hastened 
 to meet Moses, his son-in-law, bringing with 
 him Zipporah, Moses' wife, and their two 
 sons. These had waited in their desert home 
 the issue of the great errand on which Moses 
 had gone into Egypt. Now, after so long and 
 so wondrous a tale between, the family group 
 met. Moses hastened out of the camp to do 
 honor to the patriarch as he came : and, with 
 all the kindly Eastern salutations, the Midian- 
 ite train were ushered to the tents. Then 
 was rehearsed to Jethro all that God had 
 done in the deliverance and guiding of His 
 people, till the old man involuntarily must 
 
DIVISION OF LABOR. 129 
 
 have raised his eyes to the mountain ridges 
 round them, supposed to be the home of the 
 desert gods, and extolled that Mighty One 
 of Israel, Who was infinitely above them all. 
 Solemn sacrifices closed the narrative ; and 
 thereafter, sitting down, the mingled circle, in 
 their serious gladness, ate and drank together. 
 So the night fell : and the camp, lit only by 
 the pillar of God glowing on the rocks, and 
 high beyond that the shining of the clear 
 stars, was hushed in repose. It was the quiet 
 of God-watched sleep. 
 
 Next morning, however, the stir of labo- 
 rious life began anew : and of all the men 
 within the camp, none woke to one tithe the 
 burden that lay on the heart of their leader 
 Moses. He could not spare even one day's 
 leisure for his venerable guest ; but taking 
 Jethro with him, in the early morning he sat 
 down in the judge's seat, and from that time 
 till late at even again, heard patiently the 
 never-ceasing throng of the people, as, with 
 their multifold controversies and causes, they 
 
 flocked about him, and judged them all, 
 
 6'>- 
 
130 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 By eventide his strength was gone, and his 
 eye dim : and then it was Jethro, who had 
 intently watched all day, arrested him with a 
 striking remonstrance as to his taking on him 
 more than he could bear ; showed him how 
 mind and body, that should be reserved for 
 other and far grander tasks, in the huge sum 
 of these petty details would waste and perish ; 
 and sketched out to him a simple scheme, 
 such as his own experience of desert rule had 
 taught him, whereby the enormous and unrea- 
 sonable labor should be divided ; the people 
 should be distributed in regular sections and 
 grades ; rulers and judges, ascertained to be 
 men of God, should be named for each ; they 
 should judge the small matters, and the hard 
 and great causes only should be brought to 
 Moses. It was a system, in a word, by which 
 Moses should multiply himself; do through 
 the hands and heads of others an hundredfold 
 the work he vainly toiled to do alone ; and 
 yet, unexhausted, dwell at the centre of the 
 network, moving it, and controlling it all. 
 It was a scheme commended at once by its 
 
DIVISION OF LABOR. 131 
 
 plain sense. And yet it might, in its pro- 
 posal by Jethro, have made many a man, 
 other than the meek and noble servant of 
 God, shrink. For only think what a differ- 
 ence between these two, Moses and the white- 
 haired desert chief, since last they parted. 
 Then, Jethro certainly his superior in wealth 
 and place ; then, Moses but the shepherd of 
 his flocks ; tlien, Jethro head of a powerful 
 tribe ; then, Moses going forth on his solitary 
 and forlorn path to speak God's message to 
 the king of Egypt ; noio, Moses the hero of 
 an hundred events, of which the whole world 
 had heard, leader of a people in whose pres- 
 ence Jethro and his tribe were as an handful, 
 and in the vigorous prime of an influence 
 and power the aged hands of Jethro, no 
 more than the hands of a child, could grasp. 
 Was there not temptation to despise the old 
 chieftain's counsel, to cling obstinately to a 
 great rule like his in Israel, that even while 
 it broke his strength, he dared not and could 
 not part with, nay, to retort on Jethro that 
 his poor commonplace wisdom was but folly ! 
 
132 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 Yet the gentle single heart of Moses bowed 
 itself to be taught ; to see only what was best 
 for the honor and the work of God ; and, in 
 that one view, to adopt Jethro's judgment as 
 far better than his own. So the labor of his 
 high office in Israel came to be divided. It 
 must have cost him not a little to let go his 
 hold on so many poor hearts, that, from every 
 corner of the camp, looked up to him ; but 
 he nobly denied himself, if so be, even for 
 these poor hearts' sake, he might, by stripping 
 himself of a burden that, though heavy, was 
 dear, be more free to follow after the deep 
 things of God. 
 
 Now, my reader, this spirit that was in 
 Moses was surely a pattern spirit for us. 
 Nothing is so hurtful often in the labor- 
 field of God as the tenacity with which many 
 natures cling to an influence, they yet waste 
 mind and strength in seeking to wield, and 
 wield after all imperfectly. Need I point to the 
 misery a parent brings upon himself by the 
 minute enforcement of his rule in every turn 
 and detail of his children's daily life, till he 
 
DIVISION OF LABOR. 133 
 
 jades his own heart in the task, and tortures 
 into half-rebellion theirs? Or to the wearins; 
 sadness of a minister of Christ who is on the 
 constant stretch to keep up control in a wide 
 and distracting charge, who cannot consent to 
 let one point escape him, who is at work ever 
 and yet work never finished, who, even in his 
 hours of rest, is preyed upon by the rising 
 spectres of to-morrow, and whose strength 
 gives way and his life sinks, greatly indeed 
 by what labor he has done, but far more by 
 the grief and the misery of that labor which, 
 after all his straining, he is obliged to leave 
 undone ? How many high-gifted ministries 
 broken after but a short flight, and how many 
 early graves, tell this sorrowful tale! Yet I 
 would by no means plead for the work on 
 this account, being even partially abandoned, 
 or for the ardor of the overstrained heart be- 
 ing succeeded by a negligent and cool indif- 
 ference. That extreme again is certainly far 
 worse, and more reprehensible than the other. 
 On the contrary, I would plead for whatso- 
 ever charge is given us of God, being held to 
 
134 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 with intensest earnestness ; but let the man- 
 ner of its management be changed. Let 
 the labor be divided. Let the parent in 
 his sphere so become a living power of 
 pietj, as that he shall translate himself 
 round and round into the hearts of his 
 children — he shall control them not by 
 word but by silent influence — each shall 
 be his parent's deputy to himself Let the 
 minister of Christ in his sphere imbue with 
 his own spirit those standing next him in 
 his flock, transfuse himself forth, not in 
 rules or forms, but in love, in life, in power, 
 so that the weight of his great mission 
 shall no longer rest with himself — he shall 
 have fifty round him like-minded — he shall 
 have the whole circle more or less smit- 
 ten with his own zeal, and fellow- workers 
 spontaneously with him in the work of 
 God. There would be as great a difler- 
 ence between such a management and the 
 wretched ineffectiveness of a close, unshared 
 personal control, as there is between the 
 man who should think to move into play 
 
DIVISION OF LABOR. 135 
 
 a piece of vast machinery by the foolish 
 and exhausting mode of applying all its 
 strength to turn a large outside wheel an 
 inch here, to push home a mighty shaft 
 an inch there — and the man who, seating 
 himself at the centre, touches one all-com- 
 municating spring, lets on the jet of steam 
 or water, and, by that calm and easy pro- 
 cess, brings the whole gleaming labyrinth 
 into action. The one case is as the wasted 
 energies of Moses up to Jethro's visit; 
 the other as the simple thorough rule of 
 Moses, after he had laid Jethro's words to 
 heart. 
 
 True, we are often hard to be convinced 
 in letting conscious authority, even though 
 it involve wearing labor, slip from our hands. 
 VYe cling to felt rather than to silent power. 
 We have far more faith in the work we 
 do than in the life we live. And then, 
 we are jealous of the thing committed to 
 us, or the place to which we have labo- 
 riously climbed, being shared by others. 
 We mtist hold by every jot and tittle — 
 
136 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 we must feel out our influence to its last 
 details ; otherwise, we are harassed by a 
 sense of loss and wrong. How frequently 
 does this spirit of absorbing rule and work 
 spoil an able ministry — change its very 
 heart from an earnest single passion for 
 God into a mean and pitiable passion for 
 self ! And how fruitless the result ; for 
 the hand that insists on holding all the 
 reins must one day die. Who is then to 
 take up the task — who under the narrow, 
 jealous rule, has had scope so that, when 
 the leader is gone, there are twenty, or 
 ten, or one^ ready to assume his place ? — 
 with his own death, does his whole work, 
 of years it may be, not crumble like a 
 rope of sand? Besides, it is surely melan- 
 choly that, in the work of Christ, any one 
 should grudge the passing forth of control 
 and influence from himself to others. Who 
 are we that we should think to shut up in 
 our petty cistern, and restrain there, the deep 
 stream that is flowing ever from the throne 
 of God? Nay, is it not the very end we 
 
DIVISION OP LABOR. 137 
 
 labor for, that we are to make others in- 
 cessantly partakers of our gifts— that we 
 are to kindle in others, and bid go forth, 
 the light in us — that though, in that circle 
 of expanding light, we ourselves should 
 pale to nothing, we are yet to rejoice that 
 the glorious Christ is fast becoming all 
 things? Has this not been the high self- 
 abnegation of every true servant of the 
 Cross? Was it not the spirit that dwelt 
 in Moses, when he resigned so much to 
 which the natural love of power clung, 
 that God's work might be better done, and 
 His people better led? Was it not John 
 Baptist's spirit, when he rejoiced in him- 
 self decreasing, that the Lamb of God might 
 increase — when he parted with his waning 
 influence without a sigh — when, like the 
 star of morning, fading, yet hurrying on 
 into the depths of the uprising sun, he 
 yielded the glory of his ministry, that it 
 might pass on and be lost in the great 
 ministry of Christ ? And is this not the aim 
 of all of us, however sadly we miss it, how- 
 
138 DIVISION OF LABOR. 
 
 ever sadly, being set to unveil the Christ, 
 we yet come between, and darken His beauty 
 with our own unholy shadow ? 
 
 Let us not, then, my reader, despise this 
 lesson of humility and wisdom we may 
 learn, seated in thought beside Moses and 
 the patriarch Jethro, that evening long ago, 
 in their quiet desert tent. 
 
XII. 
 
 On the fiftieth day after the flight from 
 Egypt — a day, fifteen centuries later, des- 
 tined, not without meaning, to become the 
 celebrated Pentecost of Christians — the spec- 
 tacle of Jehovah's descent on Sinai took place. 
 By the long, sloping valleys or water-courses 
 that converge to that awful centre, the Israel- 
 ites had slowly moved on into the upland 
 plain, where the mountain masses, retiring 
 upon themselves, leave wider space for the 
 spread of a great multitude, and for the trans- 
 action before all their eyes of those sublime 
 scenes that were now to ensue. Nothing 
 could be more imposing than the march up 
 to this central plain. The rugged defiles, 
 black overhead hitherto, gradually opened on 
 its light ; then, as the pilgrim throng 
 advanced, the twenty different avenues 
 through which they came resolved them- 
 
140 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORF. 
 
 selves into one long vista, stretching itself on 
 and widening before the eye ; the frowning 
 hills fell back ; the broad approach, with its 
 columned crags on either side, alone filled 
 the eye ; and far at its extremity, growing 
 larger at every step in the streaming light, 
 and standing up as if alone against the sky, 
 there rose the single, dark, solid cliff of what 
 was now to be the mount of God. Along 
 the approach to this high altar came the mul- 
 titude of Israel, slowly, silently, we may be 
 sure, for the spot lay in the desert's heart ; it 
 was the very home of desolate sublimity ; in 
 the air there was not even the sound of the 
 dash of a waterfall, or so much as a brook's 
 murmur ; all was so deathlike in silence that 
 a voice raised a little rang with unearthliness, 
 or a stone, dislodged from the hill-side, rolled 
 with the noise of thunder ; and it is no stretch 
 to think that the place was hushed already 
 for the coming of the Mighty God. There, 
 then, dispersing themselves into long lines 
 upon the plain, the people "camped before 
 the mount." 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 141 
 
 The quiet of deep expectation next suc- 
 ceeded. First of all, God summoned Moses 
 to the mountain top ; probably the light 
 wreath of the cloudy pillar had settled there, 
 and God talked with His servant from its 
 screen. The people were required to make 
 a covenant with Heaven of a very solemn and 
 a very tender kind; and, with this prelimi- 
 nary charge, Moses went down. Presently, 
 bearing the ready consent of the whole 
 people, he climbed again to God ; and next, 
 was charged to prepare the camp, to sanctify 
 priests and people, for, on the third day, God 
 would descend in thick clouds in the sight of 
 all. So the process of a purifying solemnity 
 was held throughout the host; and on the 
 eve of the third day, all was done. 
 
 How intently must the first dawn have 
 been watched next day, as it came ruddily 
 along the hills. The pillared fire had likely 
 been seen on the great altar-hill all night; 
 now, in the clear amber air, it gave sudden 
 birth to thunder, reverberating an hundred- 
 fold in the silence ; it streamed with the zig- 
 
142 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 
 
 zag play of lightning ; it rolled itself out in 
 thick clouds, dense as the folds of night, its 
 billows falling like loosened garments over 
 cliff and scaur, till the whole mount was 
 hidden, and the curling vapor rose in a 
 column vast and black to heaven, and, finally, 
 from its breast there pealed a trumpet 
 ''exceeding loud." Surely no moment could 
 be conceived more awful than that in which 
 Moses then led the people out beneath the 
 mount to meet God; yet, as they clustered 
 there, the dark pall on Sinai waxed yet 
 deeper, fire seamed it in red flashes, the whole 
 mount, under the descending feet of God, was 
 as a smoking furnace, and its deep founda- 
 tions rocked. Then the trumpet notes again, 
 clear as silver, and streaming on, and increas- 
 ing, till the hills redoubled them into a thou- 
 sand echoes, made the whole desert world 
 tremulous to its heart. Who could bear it 
 further? It was terror mounting up to 
 exquisite anguish, when, at that point, " Moses 
 spake, and God answered him with a voice." 
 How that voice must have fallen on the 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 143 
 
 ears of Israel ! Was it as " the voice of the 
 Lord," sung afterwards in one of the great 
 strains of David as " shaking the wilderness," 
 or was it the " still small voice " of Elijah, 
 whispering startlingly in each heart? At 
 any rate, it was the summons to Moses once 
 more to ascend the mount ; and in the gaze 
 of the whole people, accordingly, his solitary 
 figure was seen wending upward and vanish- 
 ing behind the veil. It is at this point we 
 are made to mark that he and Aaron alone 
 were thought worthy thus to pierce into the 
 unseen. God, though so near His people, 
 would not be unveiled to all ; they must be 
 barriered off on the edge of the holy ground, 
 till they had deeper insight, purer concep- 
 tions, higher faith ; and therefore it was that, 
 wrapping up Moses under the shadows and 
 the secrecy of the mountain top, His first and 
 repeated charge to him was, to warn Israel, 
 priests and people, that not one foot should 
 dare cross into the precincts of the mount, 
 lest, God breaking forth upon them, they 
 should die. It was to be a ring of fire and 
 
144 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 
 
 awfulness impassable; at that moment, the 
 trembling in the people's heart would be sure 
 to keep them back safe enough, but the fire- 
 enveloped hill would by and by become 
 familiar, and the sight of Moses passing and 
 repassing breed a desire and a daring in the 
 hardier of the lookers-on to follow ; so, in 
 case that rash venture should be made, it is 
 striking that, in the first interview, God had 
 nought to press on Moses but that he should 
 return to the people, warn them of the inac- 
 cessible glory, and that he who broke through 
 into the mount should die. 
 
 Now we shall see presently more of the 
 scenes in and around Sinai ; but at this point 
 we must ask, why the Israelites were shut off 
 so jealously from seeing their own chosen and 
 covenanted God — why brought so near as 
 the mountain's base, and yet not allowed to 
 climb a few steps on the mountain's side — 
 why, beholding everything of power and 
 greatness, just to the veil's edge, and yet for- 
 bidden on pain of death to pass into the inte- 
 rior glory? We may answer, as we have 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 145 
 
 already virtually done, that, with many or- 
 gans in them awakened to behold the dread 
 signs of God, there was yet the deepest chord 
 of all — the capacity to see and know God 
 Himself—unawakened. Hence the utterable 
 things — the fire and smoke, on the outside of 
 Sinai — they could gaze on palpable enough ; 
 but had they been taken withm the fire and 
 smoke, and confronted with the unutterable 
 things Moses saw there, the sight, to their un- 
 purged senses, would have been a blank 
 Just as, for example, if we suppose two shep- 
 herds on the plain of Bethlehem on our Sa- 
 viour's birth-night, one gifted with the spirit- 
 ual heart, the other not ; to both the glory in 
 the broad sky, when angels appeared, and 
 their song W8.s heard, and the whole night 
 was lit up, would have been the same — awe- 
 striking, full of God ; but if both ran to find 
 the Divine Child where He lay, and did find 
 Him in the inn stable, wrapped in swaddling- 
 clothes, and laid in a manger ; while the one 
 would be persuaded here in this inner spot 
 was " God manifest in the flesh," and would 
 
146 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 
 
 bow down and worship ; the other, unbeliev- 
 ing, would look on this, the end of so many 
 dread portents, as lame and impotent, and pro- 
 bably pronounce it either a mockery or a lie. 
 So with Moses and the mass of Israelites : he 
 on the hidden steep of Sinai had the pure 
 vision to discern God ; they in the plain could 
 look at the billowy and flaming grandeur of 
 His robes ; but if admitted to the great shrine 
 where Moses was admitted, they would, from 
 want of gift, have so failed to see, that they 
 would not only not have had their curiosity 
 met, but would have disbelieved and been 
 hardened worse than ever. In true knowl- 
 edge of their state, therefore, God set bounds 
 at the foot of Sinai, to cross which into His 
 hidden dwelling He decreed would be death. 
 And the same inviolable la,w prevails now. 
 *' Except a man be born again," said Jesus, 
 uttering that law, "he cannot see," much less 
 can he enter, "the kingdom of God.'* And 
 (as the instant consequence) to seek to press 
 into the kingdom, without that spiritual capa- 
 city, is ruinous as death. The impure and 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 147 
 
 world-steeped heart, for example, has an in- 
 stinct of religion it cannot rid itself of; but 
 when it turns to do its religious worship — to 
 find, in short, and to see God — what debased 
 images of God it conjures up — either as One 
 Who may be propitiated with bribes, and 
 cheated with hypocrisies — or, where the con- 
 science is more fear-awakened, as One dark 
 with anger, and beneath His feet the torments 
 of the pit. In either of these cases, is not the 
 base and slavish worship such as, for the soul, 
 worketh death ? Or the worship of the im- 
 penitent, formal heart — what do its lifelong 
 comings to see God result in but in reducing 
 all conception of God to the dead stone of 
 ordinance and form ; and the soul, going on 
 contented in that worship — can it in the end 
 do otherwise than die — is it not smitten with 
 its own death already ? Or the intellectual 
 seeker after God — how fares he in his attempt 
 to pierce the veil ? Alas ! do we not know 
 on what miserable rafts of speculation intel- 
 lect has again and again put off its devotees 
 into the shoreless deep ? And who by this 
 
148 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 
 
 searching has ever found out God? Wq 
 grant the deep fascination of the quest — we 
 grant the strong ardor with which the natural 
 mind has often risen to the problem — nay, we 
 are aware of the passionate absorbedness with 
 which again and again intellect has plumbed 
 its way forward in its search for God, and, 
 when its poor, short line has found no bot- 
 tom, has, in its sorrow, cried, like Job, " Oh 
 that I knew where I might find Him, that I 
 might come even to His seat !" But with all 
 that, we know too, what, again and again, the 
 penalty has been — how the ground of truth 
 and faith has, inch by inch, crumbled — how 
 all footing has been lost, and gifted spirits, 
 that might have been as clear lamps in the 
 heaven of our world, through daring scepti- 
 cism, and the folly on folly which the forth- 
 putting of mere intellect has bred, have fallen 
 from their orbit, and become as wandering 
 stars, dropping into the blackness of darkness 
 for ever. 
 
 So, to this day, there is no man, unpre- 
 pared, can break through the bounds God has 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 149 
 
 set about Himself, and live. What would it 
 be, even suppose those who seek God, not in 
 His way, but theirs^ were to find and see Him 
 — suppose the impure, the formalist, the keen 
 and subtle sceptic, had some conceivable 
 power of passing into God's presence, and be- 
 holding Him as He is — would the sight be 
 joy or sorrow — would the chord struck be- 
 tween them be congratulation — and would 
 each of these, on the veil lifting, be satisfied 
 with God's likeness ? Yea, has it not been 
 recorded for us that, when such as these do 
 come into the presence of the High and Holy 
 One, as in the judgment of the great day, the 
 very face of God and of the Lamb strikes ter- 
 ror ; in that God they know at once they have 
 no part or lot, and, as they turn to flee from 
 Him, they invoke the hills and the rocks to 
 fall on them and cover them! Is not this 
 enough to bring home to us the dread bound- 
 ary-line set about God ? No matter what the 
 nobleness of life or the gift of mind ; as to 
 this point, the people of Israel were sanctified, 
 and the priests doubly so ; yet neither dared, 
 
150 THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 
 
 without the one heart-spot of light, cross into 
 the mount. Oh ! there is no way for us 
 through the barrier but the simple path up 
 which Moses climbed, written first on its 
 gateway, " Except ye be converted and be- 
 come as a little child, ye cannot enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven," and written after 
 on its upward steps, " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart ; for they shall see God!" There are a 
 thousand, like the Israelite multitude, who 
 can see the signs of God ; but there is only 
 one in the thousand, like Moses, who can 
 penetrate and see God Himself My reader, 
 have you the secret way — the always con- 
 verted heart ? Does God bid you at the edge 
 stand off? or does He call you up into the 
 mount, and bid you come nigh ? Times there 
 are in your pilgrimage, when, even in your 
 own soul, you know the difference — times of 
 cold shade, for example, when your love is 
 low, your life worldly, your prayers faint — you 
 feel then the blind drawn between you and 
 God, and the boundary for the time set you 
 cannot pass. Only again when the chill film 
 
THE INACCESSIBLE GLORY. 151 
 
 is removed off eye and heart, and the baptism 
 of the Spirit is renewed, have you power to 
 fly to God as doves to their windows. Would 
 you not then learn, even from that, to keep 
 the pure flame of an always converted life in 
 you — mindful that, if you would frequent the 
 mount, this is the way — mindful that, if you 
 would see God, this is the glass — and mindful 
 that, even one dark and forsaken hour outside 
 at the foot of the mount is enough to shew 
 you a miserable change — enough to make 
 you tremble with the words, " Our God is a 
 consuming fire !" 
 
XIII 
 
 No one can tell how the accents of the 
 living God dropped from the flaming mount. 
 There was no similitude seen, no hand fling- 
 ing back the drapery of smoke and fire, no 
 face gleaming even dimly, no lips forming 
 the august speech ; but the voice was without 
 doubt articulately heard. And heard, too, 
 by how great an audience 1 On the hills, 
 amidst the fire, and in the air, thousands and 
 tens of thousands of the throng of heaven ; 
 for, from several passages in Scripture,* it is 
 clear that, vfhen God came down on Sinai, 
 His feet were borne on the wings of angels, 
 their hands set His throne and hung the vast 
 curtains of His tent ; and in the plain were 
 the many thousands of Israel, Moses conspicu- 
 
 * Gal. iii. 19; Heb. iL 2; Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. Ixviii. 7, 8-17 ; 
 Ps. xviii. 7-11. 
 
 152 
 
" THE VOICE OF WORDS." 153 
 
 ously in front, and their dark groups still as 
 death. The fire-wreathed brow of Sinai then 
 grew for the time calm ; the air, thick wdth 
 palpitating angels, listened above; the pil- 
 grim hearts, scarce breathing, listened below. 
 Such was the audience ; and from the bosom 
 of the great calm God spake. Was it not 
 now such a voice as was to be heard, genera- 
 tions after, in that very desert region, where 
 the Hebrew prophet should lurk in his moun- 
 tain cave and witness the earthquake, the 
 strong wind, and the fire— but the Lord not 
 in these ; and then, as if revealing the 
 deeper presence that lay beneath the dread 
 magnificence of these, there should tremble 
 in his ear the still small voice, and he should 
 know God to be there f Was it not so with 
 the Israelites now, that within the sheath of 
 terror — at the heart of the fire, and the black- 
 ness, and the darkness, and the tempest, and 
 the sound of a trumpet — there was God Him- 
 self speaking in the " still small voice ?" All 
 the elements of earth and heaven wrought 
 into a storm-winged envelope out-side — but 
 
154 "the voice of words." 
 
 this the true revelation of the God of Israel 
 in its spot of stillness at the heurt ! At all 
 events, what the "voice of words" uttered, 
 as it went on from one preoept to another of 
 God's great and holy law, luas such a dis- 
 covery. For although, when the sublime 
 series of commandments was complete, and 
 the voice had ceased, the tempestuous signs 
 rolled round Sinai again ; and, passing sud- 
 denly from the hush into the tumult, from the 
 clear speaking of the words of God, into the 
 wrath and roar of elements, the people, 
 affrighted, fell back upon the plain afar off, 
 and entreated Moses he would stand between 
 them and God, and that they might hear the 
 intolerable piercingness of that voice no 
 more ; yet they had heard what neither in 
 their ears nor he-arts could ever die — heard, 
 in effect, that these volumed darknesses on 
 Sinai were but the shroud and not the reality 
 of God ; that, penetrating through their veil, 
 lifting the screen of His majesty, going within 
 the flaming of His power, there was found 
 beneath all these, as the region where He 
 
''the voice of words/' 155 
 
 Himself dwelt, and whence He spake to His 
 people, not terror, not blackness, not consum- 
 ing fire any more, but the words of truth, and 
 love, and blessedness, written at the heart. 
 In the law now given them from that hidden 
 place, and which was graven after by the 
 finger of God on tables of stone, they had 
 thus made the deepest and dearest discovery 
 of Him, to be theirs for ever. 
 
 In passing through the countries they 
 
 explore, travellers are sometimes enveloped 
 
 in the hurrying rack of cloud and storm; 
 
 every feature of the land is blotted out, and 
 
 the eye meets nothing but the blind confusion 
 
 of the elements. But suppose at some point 
 
 the steps are arrested by a moment's pause in 
 
 the storm— a sudden break opens in the wide 
 
 bwathe of mist, and through that rent there 
 
 streams one long shoot of sunshine, revealing 
 
 but a glimpse of some green and lovely spot : 
 
 the clouds may sweep in again more darkly, 
 
 and the tempest rise more in wrath than ever ; 
 
 but it is not their wildness, or their waste, the 
 
 traveller carries away as his deepest impres- 
 
156 "the voice of words." 
 
 sion of the region ; it is his memory of the 
 sweet patch of landscape that just beamed 
 upon him and was lost. So to the Israelites, 
 not the thunder-gloom and wrath of Sinai, 
 but the declaration of the Voice reading 
 forth, in the brief calm, the simple, beautiful, 
 but eternal words of God's holy law; it was 
 tJiat^ we must suppose, left the deepest imprint 
 of Sinai on their minds. And cannot we 
 confirm the experience by the yet more vivid 
 and certain discovery of the blessed God 
 unveiled to us ? We cannot find God such 
 that w^e can draw nigh to Him in either the 
 storms or calm of nature. Creation is too 
 high and remote for us, and has such an over- 
 whelming sense of its dark and cold majesty 
 to throw upon us, that if we are not made to 
 shrink from it altogether, we become at best 
 like him who, without any gospel light, having 
 explored all nature's greatness, concluded his 
 quest by the blank declaration, that there was 
 no God. Nor are wx^ happier in our attempts 
 to pierce through the veil of Providence ; its 
 workings, as well as those of Creation, are as 
 
"the voice of words." 157 
 
 vast wheels round ns, that go on inexorably, 
 and whose girth touches the heavens above, 
 and again the depths beneath — we can only 
 say about them, as is said in Scripture, " that 
 whosoever falls on them shall be broken ; and 
 on whomsoever tliey shall fall, they shall 
 grind him to powder." Where, then, in the 
 majesty of nature — whether in its still smile 
 or in its tempest fury — where shall we find 
 the spot for the trembling and the seeking 
 heart to rest ? Where, through the dim 
 shroud, is there the break for us of light 
 from heaven ? Where, in all the dread move- 
 ment and expanse, is there the discovery of 
 our God? Need I tell you, that, were our 
 Bibles blotted out, and all we learn from them 
 lost, cold and voiceless indeed would be the 
 circles of the dead universe we gaze on ; we 
 should discover how vain and miserable the 
 creeds would be we should then form, by the 
 process, of which so many have foolishly 
 talked, of rising from nature up to nature's 
 God : nature might intimate to us that her 
 broad garment was the robe of some Being 
 
158 "the voice of words." 
 
 veiled in awfulness behind ; but, as to one 
 shining of His face to us, one accent of His 
 voice, nature would remain for ever dumb 
 and dark — she would be our Sinai, appalling 
 us, and makins: us stand afar off, but with no 
 glimpse into her heart. 
 
 But now, my reader, blessed be our God, 
 He has folded back the thick clouds of nature 
 — He has torn the veil off all those dim attri- 
 butes of power nature speaks of, and, through 
 that opening in the gospel of His Son, the 
 weakest child of grace can enter with a steady 
 step where the greatest philosopher has fal- 
 tered. He can enter through that door into 
 the mighty temple of all things, and no more 
 feel dwarfed or overwhelmed, but find there 
 God, discovered by Himself in Jesus Christ — 
 in the person, in the nearness, in the lowly 
 way on earth, in the bleeding cross of Him 
 Who is the " brightness of the Father's glory, 
 and the express image of His jjerson." I say, 
 he can make this discovery of the High and 
 Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity ; and not 
 only so, but this discovery becomes the pal- 
 
"the voice of words." 159 
 
 pable possession of his heart— '' Christ dwells 
 in his heart by faith,"— and in that glorious 
 property there— in the working and the 
 breathing and the unworded speech within 
 him of the Holy Spirit, whereby the loveli- 
 ness and the realness of that property are 
 revealed to him yet more day by day— the 
 child of grace catches the full imprint of God; 
 not a distant voice, as the Israelites heard and 
 feared from Sinai ; not words floating to the 
 outward ear, as the commandments of the law 
 did to them ; but a new covenant, an unar- 
 ticulated law of love, "written not on tables 
 of stone, but in the fleshly table of the heart." 
 There now is God's impress in Christ ; and he 
 who possesses that has such a fearlessness in 
 facing all the dread problems of the universe, 
 that, after he has stood by the side of David 
 and heard the exclamation, as they together 
 gaze through the starry night, " When I con- 
 sider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers ; 
 the moon and the stars which Thou hast or- 
 dained ; what is man that Thou art mindful 
 of him ? and the son of man that Thou visitest 
 
160 " THE VOICE OF WORDS." 
 
 him?" he can quietly feel that that God is 
 not unmindful — that, from the silence and the 
 vastness of nature, He has come forth to Mm ; 
 although the heaven of heavens cannot con- 
 tain Him, He has knocked at the door of Ms 
 heart, He has come in and sups with him, and 
 he with God. 
 
 Have we not, then, good ground to glory 
 in this heart discovery of God ? If I be a 
 preacher of the Cross, I may be but a poor 
 interpreter of the hard questions of the day, 
 to which subtle intellects would summon me 
 — questions of the surrounding darknesses and 
 confusions and inexorable necessities, where- 
 by nature and reason, they say, environ the 
 doctrines of our faith. I may not be able to 
 throw many rays of light on these questions, 
 nor may I have a torch to guide me in the 
 steps of those men who, in our day, overdoing 
 their own subtlety, shew us a grievous speci- 
 men of those who are " in wandering mazes 
 lost." But I can set all these things aside as 
 but the thick clouds on Sinai — as but the dark- 
 nesses that roll under the feet of God ; and 
 
*'the voice of words." 161 
 
 going through the door in Christ, I can lead 
 poor, trembling sinners past them all, straight 
 into the heart of God Himself. I may not 
 interpret what the dread universe either 
 utters or threatens ; but I can interpret that 
 love here at hand which says, through the 
 lips of Christ, " Come unto Me, all ye that la- 
 bor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." 
 
 Or, if I am a pilgrim in God's path, hard 
 beset by evil and by trial, I may not be able 
 to expound those laws of fate, whose iron 
 force an infidel spirit never ceases to suggest, 
 and before which, if I looked only them in the 
 face, I should cease to strive, and should be 
 borne down. Nature teaches these blind 
 laws ; and all the outside mechanism of life 
 and death about us in its dreary surface-look 
 seems everywhere to utter them ; but I can 
 turn away my sight and eyes to Him Who, 
 through iron law and dread force, says, in a 
 living voice, " I will not leave you comfort- 
 less: I will come to you;" and then the day 
 breaks, and the evil shadows flee away. 
 
162 "the voice of words." 
 
 Or, if I am in the seclusion of loneliness and 
 pain, I may not be able to answer to the 
 enemy's suggestions, that my sick-room or my 
 unnoticed way in life are but spots in the 
 measureless world — that they are lost to God's 
 sight by reason of their smallness and insig- 
 nificance — and, while He is ordering the high 
 events of that world, how can He stoop to or 
 remember me ? But I can take the volume 
 of my God from beneath my pillow, and, 
 though feeble be the hand that turns the hun- 
 dred pages of its promise, I can light almost 
 at the first on such words as these, "Behold, 
 I have graven thee upon the palms of My 
 hands." Then I can recall Him over these 
 words by the cry of prayer ; I can realise the 
 light from Him breaking round my bed ; I 
 can hear His voice saying, " The very hairs 
 of your head are all numbered ;" I can feel the 
 spot where I am laid already as a Beulah- 
 light from other spheres upon me, the secrets 
 of that God the great outer world would 
 darken brightly with me, and already, as it 
 were, sighing from the upper rest, " No more 
 
'* THE VOICE OF WORDS." 163 
 
 death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither any 
 more pain." 
 
 Yes, verily; although it be written that, 
 when the temple of God is opened in heaven, 
 there are " lightnings and voices, and thiin- 
 derings, and an earthquake, and great hail," 
 that is but as the dark shell of Sinai — in the 
 hidden kernel here is the deeper voice — "Be- 
 hold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and 
 He will dwell with them, and they shall be 
 His people^ and God Himself shall be with 
 them, and be their God. And God shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall 
 be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
 neither shall there be any more pain : for the 
 former things are passed away!" 
 
XIY. 
 
 There was a long space, during which 
 Moses abode under the fringe. of the thick 
 darkness on Sinai, detained there until God 
 had spoken to him many sentences of law for 
 the worship and the life of Israel. But sud- 
 denly there came a break in that high inter- 
 view, and one of those passages occurred, 
 which, in the story of the Israelite pilgrimage, 
 arrest most deeply the reader's eye and 
 memory. God bade Moses select Aaron, 
 with his sons Nadab and Abihu, and seventy 
 elders — aged, silver-headed representatives of 
 the people, we doubt not — -and with that 
 company, (in which also we should say Joshua 
 was included,) to come up unto the Lord. 
 Accordingly, making way for this commission, 
 Moses brought all Israel together, got their 
 assent again to the body of precepts God had 
 
 164 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 165 
 
 sent them down, and building an altar under 
 the hill, the upper stone to be the table of 
 sacrifice before God, its twelve pillars to 
 signify the twelve Israel tribes, called on 
 them to ratify their assent with fear. The 
 youth of the camp, meaning, so to speak, 
 Israel's first, unspotted strength, stood forward 
 as priests of the occasion, slaying the sacrifice. 
 Moses, then, catching the blood, sprinkled 
 one half on the broad altar-stone, on which, 
 very likely, lay the book of laws he had 
 written, and which he again read aloud ; and 
 the other half, held in basins, he sprinkled on 
 the people, as an awful token that they and 
 God's will were now knit in covenant as one. 
 The rite done, he and his chosen company — 
 Aaron, his sons, and the seventy elders- 
 turned them in the morning light, for we 
 infer it was yet early morning, and leaving 
 the holy spot, wound their way upward till 
 they were lost in the shadows of the mount. 
 They were not, as we afterwards see, 
 admitted to the uppermost crest of Sinai, 
 where the central spot of God's glory hung, 
 
166 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 but probably were made to pause on some 
 lower height, from the vantage-point of which 
 they could best catch the scenic wonder God 
 had prepared, gliding on their sight. There, 
 accordingly, clustered silently and with raised 
 eyes, they beheld, as on a higher and oppos- 
 ing cliff, the rising vision ! Round about 
 behind them were the round roof and walls 
 of darkness, black and solid as if reared of 
 black marble ; but yonder, high up, were the 
 plume-like lines of fire from the mountain's 
 summit, and making a circle of light down- 
 ward, as one would say, invading the dark- 
 ness, and beneath that, first with fleecy trans- 
 parency, as you can conceive, advancing into 
 the gloom, then, shedding off its gossamer 
 dimness and revealing itself intensely on the 
 eye, there appeared a paved floor of sapphire 
 stone, the blue so deeply vivid, that it seemed 
 as it had been first cut in wedges, and then 
 tesselated together in a still and glorious 
 floor, and all about it a floating of etbereal- 
 ness and beauty, according to the sacred 
 account, like " the body of heaven in its 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 167 
 
 clearness." What a noble symbol of the God 
 of Israel ! what a dazzling similitude, by its 
 excess of light consuming, as it were, its 
 own veil from off its f^ice, and making the 
 onlookers tremble as though the next step 
 should be the very sight of Him " Whom no 
 man hath seen or can see!" Did the band 
 Moses headed, as where they stood they 
 caught rays upon their brow and dress, behold, 
 in reality with the living eye, or was it, 
 prophet-wise, with the open eye but tranced 
 brain ? With the walls hewn from the utter 
 darkness closing in on them behind, the ever- 
 streaming, ever-vanishing fire high above, and 
 over against them, the clear-cut sapphire floor 
 lying in its haze of heaven, were they not, as 
 in some vast chamber, borne up on wings of 
 ecstacy they knew not whither, and, passing 
 before them, a dream-vision of the living 
 God ? Who could tell ? Yet even while 
 they looked, and that unutterable loveliness 
 of God was unfaded, a feast was spread upon 
 the rock, as if in appeal to their every-day 
 sober sense, and there, in the dread outbreak 
 
168 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 and nearness, but tlie perfect peace of a shel- 
 tering God, they did so humble a thing as 
 eat and drink. What proof of the reality of 
 that sight could have been given more con- 
 clusive, simpler, or better? The great God 
 resplendent above — the common human meal 
 below ! It was no passage of a dream ; it 
 was the certainty made palpable of the two 
 extremities, the height of heaven and the 
 lowliness of earth, clasping hands in covenant 
 and being at one ! 
 
 So this symbolic scene passed, and Moses, 
 summoned higher in the mount, left Aaron 
 and the elders with a charge they should not 
 desert the spot until his return, and, taking 
 Joshua as his attendant a certain way with 
 him in the ascent, climbed upward to the 
 edge of that highest cloud that was both 
 cloud and fire ; there, at its nethermost part, 
 there was a halt of six days, and finally Moses 
 entered into the cloud, and, devouring fire as 
 it was, dwelt in it forty days and forty nights 
 with God. 
 
 Whither, then, does this sublime interlude, 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 169 
 
 striking in among the communings of God 
 with Moses, lead us? To interpret it some- 
 what, I believe we must first go back on the 
 scene of the twelve-pillared altar at the 
 mountain's base. There the c^^remonial 
 between God and His people began by the 
 pouring out between them of the blood, and, 
 in the blood, the life of an innocent victim. 
 In that deed there was vicarious sacrifice, 
 the innocent for the guilty, the death of one 
 for the death of all. Wherefore, when Moses 
 separated the blood into two quantities, and 
 first sprinkled one of these upon the altar, 
 there was meant in that, that Gt)d's anger was 
 appeased, and His holy justice met ; and 
 when next Moses sprinkled the remaining 
 part upon the people, there was meant in 
 that, that they were not only redeemed from 
 sin, but, by the sign of God's peace flung 
 upon them, were also consecrated and raised 
 up to life. They were both, God and His 
 people, thus on the covenant level, and 
 at one. 
 
 Now, passing on from these more material 
 a 
 
170 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 symbols at the base of Sinai, up to the loftier 
 symbol in the mount itself, we arrive at its 
 meaning as in effect the same, only writ in 
 grander and more selected characters. There 
 was the devouring fire on the hill's crest 
 above, significant of the kindling and the 
 burning of Jehovah's anger — truth, justice, 
 holiness, clad not in majesty only, but in 
 wrath. But again, there was disclosed under 
 that the sapphire floor bathed in the calm of 
 heaven, and that was significant of the fires 
 above being quenched ever as they fell ; just 
 as, could you think of showers of flame falling 
 ever on the bosom of a still watersheet — fast 
 as they should fall they would be drank up, 
 if I may say so ; they would vanish on its 
 face, and the lake would still lie smooth and 
 luminous as glass. Even so the fiery flakes, 
 as they fell from the ridge of Sinai, vrere seen 
 by Moses and the elders to drop, as it were, 
 to nothing on the blue ineflable depth be- 
 neath ; holiness, in its righteous outbreakings, 
 sinking down ever on the breast of utter 
 mercy and of utter peace ! And it would 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. l7l 
 
 have been no gain had the flames ceased to 
 be shot from their volcanic ridge ; had they 
 so ceased, the symbol would have been 
 mutilated of half its sublime meaning, for the 
 glory of the spectacle was that the fire-robed 
 righteousness of God needed to be seen above, 
 that it might excite a just and holy fear; 
 while, falling in its tongues on the deep calm 
 below, it brought the assurance home that the 
 twain in the one blessed God were one ; that 
 the wrath no longer reigned to the sinner's 
 death, but, while justly due, was caught, and 
 every moment quenched, in the sea-like depth 
 of love underneath ; that, in a word, as Scrip- 
 ture itself has described, "Mercy and truth 
 had met together, righteousness and peace 
 had kissed each other." 
 
 That, then, was, I think, the glorious shad- 
 owing forth Moses and his company beheld in 
 Sinai. The reality appears to us now, my 
 reader, in Him " Who is the image of the In- 
 visible God." Take our Lord, if you will, 
 first in His Incarnation. Above, as on the 
 ridges of heaven, there was the intolerable 
 
172 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 and burning Godhead from which He came, 
 and which, from its background, still threw 
 its glories down upon Him on the earth ; but 
 then, below, in His human guise, there was 
 the contrasted and beauteous calm. He was 
 the meek and lowlj Jesus. He in His human 
 body and life was " holy, harmless, undefiled, 
 separate from sinners ;" as it were, over again, 
 the sapphire floor, and the body of heaven 
 in its clearness. We could not have drawn 
 nigh to Him in the upper glories of His God- 
 head ; but these were withheld from us ; ever, 
 as they broke forth, they dropped and disap- 
 peared in that Saviour-form we can approach, 
 full, in its earthly way, of human tenderness 
 and peace. 
 
 Or, take our Lord in His Atonement — in 
 His whole obedience unto death. He set 
 forth, again and again, the picture of the 
 wrath above — the subduing love into which 
 He drank it away continually below. On the 
 lake, for instance, when the storm-wind arose, 
 there was the murky rage of nature darken- 
 ing the air, and sweeping with the frown of 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 173 
 
 death, overhead ; there was the still, sleeping 
 Christ, his head pillowed on the plank, be- 
 neath — image full of the light and peace of 
 heaven ; and when He rose at the disciple's 
 cry, He spake but one word, and there was a 
 great calm. Into the stillness of His mercy 
 wind and wave sank innocuous. Again, when 
 He met the furious maniac, the possessing 
 devils had their poor victim so tormented that 
 it was as if brow and locks and eyes writhed 
 with fire, and the gathered passions cried 
 against the approaching Christ, " What have 
 we to do with Thee ?" But the word of quiet, 
 heavenly rebuke was spoken, and the maniac 
 next moment was sitting at the feet of Jesus, 
 clothed, and in his right mind. It was sim- 
 ple collision with the mercy and the calm of 
 Christ, and the fire and madness that had torn 
 the unhappy soul were gone. So it was with 
 the Son of Man at every step : the vehemence 
 of every ill was in the earth ; sickness had its 
 prisoners ; sorrow had its broken hearts ; sin 
 its bitter ruin ; death its graves; it was every- 
 where a scene of gathered darkness, under 
 
174 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 which human life cowered, and its hope was 
 lost. But the way of Christ, beneath these 
 shadows, was again as the sapphire floor, as 
 the body of heaven in its clearness. He swal- 
 lowed up into Himself continually all the 
 sharpness and the fear of earthly ill ; to the 
 cheek of sickness He gave the flush of health : 
 to the sorrow-laden, the spring of joy; to the 
 sin-tortured, peace ; to the dead, even in the 
 grave's corruption, life. His was a ministry 
 as it were, a very sea of love, receiving in its 
 crystal depth every instant, but quenching fast 
 as it received, all the fiery darts of the wicked 
 one. And finally, when He closed that minis- 
 try upon the Cross, there was the hate of men 
 and devils making darkness round Him ; 
 there was the full tempest of God's wrath 
 making, at the noonday, midnight above Him, 
 so that every light went out, and in the soli- 
 tariness of His last agony the waves beat in 
 very close on the broken ebbing heart. But 
 in that heart, notwithstanding for one awful 
 minute there did sweep, as it were, the very 
 wing of night, pressing out the cry, ''My 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 175 
 
 God, my God, why liast thou forsaken me ?" 
 there was, to its last pulse, the serenity of 
 heaven ; and when its quiet prayer was 
 breathed, and its silver cord was quietly loos- 
 ened, there fell on the crucified Face and 
 Form the calm of death. All the terrors of 
 the wrath of God the air was fraught with 
 above, but there was this peaceful shrine of 
 death on the Cross helow. True, it was a 
 palUd light, as if fading to the brink of being 
 lost ; but it was even there, at its dimmest, 
 an indestructible calm. And then, as the 
 veil of death went off, and the light emerged 
 into resurrection — and the earthly drapery 
 that yet lingered round the body of the resur- 
 rection in its turn went off, and the light 
 burst in the unshaded body of the ascension 
 — what is realised over and over to the eye 
 gazing on this blessed Lord but that, widen- 
 ing out thus from the pale spot on Calvary in 
 glorious circle, He now fills earth and heaven ? 
 He is the very peace of God : where He stands 
 in His place, sprinkling His own blood upon 
 the mercy-altar before God, and again sprink- 
 
176 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 ling that same blood down on us, there are 
 above the unimaginable splendors of the God- 
 head ; but between these and us He, in His 
 person, work, human form, love, is the paved 
 sapphire floor and the body of heaven in its 
 clearness. Hence, I think, the meaning in 
 that mystic feature of the apocalyptic vision, 
 when the redeemed in heaven are said to 
 stand on " a sea of glass, mingled with fire," 
 — it is none other than a setting forth of that 
 Finished Work, which catches and extin- 
 guishes within itself the otherwise consuming 
 fire of God we fear; while, within its own 
 depths, it is a deep translucent sea of peace ! 
 There is no eye, then, need ever waver as 
 it looks to Christ. You know it is one of the 
 simplest of phenomena that, if a great circle 
 of light be kindled anywhere in the midst of 
 darkness, the darkness, ever as it sweeps 
 upon it, is perpetually changed to light ; its 
 cloud breaks and vanishes; its vapor, just 
 touching on the rim of that circle, first takes 
 a ruddy color and then fades. So Christ is 
 the light, as the body of heaven, drinking all 
 
THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 177 
 
 our darkness perpetually up. Let it be the 
 
 darkness we fear from God's anger, let it be 
 
 a vapor born of the earth, only bring it near 
 
 enough to touch the full light of Christ, and 
 
 it is dispersed and gone. The drooping eye, 
 
 emerging into that light, grows clear; the 
 
 spectral fear that haunted us outside, at that 
 
 shining border shrinks to nothing ; the sorrow 
 
 that rolled over us, carried thither, first is 
 
 smitten as with hues of gold, then is gradually 
 
 evaporated like mist, and its very shadow 
 
 lost ; and, above all, the wrath of God abiding 
 
 on our sins and us, met by the light of Christ, 
 
 even in its blackness, is absorbed as by the 
 
 noonday. Verily, of this Christ it is true, 
 
 ^'Himself took our infirmities, and bare our 
 
 sicknesses." All we cast upon Him, all we 
 
 hurry with to Him, all that from the depth of 
 
 our sin, and restlessness, and care, and broken 
 
 life, and laden hearts, we utter to Him — nay, 
 
 all the condemnation of the holy God that 
 
 would each hour destroy us if it fell — all He 
 
 receives into Himself He has an ear, and a 
 
 pity, and a help, and a complete salvation for 
 8'-> 
 
178 THE SIMILITUDE OF GOD. 
 
 all; and while He takes all miseries that 
 oppress us thus home into Himself, He 
 quenches all, and we find in Him nought but 
 a sea of peace. So St. Paul commends his 
 followers in trial to pour thus their sorrows 
 into the depth of Christ, " and the peace of 
 God that passeth understanding would keep 
 their hearts and minds" through Him. So 
 say we to the pilgrim now. Turn aside ever 
 and anon into the mount to gaze on Him 
 " Who is the image of the Invisible God." 
 Gaze on Him till you feel His calm passing 
 into you, and you becoming, if I dare say so, 
 a portion both of Him and it ; till you feel as 
 beyond the reach of any ill to hurt you or 
 destroy you any more ; feel as drawn on, and 
 standing with your very feet upon the paved 
 floor, and the body of heaven in its clear- 
 ness ! 
 
XV, 
 
 mt iatln'w in tlt^ Pijuwt. 
 
 In the upper recesses of Sinai Moses dwelt, 
 as in the audience-chamber of God, forty days 
 and forty nights. He was not only super- 
 naturally sustained above bodily want during 
 that time, but, we may be sure, also was 
 supernaturally sharpened and purged both as 
 to eye and ear ; for his main task was intently 
 to study and to take off an earthly imprint of 
 that pattern of heavenly things God showed 
 him there on the mount. We cannot tell 
 how the pattern itself must have appeared as 
 God spread its map before the gaze of Moses. 
 Even in this lower sphere we know that there 
 are glorious things, which pass before us, and 
 which we cannot fasten down into anything 
 but faintest human expression. There is the 
 tablet of illimitable thought, for instance, 
 often rising up luminous within the soul, but 
 
 179 
 
180 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 under which the poor vehicle of human 
 words staggers and breaks down. Who, even 
 the most endowed of poets, ever struck an 
 outer word-image matching the lambent 
 thought-undulations of the soul ? Or while 
 the painter transfers to his canvas pictures of 
 land and sky, beautiful exceedingly, who ever 
 caught to his satisfaction — what fairest touch 
 or color can catch — that light as from some 
 dreamland, which is nature's sweetest mys- 
 tery — which is, in truth, some reflection from 
 the King in His beauty, and the land that is 
 very far off ? And if so, we may judge how 
 the pattern in the mount, opening its volume 
 in the hands of God ; on its starlit scroll 
 showing against the dark background the 
 temple, and the altar, and the high priest, and 
 the secret spot of Godhead in the heavens ; 
 showing these mighty things as they were, 
 and are, and ever shall be ; we may judge 
 how such a pattern fell on the sight of Moses, 
 untranslatable in words — untranslatable surely 
 i^to any earthly copy. How could the 
 heavenly, the boundless, that which was pure 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE .MOUNT. 181 
 
 light find spirit, be conveyed down into a 
 rude miniature image on earth ? Yet God, 
 Who marvellously compresses His glory into 
 a span's breadth, as well as makes it resplen- 
 dent through the heavens ; Who, if you take 
 a microscope and examine, sets forth in the 
 cup and petals and minute painting of the 
 wayside flower, an image as fliir and mys- 
 terious of His working as in the myriad stars 
 of niglit ; He found expression for the pat- 
 tern that must have dazzled Moses ; He 
 despised not the rude elements of earth, or 
 of the Israelite's desert life, but, in the num- 
 berless details wherewith He taught His 
 servant, showed him how to rear on the 
 sands, in lowly earthly copy, an image of the 
 heavenly and the true. Faint, indeed, it was, 
 and unimposing to the common eye ; but to 
 the pure contemplation of the spiritual eye, 
 instinct with a divine overflow of meaning, 
 so that each pin and woven thread and hem 
 border in the tabernacle work became fringed 
 with sacredness ; and, as for the great divi- 
 sions of the place, they were seen by such 
 
182 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 contemplation to be advances, one beyond 
 the other ; first the outer court, then the holy 
 place, then the holiest of all, opening in their 
 awful line, folding back veil after veil, till, 
 along that avenue of sacrifice, of incense, of 
 light, of the discovery of God Himself upon 
 the mercy-seat, the entranced eye could gaze 
 
 "Through golden vista into heaven." 
 
 Accordingly we see, in further Scripture, 
 that that simple desert sanctuary, described 
 by God off Flis pattern in the mount, and 
 built afterwards by Israelite artisans, was no 
 unfitting shadow from the substance of the 
 sanctuary above. For John, who was admit- 
 ted in his visions to the precincts of the 
 latter, saw but the earthly, the old Hebrew 
 tent of God, expanded, so to speak, and 
 etherealised in the heavenly structure. Past 
 the outer court or vestibule of heaven, and, 
 as it were, within the first veil, he beheld the 
 Son of Man in priestly garments, and in 
 unbearable splendor, moving about *the seven- 
 branched golden candlestick — the dark cur- 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 183 
 
 tain of the chamber round about, as we must 
 conceive it, being such, and the vastness of 
 its height and length and breadth putting 
 such a distance between the spectacle and 
 John, that, to his eye, it appeared as if the 
 Lord Jesus held up the seven lights like 
 seven stars. Further, the same John, placed 
 in that vision-spot, beheld " a door opened in 
 heaven ;" that is, plainly, the veil of things 
 still deeper moved aside ; and, through that 
 aperture, had sight of what we must call the 
 Holy of Holies— the last interior sanctuary 
 of God ; the throne set in its crystal sea ; the 
 Lamb in the midst of the throne ; the multi- 
 tude of white-robed saints ; Ae pure temple 
 round needing no light of sun or moon, 
 because the Lord God Almighty and the 
 Lamb are the light thereof We cannot put 
 in one sentence all these awful glimpses John 
 scatters up and down his pages; but the 
 mention of but a few is enough to satisfy us, 
 that the outline on which he builds his sub- 
 lime narrative, the sketch he fills in, illumines 
 and expands into a compass and a color set- 
 
184 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 ting forth the heaven of heavens, is nought 
 but the slight desert tabernacle, struck and 
 again pitched each day by the pilgrim Israel- 
 ites of old. And what is John's imagery and 
 description but in keeping with the vivid 
 points summed up in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, wherein the Lord Jesus, by the 
 fullness of His work and person, stands forth, 
 Himself the tabernacle, gathering all its com- 
 partments and its rites and glorious meaning 
 up in one ; wherein He is revealed dying on 
 the tree ; as it were, the offering poured, in 
 the outer court of earth : then, in His resur- 
 rection, ordering the preparation of His 
 Church and kingdom — as it were, flinging 
 back the first veil, and trimming into light 
 the seven-starred golden candlestick ; and 
 finally, in His ascension and intercession, pass- 
 ing into the presence of God for us — as it 
 were, the second veil in His own bleeding 
 flesh rent, and, by that new and living way, 
 He entering the High Priest to the very 
 throne, sprinkling His blood upon the mercy- 
 seat, and, because of that, taking up His place 
 
THE TATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 185 
 
 there victoriously for ever ? Such is the pro- 
 cession in the great steps of Christ, from the 
 cross on Calvary to the throne in heaven ; 
 and as we gaze along the dread march, our 
 Christian thought is but the Israelite taber- 
 nacle run out into vast spiritual expanse. We 
 have curtain after curtain thrown back; we 
 follow the bleeding steps from the altar in the 
 outer place ; we pass through the holy pre- 
 cincts of the Church beyond ; and, deep 
 beyond that, we enter into that which is 
 within the veil — we see all the glory of the 
 mediating Christ, as, thronging from the east 
 and from the west, from the north and from 
 the south, His redeemed cluster on the floor 
 of heaven, and He Himself stands, above all, 
 in light as in a garment, " minister of the 
 sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which 
 the Lord hath pitched, and not man." 
 
 That, then, is the unfolded reality of the 
 pattern God showed Moses in the mount — 
 and the simple desert tent for God's dwelling 
 was accordingly afterwards upreared. Is it 
 not the true application now, that, as that 
 
186 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 tent was directed to be raised on the sands, a 
 shadow from the great archetype in heaven, 
 so each pilgrim in the desert way yet must 
 needs copy off the same high model, and 
 build a tabernacle of God in the depth of his 
 own soul? I think St. Paul means nothing 
 else but this when he says emphatically, 
 '' Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 
 and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ?" 
 and when he makes several other pointed 
 appeals to the sanctity of Christian men, as 
 being, in their bodies and their souls, sanc- 
 tuaries of the holy God. And, with no small 
 likelihood, it has been suggested, that he 
 catches more than a gleam of meaning from 
 the compartments of the desert tabernacle 
 when he prays God to sanctify His followers 
 wholly, and to " preserve their whole spirit, 
 and soul, and body, blameless, unto the com- 
 ing of the Lord Jesus." What does that 
 seem but the body as the outer court, the soul 
 as the second space within the first veil, the 
 spirit as the depth of very holiness, and 
 Divine presence within all ? Is it not a pic- 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 187 
 
 ture of the pilgrim's being, sacred through 
 its whole structure, from the common vesture 
 of the body to the deep chamber of the 
 spirit, shrine of the blessed God ? 
 
 True, although most understand that no 
 man can be called to be Christ's but he is 
 called also to be a temple thus of the awful 
 indwelling God, yet to the high sketch 
 shown us in the mount, the common life of 
 few corresponds deeply and thoroughly. 
 Who of us, in body, soul, and spirit, is 
 literally the sanctuary of Christ? Some carry 
 the presence of Christ no further or deeper 
 than the outer threshold ; it is the court of 
 ordinary religious rites, in which the multi- 
 tude assemble, in which the knee is bowed, 
 and prayers are said, and there is a certain 
 awe on the mind, and a certain outside knowl- 
 edge of the truth and will of God. But tiie 
 deeper being is not moved ; the screen of 
 deeper nearness to the God Who is being 
 worshipped is not pierced; yea, so little is 
 involved in this mere worship under an outer 
 church's roof, and in outer postures, that, like 
 
188 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 the temple court of old, when Jesus entered 
 it at Jerusalem, it may become a scene of 
 buying and selling, and money-changing ; 
 that is, men may and do carry with them into 
 church, when the worship is not deeper than 
 the church form, the busy world tossing and 
 whispering and trafficking round them ; their 
 thoughts thronged with its week-day cares, 
 their ears bent away from God to listen to its 
 solicitations ; and may, in this manner, instead 
 of pleasing God, or offering themselves pure 
 habitations of the Spirit, do the very deed 
 for which Jesus scourged the Jews when He 
 cried, " My Father's house is an house of 
 prayer ; but ye have made it a den of 
 thieves." 
 
 Others, it must be granted, penetrate be- 
 yond the outer place ; but they are still no 
 deeper than within the first veil. They have 
 accurate knowledge and conception, if we 
 mean by these a clear grasp of what the Word 
 of God declares as doctrine — they have a de- 
 light in spiritual things — their emotion breaks 
 forth at spiritual appeal — and the restraints 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 189 
 
 of God are felt real upon their conscience and 
 their life. But there is, in such, a reserved re- 
 gion still, wherein the triumphs of Christ have 
 never been — a secret lightless region I can 
 compare to nothing so much as to the 
 holiest of all within the temple during the 
 long time before Christ's coming when there 
 was no open vision in Israel ; the mercy-seat 
 was cold — the place of God's glory silent and 
 dark. So in the lives I mean, they are even, 
 like Zacharias, ministers at the altar, and irre- 
 proachably busy with the work of God ; but 
 let the veil upon the inner spot quiver, and 
 unwonted light come, and a voice from be- 
 tween the cherubim speak, as in the case of 
 Zacharias, and their start and fear would de- 
 clare, like his, how unprepared they are to 
 acquiesce to the last depth in God, how, so 
 far, the passage-way is cleared, but there is 
 that recess beyond they have shut up, dumb 
 and dark. 
 
 But there are those others, my reader, pil- 
 grims of God in the highest sense, who give 
 up their whole life to be traversed by His 
 
190 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 feet. As the Israelites stretched out their 
 sanctuary tent, one step in it holier than an- 
 other, and the last resting-place of all the seat 
 of God's light, so these true followers in the 
 desert path now, made a sanctuary of their 
 life ; the gateway of the body they deem holy 
 from its threshold ; through one stage and 
 screen after another, they then proceed, holi- 
 ness and awe increasing, till they reach the 
 last secret of the soul, and make the altar 
 there for God holiest of all. They fulfil the 
 glorious reality Jesus sketched in His great 
 prayer, when, looking up to the Father, He 
 said, in reference to His people, " I in them, 
 and Thou in Me!" They are in microcosm 
 on the earth what the great heavenly world 
 is above ; they are each the temple of the 
 Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And as 
 an old classic architecture is said to have exhib- 
 ited the reverent elaborateness of its work- 
 men's art, not only in its pillars and its capitals 
 nobly beautiful, but in the care with vf hich its 
 simplest stones never meant to see the light 
 were cut and set as though they had been 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 191 
 
 precious gems each in its own place— so these 
 lives indwelt in by the Spirit are holy to the 
 last details — there are no shot-holes where 
 one single hour's negligence or sin or world- 
 liness is huddled by, in the thought that it is 
 unknown, and will remain unseen : but pass 
 you, in such lives, from the commonest, poor- 
 est matters of the daily existence, on into the 
 solemn temple where the soul enshrines its 
 Lord, or from that temple out again into the 
 daily path, and you find the building of 
 rarest symmetry — in its little as in its great, 
 in its least hidden stones as on its heart altar, 
 graven the words, "Holiness unto the Lord!" 
 Who is ready for this traversing through and 
 through his being of the feet of God ; who 
 can bear the minutes of his life, his quietest 
 privacy as his most public profession, to run 
 as grains through the sandglass of God's light ; 
 who can, each day, in everytlimg^ stand by the 
 awful altar, that he may have his conscience 
 sprinkled with the blood of Christ, " purging 
 it from dead works to serve the living God ?" 
 It is a searching, and to some it would be an 
 
192 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 intolerable test ; yet if we bear it not now, 
 how shall we bear it in the great day, when 
 the Lord Whom we seek shall suddenly come 
 into His temple — ^when He shall come to 
 each, His fan in His hand, and thoroughly to 
 purge the floor — when He shall go in and out 
 through every court, body, soul, and spirit, 
 and, while gathering up the wheat into the 
 garner, shall burn the chaff in fire unquench- 
 able? 
 
 So, thou traveller in the way of God, antici- 
 pate in thyself that search of fire. Anticipate 
 even now the dwelling and the light of God. 
 Take impression off upon thine own soul daily 
 from the pure pattern in the mount. What 
 though the materials at hand for building 
 God's habitation in thyself be few — what 
 though the lot be poor — what though the 
 body fail ? The Israelites had no very splen- 
 did state round their wilderness tent ; it was 
 a building wrought from their best, certainly, 
 but it was a building simple and even rude as 
 their own wayfaring life. So thy shelter for 
 the living Jesus may be lowly — thy life torn 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 193 
 
 by the strain of trial — thy offering such as the 
 poor widow made, two mites, all she had — 
 yet, beneath the darkest and poorest garment 
 on the outer lot, there may be truly translated 
 the temple of the high and holy God. His 
 palace ere now has been in the poor man's 
 hovel — his sweetest dwelling in the broken 
 heart. And when thou art wasted to the very 
 grave, when the earthly curtain outside, of 
 pain or age or sickness, is rending off, is it 
 not glorious reality and triumph for thee, 
 that, through the very chinks and rents waste 
 has made, the indwelling light is breaking 
 forth — thou art about to cast the mantle of 
 the earthly, and to appear in the white and 
 glistering dress of the heavenly — thou know- 
 est " that, when the earthly house of this tab- 
 ernacle is dissolved, thou hast a building of 
 God — an house not made with hands — eter- 
 nal in the heavens!" 
 
XYI. 
 
 We turn the next leaf of these scenes on 
 and around Sinai, and we find a page of 
 deepest shame for Israel. It is a dark and 
 downward step from the high shrine of the 
 mount where Moses saw the pattern of upper 
 things unrolled on its sheet by the hand of 
 God; where he receivd also from God the 
 stone tables of the law, finger-graven with 
 their letters of light, and where for forty days 
 and forty nights he heard the divine expound- 
 ing of the tabernacle worship he was to teach 
 Israel; it is, I say, a mournful downward 
 step, from that pure retreat to the glare of 
 guilty common daylight in the plain. Yet 
 such is the rapid change of scene. 
 
 The lengthened absence of their leader in 
 the mount, it is said, had worn the expecta- 
 tions of the Israelites out. The late scenes 
 
 194 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 195 
 
 of their first gathering about Sinai, too, had 
 faded in their impression ; and though the 
 mount still burned with smoke and fire, no 
 other incident had taken place. The long in- 
 terval since Moses had disappeared was dumb. 
 The inert and bondage-stricken nature of the 
 people, therefore, receded quickly from the 
 spiritual stimulus it had received, back to the 
 level of its own natural grossness^ like some 
 sluggish wave, running in and driven high 
 upon the beach, but, without any hold to 
 keep it fixed at high mark, lapsing back again 
 into the sullen sea; so Moses, as their hold 
 between them and God, being gone, they 
 dropped back into the old base life. In that 
 temper they crowded round Aaron, urging 
 that he should make some material thing in 
 lieu of Moses — gods, as they said, to go be- 
 fore them. Aaron had already taken the 
 edge off his conscience by descending from 
 the post at which his brother had left him 
 some way up the hill, with the ring of elders 
 in a solemn assessorship round him. He had 
 broken from that high stand above the peo- 
 
196 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 pie ; and now, like all whose moral cour- 
 age and opportunity are maimed by the 
 conscience of some guilty tale within, he dared 
 not protest against the popular cry. All he 
 could do, when he had got the eager offer- 
 ings of gold ornaments from the women, and 
 when he had graven and w^rought from these 
 the image of a molten calf, was to delude him- 
 self and them by the poor sleight-of-hand pre- 
 tence that this w^as no god in opposition to, 
 or in place of, the great and living God above, 
 but was His emblem, so to say, through their 
 homage done to which they were, in effect, 
 magnifying and calling Him to mind. So, 
 setting forth this monstrous idea in the base 
 molten image, (a fact of ^vhich, I think, the 
 narrative leaves no doubt,) a feast was made, 
 a scene of wild revelry was begun, and the 
 burden of the popular excitement was, '' This 
 be thy God, Israel, which brought thee up 
 out of the land of Egypt." 
 
 Meantime, upon that frenzied shame below 
 there was set the glance of the all-holy Eye 
 from the mount above. The converse of God 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 197 
 
 with Moses was abruptly broken; and the 
 latter listened with dismay, we may be sure, 
 to God's wrathful account of what was pass- 
 ing in the plain. Contrast indeed! that at 
 the very moment while, for this people's wor- 
 ship, the pattern of the deep things of God 
 was being shadowed forth into an earthly de- 
 sign and given in the Sinai cloud, just under- 
 neath the skirt of that cloud, the people, so 
 God-sheltered, were playing in the freaks of 
 miserable idolatry ! It was a moment big 
 with peril, for the anger of the Lord burned 
 in sentence after sentence against them ; and 
 but that Moses, bold and utterly self-forgetful 
 in his mediation, had stood pleading and hold- 
 ing back judgment in the breach, the tale of 
 wilderness journeys would at this point have 
 been done. As it was, having wrested, as it 
 were, God's pledge of mercy, he turned in 
 strong concern and hastened down. Joshua 
 met him as he went ; and, for a time, involved 
 in the deep craggy slopes, they could not see 
 the camp in the valley, although, through the 
 strange mountain silence, echo brought the 
 
198 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 noise of the idol-feast. Joshua, with the sin- 
 gle instinct of a soldier, imagined it in a mo- 
 ment to be the clash of war or the sound of 
 victory ; but Moses, better informed, told him 
 it was none of these, but the rise and fall of 
 unholy song. At that moment, turning the 
 sudden shoulder of the hill-sloj^e, and coming 
 out in full view beneath the cliff— there stood 
 the two figures from the mount ; and there, 
 in the valley, full before them, stretched the 
 now startled scene. It was all plain at a 
 glance — the tale of shame and falseness and 
 abomination; and, while still there, side by 
 side with Joshua, and in their hasty appari- 
 tion clad as with awful majesty, Moses, in his 
 bitterness of heart, as if all that had been 
 done for this people were now undone, took 
 the two glittering tables of the law he held, 
 and, before all the people, dashed them to 
 pieces beneath the hill. Then followed his 
 rapid step into the very heart of the idol 
 crowd — his taking the molten calf and break- 
 ing it and grinding it to dust and scattering 
 the dust upon the brook that had hitherto fed 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 199 
 
 the people with its sweet stream, floAving from 
 out the mount of God. Relentings he had 
 none. The once pure water, now polluted 
 by their own sin, he made the idolators drink. 
 He upbraided Aaron with his monstrous guilt; 
 and, scarce waiting for his feeble, pitiable re- 
 ply, he stood in the camp gate, he drew out 
 the volunteer band of Levi as on the Lord's 
 side, and, sending them up and down among 
 the tents, bid them slay unsparingly the ene- 
 mies of the Holy One of Israel. It was a swift 
 and bloody hour ; and sad it must have been 
 to the heart of Moses to look on the smitten 
 corpses, to hear the wail in the dwellings of 
 Israel, and to bethink him of the first heap 
 of graves they were to leave in the desert ; 
 but he wore an austere eye till all was done 
 — till he bid the people wait now, in the ruin 
 and silence of the spot, his speech with God 
 for them — till he ascended again to the holy 
 Presence in the mount ; and there it was, as 
 he turned to heaven, the noble tenderness of 
 the man gushed out at last, and he cried to 
 God that, though he himself should be blotted 
 
200 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 from His book, this unhappy people should be 
 forgiven their great sin, and should live and 
 not die. So, at his prayer, the wrath hanging 
 over Israel was turned away. 
 
 I shall not dwell on the blended greatness 
 and gentleness recorded thus of Moses in the 
 chapter of the molten calf — neither on the 
 patience literally of exhaustlessness with 
 which God waited, that, from its lowest falls. 
 He might incite the miserable Israelite life to 
 some spiritual rising again. The point is 
 rather, the incredible fatality of that idol- 
 worship at the very feet of Jehovah. Was it 
 possible ? The overhanging mount with its 
 dark vestment and its living fires declaring 
 God — the recent scenes fertile with holy 
 signs — the covenant of blood between Him 
 and them — the sight the elders had gotten of 
 Him in the cloud — and, that very hour, Moses 
 their mediator face to face with Him in their 
 behalf — was it possible that, in this awful 
 compass of God's nearness, grace, glory, the 
 camp of Israel should yet become a scene of 
 idol- worship and festivity ? We speak and 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 201 
 
 think of such an outrage, and such a fall as 
 that, as monstrous. And yet, my reader, is it 
 not worse than paralleled amongst us ? We 
 see not the glaring features of the contrast as 
 these were seen in material pictures at the 
 foot of Sinai — the rites of guilty recklessness 
 round the molten calf here ; the great God 
 looking from the cloud-covered precipice 
 yonder. But the contrast, though more 
 veiled amongst us, is not less true and dark. 
 For count we up all the nearnesses and deal- 
 ings of our God with us — the overshadowing 
 Cross of His Son, to which we have professed 
 to turn — the enveloping and brooding of His 
 Spirit, not on our daily way only^ but on our 
 very souls — the mount of prayer, the scene 
 of Sabbath ordinance, the spot of holy sacra- 
 ment we frequent, the shinings of God's hand 
 and face on us, alike in the tender rejoicings 
 and the heart-searching sorrows of life — count 
 we up all the realities that press in upon us, 
 grander and more soul-subduing than ever 
 Sinai did on Israel ; and then turn we to our 
 Christian life — what in such stupendous Pres- 
 
202 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 ence do we find mlich of it to be ? Even when 
 we are fresh from some solemn life-scene, or 
 are moved yet by some spiritual exercise in 
 which we have caught a heart-impress from 
 God, and His world has broken on us far and 
 high in its light, is it not so that but a short 
 day or two are gone, and rapidly the impres- 
 sion fades out, and the rich color of the 
 things of heaven round us melts in common 
 air? Does not God's dread spiritual world 
 thus fall back from sight? We give it a 
 short nominal lease of influence over us every 
 seventh day or so ; but turn the next leaf, on 
 stepping from the atmosphere of God's dwell- 
 ing — what is it next but the picture of this 
 lower world ? And how, with its gods many 
 and its lords many, that world's arena is 
 peopled — how busy and manifold its worship- 
 pers — some, of the golden god of money ; 
 others, of their own selfishness in hundred 
 shapes ; others, of base passion, of pleasure, 
 of godless mind, of the whole racy, varied 
 run of a mere earthly life ; know we not but 
 too well ? Verily, what an utterance would 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 203 
 
 come from, let us say, a seething city, if its 
 life-currents all had tongues to tell the tale, 
 and we the hearing of the holy God to hear, 
 what a flow of voices even from the busy 
 hearts couched in the quiet church and in the 
 still service of God, if those hearts would but 
 break their silence ; what a multitudinous cry 
 of their idolatries would reach us — '' These be 
 thy gods, Israel!" Let us not, therefore, think 
 we are so many removes off, if any, from the 
 Israelitish sin. Often, looking at the sharp con- 
 trast in Christian life, one is forced to think 
 of that fearful touch in Scripture, which in 
 one or two lines tells us that under the bleed- 
 ing feet of Christ, as He hung on the tree, 
 the rough soldiers cast lots for His garments ; 
 blind to the awful Form above them, and to 
 that being the meeting spot at that moment 
 of things unspeakable from heaven, earth, 
 hell, they rattled their dice lightly beneath 
 the Cross ! So the vanity, the world-worship, 
 the sin mockeries, the greedy gain, in which 
 Christian men take share — is it not all like a 
 qame again i^layed heneatli the Cross ? ^ e 
 
204 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 cannot, I repeat, boast above the Israelites. 
 In flinging discredit on them, we condemn 
 ourselves ; for, inasmuch as we stand amazed 
 at the nature in them that, touched by God 
 at so many points in its higher side, and 
 drawn heavenward, yet, on its other side, 
 gravitated so continually downwards, as that 
 its very soul clave to the dust — we must have 
 deeper amazement still at the spectacle of 
 that nature in ourselves which on its spiritual 
 side embraced, if I may say so, by the very 
 immanence and love of Heaven, yet, in so 
 many instances, on its other side, is " earthly, 
 sensual, devilish!" 
 
 But this does not exhaust the lesson of the 
 molten calf We have said that the narrative 
 implies the Israelites set up their idol, not as 
 a false god in opposition to the living and 
 true God, but, on the contrary, rather as that 
 image of their own, through which, in visible 
 shape, they sought to set the living and true 
 God forth. It was an outward copy of their 
 inward thought of God: and that inward 
 thought took such an outward shape because 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 205 
 
 it had birth in the low slave associations of 
 their old life, and in their random memories 
 of the animal-shapen gods of Egypt ; so that, 
 such as was the gross, darkened mind of 
 Israel, such was their idol god, wrought of 
 their gold ornaments and fused in their fire. 
 It was the best they could frame. It was 
 their hideous conception, when left to them- 
 selves, set forth materially, of Him Who 
 dwelt above them inaccessibly in light, and 
 Who had brought them up out of the land of 
 Egypt. So, in long aftertimes, Paul wrote of 
 the darkened mind in the world in his day 
 that had given birth to ideas of the living 
 God like itself; that had "changed the glory 
 of the incorruptible God into an image made 
 like to corruptible man, and to birds, and 
 four-footed beasts, and creeping things." And 
 so, in this Christian time, it is not that men 
 literally oppose God, that the things wor- 
 shipped and clung to in the world are the 
 declared enemies of God; on the contrary, 
 it is the same lives that are busy in the 
 world's theatre on week-days, and that turn 
 
206 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 in to the quiet of God's house on Sundays. 
 But then the world's pursuits and whole 
 influence so mould these lives after their kind; 
 the earth so makes earthy — sin so makes 
 base — vanity so makes hollow — that where 
 men coming from the world do their worship 
 before God, each mind, according to its habit, 
 gives birth to its own self-colored image of 
 His being and His light, and, instead of true 
 honor done Him at His altar, it is, alas ! often 
 no better than the molten calf of Israel over 
 again — calling by the name of the holy God 
 that which is dishonor and a lie. Just as, if 
 the eye look through a discolored medium, it 
 sees the pure light broken into many blurred 
 hues — it has the fairness of landscape, moun- 
 tain, sky, destroyed, and, in place of these, 
 fantastic shapes, that make a false and repul- 
 sive world: so the mind, discolored by its 
 own earthly life, and looking up through that 
 medium to the High and Holy One, sees an 
 image that, compared with Him, is untrue as 
 night representing day. Hence, in a thousand 
 hearts met in Christian worship, there may be 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 207 
 
 as many strange shadows misnamed God — the 
 hard thought of the unholy, the dream of the 
 luxurious and sentimental, the undefined cloud 
 passing before the hard and austere, the 
 terror of the superstitious, the cold concep- 
 tion of the cold, clear head. What are these, 
 and many more, but travesties of God ? what, 
 but the material of each mind, molten in the 
 fire, so to speak, of its own unpurged heart ? 
 And what can be the result, but that wor- 
 shippers of such a sort, approaching to the 
 altar, instead of drinking there of the pure 
 river of water of life, find that they are filled 
 with the fruit of their own devices ; that the 
 true and righteous God, scattering the dust 
 of their own idols, so to say, on the stream of 
 grace, gives it them to drink ; their spiritual 
 exercise neither sanctifies nor refreshes them ; 
 they receive only of what they bring, and the 
 current, brimming to others with the life of 
 heaven, to them is polluted at its source. 
 
 When we think of these things, my reader, 
 what a watch, as Christ's pilgrims, need we 
 to set on our own heart ! Such is the evil in 
 
208 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 the best, that in a moment we are off the 
 high balance of a near intercourse with God. 
 Some vapor from the earth rises, its shadow 
 passes between Him and us, and, in the 
 mechanicahiess or in the wandering or in the 
 creeping habit unguarded sin is weaving on 
 us, we are forthwith no longer true worship- 
 pers, but bowing down really to some base 
 fiction we have substituted, and saying, ^^This 
 be thy god, Israel!" Hence how grieved 
 the Spirit often is in His striving with us ; 
 how awful the light of God's eye set pierc- 
 ingly upon us ; and how, but for the inter- 
 posing prayer of Christ in the mount, Him 
 who pleads for us with a sadness yet at the 
 same time with a love that can never die, we 
 should over and over perish in our false- 
 ness and our sin. I say, therefore, that if we 
 are to escape the guilt of the molten calf, we 
 must be rigorously watchful of our hearts. 
 We must leave frequently the deadening air 
 of the plain, and stand in the pure, elastic air 
 of the mount. We must, in a word, bathe 
 the soul, immediately and always, in the very 
 
THE MOLTEN CALF. 209 
 
 light of God. That light— the light of God's 
 Word, the light of all exercise and ordinance 
 and faith and life that bring Christ in His 
 presence near, the light, above all, of constant 
 intercourse with God — as the Scriptures call 
 it, "praying in the Spirit," praying as if we 
 lived and moved already wrapped in the 
 luminousness of the upper world — that light 
 of God is the one powerful solvent that in a 
 moment disengages all impurity from out the 
 heart. As the chemist does with his solvents 
 when he wishes foreign matters detached and 
 deposited, and some pure element to be set 
 free ; so the light of God I speak of, taking 
 in the heart often as you carry it there, sheds 
 every grain of pollution and of evil out of 
 it — by its action drops these down as dregs, 
 and lifts the freed soul then up in purity and 
 beauty like itself Hasten, then, always into 
 that presence of light and power. Sink not 
 down among the world's shadows, out of 
 which, if the best part of your life is there, 
 your worship can but catch feeble and broken 
 glimmers: but, like the upshot arrow, take 
 
210 THE MOLTEN CALF. 
 
 flight to God : in His light behold light : and 
 there, being strengthened in your gaze as you 
 gaze deeper, there, being purified and trans- 
 formed in your life as you live more con- 
 stantly, that shall come to pass which is put 
 with the likeness of a holy riddle in the 
 lines : 
 
 " Jesus in heaven, Jesus in the heart, 
 Heaven in the heart, the heart in heaven." 
 
XVII. 
 
 wxim tfte mat 
 
 The chapter of the molten calf done, Moses 
 made one very remarkable request of God. 
 It was that God would shew him His glory. 
 Had not Moses been perusing the features of 
 that glory all along and from day to day— in 
 the burning bush— in the miracles in Egypt 
 —in the pillared cloud and fire— in the de- 
 scent of God on Sinai— in the sight of the 
 similitude of God he had shared with Aaron 
 and the elders— and, above all, in the secret 
 audiences he had had on Sinai, when God 
 spoke with him face to face as a man speaketh 
 with his friend ? Was he not perfectly familiar 
 in the companionship and light and knowl- 
 edge of God ? What, then, meant he by the 
 earnest prayer, that God would shew him His 
 glory ? He was just fresh from an interview 
 in the tabernacle in the plain, when all Israel 
 
212 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 had stood each man in his tent door, and had 
 looked after Moses tremblingly as he Avent be- 
 hind the curtain of the Most High' — he had 
 just ceased a close speech with God, in which 
 he had gained promise of the Angel-guide 
 not yet to abandon the guilty people ; was it 
 not therefore something like superfluous reit- 
 eration, that, when all was done, a sudden 
 vehement aspiring seems like a flame to have 
 burst through the soul and lips of Moses, and 
 he prayed to God, '' I beseech thee, shew me 
 Thy glory!" 
 
 Yet you will understand the case better 
 when you reflect on what has often happened 
 in an earthly friendship. Two lives have 
 been as one in the walk and intimacy of years; 
 you know your friend, as you suppose, thor- 
 oughly ; one heart reflects the other, one 
 mind shares the whole life and opinion of the 
 other ; yet, close and dear as is this bond, 
 there comes a moment w^hen some chord of 
 hid emotion is of a sudden touched — some 
 flash of thought in a suggestive book you read 
 together wakens it, or some tale of half voice- 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 213 
 
 less sorrow, or one of you is in pain or clan- 
 ger or in the rush of bitter trial— and straight- 
 way the smooth surface of your common walk 
 together breaks up ; soul is revealed to soul ; 
 and as you gaze in each other's eyes, you feel 
 that what you knew of your friend formerly 
 was only darkly as through a glass— that now 
 you know as also altogether you are known. 
 Somewhat in this way we may suppose Abra- 
 ham to have had sight of God on the eve of 
 Sodom's ruin, for though in ordinary times he 
 was the friend of God and walked with Him, 
 in that agitated hour there must have been 
 such a gush of intense words and earnestness 
 between them that God shone round on His 
 servant with a double glow, and the latter, 
 smitten even while he prayed, fell on his face 
 and called himself dust and ashes. Somewhat 
 in this way also Ave may think of Elijah, who 
 was familiar with the deliverances and love 
 of God, yet at the cave's mouth, in the day of 
 his uttermost grief, the Lord passed by touch- 
 ing him in such wise to the quick that the 
 prophet covered his face with his mantle and 
 
214 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 stood speechless. Somewhat in this way also 
 we may think of the three disciples on the 
 height of Transfiguration ; they were the com- 
 panions of their Lord by the flood and in the 
 field, so that they knew His holy features and 
 feared not, but were gladdened in His pres- 
 ence ; but in that withdrawn scene under 
 the cloud, He broke aside the screen of His 
 glory, so that as the half-repressed splendor 
 poured its flood upon them, they fell to the 
 earth as dead men. And somewhat in this 
 way, finally, we judge it was with Moses when 
 he besought God to see His glory ; he had 
 read that glory page after page, till one would 
 have thought he might have repeated it from 
 end to end in amplest tale ; but for all the 
 closeness and the dearness of his walk with 
 God, there was still some yearning deep in the 
 soul unfulfilled — some chapter yet that left the 
 tale unfinished — some spring beyond all those 
 other springs he had drunk in God still un- 
 touched, whose stream he would loosen, w^hose 
 gush he would drink. " I beseech Thee," was 
 his craving, therefore, "shew me Thy glory!" 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 215 
 
 God complied with the request. Not that 
 it was possible for Moses, or for any man, to 
 see the essential being and glory of the Most 
 High, and live. At best, it could be but the 
 skirts of that glory, or its foot-tracks where 
 its steps had been. Thus far Moses was privi- 
 ledged — up to the very margin where human 
 eye dared look, but beyond which it would 
 be over-dazzled, and perish. So God bid him 
 stand within a clift of rock on a solitary spot 
 of Sinai ; the hills round about were to be 
 bare of men and cattle ; the silence was to be 
 as the silence and sacredness of heaven ; and 
 there, Moses, having placed himself, lapped 
 over by the walled crags, the morning soft 
 above him, and the hand of God his shelter, 
 he looked through the lattice of the hiding- 
 place thus strangely made, and the Lord God 
 passed before him, and proclaimed His 
 name:— "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful 
 and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in 
 goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thou- 
 sands, forgiving iniquity and transgression 
 and sin, and that will by no means clear the 
 
216 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
 upon the children, and upon the children's 
 children, unto the third and to the fourth 
 generation." It was not that, probably, which 
 Moses had had expectation of; it was a dis- 
 closure of the deep lore of God's name poured 
 upon his ear, not a spectacle flaming on the 
 eye ; indeed, we may at once infer that, while 
 the ear might so far hear, the eye was incapa- 
 ble of bearing the burst of the Invisible — 
 that, as the wave of God passed rustlingly on 
 the hill-side, the window through which 
 Moses strained his gaze forward was dark- 
 ened by the merciful cloud above him drop- 
 ping its drapery between — and that only 
 when the wave was vanishing, the veil before 
 his eyes melted, and he saw the latter part, 
 like the sweep of a garment train, gleaming on 
 him, and then gone. Yet even that was 
 enough, as we shall see, to fling back on the 
 face of Moses such a radiance as, when he 
 descended to the camp, beholders could not 
 look on it steadily, till through a veil its light 
 was tempered. 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 217 
 
 Such, then, was the opening into God's 
 glory Moses saw from within the clift. Now, 
 the point I think most manifest in this chal- 
 lenging of what many would consider a more 
 perilous intercourse with God, is the high 
 spiritual heroism of the man. Might he not 
 have rested in content with what he had 
 seen and heard already — with the ties already 
 very close that knit him to the God of Israel — 
 with the holy balance on which all his daily 
 way and speech with Heaven w^ere at that 
 moment poised? Why disturb the existing 
 state of things? Why put his present privi- 
 lege and quiet into uncalled-for hazard, by 
 pressing forward as he did in that burning 
 prayer into further depths of awfulness, and.,, 
 it might be, fear ? We can only answer, that- 
 he but obeyed the law of spiritual boldness- 
 and intensity every true servant of the living 
 God necessarily comes under. He could not 
 have paused, even though he would have 
 done so ; for he was in the strong current of 
 the will and work of Heaven ; and such was 
 
 the fascination in his dedicated life, such the 
 
 10 
 
218 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 one step of ardent laying hold of God lead- 
 ing to another step higher and more ardent 
 yet, that there was no line where he could 
 arrest his way — he miist know where to find 
 God, and, if that were possible, come even to 
 His seat ; like Paul in after times, who illus- 
 trated the very same passionate aspiring, it 
 might be said of Moses, that, "forgetting 
 those things which were behind, and reaching 
 forth to those things which were before, he 
 pressed toward the mark for the prize of the 
 high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Hence 
 the courage — not the mere frivolous curiosity, 
 which God would have rebuked — ^but the 
 rapt courage and deliberateness with which he 
 placed himself within the clift, and, in its wild 
 companionless spot, waited that, according to 
 his own prayer, he might see Jehovah's glory. 
 Are we aware that the same startling law, 
 forcing on Moses thus from one stage of 
 acquaintanceship to another with the Most 
 High God, is that very law which now, in 
 our Christian dedication, necessarily abides 
 on us ? It may be, indeed, that we are not 
 
\yiTHIN THE CLIFT. 219 
 
 SO earnestly bent on Divine discovery as lie 
 was ; that we do not speak and cry to God 
 out of such passion of spiritual desire as 
 moved him. We may willingly be ready to 
 keep things around us in our lot and life 
 exactly as they are : the quiet everyday bless- 
 ing, the coming and going to the house of 
 God, the routine of prayers, and the unevent- 
 ful way in which we move from day to day, 
 retreating none, neither advancing; only a 
 state of life smooth and still, and in which we 
 glide on unalarmed and our souls in quiet. 
 We should be thankful, I doubt not, that this 
 framework about us were always so ; we 
 should crave no deeper dealings with our 
 God ; we should feel, if tested on the point, 
 that we had advanced near enough to the 
 kingdom of heaven — that the ties that bind 
 us to it in our Christian name and way at 
 present, are enough, and their stretch brings 
 us near enough ; if we were drawn nearer to 
 its light and flame, we should shrink, retreat- 
 ing, and afraid. That, I believe, is the prev- 
 alent habit of our mind. 
 
220 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 Yet, although this may be our real heart- 
 temper on the subject, we cannot help our- 
 selves out of the dread dilemma in which by 
 our Christian pledges we are fixed. For 
 what is the meaning of those many prayers 
 that day by day pass, it may be lightly, but 
 before God, across our lips ? We dare not, in 
 these prayers, ask that God would keep us, as 
 regards the knowledge of Himself, exactly 
 as we are ; that He may not put anything we 
 love on earth to hazard, in drawing us on to 
 a deeper realizing in our souls of His light 
 and life ; in a word, that He may not isolate 
 us awfully within the clift, as He did Moses, 
 and there show us His glory. We cannot 
 pray such literal things as these, although, if 
 truly interpreted, perhaps these would be the 
 real petitions found at the bottom of our 
 souls. Our prayers, therefore, of necessity, 
 are, that we may know God, that we may 
 increase in the experience of His kingdom, 
 that we may rise from one reach of grace to 
 another. These are the requests Christian 
 life forces on us, and without which Christian 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 221 
 
 life would mean nothing but a hollow mock- 
 ery. And Avhat then, I ask, must such 
 prayers— such prayers as we are all in the 
 habit of breathing, alone, or in our families, 
 or at the public altar— what do such prayers 
 virtually mean, but that God would, at what- 
 ever cost, lead us on and up ; that He would 
 put us to peril; that* He would disturb and 
 dash, if no otherwise it can be, the pleasant 
 surroundings of our life; that He would 
 isolate us into loneliness, and put us within 
 the clift, and there, in secluded shadow, show 
 us His glory ? No man who prays much, and 
 prays the awful utterances the Christian 
 tongue must utter, but deliberately handles 
 these weapons. He is like the sailor in the 
 quiet port, desiring he may know the strength 
 and safety of his anchor cable ; he can only 
 discover that by being launched in the roar- 
 ing storm, when, paying his cable out, he 
 shall find whether, strained between life and 
 death, its ligaments will hold. Or he is like 
 the soldier in his quiet home, desiring he 
 may know the temper of his shield ; that can 
 
222 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 only be by his dashing into the thick of 
 battle, and receiving the winged shafts upon 
 its face. Or he is like the pilgrim under the 
 palm-tree shade, desiring he may know that 
 his bread always shall be given him, and his 
 water sure ; he can only put that to trial by 
 plunging again into the waste, looking for 
 his manna on the bare sands, and for his 
 stream flowing from the rock. So, have you 
 considered what many of your prayers must 
 mean? that answer only can come to them 
 sometimes at a cost that makes the heart 
 tremble, that destroys earthly peace, that 
 makes past life crumble down around us like 
 the crumbling of a vision? Have you con- 
 sidered that is often what is meant by your 
 " following on to know the Lord " — the 
 storm, to try your anchor — the battle, to 
 prove your shield — the desert- way, to find 
 the sufficiency of pilgrim fare ? 
 
 Hence, I believe God's placing us within 
 the clift to see His glory. He does so in an- 
 swer to our own asking, however little we 
 may have weighed the terms of that asking, 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 223 
 
 and however mucli, in breathing them, we 
 may, at heart, have been untrue. One is 
 drawn aside into the clift of personal loneli- 
 ness ; our expectations from the world fail ; 
 its friendships drop off; its rewards, when we 
 grasp them, mock us as the thin air; we have 
 a shadow on us of the heart-desertion of our 
 Lord when He said to His disciples, "Ye 
 shall be scattered every man to his own, and 
 shall leave Me alone." Yet, out of the win- 
 dow of that solitude we see with a kindling 
 eye then a nearness that had not come so near 
 before, and we borrow the Lord's words again 
 when He added, " Yet I am not alone, for the 
 Father is with Me !" Another is thrust into 
 the clift of bereavement. The desire of his 
 eyes is removed at a stroke ; the fairness and 
 the charm of his home are blotted out. But 
 again, from between the cold rocks, he sees an- 
 other leaf turned over in the Book of God 
 and reads these letters, dead before, living 
 now— '^ Thou art the strength of my heart, 
 and my portion for ever !" Another is with- 
 drawn into the clift of infirmity and pain. 
 
224 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 He is like one who has sailed hitherto on a 
 full and buoyant sea, but he would know 
 more of God, and he is summoned, therefore, 
 to leave the busy deck of life, to land alone 
 upon the shore, and then, getting him as unto 
 the imprisonment of iron rocks, to lie still on 
 his bed like an abandoned waif, while the 
 great life-current outside flows past, and the 
 company in which he had an energetic part is 
 borne from him on its way and is gone. It 
 is a bitter solitude and helplessness ; yet, 
 through the lattice of his pain, presently again 
 so blessed is the breaking in upon him of the 
 Saviour-God, that, in the tenderness and joy 
 of that countenance he seems as if he never 
 knew before, he cries, in the sublime content 
 of Paul when, helpless in liis prison, "As 
 always, so noio also, Christ shall be magnified 
 in my body, w^hether it be by life or by 
 death !" Another, once more, is shut into 
 the clift of death ; for to some Christ will not 
 appear in the daylight of life. His form per- 
 petually fades there, and it needs the over- 
 shadowing of the grave, that, in His vividness 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 225 
 
 and glorious beauty, He may appear; so 
 some, who pray to know God, must die for 
 that knowledge' sake ; they must leave all, 
 and break all ties, and withdraw into the dark 
 rest ; but then tliere^ there breaks on them in 
 Christ the near blessedness of heaven, and 
 they sink, like Paul, again, saying, '' To die 
 is gain!" 
 
 Is it not the case then, my reader, that, as 
 heavenward pilgrims, w^e should realise with 
 fear the law that binds us ? We are in the 
 current, and cannot bid the river stand still. 
 We have put our hand to the plough, and can- 
 not look back. Our whole life and prayers, 
 if they have one ring of truth in them, " cry 
 out for God, even the living God — when shall 
 we come and appear before God ?" And if, 
 in reply, God selects for us the shattered rock, 
 and in its clifts, as in a lone watching spot, 
 constrains us by His hand that, while He in 
 His glory passes by, we may see — we must 
 remember it is we who have challenged Him 
 to the venture — that, if the pathway of the 
 Cross is to be followed, we cannot avoid such 
 
 10* 
 
226 WITHIN THE CLIFT. 
 
 crises, and that, only from a spot so hemmed 
 in, darkness round us, isolation in the very 
 heart — only from within the clift can we, as 
 at a condensing focus-point, see, most in- 
 tensely, the living God. Oh, the difierence 
 between our former knowledge and this 
 deeper shewing us, even at great cost, of 
 Christ's glory 1 Would any one lose it who, 
 even at the great cost, has gained it? The 
 preacher talked of Christ before, but, coming 
 from between the clift, his phrases burn now. 
 The wayfarer read the guiding verses of his 
 Bible reverently before, but, coming from be- 
 tween the clift, he finds they speak to him 
 direct from Heaven now. The worshipper 
 prayed in still mood before, but, coming from 
 between the clift, his prayers are lit with the 
 very thrill of the Spirit now. Life, that was 
 before dull and gray, teems with the comings 
 and tlie goings of the blessed Feet now. The 
 Lord Jesus " stands behind our wall," " He 
 looks forth upon us through our lattice." We 
 detect Him " in the clefts of the rocks," aud 
 '' in the secret places of the stars." We- see 
 
WITHIN THE CLIFT. 227 
 
 perpetually " the countenance that is comely," 
 we hear "the voice that is sweet." Shall we 
 not, then, again and again, pray the high 
 prayer of Moses — ^" We beseech Thee, shew 
 us Thy glory ?" He may put us in the wild 
 and narrow clift ; but much as flesh and blood 
 may fear, neither the place, nor the spectacle 
 we are to look on, need ever shake us at 
 heart, for in Christ Jesus we have the sure 
 shelter and the sure promises of God for ever. 
 
 " Sprinkled with His atoning blood 
 Safely before our God we stand, 
 As on the rock the prophet stood 
 Beneath His shadowing hand." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 wht mm im. 
 
 When Moses reached the plain again, the 
 signet fire of God burned in his face. He 
 had caught its impress first from within the 
 clift, when, as we may suppose, after listening 
 to the name and the passing by of that 
 glorious One he sought, his ardor grew unre- 
 strainable, and, thrusting aside, if I may say 
 so, the screen of cloud, he plunged his gaze 
 forward into the wave of retreating light. 
 In that moment, the baptism of God's exceed- 
 ing fairness had been left upon him. But he 
 had further been a second forty days and 
 forty nights in rapt conference with God; 
 and, in that space, the upraised brow had 
 caught clearer yet the heavenly seal. When, 
 therefore, he appeared coming down the slope 
 of Sinai, this divine nimbus rested on him. 
 He himself wist not of it ; but Aaron and the 
 
 22S 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 229 
 
 people shrank from his presence with fear. 
 They could not abide on their common sight 
 even this fragment glow of the invisible. So, 
 while Moses stood amongst them, wonder- 
 ingly, no doubt, and showed them the two 
 new stone tables of the law in his hands, and 
 rehearsed to them all God had spoken, he was 
 obliged to put a veil upon his face, to shade 
 and all but to hide the unearthliness of that 
 light he had unconsciously drawn after him 
 out of the realms of God. He moved about 
 and talked amongst the people, veiled. When 
 he turned in to meet the Most High in His 
 tabernacle, he took the veil off, for there light 
 but met and bathed itself anew in light ; but 
 always again when he came forth into the 
 camp, he dropped the shade on his brow, so 
 that the poorest Israelite might look on him 
 and fear him not. 
 
 We all can conceive how this radiant burn- 
 ing on the face of Moses came about. Even 
 in ordinary occurrence we are taught how it 
 must have been so. We see how, in animated 
 conversation, light kindled by the glow of 
 
230 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 mind on one face communicates itself to 
 another. Or in the companionship of such 
 love as that between parent and child, how 
 the smile of penetrative tenderness in the one 
 sheds its beauty on the half Avorshipping eyes 
 and uplifted brow of the other. Or how, in 
 a great assemblage, when the preacher mounts 
 in the passion of his theme, the audience bor- 
 rows from his deep-stirred fire, and the mass 
 of hitherto calm faces ranged before him of 
 a sudden ripples, rank over rank, with light. 
 Or, in the more solemn experience of men, 
 when, as with Stephen, the spirit is about to 
 part into the dark elements, how death has 
 been rebuked even at the last moment by a 
 grander mastery, the dying gaze has fastened 
 on the heaven open, and the Son of Man 
 standing at the right hand of God, and the 
 face has shone as it were the face of an angel ! 
 How easy, then, to judge that Moses, admitted 
 for so long to the very fount of God, moved 
 so long by the very speech and by the very 
 thrill of God, should have come down from 
 Sinai as he did, fraught with the flush of 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 231 
 
 heaven. The soul first had glowed through 
 its depths in response to God, and from 
 the soul the quick flame had streamed into 
 the face. 
 
 So it should not have been unexpected on 
 the Israelites' part that their leader should 
 have borne down with him that glory from 
 the unseen. Yet the atmosphere of earth was 
 too thick upon them, and their eyes too feeble 
 because of that, to bear the test, so that they 
 could not steadfastly behold it ; wherefore 
 Moses, to the people's loss undoubtedly, yet 
 wisely and with considerateness, screened 
 himself behind his veil. Had he persisted in 
 carrying about through the camp the naked 
 dazzling of his presence, he would not only 
 have dismayed and repelled the people, but 
 in the end he would have brought scorn on 
 the seal of God through his very vanity ; but 
 he threw the wise and tempering veil over 
 all, and, through that, while he drew the 
 people, he preserved God's marvel wrought 
 on him still sacred in their deepest fear. 
 
 Can we not feel, my reader, and applaud 
 
232 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 the rare self-denying wisdom of Moses' way ? 
 Perhaps, had we stood by his side, we should 
 have been eager that he would have stripped 
 the veil, at all cost, aside, on the plea, that 
 God's gift, so signal, should not be concealed, 
 but brought to open day ; just as, in the im- 
 patience, and, we may add, the imprudence 
 of our own first impulse now, if men have 
 bestowed on them speciahgrace from heaven, 
 we deem it to be of the next necessity that 
 they thrust its tale vehemently upon the 
 world. We cannot think there is any measure 
 to be kept in bearing such a testimony — the 
 grace itself is so exceedingly precious, and 
 the world round us so needful of its light; 
 and, accordingly, there have been those in 
 all periods of the Church who have held it 
 sacred duty to unveil the profoundest expe- 
 riences and emotions of the soul, and to set 
 these broad before the outer and profane 
 gaze — it is to be feared, at heavy cost. For 
 what do we find, as to the understanding, in 
 the world, of the spiritual kingdom of our 
 God ? Paul declared long ago that the 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 233 
 
 natural man — that is, he who is, in his dark- 
 ness, without any point of capacity or kind- 
 ling between him and the light of God — 
 cannot^ in the nature of the case, discern it ; 
 to the Jews it was a stumbling-block ; to the 
 Greeks, foolishness. And again and again it 
 has been demonstrated, that the light of that 
 kingdom is too strong in its naked power for 
 the ordinary vision. We feel it instinctively 
 when, letting off restraint from the welling 
 of our own soul, we sometimes are betrayed 
 into pouring spiritual confidence into ears 
 that do not understand us, and revealing 
 heart-thoughts to eyes that look only to be 
 amazed, or by their cold unconcern to make 
 us shrink ; and we feel it instinctively when, 
 in the society of our time, if we but openly 
 word something bearing on the kingdom of a 
 present Lord — if we turn aside the conversa- 
 tion that startling way — if we but lift a corner 
 of the veil — men withdraw from us as though 
 they had seen a spectre. It is laying bare 
 too much at once. It is letting in light so 
 suddenly and so sharply, that it strikes on the 
 
234 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 unaccustomed eyeballs with pain ; as we have 
 it related of a poor captive, when released 
 from a dungeon in which he had lain many 
 years, and in whose black night he had lost 
 the memory of upper day, brought up sud- 
 denly into the glare of noon, his eyeballs 
 meeting it were so struck with anguish, that, 
 hiding them, and fleeing back to his prison, 
 he cried that he might be buried in its 
 depths again. So most untaught minds in 
 the world cannot meet the outburst of God ; 
 they are offended by, and they fear, its pres- 
 ence. And if you are to win your way as 
 Moses did through the camp of Israel, you 
 will not rend the shade aside, but rather tem- 
 per it the more, if need be, even holding 
 back the light of God, and putting a veil 
 upon its face. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, I think, but confirm 
 what Moses did as the wiser part. Our Lord 
 walked in the selfsame way. From His cra- 
 dle in Bethlehem, to His grave in the garden 
 — nay, to His rising in the cloud of ascension 
 into heaven — His life was a veiled, and, as it 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 235 
 
 were, a suppressed life. The very fulness 
 of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily ; but it 
 was only now and then, at chinks and rents 
 in the curtain, the glory streamed out. Even 
 to His near disciples. He was chary of disclos- 
 ing more than glimpses — as on the Mount of 
 Transfiguration, when the veil for a minute 
 melted, and the flame shot forth — or as in 
 His resurrection days, when sudden intima- 
 tions from Him, as it were touches from be- 
 hind the veil, made their hearts burn within 
 them. His life, I repeat, was a life, not of 
 dazzling wonderment, as it might well enough 
 have been, but of deep-shaded, well-nigh hid- 
 den light. And who does not know how 
 such holy wisdom was justified in its results 
 — how that life stole in upon the world — how 
 the handful of leaven wrought silently for the 
 leavening of the whole lump — how the little 
 seed took root, and silently came up and rose 
 into the tree that shall yet be the covert of 
 the whole earth? In like manner, after 
 Christ's holy way, all who have come doing 
 His work, find their gain in tempering in 
 
236 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 themselves the fire of heaven — ^in letting their 
 light shine, it is true, according to His com- 
 mand, but "50 shine'' as that it may fall on 
 the gaze of men unstartling and unrepellent 
 — in measure as men can bear, subdued to 
 the weak, stronger in its brilliance to the 
 strong — but never, I suppose, excepf when a 
 man turns in his privacy to converse with 
 God — never with the veil wholly taken away. 
 Will not the teacher or the parent, for exam- 
 ple, find that the work of moulding and 
 drawing to himself the young minds about 
 him, is done, out of all question, best, when 
 he studies less the direct bearing in upon 
 them of sharp precept, and intense exhorta- 
 tion, and repeated insisting on rule and right 
 — when rather he puts aside the manner of 
 directness, veils the strong light, and lets his 
 own silent unconscious life speak for him, his 
 own example tell, the slipping out of a ray 
 of feeling here, and a thrill of influence there, 
 send home lessons whole discourses could not 
 teach? The manner of incessant rule and 
 precept not seldom spoils his whole end, by 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 237 
 
 its being, to the young heart, light too much 
 and intolerable; whereas the life influence, 
 indirectly shed, is that very enchantment 
 through which young hearts most are won. 
 And will not the preacher find that, while he 
 is eloquent and earnest in his pulpit speech — 
 unwearied in his labors and his teachings in 
 and out amongst his flock — there is a far 
 deeper force which constrains them most, and 
 without which his high ends are always more 
 or less lost, and that is — the silent power 
 breathed from the veiled yet felt beauty of 
 his life ? His strong appeals from the pulpit 
 may burn, and perhaps for the time arouse ; 
 but this, the holiness, the gentleness, the love- 
 liness that are shed from him in his home, 
 and that cannot choose but gleam out in 
 quiet touches wheresoever he is found ; — this 
 it is that steals into the universal heart. And 
 so with any effort for our blessed Lord 
 amongst men. The strong outburst of speech 
 and deed is undoubtedly of value, and it is 
 what we stake our faith and hopes on most, 
 because it is a demonstration palpable to 
 
238 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 sense ; but it is far transcended, if we but 
 knew it, by that charm in a good man's life, 
 which, as a veiled light, Avins unconsciously 
 upon us, till we by and by realise it, and ex- 
 claim, " God was in this thing, and I knew it 
 not!" 
 
 And yet one would think no principle is 
 surer and plainer than that of the high efficacy 
 of veiled or suppressed power. Nature illu- 
 mines this principle in all her borders ; it is 
 not by the hurricane sweep baring her majes- 
 tic strength that her deepest or most perma- 
 nent efforts are wrought, but by the veiled 
 footfalls of the dew, by the silent sunshine, 
 by the hundred touches men know not of, 
 nature quickens all her growth, and covers all 
 the earth with life and fruit and color. The 
 orator knows the value of suppressed power 
 — what it is to breathe on his audience's 
 heart to the verge of passion, and then, leav- 
 ing them with that thrill, to drop the veil 
 again. So does the skilled book — it exhausts 
 nothing ; you feel it glows with thought, but 
 it is thought enchaining you by that, the 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 239 
 
 highest of all power — its glow half revealed, 
 yet half concealed. An hundred things tes- 
 tify the same truth. The escaped stream, 
 compressed into one narrow sluice, in its rush 
 through that channel has a power that would 
 be lost were the bank broken and the whole 
 waters scattered in a broad but shallow bed. 
 The fire caught in the furnace chimney roars 
 with strength, that, were it released in the 
 open field, would disperse and fade. The 
 loop-hole ray of light falling on a dark pic- 
 ture wakens an effect that in the full inlet of 
 day Avould be destroyed. The rule, then, 
 my reader, is the same as regards our gifts 
 from Heaven. We shall best use them in a 
 reserved way, as did Moses with the flame he 
 caught upon the mount. Certainly I would 
 mean no compromise with lower things for 
 one moment, and no suppression of the grace 
 of God in us from that fear of man which we 
 are well assured brings a snare ; but I mean 
 that quiet life which puts itself forth only so 
 far as it can " commend the truth to every 
 man's conscience in the sight of God" — which 
 
240 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 has regard to every opportunity aPxd circum- 
 stance and risk — which moves its veil aside 
 and lets its illumining fall fuller here, say in 
 its own family circle or in converse with its 
 friends — which draws the shade again and 
 makes softer light there, say in miscellaneous 
 society or in the cold circle of public gaze — 
 which is thus intuitively thoughtful and wise 
 in its own deep modesty — jealous- that God's 
 gift in it shall not on the one hand repel, shall 
 not, on the other hand, be so exposed and 
 made so common as to draw contempt — ar- 
 dent, on the contrary, that it may so live be- 
 hind its veil, now shedding forth a gleam of 
 power, again retreating into shadow, as that 
 even in an evil world it may gain tolerance 
 from all, it may, in its true presence of God 
 within it and about it, hush the unbelief of all, 
 it may, by its suppressed yet vivid charm, 
 draw many insensibly to the feet of Christ. 
 Such is what I mean : where the unveiled 
 light, paraded vehemently in the cause of 
 God, fails, the veiled hght, moving gently 
 like the wise, thoughtful steps of Moses 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 241 
 
 through the camp of Israel, wins the vic- 
 tory. 
 
 I know that it is irksome to the thought of 
 not a few, that their souls should be bound 
 up by any restraint in the service of their 
 Lord. They are as those who have a fire 
 within their bones, a woe upon their heads, 
 if they preach not the gospel ; seeing that their 
 time is short, therefore, they demand expres- 
 sion of the most eager and unhampered kind. 
 Yet I will venture to say that, with that spir- 
 itual intensity in them, longing to be rid of 
 its own tale, while it is God's will first to kin- 
 dle it, it is God's will and wisdom further, 
 that it be not vented forth in indiscriminate 
 fire — rather that a power be exercised of re- 
 taining the torture in the bones, only let- 
 ting out a shoot of expression here and 
 another there, but not the whole pent-up 
 fire, since the pent-up fire, once let loose, 
 would burn out once for all, but so retained, 
 becomes to itself a perpetual stimulus— gives 
 each outshot flame a more vivid strength, and 
 
 holds its heart set on God in deeper power. 
 
 11 
 
242 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 Those know this who are abashed by the pres- 
 ence of imgenial elements on some occasion 
 or other wheathey do long to stand forth and 
 speak their whole soul for God ; but instead 
 of that they are flung back upon themselves, 
 tongue-tied and miserable. Yet probably it 
 is better in the case it should be so, for the 
 heart, unrelieved, only burns all the more 
 ardently to tell its burden forth again. And 
 those again know it who have been made the 
 prisoners of God's dealings — who have had 
 their strength broken in its noon — who, with 
 great ambition to be heralds of the Cross, and 
 with much in Christ's name to preach, and a 
 whole life of eager energies in them to pour 
 forth, yet are thrust aside in the midst, are 
 made to bow to the yoke of feebleness and 
 pain, and while they fain would be up and in 
 the battle, must lie down in fruitless longing 
 on their beds. Yet it is God teaching over 
 again the lesson of the veiled light. Even in 
 your time of helplessness, and, as you think, 
 your uselessness, my reader, God breathes on 
 the confined flame more closely at the heart ; 
 
THE VEILED FACE. 243 
 
 \ 
 
 its own longing after Him and His work feeds 
 it the more ; if He hinders it outwardly and 
 checks it by the veil on it of the weak body 
 and the broken powers, it is only that He may 
 keep it and intensify it into the very consum- 
 ing of His love. Oh, trust God, therefore, in 
 the restraints He imposes on His own gifts ! 
 He in His divine tenderness and wisdom 
 knows best when we should glow forward 
 into light — when we should sink back and be 
 shaded in the darkness ; only, behind the 
 hindering veil that in one shape or other must 
 always be flung on us while we are on earth, 
 behind that veil let it be more and more ours 
 to cherish God's Spirit — to keep the light 
 strong and pure. And we have this blessed 
 resource always, that, suppressed without as 
 to men, we are never suppressed inwardly as 
 to God ; the veil upon the face, darkening us 
 to the world's sight, may be torn off the face, 
 and the face without a shadow when we turn 
 to pour the heart out in His sight, like Moses 
 when he put the veil off always as he entered 
 the tabernacle, and in the Presence there re- 
 
244 THE VEILED FACE. 
 
 y 
 
 strained the light upon his face no more. So 
 what we cannot speak, the grief we cannot 
 syllable, the longings we cannot find scope 
 for, the sickness of heart-love we cannot dis- 
 burthen to the world ; all these we can utter 
 in a flood to God — we have always our refuge 
 there. When we are alone with Him we can 
 let the fire leap up unrestrainedly ; we need 
 no longer stint words to tell how our heart 
 breaketh for the longing thereof ; in the ful- 
 ness of love, unsatisfied in all else, but satisfied 
 in Him, we can say out at last, " Thou art all 
 my salvation, and all my desire I" 
 
XIX. 
 
 The tabernacle was by this time pitched on 
 the broad plain fronting Sinai, and all its holy 
 garniture was complete : the Shekinah burned 
 on the interior mercy-seat, and the cloud of 
 God's presence rose above the tabernacle 
 roof For the priestly services Aaron and 
 his sons were elaborately set apart ; and, 
 after seven days of ceremonial consecration, 
 on the eighth day they came, in sight of the 
 assembled people, to the first performance of 
 their high functions. In his gorgeous dress 
 Aaron was led through the sanctuary by the 
 privileged hand of Moses — the latter holding 
 a place with Heaven even loftier than a high 
 priest's office could bestow. Thereafter, the 
 sacred rites in the Holy of Holies done, they 
 reappeared together at the tabernacle door ; 
 the smoke of sacrifice and the breath of in- 
 
 245 
 
246 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 cense filled the air, and in a vast circle the 
 Israelite thousands looked in breathlessly 
 upon the spot ; when, as the brothers threw 
 back the blazoned curtain and came forth 
 from God, suddenly a divine glow shed itself 
 on them and all the place, the glory of the 
 Lord was seen, and fire from heaven streamed 
 on the altar, consuming its burnt-offering, and 
 in its wavering and awful beauty teaching 
 Israel, that, in this their first sanctuary wor- 
 ship, God was well pleased. At the sight 
 the people gave a great shout, and fell on 
 their faces. 
 
 But a minute afterwards, unexpectedly and 
 terribly, this pause of prostration was dis- 
 turbed. Nadab and Abihu, two of the sons 
 of Aaron, who, along with himself, had been 
 robed and anointed for the office of the priest- 
 hood, drew nigh, bearing with them each his 
 censer. It must have been a singular infatu- 
 ation prompted their behavior next : for but 
 recently they had, by express arrangement, 
 been of the chosen company who were led 
 up on the hill-side to see the vision of the 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 247 
 
 God of Israel. They had been witnesses 
 then of the splendor of the Most High : and 
 now, not less marked by favor, they stood in 
 a place second only to their father Aaron in 
 these sublime tabernacle rites ; and before 
 their very eyes there played over the altar's 
 face the flame from heaven. One would have 
 imagined, therefore, that, if they must burn 
 their pots of incense before God, these two 
 men, of all others, would have knelt down in 
 humbleness and faith — would have sought 
 but to catch one lambent touch from the 
 divine fire, and, with that kindling, to have 
 then held out their steaming vessels in offer- 
 ing to God. But, strangely presumptuous, or 
 unbelieving, or negligent of any value the 
 heavenly could have over the earthly, they 
 struck, in their censers^ the light of common 
 fire ; they passed the altar flame by, and they 
 dared, perhaps without any great conscience 
 of their sin, to present themselves and their 
 offering thus on the holy ground. In a mo- 
 ment they were rebuked beyond penitence or 
 rescue ; the fire of God's anger leaped forth, 
 
248 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 and in its sharp, noiseless gleam, as it were 
 the gleam of lightning, slew them where they 
 stood. Not one word of mnrmur rose from 
 Israel: even the horror-stricken father felt 
 the deed of God was righteous ; for as Moses, 
 looking on the scathed corpses, vindicated 
 the holy precincts and the holy way of God, 
 it is afPectingly added, " Aaron held his 
 peace !" Nor could the brothers of the slain 
 men so much as touch them or carry them 
 forth ; the pollution of the dead could not be 
 left on their consecrated robes or persons ; 
 and while other kinsmen did the ghastly 
 office, carrying the bodies in their coats 
 through the appalled groups of Israel and 
 out of the camp, Aaron and these other sons 
 were, by the stern, and yet, as they must 
 have felt, the truly thoughtful, command of 
 Moses, forbidden even to give one sign of 
 grief, or to step one pace out of the taber- 
 nacle bounds, lest they too should die. 
 
 Was the death of Nadab and Abihu, then, 
 not a cruel stroke pitilessly disproportioned 
 to their sin? or if not, how do we explain 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 249 
 
 that what seems, at first glance, and reckoned 
 by an ordinary standard, a sin so venial, was 
 yet punished so swiftly and wrathfully at the 
 hand of God? We can, without hesitation, 
 answer : God's doom was just ; Moses ex- 
 claimed it was so ; and Aaron, moved as he 
 must have been by the spectacle of his own 
 two children dead in their manhood and in 
 their priestly honors at his feet, allowed it 
 was so in the silence of his heart. And the 
 reason simply was, that, in proportion to the 
 sacredness of the scene and the height of the 
 solemnity in which the offenders stood, so 
 necessarily was the heinousness of their sin. 
 One speck on the brilliance of the steel mir- 
 ror, one stain on the snow-white garment, are 
 more than the darkest flaw on a common 
 metal, or the foulest blot on a dress weather- 
 beaten and worn. For the sin of strange 
 fire, little as it seemed in common thought, 
 was a spot of contempt, or unbelief, or reck- 
 lessness, or call it what we will, flung on the 
 pure ineffable front of God's worship— and 
 that worship too in its first unfolding of a 
 
250 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 dread ceremonial to the eyes of Israel. It 
 was a sin therefore whose circumstances 
 aggravated it into the blackness of daring 
 crime : considering the occasion, and the mo- 
 ment, and the favored and instructed men 
 who were the transgressors, it was a sin that 
 became more intense in guilt an hu»dredfold 
 than even deep moral crime, perpetrated on 
 common ground, and by wretched workers 
 of wickedness, who, in untaught misery of 
 their lives, might know no better. While for 
 the latter there might be the plea of igno- 
 rance, and a relenting and a pity might be 
 drawn from heaven, for the sin of strange fire, • 
 in its wilfulness and daringness and perfect 
 light of knowledge round it, there could be 
 no place of mercy ; it was simply of a right- 
 eous necessity that the offerers of the outrage 
 on God should die. 
 
 We are not invested with the same sort of 
 priestly character and attribute as were these 
 hapless two slain at the altar; nevertheless, 
 we minister behind the shadow of our one 
 great High Priest, Jesus Christ, and the 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE, 251 
 
 ground we stand ou, as in service and wor- 
 ship we draw near God thus in our modern 
 day, is as holy and perilous as was the sacred 
 circle round the tabernacle threshold where 
 Nadab and Abihu fell. Are ive always 
 moved by the memory of their sin and fate ? 
 And do we think what we do when, like 
 them, we stand with our censers of ministry 
 before God? Shall we look what kind of 
 glow it is flashes in the pot ? Shall we exam- 
 ine conscience on the subject, and find out 
 how much in the ministry and work of God 
 there mingle an hundred impurities of motive 
 — how much mere seeming fire, how cold as 
 dead ashes the secret heart — how much the 
 occasion is seized for the figuring of intellect- 
 ual display — how much for mere self-seeking, 
 vanity, craving to be seen and heard of men 
 — how many ingredients of common worldly 
 passion are sown through the soul in the un- 
 sanctified existence of ordinary days — the 
 very soul that presents itself as the highest 
 vessel of the congregation, charged, to ap- 
 pearance, with the fire of God's Spirit in the 
 
252 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 solemn worship of the Lord's-clay ? Is the 
 burning in such a vessel a burning of earth, or 
 of heaven — is it a fire so strange to God that 
 not even a breath of prayer has blown it at 
 its lighting up — or is it that the clear lam- 
 bency of God's Spirit, borrowed from His 
 holy altar, "incense and a pure offering," 
 with which He is well pleased ? Alas, alas ! 
 I do not think conscience can stand much 
 deep catechising on this dread subject with- 
 out blenching. If it spoke true, I fear it 
 would tell that, over the broad surface of the 
 Church at this day, if, of all those ten thou- 
 sand lights kept alive, and many of them 
 splendidly lustrous, at the altars of the Most 
 High God, those were watered down that 
 have caught their inspiration, not from the 
 fire of Heaven above, but from some false hu- 
 man fire stirred below, light on light would 
 unexpectedly go out, the scene so blazoned 
 now would change into a waste of extinct 
 censers, many an eloquent pulpit would be 
 dumb, many a front rank service would drop 
 back to liidiB its head. And, if yo\\ looked 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 253 
 
 where the true lights kept glowing palely but 
 serenely here and there, you would find them 
 probably, not in the place of some gorgeous 
 ceremonial, or under some noble church roof, 
 or in the footsteps of some signally-gifted life 
 — these might be spots of strewn ashes merely 
 — while the pure flame of God might be 
 found most in the meeting-place of some sim- 
 ple but true worship, in the piety and faith of 
 some holy but nameless hearts. Indeed, when 
 one but glances into the depth of his own 
 ambitions — the hundred considerations that in 
 God's work have stimulated him, arising out 
 of earth and self, and the small, faint quicken- 
 ing he has given entrance to from heaven — 
 he cannot but fear lest God's patience should 
 be done with him — ^lest the mercy that has 
 borne with so much aifront offered against 
 the very presence of the holy God and in the 
 place of His sanctuary should be withdrawn 
 at last, and the soul, for its sin of strange fire, 
 should die. Could he have contracted a worse 
 guilt suppose he had been some wretched 
 heathen, bowing down to stocks and stones — 
 
254 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 or suppose, uninstructed in his life, he had 
 broken law by some glaring crime? Privi- 
 leged so high, handling things so sacred, 
 standing in his sanctity and service so near 
 God, does it not strike him there is a terror in 
 his sin of strange fire that singles him out 
 with tenfold prominence? Truly, did the 
 common eye have power to see on what a 
 brink he stands — did he himself but realise it 
 for a moment, I think both would shudder 
 at the sight; instead of sinking and com- 
 plaining under the humblings and the re- 
 bukes God^s hand often deals His ministers in 
 their pride, I think he himself would then 
 come to thank God that he should be chas- 
 tised for his transgressions — sore chastised, 
 but, in that very soreness of chastisement, not 
 given over unto death — rather that it should 
 be a token to him of God's righting him and 
 sparing him and making his eye and heart 
 pure, perhaps in great mercy to send him 
 back, with heaven-lit censer, to minister again 
 under the high shadow of Christ ; if not, to 
 teach him that, brought to a right mind and 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 255 
 
 saved though by a day of humiliation and 
 distress here, that is but a light thing com- 
 pared with perishing in sudden overthrow 
 hereafter ; for, my reader, if you be in any 
 way a minister of Christ and of His work, 
 you cannot but rem.ember, that the long min- 
 glings in your censer, and the fires you have 
 offered numberlessly before Him, will pass in 
 terrible review again at the altar of the great 
 day, and that it will then be " a fearful thing 
 to fall into the hands of the living God." 
 
 But it must be further added, that if all this 
 be so, we have a startling light indeed thrown 
 on much of our modern condition before God 
 by the sin of Nadab and Abihu. Who be- 
 lieves in the fire from heaven still coming 
 down and lighting on our worship scenes and 
 scattering itself in its baptism of the Spirit on 
 our hearts ? Who stakes his faith and trust 
 in that simple but Divine element — the breath 
 of the Holy Spirit ? Is it looked for in ordi- 
 nance ? Do we resort to our Bibles to find it 
 glow in word and promise ? Do we credit it 
 when it stirs abroad, quickening and reviving 
 
256 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 the Church, converting sinners, building up 
 saints? Do we believe fervently that we 
 have this Spirit as the Lord's gift from heaven 
 — that if we come still in the good way, the 
 old path of the shed blood of Jesus, our 
 Church and other altars do yet gleam with 
 this Spirit ? Or do many, many not pass into 
 God's presence indifferently, irreverently, un- 
 believingly, to stand by the old cistern but to 
 find it dry, to stand by the old hearth but to 
 find its embers cold, to stand by the old altar 
 but to find its surface blank ? How can wor- 
 ship acceptable to the living God, then, be 
 paid ? He would bestow the fiery gift if He 
 saw but one heart with simple faith raised to 
 heaven ; but men pass in and out in worship, 
 and they either offer some strange fire of feel- 
 ing or of thought, or of one knows not well 
 what, or they carry with them censers fireless 
 altogether and dead. 
 
 Hence in this neglect — this mechanical dis- 
 credit even many who serve at the altar throw 
 on the living power of God from heaven — 
 one cannot but think there has originated 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 257 
 
 that kind of cool and ready sympathy of 
 many with a great many elements that are 
 obtruded now-a-days into the circle of God's 
 worship, and that yet are not by any means 
 instinct with the fire of God's Spirit — not so 
 much, indeed, as even touched by that Spirit 
 on their edge. The supernatural side of 
 worship is rationalised away. There are to 
 be liberal interpretations made of all men's 
 tenets. We are not to deem even the vital 
 points of the gospel such as we are to place 
 much importance by. We are to make free 
 with anything and everything in the Word of 
 God. We are to believe that there are many 
 ways of devoutly worshipping God, besides 
 the good old way that now too much is fallen 
 disused ; that God will accept all honest 
 offerings ; and there is no necessity whatever 
 hangs on the mysterious baptism of the Holy 
 Ghost and of fire, so many in their simple 
 faith have clung to as all in all. So by some 
 there is a summary eliding at the threshold 
 of all tokens of a heavenly grace. By some 
 there are easy freedoms assumed as to God's 
 
258 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 worship, that make all ordinance simply con- 
 venient, or, in its presence or its absence, 
 wholly indifferent. By some, moral worth, 
 quite unstamped though it be by the power 
 of God's grace, is reckoned an undoubtedly 
 rightful claimant on Heaven — an offering, not 
 through the gospel channel, it is true, but an 
 offering God will assuredly accept. By some 
 the gifts of genius, the glorious creations and 
 victories of mind in the world, are pointed 
 to, and it is asked. Are these, though unbap- 
 tized by gospel faith, to be exorcised out of 
 the kingdom of heaven ? 
 
 My reader, in reply, we simply fall back on 
 God's divine record. It may sound a terrible 
 and sweeping act to cut off a whole world of 
 mind and worth, and, in many of its aspects, 
 noble human life, and, because it wants what 
 we deem the one thing needful, to put it 
 under ban of rejection in the sight of God ; 
 but who has ever had title to authorize a 
 relaxing of the clear appointments of His 
 Word, set forth clear in our sight as the flame 
 til at in Nadab and Abihu's sight came down 
 
THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 259 
 
 from heaven ? who has ever had title to erase, 
 either half or wholly such momentous mat- 
 ters as the blood of Jesus, as the necessary 
 life of God's Spirit, from the finger-posts and 
 milestones on the heavenward path? who 
 ever has had title given to worship God in a 
 large and negligent way, that omits God's 
 own prime condition, and yet boldly claims 
 to walk with any earth-kindled fire-censer on 
 that very ground where Nadab and Abihu, 
 for a like crime, perished ? Let us have these 
 questions well answered, and we shall con- 
 cede the latitude required ; but, until then, 
 we must abide by the gospel at once of "the 
 goodness and severity of God." We must at 
 all risks stand in the good way, and ask for 
 the old paths. We must not shrink from it — 
 that if men quench in themselves and in their 
 worship the one fiery particle from heaven — if 
 they put the strange fire of some will-worship 
 in its place — however high their endowments 
 and rich their life otherwise, they are utterly 
 alien to God; nay, by these very endow- 
 ments, by the place they stand in, by the 
 
260 THE SIN OF STRANGE FIRE. 
 
 awful sacredness of those things they tamper 
 with, so grievous is their sin made before 
 God, that that very fire of divine gift, which, 
 if they would but borrow it, would blessedly 
 awake the censers of their offering and life 
 into flame, cannot but, as in the case of Nadab 
 and Abihu, one way or other, leap forth upon 
 them that they die. Let us fear, then, as we 
 enter into the cloud. Let us see we have 
 Him who said, " I the Lord thy God am a 
 jealous God," to deal with as we come. Let 
 us ask that He Himself put the live coal from 
 off the heavenly altar on our hearts; and 
 then, as we draw near, so quickened and 
 enkindled, we may never let our eyes waver 
 from these two fore-front texts of Scripture : 
 " Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth, and 
 the Life ; no man cometh unto the Father 
 huthy MeV And, "Except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of God !" 
 
XX. 
 
 At last, the long sojourn at the foot of 
 Sinai came to an end ; the tribes of Israel 
 were numbered and disposed with the regu- 
 larity of an army ; the tabernacle was lifted ; 
 the trumpet-signals given ; the tents struck, 
 and the march forward into "the great and 
 terrible wilderness " began. As mass after 
 mass of the people disappeared through the 
 eastern defiles, gradually silence and desertion 
 fell on a scene late so astir with sublime 
 events ; the mantle of God was unrolled off 
 the high sides of Sinai, and presently that 
 mount, now memorable for ever in Israelite 
 association and story, was left alone, all its 
 peaks in the sunshine still and bare. 
 
 The path struck out by the Israelites, under 
 the guidance of the pillared cloud, as well as 
 by the lynx-eyed accuracy of Hobab, Moses' 
 
 261 
 
262 THE GRAVES OF LUST, 
 
 brother-in-law, and a denizen of that very 
 desert, was one that, after several stages, led 
 through difficult passes into a broad sand 
 tract, expanded drearily before them, and 
 roughened by the billow-like shapes of low 
 sand hills. Behind them, the heights of the 
 Sinai group they had left stood up in serrated 
 battlements; before them was this waste of 
 desert, belted north and east by other dim 
 mountain ridges ; and on the right, down a 
 wild torrent bed marked with the track of 
 ancient ruin, now riverless and dry, a glimpse 
 of the sea of Akaba sparkled distantly, with 
 the faint outline of the far Arabian heights 
 beyond. As the people journeyed on thus, 
 discontent under change had kept uttering 
 its murmurs through their ranks ; the kind of 
 settled, half-home life they had led for so 
 many months under Sinai was broken, and 
 they were now cast again on the wide, home- 
 less wilderness ; wherefore the old murmur- 
 ous spirit broke out incorrigibly. God had 
 borne with them much before Sinai ; but 
 after the lessons and the life in His own pres- 
 
THE* GRAVES OF LUST. 263 
 
 ence around Sinai, nigh a whole year, His 
 patience waned fast now, and but for Moses, 
 He would have made sharp and sudden end 
 of all Israel on the spot. As it was, a fire 
 flew forth from Him round the borders of the 
 camp, catching the thick shrub plants that 
 ran like network on the soil, and from these 
 blazing fiercely among the nearest tents, till 
 the whole camp-ground was girt with a line 
 of flame. Many fell victims in the fiery 
 onset ; but at the cry of Moses, God stayed 
 the consuming of His wrath again. Still, no 
 sooner had he done so, and while the prints 
 of the destroyer were hardly yet cold, than 
 the perverse rebelliousness of the people 
 woke anew. It was as a serpent scotched, 
 not killed ; each visitation of the Lord re- 
 pressing it for the moment, but by and by 
 moving it to deeper virulence. So "the 
 mixed multitude" who had followed the march 
 out of Egypt, having, in their low-pitched 
 existence, first taken up the tale, it was soon 
 spread through the whole people like a wild 
 contagion. They saw the bare desert stretched 
 
264 THE GRAVES OF LtJST. 
 
 before them waste on waste ; not one growth 
 grateful to the palate did it offer ; of the 
 simple manna food of God thej were weary ; 
 and in face of such change, and bleak pros- 
 pect, and, it might be, utter want, the old 
 pungent memories of the plants of Egypt 
 came across them, and, degraded to this low 
 level of the mere lust of food, they wept in 
 their tents, crying, " Who shall give us flesh 
 to eat ?" Had it been such an hour as that 
 in which, before the gift of manna, they had 
 been looking famine in the face, both Divine 
 and human patience might have found excuse 
 for them ; but now, in the midst of manna 
 plenty, it was a sheer and shameless abandon- 
 ment of themselves to the grovelling of abject 
 appetite alone ; and Moses, driven beyond 
 iDearing, appealed in impetuous prayer to 
 God, crying that the burden of this whole 
 people crushed him — that it was impossible 
 he could sustain it more — and that, if it was 
 decreed to lie on his heart, he would sooner 
 at once die. 
 
 God was pitiful, not to the people, but to 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 265 
 
 his heart-broken servant, and in Ilis pity, told 
 him He would ease his burden in a two-fold 
 way. First, He would give of the Spirit 
 that rested on Moses to seventy elders of the 
 people Moses should himself select, and they 
 should be his assessors in controlling the 
 unmanageable, infatuated throng. Next, He 
 would rain quails on the camp, till the people 
 should be fed full, not only up to the measure 
 of their lust, but for days and days beyond it, 
 till the thing they lusted for would be turned 
 into loathing and a curse. Accordingly, 
 Moses drew up his list of seventy, and God, 
 taking of the Spirit wherewith he himself had 
 been gifted, breathed it on these seventy, and 
 in the tabernacle where they were assembled 
 they began to prophesy. We have seen how 
 single and ungrudging Moses was in his 
 heart, when, on a former occasion, his rule in 
 Israel had been divided, and in so far parted 
 from him. Not less generously ungrudging 
 was he now. The Spirit that was lit upon 
 the hearts and lips of these seventy was, in 
 plain terms, taken from him — seventy flames 
 
 12 
 
266 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 kindled at, and abstracted from, his one super- 
 eminent, and hitherto solitary, flame; but 
 just as one star, touching many other dead 
 torches in the heavens, might kindle them 
 round into stars also, and would be lessened 
 not one whit in its own light, only in the 
 ring of clustered luminaries becoming less 
 marked, perhaps, than when it glowed soli- 
 tary against the night — so Moses gave to the 
 elders of the Spirit in him without an hair- 
 breadth of real loss — fast as he gave, the 
 divine effluence, far from ebbing in his own 
 soul, rebaptizing it and enlarging it afresh — 
 to that extent, indeed, of high abolishing of 
 self, and putting it for ever out of sight, that, 
 when news came that two of the seventy, 
 accidentally left in the camp, had yet caught 
 the Spirit there, and were prophesying, Moses 
 rebuked the simple jealousy that broke from 
 the lips of Joshua, and in words notable for 
 all who take part, high or low, in God's work, 
 said, " Enviest thou for my sake ? Would God 
 that all the Lord's people were prophets, and 
 that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!" 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 267 
 
 Then followed the second wonder of God's 
 promise. There had been some shade of in- 
 credulity in the mind of Moses, when, looking 
 on the thousands of Israel blackening the face 
 of the desert, he had asked God how it was 
 possible flesh should be for so many mouths ? 
 Would the flocks and herds be slain for them, 
 or the sea glimmering there in the distance 
 give up its stores ? But the Lord had thrust 
 these questions off" with the greater question 
 —Was His hand waxed short ? And accord- 
 ingly, when the hour came. He sent forth a 
 wind upon the deep, and flights of quails 
 were driven inland before it, right over, and 
 for a vast space on all sides about, the camp, 
 in such living multitude that literally not only 
 the air, but the ground where they fell, 
 swarmed to darkness with them ; and for a 
 night and two days, the people toiled at noth- 
 ing but this great harvest of their lust. But 
 even while their homers were being laden, 
 and in their greedy, thankless haste, the flesh 
 of the quails was being thrust between their 
 teeth, God's anger could not be restrained, 
 
268 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 and He smote them with a plague bom of the 
 very banquet they were gloating over, so that 
 even while they ate many of them died. It 
 was a signal lesson — their prayer granted, 
 but with a curse about its neck — the fle^h 
 they wept for given to repletion, but in it the 
 seed of reaction, of loathsomeness, of death — 
 and, to signalise the lesson more to all time, 
 the scene where the plague-stricken died and 
 were buried was called Kibroth-hattaavah — 
 *' the graves of lust." 
 
 In one of those deeply -resonant psalms in 
 which, in times long after, the Hebrews loved 
 to recount in their temple their forefathers' 
 wilderness story, this lesson is more than 
 alluded to when it is said, "He gave them 
 their request, but sent leanness into their 
 soul." It was, in short, another turn in the 
 wheel of God's varied dealing. Had He 
 refused the flesh that was wept for, possibly 
 at the cost of present pain and privation. He 
 might have won the thanks of Israel after ; by 
 holding back the wave of miserable desire in 
 them. He might, one would say, have pre- 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 269 
 
 served some spiritual ground within their 
 hearts clear for His divine purposes and influ- 
 ences ; but by this time there was need to 
 teach them another dreadful chapter of His 
 ways instead, and He therefore gave them 
 their request ; He let in the full flood of 
 earthly desire, but, in that letting in, the last 
 grain of spiritual footing in the nature so let 
 loose, and yielded to, and satiated, was over- 
 swept and lost. To the body, such a feast as 
 even the greedy eye wearied over; but to 
 the soul within, leanness. What other conse- 
 quence, my reader, could ensue ? We know 
 that in every creature God has made in this 
 world there is but a certain measure of vital 
 being assigned — a certain life- current brim- 
 ming to its edge, and for all the creature's 
 ordinary purposes enough, but nought be- 
 yond ; and if that current be distributed in 
 just proportion through the frame, every 
 organ will be in equal play ; but if divided 
 wrongfully and shortsightedly, too much of 
 the current turned into one direction, neces- 
 sarily either too little flows in some other 
 
270 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 direction, or the stream altogether attenuates 
 and dies. Mark the class of sea animals that 
 are endowed naturally with the organs of 
 vision, but, by their living wholly in the dark 
 of far- withdrawn caves, are said, in that per- 
 verse life, gradually to lose their first power, 
 and the very eyes to shrivel in their sockets. 
 Mark, in the human body, the effect of any 
 laborious work straining one limb or organ 
 heavily and for a length of time — the other 
 limbs grow feeble, and their muscles shrink. 
 Mark also, when you rise to a higher scale — 
 the ardor of the student drives the mind into 
 a passionate whirl, but it drains the body of 
 its health, and ultimately, it may be, its life. 
 And mark, rising higher yet, the man who 
 lives absorbingly in public life, be it even of 
 the most patriotic sort — yet how often has it 
 with truth been said that the intensity of flow 
 the one way dries up the quieter graces of the 
 heart in other ways — the man so eminent in 
 public is a rare guest at his own hearth, and 
 when there is miserable and blank. So, truest 
 of all is this striking principle, as to the bal- 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 271 
 
 ance in us of the earthly and the spiritual. 
 God does not mean the earthly in our nature 
 to be wholly uprooted and destroyed. He 
 gave warrant so far to the first cry of Israel 
 for food, by answering them with the daily 
 shower of manna ; and as for us, there is that 
 one middle petition in our Lord's prayer 
 which absolutely teaches us to pray, " Give 
 us this day our daily bread!" But with all 
 that clearly understood, there is just the one 
 full life-current to be distributed between soul 
 and body ; and if we give the latter more 
 than the above pilgrim petition marks out, if, 
 like the Israelites, we go beyond the daily 
 shower of ^manna and pine for an overflow of 
 flesh besides, straightway that is diverting to 
 the body more than its regulated share — it is 
 gorging all its sluices and its cun'ents with 
 the life-force God has measured out to us, and 
 of necessity the stream so abstracted runs, in 
 the direction of the soul, dwindled, and, per- 
 haps, altogether dry. 
 
 What, for example, is the proverbial effect 
 of a worldly life ? I do not mean a life as be- 
 
272 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 ing worldly simply because it is led mucli in 
 the stir and traffic of the world, for the world 
 is the place where God, for the perfecting of 
 their faith, sets all Christians ; and many ob- 
 tain a large share of the world through inher- 
 itance, or through their own honorable labors, 
 or in other just ways, who yet hold the bal- 
 ance most signally between the seen and the 
 unseen — between the body and the soul ; who 
 walk with noble, exemplary steps on the diffi- 
 cult edge, diligent in their calling on the 
 earthly side, and yet on the heavenly side fer- 
 vent in spirit, serving God. Of these we say 
 that their secret is, they keep their heart-de- 
 sires right. God sends them great worldly 
 gains, not because they have lusted for them, 
 or, once grasping them, would in the miser- 
 spirit hoard them, but because they are good 
 depositaries of wealth ; the gifts of God flow 
 through their hands plentifully for the bless- 
 ing and the help of others ; and, therefore, 
 still more liberally, they have their basket and 
 their store increased, but never to their soul's 
 decrease ; on the contrary, (to transpose the 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 273 
 
 terms of St. John's saying,) their souls pros- 
 per and are in health, even as their estate in 
 the world prospers. 
 
 Such, therefore, I do not mean when I 
 speak of worldly life ; but I mean life which, 
 spent much in the world, gets entangled with 
 a love of, and a thirst for, it; and whose 
 whole horizon-view is bounded by the desires 
 and existence this world stimulates. What is 
 proverbial of such a life ? Is it not that, in 
 proportion as the earthly rises in it, the 
 spiritual sinks ? A man gets into the eager 
 chase of money, for example, for money's 
 sake ; as he grows to the riches of a Dives 
 outside, does he not grow poor as a beggar in 
 the heart within ? Or a man lets in on him a 
 taste for the ambitions, or the vanities, or the 
 enjoyments, the world offers ; the more hours 
 and thoughts he consumes outside in these, 
 does not the whisper come fainter and rarer 
 of the neglected soul within ? Or a man is 
 by degrees wrought into a thick-set growth 
 of the anxieties and cares of business ; under 
 that choking growth outside does the small 
 
274 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 spiritual seed not perish at its heart-root 
 within ? We all know, in short, that whatever 
 draws the soul more to earth draws it, in that 
 degree, more from Heaven ; that whatever is 
 a gain of mere lust — mere unhallowed, self- 
 ish, overstretched desire — is a leanness to 
 that extent sent into the soul ; that if the 
 current flows deep and strong, and ever 
 deeper and stronger the one way, it necessa- 
 rily exhausts the whole life-force ; the body 
 drains the soul ; the material, by its suction, 
 enfeebles to its last drop the spiritual the 
 other v/ay ; till, when the case, as it often 
 does, runs into excess, (for lust that has 
 attained its end does not rest sated there, but 
 its curse is to beget lust an hundredfold,) 
 then in that excess we have the spectacle — 
 the sorrowful spectacle — of a man's life run- 
 ning on the world's side with the strength 
 and fulness of a river, all the energies and 
 interest having full play there; and, on the 
 side of God, diminished to a thread-like rill, 
 or, in darkness and stagnancy, dropped and 
 lost. Indeed we have the same picture under 
 
THE GRAVES OP LUST. 275 
 
 other words presented by our Lord, when He 
 conjures up the last stage of that frightful 
 contrast — the pampered body, the wasted 
 soul — the earthly filling all the foreground, 
 the spiritual behind it shrunken to a ghost — 
 and asks, '' What doth it profit a man, though 
 he gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul ?" 
 
 Let us be afraid, then, and deeply watch- 
 ful, not only what we ask, but what we inar- 
 ticulately wish from heaven. Yea, let us be 
 afraid what earthly thing we ^x on, that we 
 may desire it even in the secret of our souls. 
 All our real cravings go out from us con- 
 stantly, and, as on a clear page, are read by 
 God. Wherefore, should He give us our 
 desire — should He put the very morsel we are 
 hungering for — money, place in the world, 
 vengeance on an adversary, pleasure, sin, 
 earthly success, or whatever it may be — 
 should He give us that very morsel between 
 our teeth, we may be sure it is an omen that 
 should make us anything but rejoice ; that 
 leanness is sent into the soul withal; and that, 
 
276 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 in the very moment of our lust snatching its 
 banquet^ like the flesh the Israelites devoured, 
 it will be turned into our plague. Even 
 those who have stood in a very holy place 
 beside God's altar have had reason oftentimes 
 to sorrow that they allowed other seeking 
 than the seeking of God's glory to move 
 them thither — ^prizes of earthly honor, of ad- 
 vantage, nay, even of sordid gain; and that 
 God, giving them their desires to the full, has 
 sent also the inevitable counterbalancing 
 curse, blighting to all their graces, emaciation 
 and deathlike palsy into the soul. I repeat, 
 therefore, let us think what it is we ask — 
 what it is in our inner heart we wish. Dare 
 we see it realized and brought home to us — 
 the gift, but the millstone God puts as the 
 condition round its neck — the brightness, but 
 the spectral shadow in its steps ? Dare we 
 accept a too full-fed worldly estate as the 
 happiest, or, knowing God's awful manner, 
 would we not recoil from it as the reverse ? 
 And, on the other hand, if the desires of our 
 folly have not been granted us, neither 
 
THE GRAVES OF LUST. 277 
 
 strength, nor health, nor gain, nor high place, 
 nor anything beyond pilgrim simplicity and 
 pilgrim spareness, let us, as we journey on, 
 learn to give God praise that He has not 
 visited us with that last token of His anger — 
 cast us off, that we may have our desires as 
 the Israelites had their quails ; that, hinder- 
 ing us in our earthward frowardness. He is, in 
 that, drawing out and turning on the current 
 of our life heavenward ; that, making the 
 one stream run scanty. He is causing the 
 other stream to flash and deepen in its bed ; 
 that, denying the body even till it is like 
 Lazarus at the rich man's gate, He pours a 
 double and a treble blessing in through all 
 the flood-gates of the soul. Let us not 
 tempt Him as the Israelites tempted ; when 
 we pray or wish, let our fervor flow out 
 unrepressed for things spiritual ; when we 
 turn towards the things temporal, let us 
 tread in hesitancy and fear, saying, in the 
 words of Agur, " Give me neither poverty 
 nor riches; feed me with food convenient 
 24 
 
278 THE GRAVES OF LUST. 
 
 for me ;" and translating into ourselves 
 that still more God-observant saying of 
 St. Paul, '' I have learned, in whatsoever 
 state I am, therewith to be content." 
 
XXI. 
 
 It was destined that Moses should not find 
 many days' repose in the thorny leadership 
 of Israel. Scarce had the plague, springing 
 from the people's lust, abated, and the camp 
 been pitched another stage forward in the 
 broad desert of Hazeroth, than his new grief 
 arose ; and this time it was the bitterer that 
 his new adversaries were those of his own 
 household. His sister Miriam, whom God 
 had distinguished in Israel by her gifts as a 
 prophetess, began to give utterance to an 
 envy of him which had very likely long been 
 lurking in her heart. Now she whispered it 
 in the ear of Aaron, whose easy temper fell 
 the victim of her stronger passions. It was 
 under cover of jealousy for their pure Israel- 
 ite blood she made the charge against Moses, 
 it is true, for she affected to make it out sin 
 
 279 
 
280 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 that lie had married a Cushite woman ; but, 
 with this plea on her tongue, it was the ser- 
 pent envy that was really at bottom in her 
 heart. Yet it is difficult to conceive such 
 utterness of folly, not to say wickedness. She 
 existed under the mere shadow of Moses ; she 
 and Aaron were great in Israel because Moses 
 first was great ; and to look at him as he pre- 
 sided in the camp, and to mark how, 
 
 " Deep on bis brow engraven, 
 Deliberation sat, and public care!" 
 
 to think what a weight of all the people's 
 government, and sins, and sufferings he bore ; 
 how he had triumphed through so many dread 
 wilderness events ; and how he had been the 
 daily associate of the mighty God ; and yet 
 to dream that she, a woman, could displace 
 him, or so much as touch a corner of his bur- 
 den with her little finger, was surely a dream 
 of the wildest presumption. But be all these 
 things as they might, Miriam it would seem 
 proposed no less for herself than an equality 
 of rule at least — for Aaron she brought in as 
 
MIRIAMS HUMILIATION. 281 
 
 a mere makeweight in the case — and, accord- 
 ingly, her appeal at once and claim were that 
 God had spoken by her as well as by Moses. 
 Moses was silent — perhaps in great wonder- 
 ment, perhaps in grief. But God at that mo- 
 ment interposed to rebuke the treacherous 
 and thankless two. He summoned them 
 along with Moses to the tabernacle door; 
 there He brooded over them in a cloud ; and, 
 most probably before all Israel, He s]3oke to 
 them from the angry darkness. He told them 
 they, and such -like prophets as they, were 
 at best but dreamers of dreams, and seers of 
 visions ; that God revealed Himself to them 
 thus dimly and distantly, but with His servant 
 Moses He would talk mouth to mouth ; He 
 would uncover to him His rarest glory ; He 
 would shew him the very similitude of God. 
 Wherefore, then, were they not afraid to 
 speak against him? With these words, the 
 cloud rolled off, and Miriam was beheld where 
 she stood a miserable leper, white as snow. 
 Aaron repented deeply, and cried to his 
 brother to have pity ; whereupon in the first 
 
282 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 words he had yet permitted to break from 
 him, Moses in his turn cried to God. Fitting 
 it was that in so wretched an exposure of the 
 family heart such should have been the first 
 words heard from the great servant of the 
 Lord. But the answer was not one of imme- 
 diate mercy. The crime of Miriam had been 
 too excuseless and outrageous ; and she must, 
 therefore, like others, fall under the ban of 
 the leprosy law. So she was led out of the 
 camp, and left for seven days ; and in that 
 avoided, loathsome, branded state, we can 
 think of the proud prophetess, who had led 
 the timbrels of the Israelite women by the 
 Red Sea, and had been ever since as a queen 
 in honor — we can think of her as sitting out- 
 cast on the ground, her robe drawn over head 
 and face, and drinking the cup of humiliation 
 to the dregs. 
 
 What we are struck with first is, the won- 
 der that, in a family circle so lifted on the 
 platform of Divine grace and honor, there 
 should have been all at once brought to light 
 a flaw so bitter and so deadly. Had Moses 
 
MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 283 
 
 stirred the envy of any of the other outside 
 chiefs of Israel — had there been an eye of 
 smoldering fire and a lip of base depreci- 
 ation set on him from any other quarter of 
 the camp — we could, according to what we 
 know of human nature, make some allowance, 
 and account the case at least credible. But 
 that from his own flesh and blood, Aaron and 
 Miriam, who had gained all in his rise, and to 
 whom his honor should have been as their 
 own, and dearer — that from the woman's 
 heart and hand of the latter especially the 
 poisoned shaft should have been shot against 
 him — was surely too monstrous to be believed. 
 How could the host they were at the head of 
 look at it ? how could God, Whose name and 
 cause they had in charge, regard it ? Yet, 
 sooth to tell, the Miriam spirit is no such 
 strange thing in the world, we fear, as all this 
 would make appear. Punished by the leprous 
 stroke in the wilds of Hazeroth, it has revived 
 into deadliness in a thousand scenes since. 
 We know, for example, how even the family 
 group of our Lord's disciples, knit, one would 
 
284 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 think, in so sacred a bond, was torn with 
 jealousies and dissension. We know how, 
 later, Paul was undervalued by the very men 
 he had made converts to the gospel, and who 
 were members with him of the same house- 
 hold of faith ; how they seized the day of his 
 distress to level bitter sneers against him, and 
 to snatch the standard he had upborne so 
 grandly into their own rash, ineffective hands. 
 We know how he felt the stab ; yet how 
 splendid the magnanimity with which he 
 struck aside the viperous spirit and its stab 
 together, sayiug, " Notwithstanding, every 
 way Christ is preached ; and I therein do 
 rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." And we know, 
 further, how, in all strenuous projects and 
 crises of the Church, envy has slid in even 
 among men in the forefront of the battle; 
 there has been fierce contention for the place 
 of honor, and such rupture and ruin to the 
 cause of God in consequence, that the enemy 
 has rushed in and the ark of God been taken. 
 And we know, still further, how, in the 
 Church of Christ, now, and amongst those 
 
MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 285 
 
 wlio are its gaged and sworn leaders, the un- 
 happy spirit is not dead, but lives; talents 
 that are serving in the same holy work with 
 us are underrated, high success done in name 
 of the same Christ we follow is taken down, 
 high gifts are lessened, high attainments are 
 explained away, and, while we plead lofty 
 pleas of disinterestedness, and such-like, as 
 Miriam pled on the score of her and Aaron's 
 family honor — underneath, in the insinuations 
 of our lips and the real thought of our hearts, 
 there is too, too often the same trailing ser- 
 pent that in her would have stung even her 
 noble brother to death. We have asked what 
 thought the host of Israel at the spectacle ? 
 what thought that great God of Israel under 
 the shadow of whose name it was Miriam 
 gave her bad passions play? An hundred 
 times more may we ask, what men think of 
 ^^s, who, under the Christian mask, not gener- 
 ously rejoice in all good for Christ's sake, but 
 meanly lower here, coldly freeze into discour- 
 agement there? What impression can we 
 suppose the world takes on if passions, 
 
286 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 prompting thus, smolder and occasionally 
 break fiercely out in the household of God ? 
 and above all, what can the all-searching Lord 
 think, in Whose field we labor, on Whose 
 holy ground we seize occasion for the treach- 
 erous aggrandizing and strife of self — Whose 
 are all gifts, and all worthy deeds, and all 
 illustrious work, and yet Whose glory in 
 them all we would rather see blotted out than 
 that, with their high contrast above ourselves, 
 they should cross our gaze ? Is it not grief 
 and anger to the Spirit of our God that we 
 thus, like Miriam, would pluck His own 
 crown off His servant's brow ? Do we not 
 deserve to be humbled as were she and 
 Aaron down to the stature of our own real 
 littleness? And has there not been ground 
 given Avhy a magnanimous heart, such as that 
 of Moses, should be pointed to as almost the 
 wonder of a generation — so sorrowfully rare 
 is it, alas ! — one so arrayed in gifts, and yet 
 who could break into that simple outburst we 
 have already quoted — "Enviest thou for my 
 sake ? Would God that all the Lord's people 
 
Miriam's humiliation. 287 
 
 were prophets, and that the Lord would put 
 His Spirit upon them !" 
 
 So, further, as we read the tale of this 
 family breach, the rebuke of God, and the 
 leprous blight thrown on Miriam, teach us 
 not only of the hatefulness of envy, but of 
 the exceeding goodness and beauty of each 
 one in God's household being quietly con- 
 tented in His own gift. Miriam forgot her- 
 self through her having been upraised in her 
 brother's fortunes, and so sharing some meas- 
 ure of his prophet pov/er from heaven ; she 
 was tempted thus to extend her grasp, as 
 though to clutch from him the heavy sceptre 
 of Israel. How much better had she been 
 meekly thankful for that measure of distinc- 
 tion God, for Moses' sake, had seen fit to 
 bestow on her ! What a place of unbroken 
 honor and memory she would have retained 
 in Israel had she held back her weak woman's 
 hand to its natural task — to ring its soft 
 cadence on the timbrel, or to ply the homely, 
 but for her more fitting, sceptre of the distafil 
 She would have saved that episode of shame ; 
 
288 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 she would have sat chief of Israelite women, 
 instead of falling, as she did, to be the 
 leprous gazing-stock of all the camp. So it 
 is wisest flir to fall in with God's gift and 
 place for us. Letting alone that hardly any 
 misery is greater than an ambition fostered in 
 a man that aims higher than his powers will 
 carry him, what would be the result suppose 
 the success and influence we grudge envi- 
 ously in some one else were laid for us to 
 wield at our feet ? The wayside flower is 
 sweet in its lowly spot, but it could not for a 
 moment hold the place of the giant tree that 
 is rocking its branches in the storm. The 
 inland stream is sweet in its modest windings, 
 making green its meadows ; but it could not 
 for a moment fill the deep gulf-channel on 
 whose waves fleets are borne. In the shep- 
 herd-boy's hand the sling and the five smooth 
 pebbles from the brook are an effective 
 weapon ; but if he sheathed himself in Saul's 
 armor, Saul's fortune in the fight would never 
 follow him ; beyond doubt he would perish. 
 So, pilgrim of the Cross, seek the true honor 
 
MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 289 
 
 God assigns you in the circle of your place 
 and gifts. Mark not how lowly these are — 
 they are true and honorable as given of God ; 
 and, in putting them to single, quiet, earnest 
 use in His service, they are increased in 
 honor, as Miriam was increased in honor ere 
 ^he spirit of the tempter breathed in her and 
 she fell : whereas, to look beyond, except 
 with loving and unjealous eyes, into the 
 brighter circle of another's gifts — to seek to 
 grasp that we cannot wield — or, failing that, 
 to lessen its repute — to put the stigma on it 
 of its being base coin and worthy only to be 
 struck out of the currency of God's king- 
 dom — this is not only to destroy the heart 
 out of our own gifts, to enfeeble what power 
 there is in us to do God service and to hasten 
 on His work ; but it is, like Miriam, to over- 
 reach ourselves into an exposure of our impo- 
 tence and folly ; it is to forfeit all the excel- 
 lence and the beauty of our standing, as she 
 in Israel made sacrifice of hers, and in God's 
 sight it is to share in her humiliation and 
 
 shame. If there is a sight of nobleness 
 
 13 
 
290 MIRIAM'S HUMILIATION. 
 
 greater than another, it is to witness all in 
 the Church of Christ emulous, each in the 
 consideration of his oicn talent, and, however 
 small or however great, the awful writing on 
 it, "Occupy till I come;" to witness all, when 
 they look on one another's talent, still fasten- 
 ing the eyes only on the writing, " Occupy 
 till I come ;" till they mourn all as one heart in 
 any failure ; till they rejoice all as one heart in 
 any triumph ; till the spirit runs through all 
 of Him they follow, greater yet -than Moses — 
 Him Who in magnanimity has been the grand- 
 est the world has ever seen — " Who made 
 Himself of no reputation — Who took upon 
 Him the form of a servant — Who, though 
 He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, 
 that we through His poverty might be made 
 rich!'' 
 
 So passes Miriam across the scene under 
 the shadow of her humiliation, and we get no 
 other glimpse of her, save a momentary light 
 in Kadesh, where she died, and her unruly 
 heart at last found quietness in the grave. 
 
XXII. 
 
 The line by which the Israelite march 
 crossed the wild table-land of the desert after 
 leaving Hazeroth led to the next long halting- 
 spot at Kadesh. Whatever be the exact 
 point we assign as Kadesh, it undoubtedly 
 lay in the group of hills clustering themselves 
 round the spurs of Mount Hor, and to the 
 north of the Gulf of Akaba ; and if the con- 
 clusion of recent travellers on the scene be 
 correct, it was probably the same as that fa- 
 mous city lying in its rocky cleft, known well 
 to an antiquity later than that of Moses, and 
 known to us now under the name of Petra, as 
 a City of the Dead. The site of the city is a 
 long seam which has been torn, several miles 
 in length, and right through the mountain's 
 heart; the cliffs, especially in the eastern 
 avenue, frown against each other but a few 
 
292 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 paces apart ; when struck by sunshine, they 
 glow with deep colors of crimson and purple ; 
 they are festooned here and there with the 
 • growth of wild plants and creepers high up 
 till the feathery tufts quiver against the line 
 of blue sky ; and at the bottom is the path of 
 pilgrims, as it had been scooped by some old 
 torrent, not of water but of fire. Where the 
 crags at last recede, opening from this wild 
 and narrow way into a rocky valley, still built 
 round, however, by its sheer rock walls many 
 hundred feet in height, there have been hewn 
 literally into the cliff faces (and no doubt 
 there were even before the Israelites' time) 
 the cave-like temples and dwellings of a great 
 population, till, in its human hive, the whole 
 stone-girdle round and round was scored and 
 honeycombed and made alive. At this day 
 the vast cleft is the very desolation of silence 
 and ruin ; but when the Hebrew pilgrimage 
 thronged into its gap, and pitched among its 
 glowing rocks, and found lodging in its cav- 
 erns, and climbed everywhere to overlook it 
 by its rock-hewn stairs, the picture must have 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 293 
 
 been one on which, at least, human decay had 
 not yet left its trace. 
 
 If, then, the fastness of Petra really was the 
 Kadesh of the long Israelite rest, it was from 
 this point spies were sent out, both by God's 
 command and the people's own choice, to 
 search the land. The land, that is, the Canaan 
 land of long hope and promise, lay very near ; 
 there were but these north-western ridges to 
 cross and it was in sight : nay, if any one had 
 scaled the shoulders of Hor, the misty ridges 
 veiling the Dead Sea would have been de- 
 scried. The goal so near, therefore, must 
 have moved the liveliest interest ; the dreary 
 desert-life was done, and the long migration 
 of the tribes of God at the very gates of its 
 rest. So the commissioned spies, ten in num- 
 ber, being one from each tribe except the 
 Levites, very likely departed from the camp 
 with eager convoy. Speedily they were lost 
 to sight on the neutral grounds between the 
 hills and the Canaan border. As they went 
 on, the features of the wilderness, so long 
 familiar, faded ; the palm and the acacia they 
 
294 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 had been wont to greet in the desert-way 
 were gone ; and now the sprinkling of a green 
 herbage, and the color of a land of plenty be- 
 gan everywhere to appear. The slopes they 
 had seen looming from afar drew nearer, 
 thicker and ever thicker in their outshaken 
 wealth ; on their crests rose here and there 
 lines of battlement and high cities glancing in 
 the sun ; the glades between were deep and 
 umbrageous ; and as the ten spies plunged 
 into their winding paths, tracked their half- 
 hidden brooks, and ate of the fruit every 
 bough was laden with, it must have been, 
 after their long desert-toil, like the plunging 
 of head and eyes and whole soul into a deep 
 sea of coolness and deliciousness and rest. 
 There, at length, was the land flowing with 
 milk and honey. 
 
 The search of the spies through the land, 
 for they seem to have pierced some way into 
 its interior, lasted forty days. At the end of 
 that time they returned. On their way, in 
 one of the glens where fruit and flowers grew 
 tangled in the very lap of plenty, they stopped 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 295 
 
 to gather some pomegranates and figs, and to 
 cut down a bunch of grapes. It was by the 
 banks of a brook called the brook of Eshcol ; 
 and by this simple deed making the spot, as 
 by a solitary footprint, sacred and famous to 
 all time, the band then issued from the shade 
 of Canaan, and pursued their track back to 
 the camp in Kadesh. We can easily under- 
 stand the welcome, half curiosity, half fear, 
 that awaited them, and with what an escort 
 they passed up the valley to the presence of 
 Moses. First they shewed the ripe luscious 
 grapes that, to keep them unspoiled, they had 
 carried between two slung upon a bough, and 
 they, without concealment, described the 
 abundance and the beauty of the land ; but, 
 in the same breath, eight out of the ten told 
 the terror they had felt at the cities on the 
 hill-ridges, great and high and walled up to 
 heaven, how the country swarmed in all direc- 
 tions with the fiercest races, and how espe- 
 cially the sons of Anak, giants in stature, and 
 the offspring of giants, had been seen by 
 them, making them feel as grasshoppers at the 
 
296 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 sight, and that the ^yhole project of the Israel- 
 ites to invade such a land would prove, if 
 tried, defeat and ruin. 
 
 While they thus spoke, a thrill ran through 
 the listening crowds, which, for a moment, 
 Caleb, one of the two hitherto silent spies, 
 stilled by raising his voice and exclaiming, if 
 they would but go forward boldly in the way 
 of God, they would easily, spite of all that had 
 been said, possess the land. But the false- 
 hearted eight, made resolute in their tale by 
 the sympathetic panic it had moved, repeated 
 it in yet stronger color, and straightway, with 
 all that impulse of blindness and abjectness 
 with which the Israelite story so often amazes 
 and repels us, a wail ran throughout the con- 
 gregation ; the people, we are told, wept that 
 night ; and then, passing from grief to rage, 
 as though by this long, bootless circuit out of 
 Egypt, they had been at last deceived to their 
 shame and ruin, they clamored to depose 
 Moses and Aaron from the lead, and that they 
 should themselves choose a captain who would 
 guide them back to Egypt. In the face of 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 297 
 
 this wild and worst mutiny there had been, 
 Joshua and Caleb, the two spies faithful among 
 the faithless, rent their clothes and made a 
 vehement appeal ; they denied not there were 
 difficulties in the way— that Canaan would be 
 won only by warfare and conquest ; but they 
 exclaimed it would amply repay the effort ; 
 and as for the strength of cities and of men — • 
 Israel had God upon her side, and these ad- 
 versaries, strong as they were, would, in such 
 a case, perish before her. Never, in short, 
 was it a moment like the present, when it was 
 win all or lose all with Israel. But the tumult 
 scarce gave ear ; instead of that the people 
 took up stones to stone l^e two daring hin- 
 derers of their panic to death. 
 
 In this critical moment the glory of the 
 Lord appeared in the eyes of the whole con- 
 gregation, breaking forth as though the tab- 
 ernacle were on flame ; and, turning from the 
 no doubt silenced and abashed multitude, 
 Moses hastened into the awful Presence. 
 Once more divine wrath was waxing to the 
 very brink of Israel's destruction ; and in 
 
298 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 plain phrase God told His servant He would 
 sweep the people with a pestilence, and in- 
 state him and his family in their room. But 
 tlie unflinching fidelity of Moses to his great 
 mission, tried thus again, failed him not a 
 second. He threw himself before God, and 
 poured out an entreaty that He would deal 
 not so with His people — not because they de- 
 served other — but in truth deserved the very 
 worst at the hand of heaven ; but God was 
 pledged to redeem them to the last ; the 
 divine name and power and faithfulness were 
 all, in face of the heathen world, embarked in 
 this cause of bringing the Israelites into the 
 Promised Land ; andfor that reason alone the 
 task, desperate as it seemed, must be achieved. 
 Not one spot of calumny or reflection must 
 ever rest upon the pure raiment of God's 
 word and promise. It is strange to read this 
 passage — as if the earthly creature were more 
 prompt and clear-sighted than the dread and 
 blessed Creator : but it is one of those pas- 
 sages in which the truer meaning is, that God 
 seized the occasion to evoke the noble graces 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 299 
 
 He Himself had planted in His servant's char- 
 acter and heart — Himself retiring back into 
 imperfect shadow, as it were, that these graces, 
 as in the prayer and fervor of Moses, might 
 stand more luminously forth. Accordingly, 
 the mighty God, after this manner, is seen as 
 if convinced by the human reasoning, and 
 bowing Himself to the human entreaty. He 
 would spare the people for the present. He 
 said. He would not abate Him of His pur- 
 pose to give Israel the good land. But while 
 mercy was to triumph, judgment also must, 
 after these outrageous events, have its wit- 
 ness ; and therefore though the covenant God 
 had sworn to would stand. He doomed that 
 the then pilgrim generation should have no 
 share therein. They had filled the cup of 
 their provocations full ; and now, instead of 
 giving them these Canaan ridges within sight, 
 He would turn them back into the vv^ilderness. 
 He would keep them wandering there till 
 every one of the p. then living, from twenty 
 years old and upwards, should die. Forty 
 years would He imprison them thus in the 
 
300 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 desert wastes ; and only when — Joshna and 
 Caleb alone excepted— the last grave should 
 be dug, and the last of the rebel thousands laid 
 in its dust, would He bring Israel into rest. 
 
 There was no gainsaying, even by the zeal- 
 ous Moses, this terrible, but righteous, sen- 
 tence; and, as if already to bring home its 
 bitter first-fruits, God smote the eight slan- 
 derous spies then and there with a plague 
 that they died. The stroke must have 
 recalled the people to a sense once more of 
 Him with whom they had to do. And when 
 Moses added to their rising fears, by sadly 
 telling them what now were God's purposes : 
 that to them the land had been a few hours 
 before such that all conquests of it were pos- 
 sible, noiv impossible ; touched and tasted by 
 them, but never to be grasped ; seen, but for 
 ever lost ; there was a rapid passing back 
 from one passionate extreme to another; so 
 that now, stung with remorse, they mourned 
 greatly. Was it true that all had hung upon 
 the balance of a moment, and that moment, 
 allowed h^ them to slip, was irretrievable ? 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 801 
 
 that what might have been yesterday could 
 not now be to-day ? that the prize, so within 
 their grasp, and still hanging there before 
 them, could no more be reached now for 
 ever? It seemed to them incredible; and 
 blind in their despair the one way as they 
 had been in the other — spurred as men are 
 who have lost some signal opportunity, and 
 who, instead of drawing themselves back, col- 
 lecting their force, and waiting patiently for 
 the opportunity to come again, dash reck- 
 lessly and excitedly after what is lost, as 
 though passion, all off its guard, would be 
 likely to achieve that which coolness and 
 deliberateness at the right moment might 
 have done but did not ; spurred in such man- 
 ner, I say, the Israelites would not believe 
 their one great chance gone ; they exclaimed 
 they would yet retrieve it ; and in the teeth 
 of Moses' remonstrance, and the fact — that 
 should have been enough — that the cloud of 
 God's presence stirred not off its spot to be 
 their guide, they hurried tumultuously by the 
 hill-route into the region of the Amalekites 
 
302 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 lying northward. What now, compared with 
 the loss that threatened them, was the stature 
 of the giants or the fencing of the cities they 
 had yesterday so feared? But, alas! it was 
 too late. The Amalekites met them in dis- 
 order and exhaustion ; and in the shame of 
 defeat, as they were driven back to Kadesh, 
 they were taught bitterly — oh, how bitterly ! — 
 how great their sin of halting just upon the 
 brink; how precious beyond count the mo- 
 ment they had refused and lost ; and how, 
 God Himself now standing in the way, the 
 prize they might have snatched could be 
 redeemed no more ! 
 
 The whole blindness of the unhappy peo- 
 ple lay in this, that they believed their own 
 conjured-up shadows more than they did the 
 simple, plainly-seen realities of God. Two 
 things were set before them on the spies' 
 return — here, in ripe blood-red grapes, tan- 
 gible assurance of the land, first-fruits of that 
 which, according to divine promise, flowed 
 with milk and honey — and these were the 
 realities of God ; there, on the other hand, a 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 303 
 
 report of giant adversaries to be fought, and 
 cities walled up to heaven to be taken — and 
 these, though having undoubtedly some foun- 
 dation in fact, were the absurdly exaggerated 
 shadows of human fear. The Israelites 
 dropped sight altogether of the former, and 
 turned with dilated gaze only to the dark 
 proportions of the latter. Had they done as 
 the clear-sighted Joshua and Caleb urged 
 them — confessed there ivas something in the 
 Anaks and the walled cities needing courage 
 and conquest, but not more than one right 
 manly effort, specially of a God-led people, was 
 equal to — had they, in short, reduced the 
 human shadows down to their true dimen- 
 sions, then fastened their eyes on these first- 
 fruit grapes, and seen in them omens of the 
 glorious land, and given way to the swelling 
 in their hearts of that desire to win it the 
 unworthiest of them did really cherish ; had 
 they weighed matters thus, and girt their 
 loins up, and gone swiftly forward, there is 
 no question but, in one good stroke, Canaan 
 would have been theirs. But the terrors of 
 
304 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 the way, looming and expanding in their 
 imaginations, they allowed to outweigh and 
 darken God's plain pledges, although these 
 pledges lay at their very feet; and dearly 
 though they coveted the Canaan home, in 
 these terrors they lost its sight ; it was offered 
 them, a splendid chance, but they were so 
 fear-enwrapped it moved them not ; they 
 shrank from its possession, and for that rea- 
 son, victims of their own exaggerations, they 
 were turned back into the wilderness, to 
 linger hopelessly and to die. 
 
 So we get at the root of many sad defec- 
 tions in the Christian faith as well. What a 
 scope of grace and privilege and rejoicing 
 and advancement in the life of God is often 
 refused by us, although within reach and 
 sight, just because some dark spectres or 
 other, more or less the creatures of our own 
 flmcy, rise up perpetually and intervene. 
 One man, for example, cannot make up his 
 mind to a religious life led on a higher plat- 
 form than the average, because he dreads the 
 face of that society he mixes in, and to whose 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 305 
 
 tone and maxims he is bound hand and foot. 
 Another dares not, because life in Christ, he 
 foresees, would demand from him the sacri- 
 fice of tastes and habits and modes of exist- 
 ence in the world whose loss he could not 
 bear. Another dares not, because the strain 
 would be too high and constant — ^life in Christ 
 too unearthly — he could not keep his bow 
 bent always at that awful tension. And so 
 on, for the Anaks and the fenced cities with- 
 standing us, as we suppose, are legion. And 
 in consequence there ensues that sorrowful 
 spectacle of so many one would conclude in 
 the path to Zion, who yet linger afar, and on 
 the same outskirting spots near God's king- 
 dom year by year — the privileges and life of 
 the good land in sight — their eyes desiring, 
 and their speech telling you they wish they 
 were such men as God's saints have been, and 
 were clad in such spotless garments as the 
 holy of the earth have worn — yet without 
 courage to make real claims for themselves, 
 to cross the frontier, to possess what God 
 holds out as free to them as ever He made 
 
306 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 proffer to the highest of His saints : they fear 
 the obstacles between, and in their fancy give 
 them such a bulk that, like the Israelites, their 
 own shadows are always sweeping on God's 
 lisfht — the Anaks and the walled cities are 
 always more to them than the grapes of 
 Eshcol — and all their lifetime they keep wan- 
 dering in the desert, looking wistfully towards 
 that land very far off, that might, if they had 
 but heart for it, be very nigh. We cannot 
 but all have had experience, greater or less, 
 of this unhappy chapter of spiritual life in 
 ourselves. We long, yet we dare not. We 
 extend the hand, but we grasp not. We 
 make movement upwards, but we sink again. 
 As does the poor fettered bird flying up to 
 .the height of the cord that binds it ; it is for 
 the moment in a keen delight, and sings, and 
 has its eye on the free heaven ; but the sud- 
 den check, alas, is given, both to song and 
 flight, and back it is brought fluttering to the 
 earth. So we, in some earnest season, feel an 
 impulse as from God, and we set the gaze to 
 go over and possess His good land ; but the 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 307 
 
 entanglements on this earthly side are too 
 strongly warped, and, ere Ave go far, they 
 check us, and the impulse dies. 
 
 What, my reader, can there be for an escap- 
 ing from this mournful fate, but to invert the 
 Israelite mistake ? They looked at the bar- 
 riers between them and Canaan till their pro- 
 portions far outgrew the reality, and in their 
 shadow the foretaste God had given of the 
 land was lost. Suppose tve look at the ripe 
 grapes, and at the light of beauty on the land 
 which tells us it does flow with milk and 
 honey, till the barrier of the giants and the 
 fenced cities is, in turn, comparatively lost. 
 Not that we would underrate the real obsta- 
 cles there are between us and the gains of 
 God's kingdom. We are warned that to live 
 the life of Christ in the world is a race — a 
 battle — a continual strain, needing effort on 
 effort, conquest on conquest. But then the 
 principle is, to set, as the crown over all 
 these, the unutterable prize — and, with eyes 
 fixed on that, and heart going forth passion- 
 ately after that, to press forward in such wise, 
 
308 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 as that we shall count our worst battle in the 
 way, in comparison, not worthy of a fear — 
 the worst stroke of the adversary we shall feel 
 flilling on us light as dust. Such was the 
 ardent energy of Joshua and Caleb ; they by 
 no means despised the giants and their strong 
 cities, but they thought most of God's pledges 
 given them, and the land so glorious and so 
 near, and they were ready, in the confidence 
 of God, to scatter all the strength of every 
 enemy like chaff Such, too, was Paul's 
 secret, when he set eye on the glittering prize 
 held out to him in Christ, and, for its sake, 
 forgot the things that were behind and 
 pressed on to those that were before, towards 
 that prize — when again he spoke of the light 
 affliction which was but for a moment, (bitter 
 really and deep-piercing it was,) but not to 
 be compared with the glory that should be 
 revealed — when again he urged all Christian 
 competitors, like himself, to let their whole 
 soul fasten not on the difficulties of the path, 
 but on the splendid goal, and then ''so to run, 
 that they might obtain," — and when, finally, 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 309 
 
 he bade the sufferers of the Lord in this world 
 to "lay aside every weight, and the sin that 
 more easily beset them, and to run their race 
 with patience," the charm that lured them on, 
 that sank all else to nothing, that shook all 
 hindrances and enemies aside, being the 
 ''looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher 
 of their faith." 
 
 Such must be our secret yet. Instead of 
 looking at the ills and adversaries round us, 
 whose number and whose stature are at least 
 made always tenfold in our fears, we must 
 look at the pledges and the first-fruits of 
 grace, of blessing, of God's Spirit, given us 
 day by day a hundred times over ; oh, we 
 must look, in the face of Christ, at God Him- 
 self! It was the saving of Peter in the waves, 
 when he walked at his own request to Jesus, 
 that, after for a moment, as he had looked down 
 on the heaving billow, and his feet then sank, 
 and his heart died within him, he upraised his 
 eyes again to the mighty Lord, crying, " Save 
 me, I perish!" and the peril instantly was 
 gone. It was the victory, too, of him we 
 
310 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 read of in the old tale, as he approached the 
 golden house — the gate was beset with a host 
 of terrors, and had he considered these only, 
 he should have recoiled without hope — but 
 on the battlements above walked saints glori- 
 ously attired and beautiful, and offering him 
 like reward ; and his whole soul settling itself 
 on these, he set down his name at once, fought 
 a stout conflict, and won his way. So, if we 
 look up in the sunshine, we shall never then 
 think of turning our backs, or so much as turn- 
 ing aslant, to see our own shadows. If we 
 fill the eye and the soul with Christ, we shall 
 have room for nought else ; all the evil shad- 
 ows, flung from self and from the world in 
 such abundance, will vanish ; all that flesh 
 can do unto us will wane to nothing ! Should 
 the heaviest weight of fear or sorroAV settle 
 on us, we can always have recourse to the 
 thick-strewn mercies of our Lord, to His word 
 of promise, to His holy ordinances, to the first- 
 fruits of His Spirit, to the gleams yonder of 
 the good land, to the gathered grapes He 
 already brings from it to our feet — we can 
 
SEEN BUT LOST. 311 
 
 always betake ourselves to these — and, as the 
 soul satisfies itself in them, and rises in a 
 brighter and grander encouragement than 
 ever, we can exclaim — " If God be for us, 
 who can be against us ?" " I am persuaded, 
 that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
 principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
 nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
 any other creature, shall be able to separate 
 us from the love of God, which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord!" 
 
 Has not this triumph come from the lips of 
 long sickness — has it not been breathed from 
 the lips of death ? And surely nothing but 
 the heart-ardor, going out alway to the com- 
 ing Jesus and the heaven, the good land. He is 
 to bring, can sustain us at the point of real 
 superiority to all our foes. Nothing but such 
 heart-ardor can give power and earnestness 
 to any of our drawings nigh to God — can 
 wrench us from the network of self and earth 
 — can seize for us those many golden hours 
 of spiritual opportunity we timorously, and, 
 to our own incalculable loss, let slip — can 
 
312 SEEN BUT LOST. 
 
 redeem us from that sorrowful inanimateness, 
 that wilderness wandering, that lethargy of 
 years' and years' arrested graces, into which so 
 many, by their shrinking back from God's 
 call, have been doomed — and can save us, 
 above all, and at last, from that curse that fell 
 on the Israelites — the gateway of God opened 
 to them, but unentered — the good land seen, 
 but lost ! 
 
XXIII. 
 
 The sullen temper bred by their great dis- 
 appointment was now, in the Israelites at 
 Kadesh, like a smoldering fire which any 
 chance breath might blow into flame — like a 
 latent disease any chance touch might develop 
 into virulence. So the formidable rebellion 
 of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, is the next 
 scene we light on. Korah was an ambitious 
 Levite, jealous of the supremacy of Moses and 
 Aaron, and now passionately bent on having 
 them supplanted ; the others were of the tribe 
 of Reuben, eldest of the tribes af Israel ; and 
 Korah had likely wrought upon them by the 
 proposal of a popular appeal that would en- 
 gage the whole camp in their favor, overturn 
 the two brothers, and, by a new order, re- 
 store Reuben to its rightful place. Accord- 
 ingly, with this cunning bait appended to 
 
 14 818 
 
314 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 it, the conspiracy ran through the people 
 deep and wide. 
 
 The instant it came to light, and its inso- 
 lent voice was heard accusing Moses both of 
 presumption and of failure, the latter proposed 
 God should be umpire. Korah did not shrink 
 from the ordeal, nor in spirit did Dathan and 
 Abiram ; but the latter two openly refused to 
 heed the authority of Moses in any way, and 
 sent him a reply of scorn from their tents 
 The deeply-moved heart that had endured so 
 much for Israel could scarce bear more. 
 Moses prayed God therefore now to let loose 
 His arm. So, on the morrow, the people were 
 ranged before the tabernacle. If still in the 
 valley of Petra, the scene must have been be- 
 yond description grand — first, the swarms 
 moving in the low ground, then the scattered 
 groups set on every shelf of the purple cliffs 
 round, and in the heart of all, on some well- 
 seen platform, the tabernacle of God, Moses 
 standing pallid and lofty at its front altar, and 
 the two hundred and fifty of the company of 
 Korah advancing on the holy space, each his 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 315 
 
 brazen censer in his hand, and for the trial 
 before God. Korah seems to have lost no 
 confidence ; he had based his plot on the plea 
 that any man in the congregation was as holy 
 as its two leaders — that is, with an unscrupu- 
 lous artfulness and success the world has often 
 in like cases seen since, he had roused and 
 won to his side the popular feeling ; and as 
 he emerged on the clear ground before Moses, 
 the whole massed camp was as if drawn in a 
 dense ring behind him. The glory of the 
 Lord at that moment rested on His servants, 
 and a voice bade them stand aside, that the 
 whole wedged mass before them might be 
 consumed. But Moses in his quick self-for- 
 getfulness interposed — were the people not 
 but mere victims of their own ignorance 
 and folly, and would the sin of the one man 
 who had misled them bring death on all ? 
 Wherefore God, so far relenting, commanded 
 as the next thing a line of separation round 
 the conspirators and their tents, that, in that 
 doomed circle, they at least should perish. 
 Moses could not but obev this second voice ; 
 
316 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 and crying so earnestly to the people that 
 with an instinct of fear they fell back at once 
 — the tent of Korah, which, as that of a Le- 
 vite, was near the tabernacle, and the tents 
 of Dathan and Abiram, which, as those of the 
 next leading tribe in Israel, were pitched 
 close behind it, stood awfully isolated before 
 the multitude, and before God. Dathan and 
 Abiram, all they and theirs, were in their 
 tents — some, as if contemptuously, standing 
 in the tent doors ; Korah and his two hun- 
 dred and fifty accomplices bringing with 
 them censers, very likely by this time in a 
 dark uncertainty, at the sanctuary threshold 
 — when Moses, in a loud voice, brought the 
 test of God to bear. If his rule was not from 
 heaven, these within the tents would die com- 
 mon deaths ; if from heaven, the earth would 
 open then and there beneath them, and be 
 their grave. Scarce had he spoken the word 
 when the ground yawned asunder — tents, 
 men, women, children, as in a flash of pale 
 horror, were ingulfed ; and the thrill and cry 
 that ran round the vale and cliffs told the 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 317 
 
 judgment of the Lord was done. Following 
 hard on this pitiless sweep, fire darted on the 
 two hundred and fifty who would have bro- 
 ken the fences of the priesthood, and they, 
 too, perished as they stood. Only their bra- 
 zen censers were upcaught amidst the flames, 
 and beat into plates for an altar covering, 
 that Israel, coming daily to its worship and 
 beholding that memorial, might forget God's 
 visitation never. 
 
 So Korah and his company were repressed 
 into sudden nothingness. Yet even so terri- 
 ble a lesson did not at the hour come home — 
 the mutinous cause had taken too fast hold in 
 the popular heart ; and after brooding in the 
 darkness of the tents all night, the people 
 next morning began afresh to turn upon the 
 brothers, crying, as their crowds moved and 
 seethed uneasily about, that they had been 
 the slayers of the Lord's people. Moses and 
 Aaron fled as before into the shelter of God's 
 presence ; and as they stood there and the 
 murmur deepened through the host, this time 
 the anger of the Most High could not be held 
 
318 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 back. While His two servants fell upon their 
 faces, He let loose in the valley a pestilence 
 of death. Moses, with all his acute instincts, 
 felt it was abroad, and, instantly recovered to 
 his old sublime stand of mediation, he 
 exclaimed to Aaron that he should delay not 
 a moment, but snatching the fire of God off 
 the altar into his censer, should rush into the 
 breach between the dead and the living, and, 
 by that incense of atonement, stay the plague. 
 Aaron hurried to obey. He bore the swing- 
 ing vessel, flaming and smoking in his hand ; 
 he ran through the affrighted multitude ; he 
 found the pathway of the plague as it came 
 on, mowing down as with an unseen scythe 
 its thousands ; and there, where the stark 
 corpses lay, and the sweep of death was still 
 advancing, he set his feet — his priestly figure 
 in its robes of sacredness faced the destroyer ; 
 he waved his heaven-lit censer in atoning 
 power before God — he stood between the 
 dead and the living ; and the plague was 
 stayed ! 
 
 Peace then, and almost literally the peace 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 319 
 
 of death, fell on the valley. It had been at a 
 heavy cost Israel had ever lent ear to the arts 
 of Korah, as must have bitterly been felt 
 while the thousands that had died plague- 
 stricken were being buried in the earth, and 
 cairns raised on their graves. Wherefore, to 
 imprint this page of events in such wise on 
 the Israelite heart that, in the direction of the 
 Aaronic priesthood at least, it should rebel no 
 more, God directed the well-knowm competi- 
 tion of the almond rods, each tribe furnishing 
 a rod, and all being laid up w^ithin the sanc- 
 tuary. When the group was unveiled upon 
 the morrow, Aaron's rod alone was found to 
 have budded and blossomed and yielded 
 alm.onds ; and the sign w\is such that the 
 tribes yielded the Levite supremacy for ever, 
 and each departed to his own, hushed in soul, 
 and these late events casting on him, as it 
 were, the repressive hand of death. 
 
 Passing other points in this tragic page, it 
 cannot but arrest us, how sublime the attitude, 
 not of Moses, for it was no strange thing for 
 Moses to place himself in the most desperate 
 
320 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 breach, but of the less heroic Aaron, as, rising 
 to the occasion, he asserted the glory of his 
 priesthood — his feet set, his censer waved, 
 between the dead and the living, so that the 
 plague was stayed. Was it not in shadow 
 the attitude of Him Who has since come into 
 the world to seek and to save that which was 
 lost — Whose bleeding feet were planted in 
 the very tide-way of sin and death — the 
 incense of Whose life, poured out upon the 
 cross, broke the sweep of these destroyers for 
 ever — Whose place even now, where He 
 intercedes for us, is a place of arresting 
 power, whereby He holds His people safe 
 folded within the circle of life on the one 
 side, and on the other sets their dread 
 enemies, death and hell, at bay, till finally He 
 shall destroy them, and cast them into the 
 lake of fire for ever ? 
 
 Was it not also in type the very attitude 
 that has been taken by all true ministers in 
 the Church of Christ, who have been con- 
 sumed as with a passion for saving souls — 
 wdio have counted no sacrifice too great, not 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 321 
 
 life itself, if by any possibility they might 
 save some — who, in their fervor, and their 
 pity, and their fearlessness, have been every- 
 where that a door would open to them, bearing 
 with them "the fulness of the blessing of the 
 gospel," snatching prey from Satan unto God, 
 and not even in the worst depths shrinking 
 from conflict with the destroyer, but there 
 " saving with fear, pulling out of the fire ?" 
 
 Was it not also the attitude in which those 
 strike us as standing who have been raised 
 up by God to re-awaken the Church and the 
 world to His truth — who have shaken the 
 dust of ages of corruption from His holy 
 Word — who have struck off the deadening 
 appendages of men, whereby, as with poison- 
 ous creepers, spiritual life and gospel truth 
 again and again have been overrun and well- 
 nigh destroyed — who at all hazards have 
 freed the living from the dead, and given it 
 in its simple gleaming beauty again, like a 
 new and glorious birth to the world ? 
 
 Was it not also in figure that attitude daily 
 
 taken in our own hearts by the Holy Spirit, 
 14^^ 
 
322 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 carrying on His mysterious but effectual 
 work : parting us, so to speak, from our for- 
 mer selves ; rearing up the heavenly, quench- 
 ing the earthly ; cherishing the living grace, 
 staying the stealthy infection that comes even 
 from the relics of dead sin ; in a word, making 
 us " new creatures in Christ Jesus ; old things 
 passing away ; all things becoming new ?" 
 Yea, to that extent does the ever-vigilant 
 Spirit of God carry this working out of sal- 
 vation in us, standing on the line between the 
 dead and the living, that, at whatever cost, 
 the portions in us plague-smitten beyond 
 rescue must be, and are, lopped away, if only 
 at last the life be saved. Hence the dire 
 experience of those for whom a thrice-heated 
 crucible is ordained, as their only pathway 
 back to God ; and hence the searcbingness 
 of Christ's saying, that, if even the right eye 
 and the right hand be the offending members, 
 better to have the one plucked out and the 
 other cut off — better to enter heaven blind 
 and maimed — than, retaining all, to be cast 
 into hell-fire. 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 323 
 
 And, finally, was Aaron's stand between 
 the dead and the living not in figure that atti- 
 tude ordained for all who, in the desert way, 
 are following Jesus ? By our very part with 
 Him, we are more consecrated than was even 
 Aaron; for we are "kings and priests unto 
 the Father through His blood." What, then, 
 is involved in that, but that we put our awful 
 consecration to the test; that, seeing each 
 day and scene we pass through, there are ever 
 these two elements at w^ar — the kingdom of 
 God's grace and the kingdom of the wicked 
 QYie — the living and the dead — the latter 
 often advancing, too, upon the former, subtly, 
 like the footsteps of a plague ; what follows 
 for us but that, in our heaven-pledged charac- 
 ter, we slay the evil and throw shelter on the 
 good ; we bear the help of Christ where we 
 can ; we strike in to ease pain, to raise the 
 fallen, to give strength to the tempted, com- 
 fort to the sorrowful, light, as a censer lamp, 
 borne from the Cross, to the dying ? Thou- 
 sands, it is true, have but a faint sense of obli- 
 gation thus, or lack it altogether. Yet sure I 
 
324 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 am that, were the veil of life around us 
 stripped off, and we saw the ravages of the 
 destroyer, the unutterable human miseries, 
 the slain souls, the souls, still more numerous, 
 palpitating a near prey, upon the brink ; not 
 the poorest Christian conscience but would 
 spring alive with the promptitude and self- 
 abandonment of Aaron, and in Christ's name 
 stand between the dead and the living, that 
 the plague might be stayed. And so much 
 do I hold it to be a part of God's meaning 
 for us that the place and attitude of Aaron be 
 our pattern, that I believe a second consecra- 
 tion is put on some— even that of passing 
 through the scourging of affliction — to fit 
 them for the work. For, speaking comfort 
 out of an untried heart, I may chance to 
 touch faintly the right key in the broken 
 heart to which 1 come ; but, tried and searched 
 myself, I enter then with perfect certainty 
 into its very depths — I stand between its 
 dead and its living, and I help to stay its 
 plague. Untried myself, I know only as a 
 muffled sound the deeper voice of Ggd'g 
 
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 325 
 
 Word; tried, that Word rings like a clear 
 bell upon my ear, and in all its emphasis and 
 power I can then arrest thought, and raise 
 hope, and quell the adversary, in the hearts 
 of others. In short, untried, I am only so 
 far qualified, if I may use the illustration, as 
 were the magic rods of the Egyptian enchant- 
 ers, that could work their w^onders to a cer- 
 tain point ; but, heated, tempered, molded, in 
 the affliction fires of God, I become as the 
 rod of Aaron, that, instinct with its divine 
 magnetism, wrought charms far beyond all 
 the others, and by w^hich it was declared to 
 be the channel of the power of God. What 
 a meaning, then, to the awful sorrows in 
 some lives ! what a meaning to the poorest 
 and the weakest God has thrust aside upon 
 his bed ! It is the second baptism of heaven. 
 It is that you be made fully fraught with 
 holy preparation ; that you may be anointed 
 with a grace beyond the common run ; that 
 you may be charged with the intensity and 
 reality of that spirit, that, even in your sim- 
 plest word, w^ill give you wondrous power 
 
326 BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 with others; it is that, in a plague-stricken 
 world, whether you are destined yet for high 
 place and work, or even for a sick-bed's 
 feebleness to the very end, you may make it 
 felt — the lightest syllable as well as the most 
 eminent deed in God's service always making- 
 it felt, the one as the other; that you have 
 that priestliness upon you, w^hereby you 
 stand betvv^een the dead and the living, and 
 stay the plague. Who would not glory in 
 infirmities for such a sake ! that the power of 
 God might rest upon him ; that he might 
 swing his heaven-kindled censer, however 
 feebly, yet in Christ's steps, and after Christ's 
 own manner ; that, in face of an incredulous 
 world, he might be one of those who show that 
 this profession which we make of follow^ing 
 Him is not a fiction, but that there is a reality, 
 a depth, a devotedness, an energy of life 
 abroad amongst us, which is felt to be 
 unearthly— which in no way is found explain- 
 able, but that, like the sublime vehemence of 
 Aaron, it is the baptism of the Holy Ghost 
 and of fire ! 
 
XXIY. 
 
 Just at this point in the wilderness story- 
 there is a silent step over a space of no less 
 than thirty-seven years. Of these years we 
 have no record save the shadowy outline in 
 the catalogue of wilderness stations preserved 
 in Numbers, and of which about fifteen seem 
 assignable to this long narrativeless gap. 
 Probably the Israelites went scattered, not in 
 a mass, but in groups, as they could find pas- 
 ture and other settlement about the desert ; 
 and thus broken may have had binding them 
 a desultory kind of intercourse only till the 
 limit fixed by God's judgment had expired, 
 and the march-trumpet again summoned to 
 the great meeting-ground at Kadesh. 
 
 Be that as it may, it is striking surely to 
 reflect on that silent interval of years. We 
 know what changes thirty-seven years' lapse 
 
328 THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS* SILENCE. 
 
 would bring about in our modern day ; and 
 althou2:h in oriental life time marks its chan- 
 nel far less vehemently, yet there, too, the 
 long space of Israel's dispersion could not be 
 without its tokens of a deep human interest. 
 Egypt was a far way in the past — even the 
 scenes of the Red Sea and Sinai had receded. 
 Who could say his manhood had been spent 
 in the brick-making of Goshen ? Fewer and 
 fewer every day. Gradually chief after chief 
 fell, tribe after tribe was thinned, till among 
 those who now composed the thousands of 
 Israel, and who had all been striplings under 
 twenty years of age at the escape from Egypt, 
 Moses only and a few more saw themselves, 
 white-haired veterans, standing out in the 
 throng, like a clump of giant trees, hoary 
 landmarks of an old forest, rising amidst the 
 thick umbrage and the lithe stems of a 
 younger growth. Yet the manifest end of 
 God's judgment was in the space we speak of 
 undoubtedly wrought out ; and that is what 
 we take to be really the story of the time. 
 Partly that end was — to weed away all the 
 
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS' SILENCE. 329 
 
 lives that had been born and bred in the air 
 of Egyptian grossness, which, so far as con- 
 cerned the grown manhood of Israel, was 
 done — although, like a tenacious poison-root, 
 there remained always some ineradicable fibre 
 of Egyptian idolatry, and of the strange spell 
 of Egyptian life, in Israel's heart ; — and partly 
 God's end had been, by the slow stretch of 
 desert existence, to teach the new generation 
 hardy desert habits — to put that courage in 
 them the slave spirit of their fathers had 
 always shrank from rising to — to prepare 
 them by a long and total homelessness among 
 the wastes for a real ardent zest in being led 
 once more towards the good land — and so to 
 pave their last year's pathway as one of con- 
 tinuousness and victory. Hence God's long 
 and silent patience, even while His people 
 seemed to drop in the wilderness as the au- 
 tumn leaves drop — sadly, and one by one ; it 
 was a blank silence in the eyes of men, but a 
 record every moment of breathing interest 
 before Him in heaven. 
 
 So, for wise results, God has often favored 
 
330 THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS SILENCE. 
 
 such silent spaces as these thirty-seven years. 
 If we may touch on the instance reverently, 
 our Lord Himself in His earthly history was 
 an eminent illustration. Not for a moment 
 that there was needed any interval whatever 
 to mould or change that life that was perfect 
 in Him as a crystal sun-ray from the begin- 
 ning: ; but it is matter of record that its first 
 thirty years were those of nearly absolute 
 silence — that the comparison between these 
 thirty years' silence and the three years' brief 
 condensed action which succeeded is most 
 startling when we think of it. And we dare 
 not, therefore, say how far that long voiceless 
 preface — perhaps in a degree the favorite por- 
 tion in the eye of God and the holy angels — 
 how far it may not have been, even with the 
 all-holy Jesus, needed — how much feeling 
 round was necessary, as if half-shrinkingly, 
 ere the divine growth struck its roots into 
 our cold earthly soil — ere it sent out its deli- 
 cate shoots, sensitive to each breath, yet adapt- 
 ing themselves gradually to live and expand 
 in our cold earthly clime — ere at last it 
 
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS' SILENCE. 331 
 
 emerged wholly from the sheath of silence, 
 and was seen the one peerless flower of all 
 human life — "the chiefest among ten thou- 
 sand, and altogether lovely." " Yet learned 
 He obedience by the things which He suf- 
 fered," it is said of Christ. Was that won- 
 drous tuition not done as much in the mute 
 thirty years of Nazareth as in the three years 
 after, which had their cruel ending on the 
 Cross ? Were the three years not but the 
 open supplement to the sealed volume of the 
 thirty years before, wherein, in the awful 
 secrecy of Himself and His beloved Son, God 
 had traced line by line those fairest graces, in 
 whose revealing to the world He was after- 
 wards " well pleased ?" 
 
 Moses, too, in his own history, had been a 
 marked example of successive stages when the 
 life was silent ; first, in the forty years of Pha- 
 raoh's palace ; and still more in the forty years 
 when he was the shepherd of Jethro's flocks 
 in the solitudes of the Horeb desert ; when it 
 seemed as though his manhood were running 
 all to waste, and the purposeless life should 
 
332 THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS' SILENCE. 
 
 have a memory and a grave without a name. 
 But how the reined-in muteness of these years, 
 and years so melancholy in their passage, sent 
 out in the end a noble outgrowth of service, 
 and of rapid crowded action in the cause of 
 God, these stages of the desert journey we 
 have been tracking tell. 
 
 So the curb of silence has been laid repeat- 
 edly upon the Church. Often, too, for whole 
 generations — till the life of God's kingdom 
 has appeared as if it had ebbed into utter dor- 
 mancy for ever. But it has not been that 
 God has either abandoned or neglected His 
 own : on the contrary, the intervals of a hu- 
 man inaction have been those in which He has 
 been busiest winnowing His Church behind 
 the veil — fusing some chosen hearts here and 
 there in his heavenly moulds — and so anoint- 
 ing, and preparing, and intensifying, His king- 
 dom anew in the earth, that, when the signal 
 has been given, the vast garments of torpidity 
 and decay have been flung off, and the revived 
 Church has come forth "fair as the moon, clear as 
 the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." 
 
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS' SILENCE. 333 
 
 With our own lives also the retreat of 
 silence is not unfrequently the rule of God's 
 working. Who shall say that the silence is 
 not better than the stage of fevered action? 
 We may pine under its tedium, and especially 
 so if it be far protracted, and we get to drink 
 withal the cup of privation and of pain. But 
 I cannot help thinking every heart intently 
 studious of the leadings of God's hand must 
 feel soon or late, that to be thrown back off 
 the lighted stage of action into the eclipse of 
 silence is to be thrown back into the more 
 secret laboratories of grace, where God the 
 Spirit sheds His noiseless, but rarer imprints ; 
 weeds away one by one the nerves of sin and 
 death ; binds one by one the gleaming threads 
 of holiness and life ; prepares, subdues, 
 chastens, makes way through the whole soul 
 in persistent action, till the last dark spot is 
 gone, and the soul is one shrine of light. 
 And that this process often should be long we 
 wonder not, for, as in providence, so in such 
 exercise of grace as this, 
 
 " The mill of God grinds slowly, 
 But it grinds exceeding small" 
 
334 THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS' SILENCE. 
 
 So you catch a glimpse, surely, of what makes 
 the shadow of your silent time, although a 
 mere blankness in the sight of men, a hidden 
 brightness in the sight of God ; a mere blind 
 monotony the world passes or shakes its head in 
 pity at without, but a drama of intensest inter- 
 est within, off which the Refiner's eye, or hand, 
 is lifted not day nor night. It is something I 
 would compare only to the building of Solo- 
 mon's temple, which, we are told, rose with- 
 out sound of axe or hammer heard ; as we 
 may conceive it, the tracery of dark and 
 muffled scaffolding hiding it round, and mak- 
 ing it even hideous to the outside beholders ; 
 dumb, too, the workmanship that went on 
 within ; till the silent task was done ; and 
 then the blind scaffold garniture was stripped 
 away, and the fair creation in its dazzling 
 glories was revealed. So, if you are reserved 
 yet for an active part in God's cause in the 
 world, here is the meaning of your silent 
 prison-house now. The world hears not, sees 
 not, what is going on ; but in the day of 
 God's will He will snatch the veil off and 
 
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS* SILENCE. 335 
 
 reveal what has been His hidden working in 
 your heart — new faith, daringness, elevation, 
 humility, earnestness, purity as of a child, 
 love as of heaven. Or, if you are doomed 
 not in this earth to have the bands of silence 
 loosed ; if, as you may be lingering in trial 
 and patience now, you are doomed to go on 
 lingering and shrouded to the end ; oh, be 
 not discouraged, as though God had forgotten 
 to be gracious; hold thyself still in Him; 
 He is purifying every pulse-stream ; He is 
 toning every pulse-beat in the dejected soul ; 
 He is preparing thee for the good land ; and 
 marvellous, even to thyself, when His sum- 
 mons comes at last to go over thither, will be 
 the snatching off of the scaffolding of pain 
 and silence, and the weariness of days and 
 years, when thou wilt stand a living temple 
 of His grace and glory in the heavens, when 
 thou wilt prove His unbaffled work to all, and 
 wilt exclaim, as did the psalmist, '' though I 
 have lien among the pots, yet am I as the 
 wings of a dove covered with silver, and her 
 feathers with yellow gold!" 
 
XXV. 
 
 The muster was at last called, and Kadesh 
 again teemed with the thronging tribes of 
 Israel. They were undoubtedly now to set 
 forward in the great enterprise God had set 
 them ; and as phalanx after phalanx emerged 
 from the boundless desert, and arranged them- 
 selves, dark and many, round the sanctuary 
 cloud, one would have expected high hopes 
 kindled, and a strong buoyancy in each eye 
 and step. Moses and Aaron probably, from 
 their lofty place, scanned the valley far and 
 near, with some such keen expectant glance. 
 If so, bitter was the first recoil. The slave- 
 brand of Egypt that had marked the flesh 
 and blood of Israel had gone too surely into 
 the very heart and life of the people as well; 
 and even this new generation that had left 
 the thousands of the old there behind them 
 
TPIE UNADVISED LIPS. 337 
 
 in the silent wrappage of their wilderness 
 graves — even this new generation betrayed 
 the old tale and the old murmur : Why were 
 they brought out of Egypt to die there as 
 their fathers had already done ? The occasion 
 was the want of water ; and no doubt it was 
 a sharp transition to most from the green, 
 well-watered, fruit-yielding oases they and 
 their cattle had likely with reluctance aban- 
 doned, to the rock-bound fastness, and the 
 grim cliffs round Kadesh, and the shadeless 
 blaze poured on them from the sun overhead. 
 But the popular outbreak was nevertheless 
 like the waste and baffling of whole thirty- 
 seven years' lesson ; it was a dashing of the 
 single cherished hope Moses had reposed on 
 in his heart; and in his grief and anger — 
 anger mounting higher than the grief — he 
 was betrayed into the one celebrated sin, 
 which broke the charm of his hitherto fault- 
 less way, broke the wand of his leadership in 
 Israel, and doomed even him to die before 
 the entrance into the good land. He sought, 
 indeed, as was his wont, to obey God ; he 
 
 15 
 
338 THE UNADVISED LIPS. » 
 
 inquired on the tabernacle ground how the 
 people's outcry was to be met; and when 
 told to take his rod as formerly, and with 
 Aaron to assemble the congregation, and, 
 before their eyes, to address the dead rock, 
 and water would leap forth, he had prepared 
 to do this solemn part ; the host's countless 
 eyes, gleaming out thirst and eagerness, were 
 on him, and in front of the chosen rock— one 
 probably conspicuous in the chasm-like valley 
 — ^he had planted himself and upraised his 
 arm ; but then it was the human passion min- 
 gled with the divine deed, and swelled to over- 
 flow — the lips that never hitherto had spoken 
 but fittingly gave way to the unadvised burst, 
 ^'Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you 
 water out of this rock ?" At the two strokes 
 which followed, it is true, the gush came ; the 
 valley ran for the thirsty multitude like a 
 flooded river; but, although unnoted per- 
 haps, or noted by few, how fallen from his 
 high estate stood Moses there within the 
 shadow, passion fading in him, shame and 
 sadness settling on him, as of a long, long life 
 
THE UNADVISED LIPS. 339 
 
 of upheld consecration broken in a moment's 
 whirl — and God speaking with his conscience, 
 and declaring to him that, for this failure to 
 set forth His honor in the people's eyes, he 
 should have his part in the conquest of the 
 good land reft away. Aaron had been part- 
 ner in the sin, and a like doom of death in 
 the wilderness should fall on him. 
 
 How sorrowful the change on the aspect of 
 the great mediator of Israel! If ever man 
 had been chastened to the purest life in the 
 path of God, he had been. He had been faith- 
 ful in all God's house. He had on frequent 
 occasions stood on almost terms of sublime 
 level with God ; and the wisdom, and the 
 love, and the pure-hearted pleadings he had 
 uttered, had been justified of heaven. We 
 should have thought, therefore, that, about 
 and within the fabric of so tried, watchful, 
 sanctified a life, the last faintest ofispring of 
 sin-born passion would have been destroyed ; 
 but here was a moment, alas ! when even this 
 saint of God was off his guard, and an un- 
 crushed serpent-fang discovered itself living 
 
340 THE UNADVISED LIPS. 
 
 yet, shot out from underneatli the life where 
 it had been coiled, and struck " all its excel- 
 lence suddenly to the heart. Instead of the 
 portrait glowing hitherto with a]l its colors 
 rich from heaven, we have now the pallidness 
 of one from whom the virtue has gone out — 
 the radiance has been lost. We look at the 
 contrast — the enlarged minister of God one 
 moment, the drooping, shame-stricken peni- 
 tent the next — and we feel that the purest, 
 truest, strongest, most advanced in God's 
 grace should still walk softly. Even near the 
 end, at the very gate of heaven, never relax 
 in the doing of these words of Christ — 
 "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into tempta- 
 tion!" 
 
 Yet, it may be asked. Why so heavy a 
 penalty inflicted for the fault of a mere mo- 
 ment, and especially in such a case as that of 
 one who had served God so rarely and un- 
 swervingly till then ? We are disposed by our 
 common standard, generally, to judge that 
 one eminent virtue in a man is a set-off against 
 many defects ; that where, for instance, there 
 
THE UNADVISED LIPS. 341 
 
 has been great heroism, or generous kind- 
 ness, these throw even bad failings in the 
 same character into shade ; nay, that such 
 things as genius, public service, intellectual 
 renown even, elevate a man into such a 
 blaze that his vices behind the brilliance are 
 lost. And much more in the case of a lus- 
 trous Christian, who in all things has been 
 adorning the doctrine of God his Saviour, we 
 leap to the conclusion, that the blemish of a 
 passing infirmity against that shining back- 
 ground is nothing ; the light of so much good- 
 ness otherwise condones it and blots it out. 
 But God's ways are far other than our ways 
 — His thoughts than our thoughts. He in His 
 searchingness draws out the verj^ opposite 
 conclusion. For His rule is, the higher you 
 ascend in attainment and in place within His 
 kingdom, the higher the holiness exacted, the 
 more faithful the steps, and consequently, if 
 there be one moment's fall even, the more un- 
 pardonable the sin ! A common potter's ves- 
 sel might be injured without loss, but the 
 slightest crack in the richly-chased vase that 
 
342 THE UNADVISED LIPS. 
 
 is to be a vessel in the Lord's house must be 
 felt to be a loss irreparable. A stone of the 
 valley may be seamed and broken, but the 
 jewel that is being wrought for the setting of 
 God's crown must not have in it the faintest 
 flaw. So judgment begins at the house of 
 God. It is there the rigorous and awfal in- 
 quisition is the most unrelenting, just because 
 "unto whomsoever much is given," not to 
 him shall any compensating latitude be 
 granted, but " of him shall be much required ;" 
 he who walks high in influence and grace 
 must walk the more spotlessly in white ; he 
 to whom many eyes are turned, on whose 
 words they wait, by whose example many 
 souls (so helpless are they) are almost literally 
 to live or die — he must hold himself the more 
 utterly from off the earth, and gather to him- 
 self increasingly the saintliness of heaven. For 
 God's work he must be holy as God is holy, 
 pure as He is pure. Does it not startle us to 
 think of this judgment not of men but of God? 
 Do we not approve it in our hearts? And 
 considering the grace that has been heaped 
 
THE UNADVISED LIPS. 343 
 
 on grace to us, the high stand to which many- 
 have been lifed in the signal love of God, do 
 we not feel, Christian minister. Christian pa- 
 rent. Christian laborer. Christian pilgrim, that 
 the momentous charge we have obtained is 
 ours — that it and we can no more be rent 
 asunder — that the rising of our steps hitherto 
 implies a higher rising yet — that room for 
 even infirmity, far less sin or earthliness or 
 folly, must be found less and less with us — 
 that we must daily, hourly, embrace our gift 
 from God with such a trembling memory of 
 Moses' sin, as that we shall count one fleck 
 of evil, so much as one hasty word, or light 
 deed, or moment's anger on the brow, what 
 would undo all and destroy it to the heart. 
 Here surely is our perpetual prayer, " Search 
 me, God, and know my heart ; try me, and 
 know my thoughts ; and see if there be any 
 wicked way in me, and lead me in the way 
 everlasting !" 
 
XXYL 
 
 Looking from the watch-towers round 
 Kadesh, there was one broad beaten high- 
 way penetrating through the hills of Edom, 
 by which Israel saw an access to the good 
 land straight and easy. That is, after their 
 passage that way, and across the long slopes 
 of Mount Seir beyond, they would stand on 
 the eastern heights lining the Jordan, and 
 with the fields of Canaan map-like at their 
 feet. It was strongly tempting, therefore, to 
 conciliate the fierce hunting tribes of Edom, 
 descendants of that famous kinsman of their 
 own race, Esau ; and accordingly with every 
 soft solicitation the Edomites were besought 
 to allow them to pass through, and simply to 
 pass through, the gateway of their hills. But 
 these wild rovers of the desert would have 
 none of the proposal ; and the Israelites, not 
 
 3U 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 345 
 
 choosing to make their passage one of battle 
 and slaughter, turned aside by the way of 
 Hor, that, as God directed, they might fetch 
 a circuit round Edom, far and painful, indeed, 
 but yet better so, since it would be a path 
 bloodless and free. 
 
 But at their very first halting-place on Hor, 
 one of those two great figures that for forty 
 years had stood in the van of Israel fell at 
 last. Change and death had smitten the face 
 of all the host ; change and death were now 
 to strike these last and greatest two also. 
 Moses, indeed, would still be spared a few 
 marches further, but Aaron's sand-glass was 
 here spent, and on Mount Hor he was destined 
 to die. It was in a manner simple, yet beyond 
 words sublime. By the Lord's bidding, only 
 the brothers, with Eleazar, Aaron's eldest son, 
 were to climb the upper pinnacle of the 
 mountain ; the people were to stand over 
 against, upon a lower ridge, from the sort of 
 table-land of which the high rocky crest 
 above, appointed to be Aaron's deathbed, has 
 its rise. We can almost set the scene before 
 
346 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 US in the glorious ruddiness of morning, as 
 the tribes, in their awe and sadness, hastened 
 up out of all the valleys, till the broad height 
 they were to occupy was black with the con- 
 course, and every breath was held, and every 
 eye was fastened on the sacred three, as, pass- 
 ing line after line, they emerged beyond the 
 crowd, and, parting from its hum and its living 
 touch, began to scale the rocky way. Their 
 figures were seen in and out among the cliffs 
 as they went ; now pausing, as if to take 
 another farewell look of the watching multi- 
 tude ; again resting, as if the aged brothers 
 were recounting to one another the long bur- 
 den they had borne together — one to bear it 
 yet a little while, the other to bear it now no 
 more for ever ; and finally rising clear upon 
 the hill-top, their forms set against the sky, 
 and with all the desert realm cast beneath 
 their feet. It must, in truth, have been to 
 Aaron a striking yet a dreary moment, when 
 he thus stood on his own couch of death, and, 
 for the last time, let his eye rest on the world 
 around him. Far behind, and southward, 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 347 
 
 were the desert hills and valleys they had 
 traversed for so many years, half hazy, half 
 dazzling, in their whiteness ; northward w^ere 
 the dim barriers of Canaan Israel had once 
 faced but recoiled from ; eastward were the 
 dark clusters of Edom, with their dark red 
 seams cutting them in manifold places, and 
 one of them, the famous cleft of Kadesh, 
 buried utterly unseen in their breast ; while 
 beyond these still lay the regions of Seir, 
 fading away into the horizon's mist. There 
 was no break for Aaron, even of a lattice- 
 width, through which he might see one soli- 
 tary shoot of sunshine resting anywhere upon 
 the good land. This was his Pisgah view ; 
 but how different far from that of Moses that 
 was to be — like what had been the difference 
 in their lives in nearness and constancy to 
 God. The dying gaze of Moses was to be 
 filled with the land, lighted and glorious to 
 its utmost stretch : the dying gaze of Aaron 
 w^as filled with a picture of desert dreariness, 
 and the land in its far-off veil was shut away 
 as much as had it been the veil of night. 
 
348 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 Touching, too, it was when, from the pros- 
 pect, the aged high priest turned that his 
 brother might strip him of the trappings of his 
 state. The action must have been distinctly 
 seen by the ten thousand eyes below; the 
 flash of the tall mitre as it first was taken off 
 and the white hairs were allowed to stream 
 abroad ; then the broad glitter of the Urim 
 and Thummim as they were lifted from his 
 breast ; then the disrobing of his jewelled 
 dress, and the removing of his priestly staff. 
 True, these were transferred on the very spot 
 to his own son, Eleazar; neither his name, 
 therefore, nor his office nor his work would 
 perish. Moreover, he had other consolation 
 at the moment, in that his two nearest kins- 
 men stood beside him, if they might, to help 
 him die — that is, to go with him to the dark 
 verge : Moses, his brother, he had always 
 in his heart loved and leaned on, and Eleazar, 
 his son, now to be the heir of all his honor. 
 And he Avas about to die also literally in sight 
 of all the people- — the thousands of Israel below 
 on that vast platform having but one thought 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 349 
 
 and uttering but one prayer, and weeping 
 with one grief, because their great high priest 
 there on the mountain summit was about to 
 breathe his hist. There was something in so 
 grand a spectacle round his bier the easily- 
 impelled nature of Aaron could not but con- 
 fess. To die on the altar, as it were, of a 
 whole nation's heart, was what might, with 
 any man, bring a flush into the cheek of 
 death. 
 
 Nevertheless, spite of these undoubted 
 consolations, it was sadly touching when the 
 moment came. He was high priest of Israel 
 no more. He was nought now but a bent, 
 disrobed, discrowned, old man. The gar- 
 ments he had just parted with faded before 
 his dim eyes, as though they had lost their 
 beauty. So did the hues of life, the taber- 
 nacle service, all the steps of influence and 
 honor he had trodden — everything earthly 
 scenes had been to him must now have waned 
 into a dull and featureless shadow. Even the 
 living faces of Israel turned upward to the 
 cliff, I can conceive, must have flitted away 
 
350 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 from him like a sea of spectral nothings. 
 Even the hands of Moses and Eleazar, as they 
 laid him on his couch, must, I can conceive, 
 have glided from him afar off. And as he 
 was stretched on his great mountain bed of 
 state, his back upon the cold rock, his white 
 face turned up to the blue of heaven, proba- 
 bly Aaron entered as deep as any man into 
 the pure solitariness of death ; all the arrayed 
 fellowships of earth did really help him not ; 
 and, within the shadow of his own soul, there 
 crossed him the inextinguishable pang, and 
 the aged heart lay still ! 
 
 I mean not for a moment that Aaron was 
 without hope in his death : on the contrary, 
 he had not only grown hoar-headed in the 
 service of his God, and, with all his failings, 
 had set forth a life to be reverently cherished 
 in the memory of Israel, but now, in his last 
 hour on Hor, God himself was around the 
 steep, and, no doubt, out of the death-shock 
 He would make His servant rise a priest in 
 the true blood of atonement on the floor of 
 heaven for ever. But I think there had been 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 351 
 
 tliat degree of failure in the life of Aaron 
 which made the minutes of his parting exceed- 
 ing sad : no bright view of promise given him 
 without — none, we should suppose, within: 
 only the curtain drawn down, and the mys- 
 tery of death very dark. Is it not the case 
 that such an end arrives to many who yet 
 have been true and even noted servants of 
 God ? Yet, when it is told them the time of 
 God's will is near and they must die, with what 
 cold sharpness the message comes home ! How 
 it takes the light and color in a moment out 
 of all earthly existence— the interests that 
 stimulated but the day before— the current in 
 whose strength we ran — the work in whose 
 freshness we were up and doing— death pales 
 them all, and, like ghosts, they wane from us 
 and vanish. Not that, in one sense, we fear 
 to die. We know the certainties the gospel 
 teaches ; we hold by Him who hath destroyed 
 death, and him that had the power of it ; and, 
 when the strife is over, we have the light and 
 the deliverance beyond. But it is the un- 
 reckoned, inextinguishable pang there is be- 
 
352 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 tween — it is that hour of sinking when the 
 holds we have sustaining us here drop and 
 can cling to us no more — when, although the 
 very closest and dearest we love on earth 
 stand beside us, they are powerless — when, 
 although hundreds of hearts we may have 
 blessed pray for us and weep for us, they avail 
 us not — when we sink far into the waste soli- 
 tude, and the face of love fades, and the voice 
 of love dies — oh, it is in that shrouded, un- 
 penetrated hour — that falling alone into the 
 void — that agony and depth of death, even 
 were it but a moment — it is there the inex- 
 tinguishable horror lies ! Are there not many, 
 I ask, true servants on the whole of the living 
 God, and having on the whole true faith in 
 what God's gospel word has taught them, who 
 yet cower in their hearts before this misery 
 of death ! I think it cannot be denied. And 
 the reason simply is, that, although in one way 
 leading Christian lives, they have not been 
 lives sustained in the highest and most con- 
 stant closeness of companionship with God — 
 rather we may have practised very slack and 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 353 
 
 very occasional intercourse with Him and with 
 the world to come. We may never have 
 dreamt of dwelling day by day, hour by hour, 
 in the near blessedness of God, His loving 
 Son, His Holy Spirit. It may have been a 
 tedium and a shrinking to us. The temper 
 and the pursuits of our life may not have been 
 of a sort to bear it. And, instead of having 
 the two paths, that of earth and that of 
 heaven, running so closely parallel in our 
 hearts as that any moment we might step 
 from one into the other, we may have led the 
 earthly into such far and many windings, that 
 only at a point here and there, and only for a 
 few minutes, it has touched the heavenly, 
 when it has glided away quick into the thick- 
 ets of the world again. Such lives as these 
 cannot but find a darksome start and misery 
 in death. In the very nature of their case, 
 the good land cannot be in its clear light be- 
 fore them ; they must die rather, as we have 
 pictured Aaron, with the veil heavy upon it, 
 and the soul very solitary in its death ; for 
 how can God be flown to in death as a father 
 
354 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 would be flown to by a child, since that was 
 not the manner of the life — how can Christ 
 be otherwise than strange somewhat in death, 
 since He was, for the most part, strange in 
 life — how can the Holy Spirit breathe with 
 power in death, since He was allowed to 
 breathe only with such feebleness in life ? 
 
 Oh, my reader, it is by our own neglect 
 and coldness and unfaithfulness with God while 
 we live that we provide for ourselves that 
 troubled hour, almost of desertion, when we 
 die. And we shall never strip it of its terror, 
 either then or now, but by making the hour 
 of our death the sort of criterion of our life — 
 living as near God now as we shall desire to 
 be then — cultivating as real touches on the 
 heavenly state now as we shall count it the 
 simplest possible thing to put forth then — 
 drawing the presence of the blessed Jesus as 
 entirely into our lot now as we shall need Him 
 and His everlasting arms in the depth then — 
 running our every day and hour in reference 
 up to God's judgment now as the whole issue 
 of them must be poured out then. Such is 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 356 
 
 what alone we can count making security 
 against the forlornness of death. Nearness 
 and constancy to God in life — nearness to God 
 in death. That is the rule — and that must be 
 our strength at last. We shall then die, not 
 as Aaron, but as Moses, with the whole land 
 distinct in view — as the earthly love drops us, 
 the heavenly, without one instant's rupture, 
 solitariness, or dismay, taking us up, and whis- 
 pering us, "0 death, where is thy sting? 
 grave, where is thy victory ?" We shall be 
 like one sailing in his solitary bark down a 
 stream — to those looking at us from the hither 
 side of earth it will seem as though, at the 
 death-point, the stream narrows, and the rocks 
 draw close above it, and the flood runs into a 
 dark shoot, and between their cleft is swal- 
 lowed up for ever. But we, who are in the 
 bark of God, see and know different far. The 
 stream does narrow and blacken, indeed, in 
 that swift rocky passage-way of death ; but 
 as we go down its rapid we can see more than 
 does the spectator on the bank. We can see 
 a light as of day beyond ; and while to those 
 
356 THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 
 
 we leave behind we vanish in the chasm as if 
 lost, as if nothing could be said about our 
 death but that we have passed and we are 
 not — the heavenward flow to us is never 
 broken — we are out beneath the gloomy 
 archway, and on that thither side the stream 
 expands, and we are floating on its fair 
 and bounteous wave, and wc step ashore 
 upon its banks, and we find we are in 
 the good land — the shining valley " that 
 flows with milk and honey." Oh, let the 
 prayer of our daily pilgrimage be what will 
 make each living moment fearless and more 
 fearless yet of death— what will make the 
 path hourly clearer — what will make the 
 death-hour itself at last instead of the dark of 
 agony, the very burst of peace — let our cease- 
 less prayer be — 
 
 " Nearer, my God, to Thee — 
 Nearer to Theel" 
 
 So we leave Aaron to his rest. Moses 
 and Eleazar buried him where he died ; 
 and when they two came sorrowfully down 
 
THE MOUNTAIN BIER. 357 
 
 the hill-path, the wail of the Israelites be- 
 gan, and, bethinking them how the sin of 
 Aaron for which he had been cut off had 
 been their sin first, they mourned for him 
 thirty days. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 Courage ought to have shone high upon 
 the banners and faces of Israel, as, leaving 
 Hor, they entered on the clear line of their 
 resistless march ; for scarce had they suffered 
 in some of their outposts an ill-advised assault 
 from one of the Canaanite kings, than, pray- 
 ing God to be their help, they turned aside 
 and destroyed him and his cities at a blow. 
 Then the great multitudinous movement 
 swept on. But it was a slow and wide cir- 
 cuit, as we have seen, it was destined to take ; 
 and more particularly, by doubling back upon 
 their old, old track towards the Red Sea, the 
 Israelites were for the time involved again in 
 the great desert of Arabah, and at its bound- 
 lessness and desolateness and fruitlessness 
 their soul fainted within them. When was it 
 to end ? Were they to be for ever tantalised, 
 
 858 
 
THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 359 
 
 haunting these broad gloomy valleys, in the 
 coldest nook of which hardly one water-drop 
 was found ? Even when the march came out 
 at one of the great valley mouths on the 
 beach of the Akaba sea, and the sheen waters 
 spread their silver sheet out afar, and the 
 shell-strewn sand made a pavement for the 
 feet, marvellous and white as snow — even 
 then the fainting eyes of the people must 
 have been too weary for the sight, and they 
 poured out their impatience as of old on 
 Moses. Neither was their thirst quenched, 
 neither was their hunger met ; and " their 
 souls," as they cried, ^' loathed this light 
 food," meaning nothing else than the sacred 
 manna — ^food of God from heaven ! 
 
 There was a miserable monotony in this 
 perpetual complaint of the Israelites as to 
 food and water, and their having been led out 
 of Egypt into the wilderness to die. It 
 recurs again and again, after all God's visita- 
 tions, whether of mercy or of judgment — the 
 same burden of the Israelite tale, without one 
 new note to vary it. How weary God's ear 
 
360 THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 must have been through forty years of that 
 monotonous complaint ! In the present in- 
 stance, angry as well as weary, He sent a 
 plague of fiery serpents through the camp — 
 creatures fierce and flame-colored in their 
 long glittering shapes, as, gliding suddenly 
 from out the earth, they darted hither and 
 thither in their swarm, filling the people with 
 intensest horror, and striking them with their 
 fangs, so that, and even while they fled, many 
 of them died. An instant cry to Moses for 
 mercy broke from every tongue, and at his 
 prayer once more to God deliverance came. 
 But not this time by the immediate staying 
 of the plague and the sweeping back of the 
 serpent brood into the earth. God chose, 
 while He delivered, to put His mercy in a 
 way that should extract from the Israelite life 
 a faith not hitherto called much into power, 
 that should cast the choice of the deliverance 
 very much on the people themselves, that 
 should call them into co-operation with His 
 working, that, in short, should really prove 
 their hearts, whether there they would trust 
 
THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 361 
 
 Him and obey Him or no. Accordingly 
 Moses was bidden make an image in brass of 
 the fiery snake that was the plague and scatter- 
 ing of the camp ; and this image, transfixed 
 upon a pole — the deadly creature, so to speak, 
 thrust through and crucified — to upraise in 
 sight of all the people. Whosoever, then, bit- 
 ten of the serpents, looked straight to that 
 God-appointed device, fixed his eyes stead- 
 fastly on it, and in that gaze sent forth his 
 soul, believing there for him in emblem were 
 the power and cure of God — that instant he 
 ceased to die. So the brazen serpent became 
 the centre of smitten Israel ; eager eyes were 
 raised to it from every quarter ; clasped 
 hands were stretched towards it ; the dying 
 dragged themselves nearer that they might 
 but catch the faintest glimpse ; and the Avave 
 and light of restored life passed throughout 
 the camp. The dead who had died in their 
 agony were indeed lying there ghastly on the 
 sands ; but it was a mighty deliverance, in 
 that the accursed serpent-plague was gone. 
 
 The one thing that marks to all time this 
 16 
 
362 THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 marvel in the camp of Israel was, the utter 
 simplicity of that act and way in which not 
 only God on His side pledged a cure, but on 
 the people's side the cure was seized. The 
 sufierer had but to look on the uplifted sign 
 and he straight was healed. It was an action 
 simple as the famished man opening his 
 mouth for bread— the man consumed of thirst 
 lapping at the stream of water — the man 
 sinking in some malady holding out his hands 
 to the physician. Would not all of these act 
 in such wise from simple instinct ? would one 
 of them shrink one moment from the thing 
 his soul panted for ? would there be hesitancy 
 or mistrust? would there not rather be an 
 intense leaping forward towards the one help 
 .that stood between him and death ? Even 
 so with the Israelites struck by the fiery ser- 
 pents ; the remedy of God was raised before 
 them, blazoned with its high meaning, lus- 
 trous as the sun that shone upon it, and, as 
 one thrill through the dying throng, every 
 eye sent forth its gaze ; none would have 
 ventured, save through the strangest mad- 
 
THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 363 
 
 ness, one instant's pause in that dread ques- 
 tion ; and so, through the simple deed, the 
 dropping victims no more died but lived. 
 
 Have we not like simplicity in God's great 
 remedy with us ? "As Moses lifted up the 
 serpent in the wilderness," said Christ Him- 
 self, " even so must the Son of Man be lifted 
 up, that whosoever believeth on Him should 
 not perish, but have eternal life." It is true, 
 we first ask how any likeness can be found 
 between the spotless and the loving Christ, 
 and the loathsome deadly serpent? Is the 
 figure not the very contrary to all we asso- 
 ciate with the blessed Lamb of God ? But it 
 is explained when we remember that we, in 
 the first place, are in like case with the smit- 
 ten Israelites ; we are plague-struck and 
 destroyed of sin ; it is the serpent-poison and 
 the serpent-fang creeping in our path, and 
 wounding our whole soul to death. As, then, 
 in the emblem of the brazen serpent on its 
 pole, the Israelites beheld that very thing that 
 had been their curse transfixed and slain, and 
 as in their look thither they believed that 
 
364 THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 God had so done, and that the death was 
 taken off them and destroyed there for ever ; 
 so, m Christ lifted up and slain upon the tree, 
 we see the deadly thing that has tormented 
 us transfixed and crucified ; there is no sha- 
 dow or mere figure in the matter ; it is the 
 literal word of Scripture : ''He was wounded 
 for our transgressions, He was bruised for our 
 iniquities ;" and again, " Who Himself bare 
 our sins in His own body on the tree ;" and 
 again, "For He hath made Him to be sin for 
 us Who knew no sin, that we might be made 
 the righteousness of God in Him ;" I say it is 
 so literally stated, this great truth on which 
 our atonement and salvation hang, that while 
 we do not dream of so much as one shade of 
 the poison of sin darkening by its lodge- 
 ment the pure soul of Christ, yet unques- 
 tionably, into His body, on His very heart, 
 sin was taken in its weight and curse and 
 death ; so that in His nailing to the cross it 
 was crucified, in His pouring out His soul 
 unto death it was destroyed; and we now 
 looking thither and beholding Him, and 
 
THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 365 
 
 believing that our worst enemy, even sin, so 
 has perished — we die no more, but live with 
 an eternal life ! Such is how the blessed 
 Christ compares Himself lifted up on the tree 
 of Calvary to the brazen serpent lifted up by 
 Moses on its desert staff 
 
 And has it not so become a thing of intensest 
 simplicity that, for our peace, we gaze on the 
 crucified Christ ? What can be simpler than 
 that we make the eye an avenue, so to call it, 
 through which the whole soul may go out in 
 steady fixedness, and see all in Him — sin and 
 death abolished — ^life, as the very power of 
 God, given ? Who yet, in awakened con- 
 science and broken spirit^, has so fastened all 
 hope and faith on the uplifted Christ but has 
 felt the shadow fly from off the face, the mal- 
 ady from off the heart ? For when I look, it 
 it is my sin in all its length and breadth I see 
 pierced in His woundings — it is my lot, in all 
 its cruel sufferings and pains, I see winnowed 
 of its bitterness in His passion — it is my death 
 I see annihilated for evermore in His ! But, 
 alas, it is in the very simplicity of this great 
 
366 THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 ordinance of God that we are often lost. 
 Acute speculation will not have it ; the inge- 
 nious fears of all sorts we conjure up in our 
 self-torture hang back from it; all our pre- 
 conceptions of the heights that must be level- 
 led and the depths that must be filled up ere 
 we can find our way back to God forbid it ; 
 in a thousand ways the pathway of the Cross 
 becomes foolishness in the world. And men 
 are roaming in their search in all the mines 
 of human knowledge and human wisdom 
 throughout the earth, while the one pearl of 
 great price lies here at home at their very feet. 
 They are abroad in every kind of quest, while 
 here at home the Lord Jesus, " His head filled 
 with dew, His locks with the drops of the 
 night," is knocking at the door of their hearts. 
 They are flying off" at every diverse way lead- 
 ing them on this hand and that, till they go 
 stumbling on the dark mountains, many of 
 them, alas, falling to rise no more, while here 
 at home is the way of God straight by the 
 Cross as an arrow-flight to heaven, and so 
 plain as that the wayfaring man, though a 
 
THE BRAZEN SERPENT, 367 
 
 fool, need not err therein. We fear, in many- 
 instances at least, the secret is that the ser- 
 pent-plague of sin is not felt with its fiery rest- 
 lessness in the heart. Ah, once let that awake, 
 and a thousand phantoms of the life, the rea- 
 soning, the mechanical beliefs or no beliefs of 
 former days, are instantly put to flight We 
 cannot play with theories when we have be- 
 fore us then the naked choice of life or death. 
 We then dispel the tempter ; we then have 
 no hope in all the waste of human substitutes 
 on earth ; we turn, as the poorest pilgrim of 
 Israel may have turned his languid head upon 
 the sands, and we set our all, like him, in one 
 gaze upon the mighty power of God — 
 
 " Nothing in our hands we bring, 
 Simplj to the Cross we cling." 
 
 And the look once set there, it is there we 
 find our pole-star ever after. Each day, in its 
 new griefs, its new apprehensions, its new in- 
 firmities, and, alas ! its new sins, we still turn 
 ourselves, that all may go forth and be cast 
 on Christ slain for us — we fasten our depend- 
 
368 THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 ence to its utmost shade upon Him, and we 
 learn with still increasing meatning to reiterate 
 the daily descant as we go — 
 
 " Nothing in our hands we bring, 
 Simply to the Cross we cling 1" 
 
XXYIIL 
 
 By a pass opening through the Edomite 
 hills to the north-east of the sea of Akaba, the 
 Israelites gradually worked their way round 
 the borders of Edom, and so out into the 
 broad rolling downs of Seir. Thence, after a 
 march of stormy conflict and bloodshed, in 
 the course of which they swept away the 
 Amorites, they came, at last, locust-like, or, as 
 they were described by the alarmed Balak, 
 licking up all round about them, " as the ox 
 licketh up the grass of the field," and, in such 
 array, pitched among the hills, whose crests 
 overlooked the Jordan and the fields of Ca- 
 naan beyond. 
 
 A wide-spread terror ran as their herald in 
 front, and hovered in their track behind ; and 
 none did this terror seize more profoundly 
 than Balak, one of the Moabite kings, past 
 
 16* 869 
 
370 ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 
 
 whose territory the dark invasion was now 
 wending its way. He feared to try with the 
 invaders the issue of battle ; for in that trial 
 the Amorites had already fallen. But he fell 
 on the device instead of bringing power not 
 of earth to grapple with these hated tramplers 
 on his soil. And so comes in upon the bor- 
 ders of our wilderness story the singular epi- 
 sode of Balaam, son of Peor. He was one of 
 those beyond the elect circle of God's grace 
 and revelation in the olden time, (such as 
 were Melchisedek and Job and Jethro,) who, 
 in their outside heathen twilight, seem myste- 
 riously to have caught upon them shoots of 
 divine discovery — as tokens at the time that, 
 while God had a chosen people. He had yet 
 not left the whole world besides in utter black- 
 ness — and as preludes also that a time should 
 come when the narrow boundary of one 
 selected nation would be broken down. Gen- 
 tile as well as Jew would share in the cove- 
 nant of Heaven, and '' all nations of the earth 
 be blessed." This Balaam dwelt in an East- 
 ern land, where his fame ran high to excess — 
 
ISRAELS KEEPER. 371 
 
 in that whomsoever he might bless he was 
 blessed, whomsoever he might curse he was 
 cursed. Undeniably God's power rested on 
 him ; he was covetous and false at heart, and 
 perished among the enemies of God at last ; 
 but meantime, as a gifted seer, he was visited 
 by illuminations straight from God, and stood 
 so eminent upon the edge of God's kingdom 
 that his whole figure was revealed in light. 
 To him accordingly Balak sent in his distress 
 messengers of high rank — gold and silver lav- 
 ishly. Would he come under such bribes 
 and inflict a curse on Israel ? We need not 
 follow all the steps in the striking yet melan- 
 choly story. There was strong possibility at 
 first sight that what Balak wished might be 
 done ; and Israel, all unconscious of these dark 
 machinations moving to and fro around it, 
 might have found its host called on to fight 
 not any more against enemies of flesh and 
 blood but against impalpable adversaries of 
 curse and blight, that might have made them 
 shrink as in the breath of pestilence. Such 
 was Balaam's power, I say, that it might thus 
 
372 ISRAELS KEEPER. 
 
 have stolen in upon the camp, and bought the 
 whole desert-pilgrimage to nought. 
 
 But the Lord that kept Israel had set too 
 keen a watch round about. He was at the 
 ear of Balaam quick as the tempter with his 
 bribes. He followed silently each word and 
 step. He checked the false heart of Balaam, 
 both at the outset and by the way. Not one 
 loophole of advantage would He, in short, 
 allow that treacherous tamperer with God's 
 honor and his own soul — not one loophole 
 whereby he might wind through into some 
 compliance with the demands of Balak. So 
 that, when the latter led Balaam first up to 
 the heights of Baal, and there from their seven 
 smoking altars they looked down on the host 
 of Israel darkening the plain like a cloud ; and 
 again when a second trial was made from an- 
 other view-point, whence but a mere section 
 of the camp was seen ; and yet again when a 
 third time Balak led his guest up to a crown- 
 iug eminence, and once more bid him curse 
 the multitude below-r— on all three occasions 
 Balaam poured out a blessing instead, waxing 
 
ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 373 
 
 higher and higher in splendid and emphatic 
 speech. He would have done the opposite, but 
 his tongue was constrained of God — it was bent 
 to speak His will. And so triumphantly did 
 God care for and save His own, that not only 
 did He stand a shield between the conjuring of 
 Balak and Balaam and His people— not only 
 was it that He insured they should escape with- 
 out scath— but He so compelled the evil that 
 was devised against them into good — He so 
 seized the stammering tongue and the traitor- 
 ous heart and the whole dark menace hanging 
 over Israel— that the darkness poured out 
 light, and the mouth of cursing poured out 
 blessing, and the pilgrim-hosts that were to 
 have been destroyed moved forward, scatter- 
 ing their enemies in confusion more than ever! 
 Even so, at the face of Israel's Keeper, Balak 
 shrank dismayed. 
 
 It may be said the same far-seeing sleep- 
 less guardianship of God is witnessed in 
 His ordinary providence all round. How 
 many destructive forces, for example, sleeping 
 in nature round us, does His hand repress, 
 
374 ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 
 
 any one of which, unloosed an hair-breadth, 
 would strike us into nothing ! And not only 
 so, but how these relentless forces, by the 
 arrangement and the care of God, are put into 
 our hands in a great measure to be our boon 
 — whereby, through processes of marvellous 
 beauty, (were they not too common now to 
 affect us,) we obtain the air we breathe, and 
 the food we eat, and the raiment we put on. 
 So, by the restraining and compelling hand of 
 God most merciful, that world that might be 
 either our prison cell or our grave is a wide 
 dwelling-place of loveliness and plenty. Also, 
 it is God's watchfulness that surrounds and 
 prepares triumph for all the good causes of 
 our common humanity — such as the seed of 
 civilisation, the path of commerce, the light 
 of discovery in science, the growth of free- 
 dom, the upspringing of any truth or charity, 
 or nobler life of which men have need — from 
 how small beginnings God has led all such 
 causes — how many barriers of land and sea 
 and the stubborn strength of hell itself has He 
 broken down for them — and, amidst the flue- 
 
ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 375 
 
 tuations of their progress, how has He never 
 allowed any cause dear to human well-being 
 really to perish. But yet in sense far higher 
 than all such guardianship has been the watch- 
 ful tending of our God round His own special 
 cause in the earth. In the Church's story, 
 from the time of the little seed up now to the 
 expanding of the great tree, we have over 
 and over instances, lastingly memorable, of 
 the keepership of God. How the fires of per- 
 secution of to-day, for example, have become 
 the zeal and vehemence of friends to-morrow ! 
 How the enemy of God, putting the poor mar- 
 tyr to his cruel death, has been breathed on 
 by the parting spirit, and himself has fallen on 
 the knees in prayer! How the cause, sup- 
 posed to be crushed out at one stake, has 
 dropped its mantle with such power increased 
 that an hundred stakes more must burn, and 
 these only to produce their farther crop of 
 thousands ! Know we not how God has thus 
 countlessly made the curse of men His kmg- 
 dom's blessing-that not only has He saved 
 that kingdom, and put the thick bosses of His 
 
376 ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 
 
 buckler round it, but He has bent the ele- 
 ments of evil that arose against it in such wise 
 that He has yoked them in its chariot shafts — 
 He has made them serve its better triumph — • 
 He has compelled their speech, like that of 
 Balaam, to speak its praise — through their 
 designed ill, He has brought out the Church's 
 enhanced prosperity and good ! 
 
 And what the Mighty One of Israel has 
 been doing in the wide circle of the Church, 
 He has been repeating not less tenderly and 
 powerfully in the little circle of each redeemed 
 soul. Have we even the faintest guess how 
 often, in the pathway of our lives, the enemy 
 has bent the bow and shot the arrow against 
 us, and it has been warded off by the quick 
 hand of our Saviour God ? Have we the 
 faintest thought of the abysses we have trem- 
 bled over, no more conscious than the sleep- 
 walker ; the ruin that has gaped to snatch us ; 
 the temptations that have breathed past us 
 like a scorching whirlwind, and that have 
 destroyed so many others ; and this our God 
 has kept us in the hollow of His hand through 
 
Israel's keeper. 377 
 
 them all ? Glimpses indeed we have had, as 
 in cases in which we have been tossed in the 
 storm of trial, but presently the Lord Jesus, 
 as He did with His disciples, has arisen and 
 rebuked the elements to peace, and it has 
 flashed upon us, ''What manner of man is 
 this" — our Keeper and our Lord — "that even 
 the wind and the sea obey Him !*' And again 
 we catch note of how He makes the vastness 
 and the strength of all things bow to bless 
 His people ; these very things that would 
 have frowned upon them and destroyed them 
 else ; when, looking back over a stretch of 
 life, we see how the crooked places have been 
 made straight for us, and the rough places 
 plain — the wilderness pools of water, and the 
 dry land springs of water. Who has not pas- 
 sages along his way like this to acknowledge 
 — the evil changed into the good, the cursing 
 compelled, like Balaam's tongue, to yield the 
 blessing ? And who, then, cannot rise to tlie 
 inference, somewhat, that, if need be, our 
 Saviour-God will make the strong universe 
 and all its laws, and all its stupendous move- 
 
378 Israel's keeper. 
 
 merit stoop around us, even us in our little- 
 ness and weakness ; for He Who holds us 
 sleeplessly in the hollow of His ' hand is the 
 same God Who weighs the mountains in 
 scales and the hills in a balance ; Who holds 
 also the depths of the sea in the hollow of 
 His hand, and taketh up the isles as a very 
 little thing ! I say, any one who looks back 
 thoughtfully over any back page of his life 
 may gain hints of these things. But oh! 
 never, never can he know in full extent what 
 the guardianship of the blessed God round 
 him has implied first and last ; how won- 
 drously He has taken the mouth of hate and 
 evil and put into it, for our sake, the silver 
 tongue of blessing ; how He has extracted 
 that thing that has been best and happiest for 
 us from what we have most feared ; how our 
 feeble prayers have been wafted up, and have 
 not only flxllen on the ear but moved into 
 strength and triumph the arm of His omnip- 
 otence ; how the spot where we have dwelt 
 on earth has been the spot of His delight — 
 the axis of the whole world of His love and 
 
ISRAEL'S KEEPER. 379 
 
 care — about which they have revolved and 
 shed themselves, and made the darkness light 
 around us, and infirmity in Christ a glory, and 
 suffering a benediction, and the ills we bear a 
 prophecy of coming victory, and death itself 
 the vestibule to life ! We never can know 
 these things in fall, till, with the purged sight 
 of another state, we see back the whole path- 
 way we have come. And yet surely there 
 are intimations enough now to enlarge our 
 hearts and make our steps buoyant. We are 
 travelling forward overflung by the network 
 of the guardianship of our God. Who can 
 hurt us or destroy us ? What can flesh do 
 unto us ? Nay, do we not rise a note higher, 
 and claim the whole universe of God as 
 tributary to us — everything made to run into 
 the current of our blessing, and to be a por- 
 tion of our spiritual greatness before God ; 
 for, as the poorest lips that call on the name 
 of Christ can say, " All things are ours, 
 whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the 
 world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
 things to come — all are ours ; and we are 
 Christ's; and Christ is God's!" 
 
XXIX. 
 
 §atU ut to ilut^boW. 
 
 Along the plains of Moab, a green and 
 shady belt lying on the eastern bank of the 
 Jordan, between the table-lands of Abarim 
 and the river, the tribes of Israel were now 
 encamped. This was their last stage ; the 
 desert pilgrimage was at its close; and as 
 they were sheltered for the time under the 
 acacia-groves that grew thick over the Moab- 
 ite valley, the Promised Land lay there, across 
 the deep cleft of waters, full in view. It was 
 here — at the threshold of their great triumph, 
 their forty years' prize so long and wearily 
 travailed for, about to be won at last — it was 
 here Moses, under God their leader and law- 
 giver, was summoned to die. 
 
 Every precaution had been taken by him, 
 as he knew the inevitable hour drew on. A 
 portion of the tribes had been settled in the 
 
 8S0 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 381 
 
 rich lands conquered to the eastward of the 
 Jordan ; the Moabites and others had been 
 scattered to make unimpeded room for the 
 final march beyond the river; Joshua had 
 had solemnly transferred to him the leader- 
 ship of Israel ; in a long and affecting ad- 
 dress, Moses had reviewed the whole history 
 of the people's wanderings, reiterated to them 
 the commandments of their covenant God, 
 chanted with them another song such as their 
 fathers had sung in full melody by the waters 
 of the Red Sea, and finally pronounced on 
 each tribe his dying benediction. All was 
 done ; the mournful farewell was said ; the 
 faults and follies and harassings of the past — 
 the venerable man of God forgot them all 
 now, as, going on through the tented lines 
 and under the thorny clumps, he must have 
 been followed by weeping hundreds ; and 
 again he must have stopped to say some 
 soothing word ; and again he must have 
 pushed on with a steadfast, though breaking 
 heart. Now he addresses himself to the 
 mountain steep ; there is a line where the last 
 
382 DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 Israelite must pause ; arid the hand of Moses 
 waves its parting to the camp ; and his form, 
 visible for a minute as it turns to face the hill, 
 plunges into the hill-side thickets, and thence 
 forward to the Pisgah summit his pathway is 
 alone. 
 
 Silence lay along that lonely way ; silence 
 was in the deep blue air ; silence on the pro- 
 phet's lips, and in his heart. His great office 
 had been laid down — the burden of the whole 
 people was off his heart ; and it now remained 
 for him only to see the land he was not to 
 tread ; and then, so strangely lightened, and 
 alone, and in the deep mountain silence, to 
 die. Presently therefore he reached the Nebo 
 edge. We know not if the encampment he 
 had left was underneath his eye ; rather 
 would we think of it as hidden by some 
 sweeping of the hill, and that, nothing living 
 near him save the shadow of God, Moses 
 stood in his death-hour looking down on the 
 wide world literally alone. No doubt, the 
 past way of the wilderness and the flood was 
 wonderingly run over, and every stage, like a 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 383 
 
 compressed, yet intensely vivified chapter of 
 God's mercy and truth, seen to start out with 
 light. So in dreams ; so in dying moments, 
 when the brain is singularly lit, the entire life 
 is said to come back, flashing itself and all its 
 meaning into the lapse of a minute ; so before 
 the eyes of Moses on his Pisgah rock may 
 have gleamed the desert pathway of forty 
 years. But the view lay mainly forward. 
 To the north, the good land stretched before 
 his eager gaze in its fields and slopes till it 
 melted in the dim slopes of utmost Lebanon ; 
 across, right before him, rolled the green 
 undulations of Judah, till, afar off, they, too, 
 dropped into the haze that marked the line 
 of the great sea ; and southward, spread the 
 same rich swell, meeting, as its boundary in 
 that direction, the yellow cloud-border of the 
 outer wilderness. Immediately over against 
 him, crowning its palm-tree summit, were the 
 towers of Jericho ; while the eye, pursuing 
 the deep valley of the Jordan, lost itself in 
 the sicklied mists hanging over the accursed 
 basin of the Dead Sea. Such was the fair- 
 
384 DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 framed picture set by God Himself under the 
 vision of Moses. Did it awaken any pang of 
 sorrow that his feet might not touch the holy 
 soil ? that, after all that had come and gone 
 in the deliverance of Israel, his hand might 
 not guide this last and greatest conquest? 
 Did the still strong frame of the aged man 
 bow itself upon the rock, and the clear eyes 
 suffuse with tears, as he felt it a bitter thing 
 thus to die at the threshold ? There was no 
 hint of any such emotion ; if any such crossed 
 him for a moment, it passed from that noble 
 brow as the fleck of shadow in the broad sun- 
 shine. And, as we judge, even while he 
 looked, the earthly faded — the mystery of the 
 heavenly was near — the silver-white head 
 leaned on the rock in a sudden sigh — and the 
 next moment the spot where he stood was 
 vacant — only his footprint on the grass re- 
 mained — the great servant of the Lord was 
 not, for the Lord took him ! There was a 
 passing clash of armor in the air, for the 
 devil disputed with Michael the archangel for 
 the dead body's spoil ; but the Lord Himself 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 385 
 
 bore the sacred burden into the solitudes of 
 Beth-peor, and buried it there where no man 
 knew ! 
 
 There is something confessedly most pa- 
 thetic in this death at the threshold. We 
 ivould^ somehow, that Moses had lived to see 
 his life-work done, and the success for which 
 he pioneered the way so gloriously and pain- 
 fully, not only within his grasp, but actually 
 grasped. Does it not seem a most hapless 
 fate that, at the last crowning step, he should 
 have fallen — in the very doorway of the long- 
 dreamt-of Canaan, he should have died ? 
 And we carry the same sort of feeling into 
 our thought of deaths and losses in the king- 
 dom of God now. How many who have led 
 the battle bravely through the heat and bur- 
 den of the day, and have been struck down 
 just in the hour of victory ! How many have 
 toiled, utterly negligent of self, for years and 
 years in some great project, and when all the 
 storms are over and the haven just in sight, 
 they have fallen, vf orn out, at their posts ! 
 
 How many in their first manhood have had 
 
 17 
 
386 DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 years opening before them flushed with prom- 
 ise, and ere they have well stepped into the 
 field and cropped the first harvest, they have 
 been struck down — literally, they have died 
 on the threshold ! We might quote a hun- 
 dred such baffled, broken lives besides. 
 Nothing the world mourns over more — 
 nothing, when the blow falls, seems to us 
 more irreparable. Are they really baffled 
 and broken lives ? Are they really, what we 
 at first thought count them, sad and mysteri- 
 ous failures— creations bright and noble in 
 their beginning, disappointments, darknesses, 
 miseries in the end ? 
 
 If we look for a moment thoughtfully at 
 the matter, my reader, we cannot at all think 
 so, but the reverse- For God would teach 
 us, that there is no work or cause in the 
 world for good to be considered as the pecu- 
 liar possession of any man ; that the whole 
 work and the whole cause are His own ; that, 
 therefore, no one, not even the rarest of His 
 saints, is indispensable to Him. He sends 
 him into the world but as an instrument to do 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 387 
 
 an appointed part — a link in the chain, a 
 torch in the line of light. So, while we look 
 at the sphere some one life is fitted, as we 
 think, splendidly to fill up, God looks beyond 
 that small and arbitrary circle at the vast 
 sweep of His advancing kingdom, and, accord- 
 ing to the exigencies and the calls of that. 
 He puts down one man and raises up another; 
 He leads a Peter to an early crucifixion in 
 the footsteps of his Lord ; He protracts the 
 ministry of a John till, through the feebleness 
 of utmost age, he drops into his grave ; He 
 will let one labor, and also enter into the fruit 
 of his labor ; He will let another labor, but 
 just as he is entering in, bid him, as He bade 
 Moses, die. Wherefore, looking at our human 
 lives in the light of that high sovereignty of 
 God, even that which seems to us on this 
 earthly side most baffled and fragmentary we 
 dare not for a moment call incomplete. At 
 whatever point it has been arrested, if it has 
 performed the part God assigned it in the 
 vastness of His scheme, it is a life rounded 
 and done. 
 
388 DEATH AT THE TPIRESHOLD. 
 
 Moreover, when it pleases God to cut short 
 a gifted human life, smiting it with death at 
 the threshold, it may in this mystery of His 
 dealing be better so ; and, therefore, the 
 existence attain a completeness higher and of 
 a more glorious kind than if, in its earthly 
 framework, it had gone on to live. For it 
 receives tenfold power in its death ; it 
 awakens men's sorrow ; it calls their deepest 
 thoughts into play ; it realizes to them as it 
 passes away all its nobleness and influence, 
 and the grandeur of the cause in which it 
 fell ; if there is no one man to snatch at the 
 whole legacy it leaves, there are a hundred 
 stirred up to snatch at least each his part ; 
 and so, just as the clustering ear of corn when 
 cut. down shakes its seeds abroad, and these 
 spring up, in some thirty, in some sixty, in 
 some an hundred fold, a rich life, cut down 
 and shaken by the hand of God, strews a 
 power behind it, for which even what we call 
 its premature death is not too great a price to 
 pay. Such was the completeness of Moses' 
 life at the very moment, in his death on the 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 389 
 
 Canaan border, all men would have thought 
 otherwise. He died that the heart of Israel 
 might be moved to thoughts his death alone 
 could strike ; that, as he let the staff of God 
 fall, hundreds might arise to catch it up ; 
 that, instead of their entering Canaan mechan- 
 ically dependent,, as heretofore, on his high 
 guidance and his sure prevalency with God, 
 the vanishing away of his figure from the 
 host — -the startling blank left — and yet the 
 path of conquest there before them, where he 
 had pointed with his dying finger — by fhese 
 they might be appealed to resistlessly ; they 
 might feel his spirit pass into them; they 
 might rise into new and heroic being; they 
 might move forward as one man to crown his 
 work in such triumphant sort as even he, if 
 left alive, could not have done. Life dying 
 at the threshold, therefore, changes thus, and 
 on that very account, into life the most glori- 
 ously fulfilled. 
 
 Let us, then, my reader, humble ourselves 
 under the mighty hand of God. From our 
 human side let us strive to realise His broad 
 
390 DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 divine view of what oiir lot is on the earth. 
 Let us count no work or sphere ours, in that 
 sense that we shall ever dream it must de- 
 pend on the strength of our arm or the sus- 
 taining of our life and heart. Thankfully in- 
 deed do we gather up the tokens that our 
 labor in the good cause of our God is not in 
 vain in the Lord— that the seed we sow is 
 springing to the harvest — that the enterprise 
 we have engaged in and yielded all our heart 
 to is developing through all trials and battles 
 into high success. And thankful and blessed 
 also should we deem ourselves if, in God's 
 good will, we should be allowed to finish here 
 on earth what we have begun — to bring home 
 the sheaves rejoicing, whose seed we went 
 forth to sow with tears. A cruel stroke should 
 we feel it if, at the threshold of such fruits, 
 death should cut us down. Yet never let us 
 fail to reiterate to ourselves, that what we do 
 in ^ God's cause on earth is His privilege 
 granted us, and that alone ; that our portion 
 of His cause assigned us is not ours, but His ; 
 that whether we shall do it bnt for one hour 
 
DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 391 
 
 and then have our strength broken, or do it 
 fifty years, either time is our complete mea- 
 sure, and God then but resumes His own. 
 We shall thus learn to lean, in life — even 
 when it has been an arduous and well-fought 
 course — very sparingly upon ourselves, and 
 to lean, with great confidence on God. We 
 shall feel that, though we or any man die, 
 God's work in His own hand will perish never. 
 And as to the sharp trial to the natural feel- 
 ing th^death is in the midway of our work — 
 death in sight of that work's last conquest — we 
 shall take home that, if our life has been hum- 
 ble, true, single, worthy in God, even while 
 it dies it will an hundred times over bless — it 
 will leave seeds in other hearts, out of which 
 our work shall be finished with a double vic- 
 tory. And as for us, caught away, like Mo- 
 ses, in the sight of our earthly reward — the 
 good land before us, but our feet never to be 
 on its soil — it will only be, like Moses also, to 
 find our reward full in heaven. There the 
 shaft, looking on the earth broke across, is 
 built up a noble pillar in the temple of our 
 
392 DEATH AT THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 God. There the hand, that all but closed 
 upon its prize on earth yet just fell short, puts 
 on the golden crown and holds the palm of 
 victory. There the ardent spirit, fainting 
 and dying at the threshold on earth, is seated 
 on the throne of him that has overcome, and 
 has right to the tree of life. All the broken- 
 ness and incompleteness here is amended into 
 everlasting fulness there. Each fragment life 
 we mourned over here is " orbed into its per- 
 fect star" there. And as we look up thither, 
 with such certainties as these, oh surely we 
 shall never falter in our pilgrim way — we 
 shall not fear, even with the whole fruit of our 
 doings ungathered, any moment God may 
 please, to die — we shall rather all the more 
 earnestly while we live press on in the cur- 
 rent of God's kingdom, with the fervent mind 
 of Jesus saying, " I must work the works of 
 Him that sent me while it is day; for the 
 night Cometh when no man can work!" 
 
XXX. 
 
 In the pleasant plain by the edge of the 
 Jordan, the pilgrims were encamped, now at 
 their journey's end, as on ground we might 
 call their Beulah. It was not only that it was 
 a space lovely in itself, but it caught all the 
 light of hope and promise from the near land 
 of their rest little more than a step across. 
 Only the flooded bed of the river rolled its 
 brown waters deep and turbulent between ; 
 but as the long company of the Israelites 
 watched from their tent-doors, or went up 
 and down by the sedgy banks, looking at the 
 harvest-flood in its fury, or their eyes travel- 
 ling up the opposite steep to the battlements 
 of Jericho half hid among the palm-trees, not 
 one but must have felt assured that this last 
 span of difficulty also God would in some way 
 bridge across. Had the Red Sea at the out- 
 
394 FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 set of the great pilgrimage not parted for 
 their fathers, and would this chasm of the 
 Jordan at the great pilgrimage's close not 
 make a passage-way for them? Yet, while 
 from their Beulah spot there was so much in 
 the immediate prospect to fling over them the 
 flush of exultation, there was a great deal, 
 too, might have crossed them (and in the 
 more reflective hearts I have no doubt did 
 cross them) from the thought of the past, to 
 sober them and sadden them down. What a 
 memorable pathway was theirs, now of forty 
 years, through the wilderness ! What an 
 utter blank all the region had been before ! 
 how thick now with the monuments of their 
 wanderings, follies, infirmities, sins, and shame, 
 and of God's ^^^.tience, love, miracles, revela- 
 tions, mercy ! What hallowed ground, as the 
 eye ran back and lighted on the long chain 
 of heavenly footprints indelible among the 
 rocks and sand for ever! With all their 
 weariness and perverseness by the way — their 
 cry one day to flee back to Egypt — their cry 
 next to press on and be at their journey's 
 
FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 39D 
 
 close — was there not now a strange lingering 
 about the heart as though they would fliin 
 almost retrace these desert scenes ? With all 
 this chequering of light and gloom, peril and 
 deliverance, life and death, was there not a 
 deep sorrow now in feeling that this great 
 page in their history was done, and the leaf 
 about to be turned for ever ? I believe some, 
 at least, of the Israelites must have meditated 
 thus on the past, must have realized to them- 
 selves what the Desert Pathway had made 
 them and theirs — not only what an impress it 
 would leave on Israelite life and history to all 
 time, but what a stamp of heaven it had left 
 on them, the actual pilgrims. Where else 
 would they have acquired that moulding, that 
 light, that regenerated being, which, in meas- 
 ure more or less, was theirs — sealed on them 
 by the hand of God ? Would they have ever 
 caught it in the dark slavery of Goshen? 
 Would they have taken it on, though they 
 had been princes and not slaves, in the lux- 
 urious valley of the Nile ? Was it not alone 
 through the far-shrouded avenue of the desert- 
 
396 FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 way Israelite life could have had the birth 
 that had passed upon it into the likeness and 
 the will of God? 
 
 So that with all the solemn shadows mem- 
 ory summoned up there by the waters of the 
 Jordan, they became, after all, in the peni- 
 tent and pious heart, but a tempering of the 
 now glorious Beulah light — but a making 
 more mellow this quiet and beauteous evening 
 that closed in the fitful and stormy pilgrimage- 
 day. And as it had been anticipated, so God 
 was with His people to the last. Jericho had 
 been spied out, and it was discovered how 
 the heart of the Canaanites had melted in 
 them through fear ; the last wonder of the 
 arm of God therefore struck that terror home. 
 He bade Joshua marshal the tribes upon the 
 river bank ; He directed how the priests, 
 bearing the holy ark, were to go several 
 paces in advance ; and, soon as the serried 
 march began — the Israelite eyes intent from 
 this side, the heathen eyes intent and cower- 
 ing from the other side — there was the hush of 
 God's own leading felt, pown to the dark 
 
FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 397 
 
 and rusliing ford He brought His priestly 
 band straight ; and the instant their gleaming 
 feet touched the wave, it was cleft across 
 from bank to bank. On the right, the roar- 
 ing flood gathered back upon itself, pent up 
 as if an iron breast-work held it in its wild 
 wrath helpless; on the left, the current failed 
 away, the channelled bed lay bare, and the 
 priests planting themselves the while with 
 their sacred burden in mid-stream, the deep 
 masses of the Israelites passed across steady 
 as on dry land. They climbed the other 
 bank, file by file, thousand by thousand. 
 They were on the soil of God's promise at 
 last. They were in their Canaan home, mak- 
 ing black its threshold with their numbers, 
 and as the last man was helped up the edge, 
 and the priests then raised the ark, and in 
 slow and measured step emerged also from 
 the river's depth, it was surely startling to 
 the heart of Israel to see the champing flood 
 burst its barrier, to watch it sweeping all its 
 banks to the very brim again, and to reflect 
 that, by the line novf of these loosened 
 
398 FORDIXG THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 waters, they, on the spot where their feet 
 were set, were cut off from the desert and its 
 pilgrimage for ever ! 
 
 To the pilgrim still, as he hastens through 
 his last stage home, it is a marvellous hour that 
 Beulah hour, just ere the sweep of death is 
 crossed. With some there has been a light 
 from the near land so bright, that it has made 
 the deathbed all aglow with heaven ; streams 
 of rapturous gladness have broken from the 
 lips ; sentences of chastened yet burning 
 anticipation have flowed from the pen. Yea, 
 to that extent has such experience gone, that 
 it has been related of one, dying under the 
 kindled glories he beheld rising on him 
 beyond death, that his ecstasy mounted to 
 such a pitch his attendants had to beseech him 
 to be hushed, otherwise he should not have 
 power to die ! But for the most part, w^ith 
 those especially who have come out of the sor- 
 rows and the blessings of the Desert Pathway, 
 it is a tempered though beauteous light, a quiet 
 sunset calm. In that solemn hour, if God pre- 
 serves to us our faculties, and we are not 
 
FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 399 
 
 stretched on the rack of pain, what a halo of 
 mingled memory the one way and hope and 
 looking forward the other gathers round us ! 
 We look back on the earthly way about to 
 close. We thank God now for all its hard- 
 ships and distresses, as we counted them at 
 the time ! We rejoice our way was not in the 
 stages of plenty, and of great temporal ease, 
 and success, and, as the world reckons it, hap- 
 piness. We see how these would have re- 
 laxed most dangerously the up-springing of 
 our soul to God ; and how, in the last hour, 
 such fetters would they have cast around us, 
 that it w^ould have been a hard and a fearful 
 thing to die. In our spiritual feebleness, we 
 should then have been in the case of those 
 whom the prophet addresses when he so start- 
 lingly asks them — "If thou hast run with the 
 footmen, and they have wearied thee, then 
 how canst thou contend with horses? And 
 if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, 
 they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in 
 the swelling of Jordan ?" Yes, verily, with 
 the spiritual nature that through the unnerv- 
 
400 FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 ing of earthly prosperity could so ill bear a 
 strain in life, how could we have borne to face 
 the fording of the dark waters in death ? But 
 in that soft twilight hour I have called our 
 Beulah, just on the hither side Jordan ere we 
 die, we bless God that it has been the contrary 
 case with us ; that although we rebelled, and 
 repined, and often made our hearts hard un- 
 der it. He yet led us persistently in " the right 
 way ;" that He gave us the cross of feeble 
 health to bear; that He scattered our fair 
 hopes at a breath ; that He wounded us to the 
 quick with anxiety, with bereavement, with 
 sorrow ; that He made us often and again ask 
 the question, " Wherefore dost Thou afflict 
 me thus ?" We bless His name, that all the 
 while He was weaning us in heart and soul to 
 Himself ; that He was raising us and con- 
 straining us on to the level of His blessed 
 world above ; that He was giving token on 
 token of our being the chosen people of His 
 love — according to that wondrous yet most 
 holy principle, " Whom the Lord loveth He 
 chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom 
 
FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 401 
 
 He receiveth;" and that by that vicissitude 
 and sharpness and wandering to and fro in 
 the desert path all these years — now in a 
 break of sunshine, now in the folds of gloom, 
 now under quiet shade and rest, now in the 
 brunt of heat and storm—He was preparing 
 us for this unutterable sweetness at the close, 
 this Beulah eventide, and yonder, just across 
 the fords of death, the good land and the glo- 
 rious day. In such retrospect, my reader, 
 what life, the barrenest wilderness as it may 
 have seemed in passing through, but becomes 
 strewn with the selected goings to and fro of 
 the blessed God ! We read of the poor pris- 
 oner who inherited a solitary cell for long 
 years ; in that time he had watched a little 
 creeper plant growing with its soft tendrils in 
 one of the crevices of the bleak stone walls 
 outside his window ; he had watched it till he 
 knew every fringe and fibre, and the sweet 
 growth he would have crushed in a common 
 path outside* in this desert corner grew lite- 
 rally into his heart ; so that when at last he 
 was released, he found there was a pathos 
 
402 FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 about the bare cell and the mute climbing- 
 plant that had consecrated many hours, and 
 that, even with freedom and his home in view, 
 made it hard for him to tear himself away. 
 So in the desert way we have come ; so illu- 
 minated does it shew at the hour of parting, 
 all its nooks and spots and windings revealing 
 some tie of tenderness and blessing such as in 
 no other path but in the grief and loneliness 
 and barrenness of this could have wound 
 themselves about us, that, even with heaven 
 and all its rest in view, we cannot quite break 
 away from it. We feel as if we should like to 
 traverse it again. We bless God He led us 
 as He did. We behold it all a path of bless- 
 ing. We find what at the end it has made us ; 
 that if we have " come out of great tribula- 
 tion," we have also "washed our robes, and 
 made them white in the blood of the Lamb !" 
 Then, turning round on such a death-pil- 
 low, what to us is death ? It is a dark and 
 cold river indeed, across the rushing straits of 
 which we could never of ourselves hold our 
 way; but the covenant God, Who has led us 
 
FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 403 
 
 in the way we knew not already, will be with 
 us still. "Yea, though I walk through the 
 valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no 
 evil ; for Thou art with me : Thy rod and Thy 
 staff they comfort me." As we edge on to 
 the death-flow — slacken all earthly holds — feel 
 the light and the love of earth fade — we see 
 — we must see — with the open inward eye. 
 One Who is our great High Priest from 
 heaven — on the dark background His figure 
 white as light — making the heart of all our 
 enemies melt around us and before us for fear 
 — scattering our sins in their multitude for 
 ever — scattering the tempter and his myrmi- 
 dons that hang gnashingly around us — and 
 our last enemy, even death, utterly destroy- 
 ing that ; for as His pierced feet touch the 
 waters, they are rent in twain — as He stands, 
 the ark of His own Cross planted in the deep 
 middle ford, they roar in the restraint over- 
 head, but they cannot oversweep us ; we pass 
 dryshod where we thought there w^as the fear- 
 fulest of all depths ; we climb on the other 
 shore into the ten thousand arms of love wait- 
 
404 FORDING THE DARK WATERS. 
 
 ing US. And as the blessed Lord Himself then 
 releases death in its foam and surge behind 
 us, we are struck — oh, so unutterably ! — with 
 the everlasting change ; the light affliction 
 there behind us, the exceeding glory here ; 
 the Desert Pathway cut off there, the hills 
 and vales of Canaan here ; the pillow of pain 
 and of helplessness we died on there, the em- 
 brace of our God and Saviour w^e are clasped 
 in here ! What is death, if through death we 
 make such a change as that— if, after fording 
 the dark waters, w^e are home with God, and, 
 looking up to Him, can say : — 
 
 " For ever on the Incarnate breast, 
 That fount of sweetness, let me rest ! 
 My spirit every hour imbued 
 More deeply with His precious blood I" 
 
 THE END. 
 
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