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THE SOUL'S EXODUS

AND

PILGRIMAGE.

THE SOUL'S EXODUS

PILGRIMAGE

JAMES BALDWIN BKOWN, B.A,
MINISTER OF CLAYLAND's CHAPEL, CLAPHAM HOAD, LONDON.

"THE 1VAV OP TIIF TYIbDERNESS."— EXODUS Xlil. 18.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.

M.DCCC.LXII.

nwvS.1

IThe right of Translation is reserved.}

TO
THE DEAR
COMPANION AND
GOOD ANGEL
OF MY
PILGRIMAGE, I INSCRIBE
THESE.

J. B. B.

,;—3

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Sfl'lUOtt t. — The Bondage  1
'• The land of Egypt : the house of bondage." — Exod. xx. 2.

~rtmon tt. — The Exodus (lit. " ivay-out ") . . 28
" Out of Egypt have I called w.y Son." — Matt. ii. 15.
Senium tit. — The Way of the Wilderness . . 58
" But God led the people about, through the way of the wil
derness of the Red Sea." — Exod. xiii. 18.
£iCtmOtt tb. — The bitter Waters of Marah. . 81
" So Moses brought Israel from the Bed Sea; and they went
out into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three
days into the wilderness, and found no water. And
when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the
waters of Marah, for they were bitter." — Exod. xv.
22, 23.

VIII CONTENTS.

Sermon b. — The Springs and the Palm-trees of
Elim. . . ' . . . * . .104
" And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water,
and threescore and ten palm-trees, and they encamped
there by the waters." — Exod. xv. 27.
Sermon hi.— The Bread of the Wilderness —
Exod. xvi  131
" He fed thee with manna (which thou knewest not, neither
did thy fathers know), that He might make thee know
that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth out of tlie mouth of the Lord doth man
live." —Deut. viii. 3.

Sermon bti.— Sinai. The Revelation of the Divine
Name. — Exod. xix  154
"Jam the Lord thy God." — Exod. xx. 2.
Sermon btti.— Sinai. The Golden Calf. The
essential Nature of Idolatry. — Exod. xxxi. 178
" Up, make us gods which shall go before us."— Exod.xxxii. 1.
Sermon ix.— Sinai. The Dispensation of Laiv.
— Exod. xx. ..... 202
" And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear
the Lord our God, for our good always." — Deut. vi. 24.
Sermon X. — The Gospel under the Law. . . 228
'And thou shalt put the merry-seat above upon the ark ; and
in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give
thee." — Exod. xxv. 21.

CONTENTS. IX

PAGE
Sermon It. — The Divine Presence. Alone : yet
not alone. ...... 255
" And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will
give thee rest." — Exod. xxxiii. 14.
Sermon lit. — Kibroth-hattaavah. The Graves
of Lust  279
" And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah ;
because there they buried the people that lusted." —
Numb. xi. 34.
Sermon Ittt. — The Wanderings. The common
Levels of Life. ..... 306
" And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God led thee these forty years in the wilderness." —
Deut. viii. 2.
Sermon lib. — Pisgah. The Visions . . . 334
" And Moses went up from the plains of Moab into the
mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over
against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the
land." — Deut. xxxiv. 1.
Sermon lb. — Canaan. The good Land that is
beyond Jordan. ..... 361
" The good land that is beyond Jordan." — Deut. iii. 25.
Sermon ibt. — Canaan. The everlasting Joy. . 392
" Everlasting joy shall be unto them." — Iaa. lxi. 7.

a — 5

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In sending forth a second edition of " The SoaTs
Exodus and Pilgrimage" I should be ungrateful
indeed, if I did not express my very warm sense
of the cordiality with which it has been noticed
by the critics of the press, and received by the
public at large ; if I may form an estimate from
the fact that a new edition has been called for
so soon.
There is but one point in the criticisms which
have fallen under my notice which seems to me
to need a word of explanation. A friendly critic
mixes with many warm encomiums a complaint
that I have omitted all reference to the Passover
in connection with the Exodus. He is right in
supposing that the omission was purposed. What
the Passover seemed to mean to the Israelites
that night, is one thing; what it means to us,
who can look at it in the light of God's sub-

Xll PREFACE.

sequent revelations of Himself, is another. I
could not have referred to it in its place without
entering on a discussion of theological tenets
which would have been premature ; which would
not only have interrupted the moral continuity
of the narrative, but would have anticipated the
period in the history of the education of the
people, when these truths were formally pre
sented to their minds by the Lord. It seems
to me much more true to the method of the
Book of Exodus to deal with these portions of
the subject as I have done, as a whole, in con
nection with that which gives to them their full
significance — the Dispensation of the Law.
With this one explanation of a matter wherein
my method might, without explanation, be easily
misunderstood, I send forth this new edition of
my book, with an earnest hope that God may
make it the means of arousing some who are
" in captivity " to attempt the Exodus, and of
helping them to bear themselves Christianly
through the pilgrimage of life.
April 4th, 1862.

PKEEACE.

To the Members of the Congregation
of Clayland's Chapel.
My dear Friends,
It is to you first, and through you to a
wider congregation, that I offer these thoughts
on a Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage, as illus
trated by that way of the wilderness through
which of old God led His sons. You are fully
familiar with my conviction, that we have been
in some danger of slighting the instruction and
influence which the records of the Old Dispensa
tion are capable of affording to us, and which
unfold to us the way of God for nearly two thou
sand years in the education of mankind. I believe
that every man, in a measure, repeats in his own
experience the experience of the race ; that in
a sense we all live through the stages through
which the world has lived ; and that the records
of God's methods with the world in any age of
its history, have not merely speculative but prac-

Xiv PREFACE.
tical and personal bearings on us all. And I
think, too, that, on a wider scale, it will help us
not a little to understand the revelation which
God has given to us in His Son, if we trace
back His course of preparation for the fulness of
times, His education of the world for tbe light
and freedom which it now enjoys. Those will
see most in Christ, and will comprehend best
what " the adoption of a son " may mean, who
trace most reverently the steps by which God
unfolded the revelation, and educated men to
receive all the fulness which it contains.
I confess that I hear with a strange shrinking
of spirit, the notions about the Old Testament
which some of the more advanced even of our
orthodox teachers and writers put forth, as
though the less we studied it the better ; as
though it were the record of some palaeozoic age
of human development, cut off utterly from any
vital communion with us — belonging, in fact, to
a period and stage of human culture and intelli
gence which we, in our enlightened age, do right
to scorn. Unhappy the nation where childhood
is not beautiful, and is lightly esteemed. And
unhappy the Church which has no eye of reve
rence to bend on tbe childhood of humanity —
which feels itself far removed from those per
plexities and perils with which adolescence is

PREFACE. XV

familiar, and regards the record of them as meet
pabulum for weaklings, and such as love to dote
about the past. We are all of us too much
children to be able to despise the history of
God's education of the world's childhood ; nor
can I afford to close my Old Testament, while
the Christian repeats so constantly the expe
rience, sufferings, and sins of the old Jewish
world. I think that there is a growing reaction
against that tendency to depreciate the old,
which is so characteristic of all radical schools,
political, intellectual, and Christian. I think
that Mr. Maurice's " Prophets and Kings of the
Old Testament" did much to promote the reaction
in the province with which we have here to do.
I remember reading it many years ago with deep
interest, and being led by it to consider more
thoughtfully, whether I had fairly appreciated
the significance of the Old Testament in relation
to the New. I have always endeavoured to study
the Old Testament in the light which the New
sheds upon it, being fully convinced — in spite of
a marvellous argument to the contrary in some
" Strictures" upon my "Twine Life in Man" —
that that which is typical must be essentially
smaller and narrower than the thing typified, and
cannot therefore explain it, but must be explained

XVI PREFACE.

by it, while it reflects a rich light upon it, as
revealing the method in which the way for it was
prepared by God.
If there be any part of the Old Testament
which is of the widest and grandest human
interest, surely it is the way of the wilderness,
which I have taken as the text of this present
book. It is human from beginning to end. It
is this universal human interest which I have
endeavoured to elicit; that it is there, — that I do
not put it into, but draw it out of the narrative, —
I hope my book will show. We have here a
complete inspired history of a great human pro
gress. The education of a people who had been
bondmen, to be the freemen of God, and His
elect ministers to the world ; a ministry which
the nation refused, but which such men as Daniel
and, in a far higher form, St. Paul, fulfilled.
I am sure, then, that we must have here a com
plete picture of a human pilgrimage from the
bondage into which sin has sunk us, to the free
man's home for which God is seeking to educate
us by His Gospel. I am sure that a whole Chris
tian philosophy of life is here, looking back upon
it in the light of the great principle of the
Apostle, that the angel who was with the Church
in the wilderness, was the Lord who is " God
with us."

PREFACE. xvii

But I have not attempted to present any
thing like a complete philosophy of life in these
pages. Many may feel disposed to complain of
the absence of formal symmetry in the treatment
of the subject, of the stations omitted, and of
the want of a blending of the picture of our
human pilgrimage into one harmonious whole.
I should plead guilty to the charge without
shame. I have not attempted to interpret every
thing, because I do not understand everything.
I have not attempted to make a complete
methodical picture of man's pilgrimage on this
basis, because I am sure that such a picture would
be the more incomplete for the very appearance
of completeness which it might wear. I do not
comprehend God's whole thought about man and
man's life. I see here a little .and there a little,
assured that what is most essential is brought
out by our heavenly Teacher into the clearest
daylight. What I see, I have set down, but I
have not attempted to dogmatize where I do not
see, under the idea of making my book on our
pilgrimage more complete.
I can fancy, too, that some may complain of
an uncertainty of utterance as to the precise
spiritual character of the nation, and what God
intends it spiritually to illustrate. Now, I speak
of the glory of the dispensation, and now, of its

XV ill PREFACE.

darkness ; now, of the people as God's chosen
ones — His sons beloved, cherished, and elect to
Canaan — and now, as faithless, slavish, denounced
and disowned by Him. I can only answer, that I
find this formal inconsistency in the Book, and
that I have tried to be faithful to it ; and that
such uncertainties and apparent inconsistencies
must inhere, in any faithful attempt to set forth
tbe truth of Divine things within the range of
our comprehension ; that St. Paul's writings are
full of them ; that I should distrust deeply the
man who should profess his ability to clear up
all difficulties, and explain precisely what God
means by every act and word ; and finally, that
to those who will look honestly, the counterpart
of these inconsistencies and uncertainties, and in
some measure the key to them, is within.
I have spoken of the Jewish dispensation as
having its own essential glory. With St. Paul's
words before me, I could do no otherwise. In
2 Cor. iii. he says distinctly, that it was
glorious ; no prison-house for bondmen, but a
training-school for sons. I have endeavoured to
recall that glory, while showing how in the
glory that excelleth, it is not abolished, but
absorbed, and thus more nobly lost.
It will be seen that this is mainly a book of
experience. I have not sought to unfold doc-

PREFACE. XIX

trines ; not because I undervalue their impor
tance, but because they are among the things
which are most surely believed in our churches ;
and the great need amongst us is to have them
married to life. I have assumed, without
lengthened proof, that the Jehovah of the Old
Testament is the "Emmanuel" of the New;
and that, as St. Stephen testifies, the Spirit of
the Lord who strove against their sins, and
educated their souls, was the Holy Ghost. I
have adopted the thoughts and phraseology
of the New Testament, as matter of course ;
believing. that in doing so I am doing precisely
what a believing Israelite would have delighted
to do, had he enjoyed our fuller knowledge of
the things of God — the fact of the Incarnation,
and the mission of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter
and Quickener of men.
My readers will see that I avail myself of the
works of Oriental travellers for the purpose of
illustrating the scenery of the wilderness way.
I had published the syllabus of the series of
Discourses which I now give to the public, and
had preached some of the earlier ones, before
Dr. Stanley's masterly work on "Sinai and Pales
tine " appeared. I read it with intense interest,
and was delighted to find how amply his descrip
tions confirmed the views, which I had been led

XX PREFACE.
to entertain as to the fitness of the wilderness
of Sinai to be the scene of the education of a
noble race. I know how hard it is to bring
a fresh eye to bear on scenes oft described, and
about which a stereotyped impression is abroad.
This rare merit attaches to Dr. Stanley's work.
It is evidently a fresh and faithful record of the
impressions of a man whose eye may be trusted,
and is invaluable to those who, like myself,
endeavour to comprehend and set forth the
reasons why by that way God led His sons.
And now, my dear friends, I commend my
book to your thoughtful perusal, and myself to
your sympathies and prayers. I never cease
to give thanks for the cordial sympathy and
co-operation which, for fifteen years, you have
afforded to me ; and for the zeal — never more
conspicuous than at present, with which you
sustain my efforts to instruct, comfort, help,
and bless the poor of the neighbourhood, to
whom we, in common with other Christian
congregations, are set to be as " the salt of
the earth," and " the light of the world."
150, Albany Street, Regent's Park,
December 3rd, 1861.

THE SOUL'S EXODUS

PILGRIMAGE.

The Land of Egypt : the House of Bondage.
Exodus xx. 2.
Egypt stands foremost among the countries of
the elder pagan world. Egypt is, in truth, the
mother of paganism, the fruitful parent of idola
tries, the nurse of pagan civilization, of pagan
literature, politics, and art ; and therefore the
fitting representative in the language of Scripture
of that "world" out of which, in all ages, God
calls His sons.
Let us first study the physical aspects of the
country. The plains of the Nile, the Euphrates,
the Ganges, theHoang-ho, bear indisputable marks
of having been the earliest settled homes of the
1

THE LAND OF EGYPT:

human race. In these vast valleys, under the fos
tering warmth of an almost tropical sun, agricul
ture was at once simple and productive; bodies
of men could be nourished readily, and society —
using the word in a popular sense, the aggrega
tion of masses of men around common centres —
became easily possible. The soil of these alluvial
plains is of the richest, and is cheaply renewed by
inundation. Egypt has never been manured for
four thousand years, and is as fruitful now as in
the days of Sesostris. The means of communi
cation, moreover, are in such countries easy and
rapid; and the apparatus of a complicated social
system can be set up with less toil and cost than
in those varied and temperate regions which are
fitted to develop the higher faculties of man, and
to be the home of civilization at a more advanced
era of its history. The early settlers in the valleys
of Mesopotamia and Egypt attained very rapidly
to an advanced stage of social and political deve
lopment. While the Hebrew patriarchs were still
feeding their flocks on the wolds of Canaan, and
struggling with the inhabitants for no greater
matter than a well, Egypt had a settled and com
plicated polity, castes of labourers, soldiers, and
priests, a hierarchy, a court of great ceremonial
pomp, and commercial relations with the most
distant nations of the world.

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE.

At an equally early period Mesopotamia became
the seat of a powerful and splendid monarchy,
whose earliest records are being disinterred from
the sand-hills which, like the monasteries of the
middle ages, guard treasures of which they little
know the worth. These records show the exceed
ing rapidity of the growth of civihzation under
the propitious circumstances at which we have
glanced. If, as has been suggested, the name
Peleg, Gen. x. 25 (division), marks the period
of the canalization of Mesopotamia, it shows what
rapid progress had been made in that region in
the time of the great-grandson of Shem.*
But such civilization is not fruitful in true pro
gress. Though rich, it is stagnant, like the cli
mate and the land. In such wealthy regions,
where nature is so lavish and her smile is to be
had for asking, man misses the stimulus to action,
and that play of his nobler qualities and passions
which the more thrifty temperament of nature in
a colder climate and more broken country secures.
If you want to see man in his individual man
hood, full-grown, free, noble, and productive of
his highest works, you must seek the colder and
more varied European Continent. If you want to
see men living in herds, springing up and perish
ing like the crops of summer fruits, preserving
* Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. 1856.
1—2

THE LAND OF EGYPT :

unchanged characteristics of form, feature, and
habit, without progress, without regress, through
thousands of years, you must go to the basins of
the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile. The
fellah of Egypt lives still, uncomplaining and
hopeless, the life of his oppressed forefathers in
the days of the Pharaohs, while the whole Western
world has been in rapid progress, and has left all
ancient landmarks, even the loftiest, hull-down in
her wake.
Of the four regions which dispute the palm of
antiquity and contend for the name of Mother of
Civilization, Egypt stands first in interest and
importance, as the wisest, the most developed,
and, above all, the most influential on the civi
lization of Europe and the fortunes of mankind.
From Egypt were carried the seeds which, re
ceived into the generous soil of the Greek nature,
bore as their fruit the completest form of pagan
society ; and in Egypt was nursed and educated
that intellect, which, receiving a diviner wisdom
from on high, gave birth to the social and national
institutions which have unfolded out of their
bosom the Christian Church. Thus the two great
streams of human progress had their starting-
point from Egypt ; which became, though for dif
ferent reasons, the classic ground of the pagan

and Christian worlds.

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE.

Egypt is, in point of physical features, the
strangest country upon earth. It consists simply
of a long narrow valley, with the Delta formed by
the deposits of its river where it issues into the
sea, of the length of about five hundred miles,
and an average breadth of not more than seven.
The cultivable land, from Syene to the commence
ment of the Delta, is simply a narrow slip of fer
tile soil, hemmed in by a belt of stony or sandy
plain, reaching to the foot of the mountain chains
which enclose it, and sometimes press closely on
the river on either hand. The productive area,
from Syene to the sea, may be estimated hberally
at seven thousand square miles. In the time of
the Pharaohs, it is said to have contained
7,000,000 of inhabitants ; but the statement is
a vague one, and, there is reason to think, some
what exaggerated. Sir Gardner Wilkinson esti
mates the present population at 1,500,000. It
is a country in which rain seldom falls, but the
dews are copious. The land, as every child
knows, is irrigated by the periodical overflowing
of the river; which begins to rise at the time of
the summer solstice, overflows the belt of cul
tivable land on its borders, and during its hun
dred days' dominion amply enriches the soil.
The height of a fair average inundation is about
forty feet at the Cataracts, thirty- six feet at

6 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
Thebes, twenty-five feet at Cairo, and four feet
at the mouth of the river. A height of only
twenty-three feet or twenty-four feet at Cairo,
near which the Nilometer is situated, is followed
by famine ; a height of twenty-seven feet lays
the whole country waste. The rains in April and
May in the highlands of Central Africa are sup
posed to be the cause of this marvellous pheno
menon, on which depends, and has depended for
ages, the very existence of milhons of the human
family, and, in ancient times, the fate of the
world's most splendid empire ; and yet, though
lawless storms are the feeders of this river of
Egypt, so strong and sure is the hand of the
Creator, so delicate the balances in which He
holds the adjustments of nature, that the Nile
has continued to rise and fall within the pre
scribed limits, with rare exceptions, for, at any
rate, four thousand years. The cultivation of
the soil is most easy. The plough is hardly
required ; it serves chiefly as a harrow. In the
sculptures, the sower precedes the ploughshare,
which is a slight instrument, and managed by a
single hand. At the same time, the rise of the
river was watched with intense anxiety, and the
cultivation of the country was matter of extreme
difficulty, in the years when the required height
was not attained. With what joy does Moses

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE.

contemplate the physical features of the Promised
Land : — " For the land, whither thou goest in to
possess it, is not as the land of Egypt from
whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy
seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden
of herbs : but the land, whither ye go to possess
it, is a land of hills and vaUeys, and drinketh
water of the rain of heaven : a land which the
Lord thy God careth for : the eyes of the Lord
thy God are always upon it, from the beginning
of the year even unto the end of the year." —
Deut. xi., 10—12.
Eyes wearied with the monotony of Egyptian
scenery, hearts sick of the monotony of Egyptian
life, revelled in the prospect of a land of rich
natural beauty — of brooks, purling through green
meadows nestled in the bosom of the hills, of
mountains, springs, and foamy torrents, and all
the brilliant variety of a highland country. Egypt
is a monotone. Her part has been a monotone
in the great choral hymn of the progress of the
ages. Her unfathomable sphinx expresses, as
perfectly as human art can express it, the mystery
of the life of man. And Egypt is as far from the
solution of it now, as when Moses led forth his
shepherd tribes to seek, amid the awful desola
tions of Sinai, the solution from the lips of God.
I do not know whether it has ever struck you, as

8 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
you look into the faces of the Egyptian images at
the Museum or the Crystal Palace, that they are
full of wonder and awe — as children amazed at i
mystery which holds them in its spells, rathei
than as men of intellect and resolution, who set
the mystery, but are minded to explore it or die.
The Apollo looks out with open face into the uni
verse. Beauty in the Venus of Milo reigns. The
masterpieces of Greek art hold up their heads
with defiant or conquering strength and courage :
you see that the men who carved those images
are men who will invent, discover, and explore
all domains where man's foot may tread ; thej
have in them the principle of progress — they
will grow, create, and leave a glorious legacy to
the Future. The Egyptian figures, on the other
hand, are full of intellect ; but it is beaten,
baffled, oppressed by the mystery which oppresses
the world. The men who wrought those images
will not strive to wring out the secret from nature.
Nature will master them ; they will bow down,
and worship abjectly what they cannot explore.
Every beast and reptile, every blade of grass, will
re-present the mystery, and seem to them full oi
God. And such was actually their history. Their
sphinx looked out with calm, unintelligent, un
aspiring wonder over the prolific land on whose
borders it stood sentinel— beautiful in the serenity

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 9
of its despair : and thus the people looked with
idolatrous awe and reverence at the teeming
fertility of the soil and of every living thing in
Egypt; and they bowed down their souls, and
worshipped every form of animal existence ; birds,
beasts, reptiles, and every thing, however obscene
and loathsome, which moveth upon the face of
the earth. Take the testimony of Herodotus : —
" Egypt, though hordering on Libya, does not abound in
wild beasts ; but all that they have are accounted sacred, as
well those that are domesticated as those that are not. But
if I should give the reasons why they are consecrated, I must
descend in my history to religious matters, which I avoid
relating as much as I can ; and such as I have touched upon
in the course of my narrative, I have mentioned from necessity.
They have a custom relating to animals of the following kind :
Superintendents, consisting both of men and women, are
appointed to feed every kind separately ; and the son suc
ceeds the father in this office. All the inhabitants of the
cities perform their vows to the superintendents in the follow
ing manner : Having made a vow to the god to whom the
animal belongs, they shave either the whole heads of their
children, or a half or a third part of the head, and then weigh
the hair in a scale against silver, and whatever the weight
may be, they give to the superintendent of the animals ; and
she in return cuts up some fish, and gives it as food to the
animals ; such is the usual mode of feeding them. Should
any one kill one of these beasts, if wilfully, death is the
punishment ; if by accident, he pays such fine as the priests
choose to impose. But whoever kills an ibis or a hawk,
whether wilfully or by accident, must necessarily be put to
death 

10 THE LAND OF EGYPT:
" In whatever house a cat dies of a natural death, all the
family shave their eyebrows only ; but if a dog die, they shave
the whole body and the head. All cats that die are carried to
certain sacred houses, where, being first embalmed, they are
buried in the city of Bubastis. All persons bury their dead
dogs in sacred vaults within their own city ; and ichneumons
are buried in the same manner as the dogs : but field-mice and
hawks they carry to the city of Buto, the ibis to Hermopolis ;
the bears, which are few in number, and the wolves, which
are not much larger than foxes, they bury wherever they are
found lying." — Herodotus, ii. 65 — 67.
I think, if you look at them, the statues of the
two peoples will expound their character, and
explain their history. There are few English
men who have not seen the rich remains of
Egyptian art and life which are contained in
the Museum of our country, and who have not
staid to gaze curiously on those strange symbols
carved in stone by the Egyptian priests, which as
yet half hide and half reveal the secrets of the
primaeval ages of history. Into the vexed ques
tion as to the duration of man's existence upon
this earth, which, not from this ground alone, is
being urged upon our attention, I have happily
here no call to enter. Science treads boldly, not
to say defiantly, on ground which is claimed in the
sacred name of revelation ; and has, not seldom,
been compelled to recall her dicta and retrace her
steps. Perhaps the reason of this defiant atti
tude is partly the jealousy with which narrow

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 11
theologians have watched her explorations. A
happier age is dawning ; and whatever may be
the final judgments of science on matters which
fall fairly within her domain, theologians are
thankful now to beheve that it can but end in
the estabhshment of a higher harmony between
man's knowledge and the essential truth of the
Word of God. One thing, at any rate, has been
made clear by the study of Egyptian monuments,
that the writer of the Pentateuch must have
known Egyptian life thoroughly, and must have
had a native right to discourse of Egyptian things.
And the world is full of buried witnesses to the
truth of God. Every stone of the Desert, could it
speak, would testify that Israel passed that way.
The early history of Egypt is still buried in
confusion, through which an orderly track is being
slowly opened by the efforts of the ablest scholars
of our time. From the time of Pharaoh Necho
and his grandson Apries, or Pharaoh Hophra, who
succeeded B.C. 595, who cross the track of the
Scripture narrative, the course of Egyptian his
tory is clear. In the reign of Hophra, Greeks
first appear upon the scene, and the history of
Egypt becomes inwoven with the general history
of the civilized world. In 523 B.C. the native
dynasties were overthrown by Cambyses the Per
sian, and the Pharaohs disappear from history.

12 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
There can be no doubt that the Egyptian
idolatry, being of a pecuharly degrading cha
racter, had plunged the people into the very
depths of anarchy and moral pollution, when the
Persian fire-flood swept the whole system away.
So swept the fire-flood of Jewish conquest through
Canaan, when the land was " weary of its inhabi
tants," and purged them out. Some baptisms
must be of fire. About 400 B.C. the Persians
relaxed their grasp, being fully occupied with
Greek affairs ; and a native monarch, Amyrtseus
the Saite, occupied the throne after a long life of
struggle against the Persian rule. He reigned
from 414 B.C. for six years in tolerable prosperity,
and was magnificently interred in a green breccia
sarcophagus which you may see now in the British
Museum. In the year 350 B.C. the Persians re
conquered the country; but at the disruption of
the empire of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy
Lagus, his ablest general, possessed himself of
the sceptre, and under his successors Alexandria
became the most wealthy and splendid city of the
East. Under Augustus Caesar it became a Roman
province, Alexandria being still one of the most
important cities of the empire, and for three cen
turies, at any rate, the most learned school of
the Christian Church. In the 5th century, Alex
andrian philosophy, Christianity, and society seem

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 13
to have fallen again into that state <af utter de
moralization, of hideous vice, which marked the
close of the dynasty of the Pharaohs ; and in
640 A.D. God again swept it by a fire-flood, and
the fierce Mahometan conquerors trampled its
pride and splendour in the dust. With them it
remains to this day. But the cycle of time brings
strange compensations, and Alexandria, as the
key of the route to India, may again become one
of the most important cities of the world.
I proposed to myself two objects in this present
discourse. In the first place, to give you a little
condensed information about the country and
people, of which some of you might be glad ;
and, in the second place, and as the main sub
ject, to inquire what it is in Egypt which makes
it the symbol of that world, that state of nature,
that " house of bondage," out of which in all
ages God calls His sons.
That it is so employed in the Scripture, needs
no proof. Why it is so used, it is worth while to
consider. Babylon is not more identified in Scrip
ture with malignant Antichrist, than is Egypt
with the ensnaring world. Why Babylon repre
sents to us Antichrist, while Egypt represents the
world, it is not difficult to show. And here let
me say, that, by the word " world " I am not
seeking to indicate any places, occupations, or

14 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
portions of the great human family. I find too
much of the " world " in what passes for the
Church, to dare to draw a visible line of demarca
tion. By the world here and throughout, I mean
that without us — each one of us — which corre
sponds with the flesh within us ; that which
tempts the too willingly tempted soul.
The character of the Babylonish despotism, the
ceaseless attempts of the Assyrian monarchs on
the liberty of the Jewish Church, the injuries they
inflicted on Palestine, and the ruin they brought
on Jerusalem, fully explain the one symbol.
Egypt, on the other hand, always assumed a more
passive attitude, or at any rate was the seductress,
rarely the assailant and tyrant, of God's people.
It was expressly as a safeguard against seduction
that the people were warned against going down
into Egypt for war-horses, Deut. xvii. 16. Egypt
was not malignant, but rather corrupt and effemi
nate. In a word, the quintessence of the world.
How it was so, and what the symbol has to teach
us who are called as sons out of Egypt, I proceed
to show.
God could have sent the patriarchs down into
Assyria as easily as into Egypt. There must
have been that in the temper and character of the
Egyptian people and land, which made it specially
capable of showing the world its " form and

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 15
pressure," and of furnishing in its relation with
God's people a type, clear and impressive for
ah ages, of the method of God's deliverance of a
soul. I shall consider two points. The character of
Egypt, her hfe, and her influence on her children ;
and the experience of the sons of God in relation
thereto. I. The character of Egypt and her influence on
her children.
I observe —
1. That Egypt was distinguished as the abode
of a peculiarly easy and luxurious life. " Take
thy fill, eat the fat, and drink the sweet," was
her seductive song. The means of subsistence
were inconceivably abundant. The very soil
teemed with life. Trees and the nobler forms of
animal life were rare, but the lower forms and
the coarser — melons, cucumbers, garlic, dates,
fish, fowl, and the like abounded. How coarse
and foul are even the great beasts of Egypt, the
crocodile and hippopotamus, compared with the
splendid beasts of prey which are the terror of
other and more highly organized lands ! Every
thing in Egypt has the mark of grossness on it.
The higher faculties of man had little stimulus,
the lower being surfeited with food. The luxury

16 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
of the Ptolemaic court was excessive.* In Egypt,
as in the world, there was all that could lay the
soul to sleep under its vine and fig-tree, and
reduce it to the level of the brutes which the
Egyptian worshipped as more wise and wonderful
than man.
This easiness of the terms of hfe is fatal to the
noblest elements in man. Look at Naples. No
heroism can be extracted from the Lazzaroni. Give
the fellow a bit of bread, a shce of melon, and a
drink of sour wine, and he will he all day long on the
quays, basking in the sun and the glorious air ;
and what cares he if empires rise or totter to their
fall? Egypt was the Naples of the old world;
wealth, luxury, elaborate refinement, of a kind not
inconsistent with grossness ; but no moral earnest
ness, no manhood, no life. Nature wooed man
to her lap in Egypt and won him, bathing him in
luxurious pleasures — Egypt was the world.
Moreover, Egypt was cut off very much from
all the political and intellectual activity in which
Babylon was compelled to share. There was the
stir and progress of hfe at Babylon. It was in
the current, it must move on or sink. The high
way of human progress passed through Babylon.
Its situation related it inevitably to the leading
* See the elaborate description in the fifth book of the
Deipnosophists of AthensBus.

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 17
peoples of the world. It would probably be just
to date the commencement of the higher civiliza
tion of man from the fall of Nineveh, and the rise
of Babylon to be the leading city of the East.
Babylon lay in the track of commerce, in the path
of progress ; was brought into fruitful relations
with neighbouring and even distant peoples, and
was compelled to play a conspicuous part in the
drama of the world's history. But Egypt, in her
quiet nook, a cleft in the desert, enfolded by
jealous wastes on every hand, was out of the line
of march. She could " five to herself and die to
herself," as was not possible for Babylon. She
could play away her strength and her life in
wanton pleasures at her will. Sense, the plea
sures of the world, pamper the self in man till it
kills and buries in its slime aU the noble, unselfish,
and distinctively manly powers ; and thus Egypt
nourished her children to wantonness, sloth, and
emasculate manhood : feeding them, lulling them,
caressing them, as the world, it may be, is caress
ing you ; but robbing them, as the world is robbing
you, of heaven and of God.
2. Egypt is the image of the wanton world
herein. It was full of the wisdom of this world,
the wisdom of the understanding, which prosti
tutes itself easily to the uses of a sensual and
earthly hfe. Man is not a beast, nor is earth a
2

18 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
wild beasts' den. It is full of beautiful and glorious
creations of human intellect and force ; but if the
name of God is not on them they bear the badge
of vile service, and lend themselves readily to
unmanly use. When the sacred fire was cold in
the temple of art in the sixteenth century, to
what uses did men like Romano lend most wil
lingly their consummate powers ? What fruit did
the complete intellectual culture of the eighteenth
century bear to the world ? Egypt was in a sense
the wisest of ancient nations, and yet her wisdom
was worth least to mankind. She covered the
land with cities and temples, invented arts, dis
covered powers, attained to a strength and stature
whose grandeur has not yet been fully revealed.
Yet where are the temples of Karnak, of Denderah ?
What are they ? Jerusalem is still the magnet of
all hearts, Rome the shrine of all priestly power.
We still think, by the logic which Aristotle deve
loped ; and the constructive men of our time, the
harmonists of long sundered spheres, in philo
sophy are Platonists to the heart's core. But
Luxor, Memphis, Heliopolis — the floods have
left them stranded, buried in the sands of time.
The world looks at them with wonder, and
steals their treasures to adorn her capitals; but
the Obelisk of Luxor is not more alone and
strange in the focus of modern civilization than

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 19
is Egypt in modern history. She has given us
no heroes. Mighty conquerors seem to have
swept over vast regions, but none of them had
genius to consohdate the empires which they
won. Cyrus, Alexander, Caasar, tread stiU with
imperial step in history. But Ramses, Sesostris,
Amenophis, who knows more than their names ?
Even such is the wisdom of this world, which
cometh to nought. "Where is the wise, where is
the scribe, where is the disputer of this world ?"
Dead as the memory of Egyptian conquerors.
That which lives must have some portion of
diviner life and higher wisdom ; that which is of
the earth earthy, as Egypt was, perishes as Egypt
has perished, and its very ruin is choked by
sand. The seeds of great things were in Egypt in
rich abundance, but she could not nourish or
force them to maturity. Even so, in the world's
dust and slime the seeds of glorious things lie
buried, waiting for the quickening breath of the
Spirit of the Lord. The wisdom of Egypt was
fruitless, wonderful as it was ; it availed only to
make the priests luxurious tyrants, and the
people miserable, soulless slaves. It simply esta
blished and maintained a system which studiously
destroyed all elements of freedom and dignity in
man; and has left the world, as its one legacy, a race
2—2

20 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
of the most abject slaves and drudges, the pity of
travellers, the sport of domestic rulers, for two
thousand years. There is something profoundly
sad in the account of what their wisdom had
brought them to, which is given to us by the
Father of History, who saw it there four hundred
and fifty years before Christ : — "At these con
vivial banquets, among the wealthy classes, when
they have finished supper, a man carries round in
a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood,
made as hke as possible in colour and workman
ship, and in size generally about one or two
cubits in length ; and showing this to each of the
company he says, ' Look upon this, and then
drink and enjoy yourself, for when dead you will
be hke this.' " — Herod, ii. 78.
And is not this the world ? Is not the wisdom,
which might have traced the path to heaven, busy
clearing and paving the path to heU ; making hfe
more cheap, death more trifling, man more beast
like every day ? Is not this the world's work in
you ? Does it nourish and expand the real life
of your being, cultivate your highest nature, and
hold your lowest under firm control : or is it
thickening daily the crust that is growing round
your spirits, whereby celestial messengers more
seldom reach them, and auroral radiance, gleam
ing through the heavenly spaces, is more rarely

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 21

seen ? Does the world nourish the habit of
self-communion, of heavenly contemplation, of
prayer ? Egypt did not this for her children ;
the world does it not for you— Egypt is the
image of the world. Such was Egypt in herself
and in her influence on her children. Now let us
consider —
II. The experience of God's children there —
its influence on a people conscious that they had
a soul to be saved.
1. They went down to Egypt with the fairest
prospects — certainty of sustenance, and promise
of wealth, honour, and power. They were to.
settle in Goshen ; better, richer land than the
bare hills which would be their only home in
Canaan, whose rich valleys would be mainly
occupied by the native inhabitants — land in every
way suited to yield pasture to their flocks. I
am not criticizing too keenly their motive in their
descent to Egypt — but they went down to Egypt
in more senses than one — as we all of us mostly
go down to a great worldly success. And though
it was brought about by most striking providential
agencies, and was ruled by God for his own great
ends, I am not sure that we are bound to believe
that the motives were pure and unworldly which
drew them thither. Jacob wanted the higher

22 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
courage of Abraham, who sent Lot down into the
rich valleys while he remained himself by the
altar of his God. Some thought of the flesh-pots
mingled with fraternal feeling; doubtless they
went down to prosper, as men go down to win a
fortune by their daily toils. And to how many of
us is that fortune a Goshen ; and if we can get
hold of any Joseph who can settle us there, God
keep us from idolatry ! The memory of Hudson's
statue is not yet cold. Still they found them
selves in Egypt in a very simple and natural way,
and in a very comfortable and prosperous world.
And why should we refuse the gifts of fortune ?
Why should we not make the best of the good
things that God puts within our reach ? Why
should we not pass as many pleasant hours in
this dull world as possible ? Is not
"Dona praesentis cape laetus horse, ac
Linque severa,"
the true philosophy of life ? So the world woos
us. We are born in it, God placed us here,
God gave us these keen senses, these imperious
appetites, and the means of their fullest indul
gence ; and why should we tighten the rein ?
See you no new reason why Egypt, when the
patriarchs dwelt there, was a fit and full image
of "the world?"

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 23
2. They had not lived there long, before, rich
and fruitful as was the land, they began to find
their life a bondage.
The cattle throve ; they had fine possessions,
and a monarch's favour. But they were men
with hving souls in them, as well as with cattle
and stuff. They had heard the name of God ;
God knew them by name, and had inscribed them
as heirs of a better country. They could not
rest. Egypt was strange to them. They could
not amalgamate with the inhabitants. The
Egyptians came to feel it ; alienation sprang up
and bitterness. Egypt laid chains on them to
keep them in her service, while they groaned and
writhed, and sighed to be gone — to be free. And
rich as the world's pastures may be, propitious
as may be its kings, the soul of man grows uneasy
in its abodes. There are moments of utter heart-
sickness amidst plenty and luxury, such as a sick
child of the mountains knows, tossing on a purple
bed of state : " Oh, for one breath of the sunny
breezes, one glance at the shadows sweeping over
the brown moorlands; one breath, one vision,
would give me new life." The very prosperity
makes the soul conscious of its fetters. The man
gets hide-bound with formalities, swathed in
respectabilities, meshed in proprieties; he lives
in a round of weary, frivolous, heartless occupa-

24 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
tion, which kills the very soul of pleasure, and
makes life, whose every sensation was once so
joyous, a clog and a pain.
3. The moment comes, in every experience,
when the bondage becomes too grievous to be
borne ; when the spirit cries out and wrestles for
dehverance, and the iron, blood-rusted, enters
the very heart.
"And the Egyptians made the children of
Israel to serve with rigour : and they made their
lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in
brick, and in all manner of service in the field :
all their service, wherein they made them serve,
was with rigour." — Exodus, i. 13, 14.
"And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the
land now are many, and ye make them rest from
their burdens. And Pharaoh commanded, the
same day, the taskmasters of the people and their
officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people
straw to make brick, as heretofore : let them go
and gather straw for themselves. And the tale
of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye
shall lay upon them ; ye shall not diminish aught
thereof: for they be idle; therefore they cry,
saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let
there more work be laid upon the men, that they
may labour therein ; and let them not regard vain
words. And the taskmasters of the people went

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 25
out, and their officers, and they spake to the
people, saying, thus saith Pharaoh, I will not
give you straw. Go ye, get you straw where ye
can find it : yet not aught of your work shall be
diminished. So the people were scattered abroad
throughout all the land of Egypt, to gather stubble
instead of straw. And the taskmasters hasted
them, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks,
as when there was straw. And the officers of the
children of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters
had set over them, were beaten, and demanded,
Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in
making brick both yesterday and to-day, as here
tofore ? Then the officers of the children of
Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying,
Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants ?
There is no straw given unto thy servants, and
they say to us, Make brick : and, behold, thy
servants are beaten ; but the fault is in thine
own people. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are
idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice
to the Lord. Go therefore now and work ; for
there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye
dehver the tale of bricks." — Exodus, v. 5 — 18.
It is a chapter out of our own history. The
men became conscious of their higher vocation,
and wept and pleaded more earnestly ; and their
tyrants yoked them more tightly, and loaded them

26 THE LAND OF EGYPT :
more heavily ; till, like Job, they cursed God's
light and hated life, in bitterness of soul. And
the soul in its Egypt, the world, drinks deep of
this experience. The moment comes when it
wakes up and says, "lama slave;" "I am a
beast ; " "I will shake off this yoke; " "I will be
free." Then begins a battle-agony ; a strife for
life and immortality — the end either a final,
eternal relapse into captivity, or an exodus into
the wilderness and to heaven.
Let the soul fight its own battles, and the most
heroic struggles shall not save it. Let it follow
the Captain of Salvation, and gird on the armour
of God, and death and hell shaU not spoil it. It
shall sweep as "on eagles' wings" through the
toils and perils of the desert, and rest at last in
the "rest that remaineth for the people of God." I
believe that once, at any rate, God leads every man
to the edge of this desert: "There, where the
flame column lights the path through the darkness
is the way of a free man to liberty and heaven.
Behind you are the flesh-pots, the melons, the
fish, and the garlic, enough of them to surfeit
you. Now choose, and for ever."
Choose now, and choose for ever. You cannot
make the tale of bricks which the devil demands
from you. When have you had a moment's rest
in his service, a moment's hope? How often

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 27
have you cursed the bondage, and writhed under
the yoke ! How often have you hurled fierce
anathemas at the lusts which enslave you, as you
felt, with a darkness of heart to which the gather
ing gloom of death were as morning twilight, that
the world was conquering, that your resistance
was weaker daily, that the battle would soon be
over, and your soul in the outer darkness for
ever ! Or perhaps you are satisfied with Egypt,
its flesh-pots and flavours ;' you do your daily
service hke a task, wearily, if you may but play
or wanton when it is done. You spur the jaded
senses with fierce excitement : the casino, the
gambling-house, the masquerade, if the burning
brands do not drop too thickly, are the only
pleasures that have the taste of pleasure to your
surfeited heart. I know not what to say, or how to
deal with you. Will you lie there and rot among
your pleasures, as Egypt lay and rotted; and then
be swept out into the outer darkness, where " the
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched for
ever." But if there be one pang of pain, one cry of
weariness, one aspiration for liberty and life, I
preach to you an exodus. Choose, choose now,
choose for ever — the flesh-pots of Egypt, the eter
nal darkness, or — Exodus into the wilderness
with God !

28 OUT OF EGYPT

Sqmmt ii.
Out of Egypt have I called My Son.
Compare Exod. xii. 80-41, with Matt. ii. 15.
Egypt is the " house of bondage," where God's
children are enslaved — -the land of easy subsist
ence, of worldly wisdom, of carnal completeness :
yet of bondage to the spirit which has caught the
tones of a divine vocation, has heard a promise,
has executed a covenant with God. The bondage
becomes more bitter as the soul becomes more
conscious of aspiration and duty, — as it strives
for hberty and pants for life. The world exacts
its tasks, the devil demands his tale, with more
cruel despotism, as the voice of the Lord is heard
cleaving the darkness, and calling forth His sons.
At length the case becomes quite desperate. The
question is of hfe or death. "I can no longer gasp
in this dense atmosphere, steaming with the
smoke of the flesh-pots, and stinking with the
fetor of corruption, — I must go forth. In the
desert there is air, light, and freedom, and be
yond there are worlds which are the spirit's

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 29
home." Then begin throes and struggles which
rend the very substance of the being, and tear
the fabric, of our world. The world and hell
muster all their power to crush us ; heaven's
bright hosts throng thither to aid. Nature seems
to groan and shroud herself in gloom during that
mighty travail ; aU heaven, all hell, battling for
the possession of a soul. Then amidst porten
tous gloom, shivering with terror and shrinking
with weakness, the soul passes out of its bondage,
through mountain gorges and walls of water,
pressed by foes and led by God, till it stands at
length a free soul under the lustrous canopy of
the desert heaven ; and sees, with an awful joy,
breaking forth into triumphal hymns, a broad sea
flowing between it and the land of its bondage,
and its tyrants dead upon the shore. Such is the
picture of a soul's deliverance, which the scripture
history presents to us. I shall in this discourse
endeavour to present to you, as vividly as I can,
the leading features of this exodus of Israel, and
thence illustrate the exodus of the soul.
During the period of their abode in Egypt, the
seventy souls which went down with Jacob had
multiplied and become a nation — "six hundred
thousand that were men, besides children," as
sembled in Succoth on the eve of the exodus.
The increase appears to be enormous. But, in

30 OUT OF EGYPT

truth, it is but a fair allowance, considering all
that was in their favour, the immense fertility of
Egypt, the abundant nourishment, and the extent
to which polygamy still prevailed. It is to be
considered, too (as Mr. Drew has pointed out in
his able and scholarly book on Scripture Lands,
note, p. 30,*) that the total number of Hebrew
immigrants must have been considerable, far ex
ceeding the seventy of the house of Jacob "which
came out of his loins." — Gen. xlvi. 26, 27. A
family had come down into Egypt, a nation was
ready to depart. The Israehtes did not belong
to Egypt, they never had a home there. There
was something infused into their composure which
made them of finer quality than the slaves of
Egyptian plenty ; they were a race of higher
strain, and in bondage they could not rest. True,
it had weakened them, demoralized them ; much
of their freedom was crippled, and their fineness
marred. But no more could the Prodigal herd
with the citizens of the swinish country, than
could Israel, all bedimmed and degraded, herd
with Pharaoh's slaves.
The character and conscious destiny of the
race, buried from common eyes in the sensual
life of the multitude, stood out, in one man's form
* Scripture Lands, by the Rev. G. S. Drew, M.A. Smith,
Elder and Co.

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 31
and history, with preternatural clearness. There
are these "prserogative" men in all ages, in whom
the capabilities and tendencies of a race or com
munity come out and express themselves. Men
who, by a hfe of toil and sacrifice, bring out the
latent possibilities of their brethren, and make
the people, after long discipline, what they are
themselves by the vocation of God. Moses,
nursed in the very lap, fed from the very bosom,
of Egypt, felt that the blood of his race had
some diviner tincture than that of the smooth,
soft, wanton, wondering Egyptians, among whom
he abode. He loved the desert more than the
city ; the free range of open pastures better than
the fanes of temples, or the palaces of kings.
By a strange chain of circumstances God led him
forth into the desert, and trained him there, in
freedom and solitude, for the grandest work ever
committed to the hand of man. Moses is the
man of Israel. You must see Israel in his mirror,
if you would understand, as God understood,
what varied powers the people had in them. And
thus, if you would understand man, you must
"see Jesus," in whom what man shall be appears.
Moses, according to God's universal plan, was
thus disciphned ; hardened and sharpened to be
God's instrument of dehverance. He came back
with a calm but unconquerable resolution to

32 OUT OF EGYPT

redeem his race. Meantime, while God was
educating the leader, the world was preparing the
masses for deliverance ; was pressing them so
hardly, smiting them so sharply, that in very
desperation at last they were ready to achieve
liberty or die. Then follows a series of most
tremendous portents, by which the people were
uprooted from Egypt, their very lusts and
passions tamed and queUed ; while Egypt was
set before them, not as a tyrant, who, if he
smote and burdened them, at any rate fed and
housed them, but as an embittered enemy,
between whom and themselves there must hence
forth be battle of hfe or death. After these dread
miracles Egypt was to them no longer a house
of bondage, but as a valley of death, as a gate
of hell. The last judgment, the most awful,
made eternal schism between them and Egypt.
Egypt herself cast them forth in terror, and
besought them to depart out of her coasts. —
Exodus, xii. 29-33.
From out the shadow of that death-haunted
night, themselves palhd with dread, they passed
forth. The powers of the world to come were
acting visibly on that theatre — the secret of the
Lord was laid bare. They went forth, not naked
and crouching, as captives, glad of life on the
meanest conditions, but as men girt for their life-

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 33
work; "harnessed," they faced their future.
They reclaimed, at the world's hand, all the
treasures of which ages of bondage had robbed
them; they "asked," not "borrowed," but
asked with open face of the Egyptians jewels
of silver and jewels of gold and raiment, and
they bore them forth as men that had a right to
them, and would use them in the service of the
living God. The Egyptians gave their treasures
as to men favoured of heaven ; and one day all
the world's wealth and splendour, now lavished
on its idolatries, shall pass into the hands of Christ,
and bear the inscription, " Holiness unto the
Lord." Thus harnessed, with their wives and little
ones, with every fleece and every hoof, with
jewels of silver and jewels of gold — not at all
as men stealing away from their acknowledged
master, but as subjects seeking the service of
their rightful king — the children of Israel went up
with all their armies out of " the land of Egypt,
the house of bondage."
It is a matter of extreme difficulty to trace
their path. That they crossed the Red Sea into
the wilderness of Sinai is clear ; but where they
crossed and by what route they reached it, is
fiercely debated among the best scholars, even
at the present day. The stations are Ramses,
3

34 OUT OF EGYPT
Succoth, Etham, and Pihahiroth, the passage of
the Red Sea, and the encampment in the wilder
ness. But none of these stations can be fixed
with certainty, and no theory can be constructed
which is entirely free from difficulty. Moses, it
must be remembered, was famihar with the whole
region ; a man, moreover, of large forethought
and resource, prepared for this great movement,
and therefore, we must suppose, prepared with
some general plan of their course. The difficulty
is how to bring the children of Israel into such a
station as that of Pihahiroth, without attributing
to Moses an utter want of skill and foresight as a
leader ; or without, on the other hand, according
to the apprehension of some, even orthodox,
critics, drawing too largely on the supernatural,
which mostly appears to sustain and strengthen
the practical wisdom of the man who had been so
richly endowed for his work.
We shall not, probably, be wrong in placing
Ramses in the neighbourhood of modern Cairo*
— at any rate in that district of Egypt. From
that point a tolerably direct eastern course would
bring them to the head of the gulf which forms
the western arm of the Red Sea. Succoth was
* This, however, is by no means certain. Very able
scholars, following the LXX., identify Ramses with Heroopolis
— considerably to the north-west of the head of the gulf.

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 35

their first station. It could not have been far
from Ramses. It means "tents," and was pro
bably a mustering-place for those who were
journeying eastward through the desert for the
purposes of traffic or war. Their next station
was Etham, "on the edge of the wilderness;"
and here the difficulty begins. The Gulf of Suez
manifestly stretched, in ancient times, far to the
north-west of its present head. It is quite possi
ble that the passage took place on some point
which is now part of the isthmus, whose features
are now all but obliterated by sand. Etham
would seem, from the narrative, to be some place
whence the desert might be reached by an easy
route ; whence, indeed, it was possible to pass up
northwards, and follow the track, " by the way
of the sea," to Palestine ; or, bending to the
south-east, seek the real desert by the wilder
ness of the Red Sea. There, at Etham, on the
edge of the desert, a strange, and, humanly
speaking, inexplicable message reached them.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak
unto the children of Israel that they turn and
encamp before Pihahiroth ; between Migdol and
the sea, over against Baalzephon, before it shall
ye encamp by the sea." — Exodus, xiv. 1, 2.
This direction turned them back from their
route round the head of the gulf, and brought
3—2

36 OUT OF EGYPT

them down its western side, at some distance from
the sea. They are expressly told to turn. There
are two possible explanations. Either Moses led
them too far southwards, and was in danger of
finding himself on the coast of the gulf, at a
point where there was no prospect of crossing,
and was then told to turn northwards, that he
might double its head, when he found himself cut
off by the Egyptian forces, and was compelled to
encamp in the gorge on the border of the sea ;
or, he was fairly en route for the desert, by a track
which he knew well, when he was deliberately
told to turn southwards, into a difficult and moun
tainous country, where he might find himself
cooped up in a wild ravine, with the Egyptian
host behind him, the deep sea in front of him,
and the cliffs on either hand so precipitous and
close up to the edge of the gulf, that there was no
way of escape for him northward along the shore.*
I believe the latter to be the true explana
tion, and that this apparent entanglement was
so ordered by God. Their strange course, in
turning southwards from Etham to the moun
tainous country on the Egyptian coast of the Red
Sea, filled the scouts who were observing their
march with wonder. They no doubt bore the
* See an interesting and able report on this subject, by
Captain Moresby, in Aiton's Lands of the Messiah.

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 37
tidings to Pharaoh, " they are entangled in the
land, the wilderness hath shut them in." These
tidings evidently directed and quickened his pur
suit. It would seem that they reached a gorge
in the mountains of which the exit was securely
barred by the sea. God's direction was explicit.
No human arm, no human wisdom was to work
their deliverance. What follows, in the fourteenth
of Exodus, completes the wonderful story. " Fear
ye not, stand still and see the salvation of God ; the
Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your
peace," was the inspiring word of Moses. And
this is the key of the whole narrative. That they
might stand still and see God's salvation, they
had been led into such straits. And thus, from
a narrow cleft of the mountain, barred behind by
all the forces of Egypt, and in front by an arm of
the sea, they were brought forth with an high
hand and a stretched-out arm, out of the land
of bondage. The broad free expanse of the wilder
ness at last spread round them, its brilliant sky
and burning stars above them ; and a broad sea,
deep and still as the waters of Lethe, swept
between them and the scenes of their slavish
tasks, their swinish pleasures, their careless serf
dom, to flow on for ever. " As for the Egyptians
whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no
more for ever." Then while the solemn desert air

38 OUT OF EGYPT

was hushed about them, and the morning sun
light bathed the scene of their triumphal exodus,
and poured a flood of golden splendour around
the camp of God's redeemed, rang forth the notes
of the most magnificent jubilant hymn that human
lips have ever uttered or heaven has ever heard :
" And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron,
took a timbrel in her hand ; and all the women
went out after her with timbrels and dances.
And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the
Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously, the
HORSE AND HIS RIDER HATH He THROWN INTO
THE SEA."  Ex. XV. 20, 21.
Thus Israel completed the exodus. Thus God
redeemed His sons. In the wilderness of Shur
we leave them awhile, to consider what this won
derful exodus has to do with us — how Israel's
history is the painted picture of our own.
I. We cannot treat this as an isolated fact in
history. As I have already shown, Egypt is the
type of the cunning, careless, wanton world out
of which in all ages God is calling His sons.
And the exodus remained a hving fact in history.
The infant Jesus went down into Egypt, as the
infant Israel went down, not to repeat the exodus,
but to illume afresh its fading lines. The descent
of Jesus into Egypt is just a divine index of the
significance of this history to man in all his

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 39
generations. His wilderness was Judea, his own
Jerusalem ; like ours, the home of our nativity,
the theatre of our life-work, our nearest, dearest,
most beautiful and familiar things. I have likened
Egypt to the house of bondage in which each
one of us labours. I have now to show how out
of Egypt God is calling His sons. " His sons!
Yes," some of you will say, "let me but know
that I am one of the elect race, the chosen gene
ration, the royal priesthood, and I come forth at
once ! God forbid that I should waste here,
among bricks and flesh-pots, the force which will
put Canaan into my power ! But how am I to
know ? The cases are not parallel. Suppose I
leave my Egypt, and fall in the fruitless effort to
force my way uncalled to the promised land !
Show me my vocation ; show me my name on
the muster-roll of God's elect host, and I am
ready at this moment to take up sword and shield
and go. In the case of Israel every man knew
himself called, every child of Abraham was in
cluded in the vocation ; to every child of Abraham
those awful miracles sealed the promises of God."
And they seal the same to you.
I say at once, that the whole history of Israel
would be quite dark to me if I could not look
upon it as a picture of God's dealings, not with
an elect circle of men, but with mankind, I read

40 OUT OF EGYPT

in the Gospel that " God loveth the ivorld " — the
world in its rebellion. I read that " Christ died
for all men." That as the hour of His agony
drew near, He took the whole world to His heart
of love, " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
men unto Me." I am told that the book is given
to me to teach me this : that every line of it has
a distinct relation to its great end — the proclama
tion of a Gospel to a whole human world. Its
last cry of invitation is to " Whosoever is athirst,
whosoever will ; "~ and with this the revelation is
sealed. I take up my Bible, and a casual glance
shows me that three-fourths of its bulk is occu
pied with the history of this people. I am driven
to the supposition that the history of this people
is a microcosm, in which I can see the history of
all peoples — that Israel is, in little, all the world.
A closer inspection of the Word sustains the sup
position. There is absolutely no other key.
Unless we take the kingdom of Heaven to mean
the whole mass of those who have heard the
proclamation of Christ's Kingship, and know
themselves amenable to His laws, then the people
of Israel is not, and cannot be made, typical of the
kingdom of Heaven. Once lay it down as a prin
ciple that there are those in the world whom, by
a distinct act of His Sovereignty, God calls out
of the world, and leads forth to a pilgrimage

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 41
which, despite many backslidings and short
comings, terminates inevitably in heaven, and
you may shut up your bibles, you may shut up
the book of experience, you may shut up the
history of Israel specially — sovereignty is all that
you have to do with ; search for evidence of that,
it will save you all further trouble ; and if you
find no evidence of that in yourself or in other
men, at least you know your destiny, it will save
you all further hope.
If I were compelled to say to you, my commis
sion is to call certain of you, who have God's
mark upon you, out of this congregation into the
living fellowship of the Church; some of you
being Israelites though unconscious, some of you
being of the world, Egyptians in blood, habit,
character, and inevitable destiny ; the only point
of uncertainty being as to who was of the one,
and who was of the other side, — I declare to you
solemnly, I would shut up this book, and shake off
the dust of my feet as I leave this desk, as a testi
mony against the most solemn mockery which a
man can enact before the face of God. That
God has His own in all ages ; that out of this
company there are those who will join that sacred
band, and some who will snuff the flesh-pots of
Egypt, and laugh at liberty and divine joys, I
cannot question ; alas, it is made daily too clear !

42 OUT OF EGYPT

That none can join that holy company except by
the Father's grace and attractive power, seems as
solemnly plain. What can "effectual" mean
except that which is penetrated with the strength
of God ? But that God has already settled it —
has put a mark on one and another, and decreed
to this one an exodus, a desert pilgrimage, and a
triumphant entrance into Canaan, whilst to the
other the flesh-pots are left in indifference or
scorn- — is a conception of His relations and ways
to man which does violence to the deepest con
victions of the human spirit, and the clearest
statements, the most earnest and heart-searching
appeals of the word of God.
I believe solemnly that each one of you, to
whom these words may come, is elect as Israel
was that night ; that to each one of you the
summons comes as distinctly, as peremptorily
from God, "Arise ye, and depart, for this is not
your rest." They were an elect race. Let us
ask wherefore, and to what.
Wherefore ? They were of the race of Abra
ham : that marked them ; that constituted their
distinctity. And you are of the race of the
second Adam, who " seeing that the children
were partakers of flesh and blood, Himself also
took part of the same." That is your distinctity.
You are of the same race, the same flesh and

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 43

blood as Jesus ; and aU who wear a human form
and understand a human voice, God calls forth
from Egypt : His voice is even now piercing,
flashing hke electric fire through the gross
darkness which enwraps the land of bondage in
which they torment and strain His sons, " Come
forth to freedom, life, and heaven." If Israel
was of the race of Abraham after the flesh, never
forget — let it shame you in your abject serfdom,
your swinish pleasures — you are after the flesh of
the race of Christ. " Awake then, sleeper, and
arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
life." And to what were they elect ?
To what did God call them, deliver them,
bring them out with a high hand and a stretched
out arm? Was it to Canaan, to triumph, to
glorious rest ? Yes, in His will He caUed them
to all this, but failing their will, how many of
them fell in the wilderness ! He states, in the
most solemn terms, that it was His will to bring
them into Canaan ; then, as their will went not
with His will, He swears as solemnly, that they
shall not enter into His rest. This opens up an
awful abyss of speculation. Who hath resisted
God's will ? What finite being can resist Him
"who doeth according to His own wiU among
the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants

44 OUT OF EGYPT

of earth ; none can stay His hand, or say unto
Him, What doest thou ? " You will find a grand
distinction, in scripture and in hfe, between what
God wills and what God decrees : when He says
a thing shall be, it must be. When He says He
wills it, if it is within the region of the moral acti
vity of the creature, the will of the finite creature
may counterwork the wiU of God. " He wills all
men to be saved." There were those of whom the
Saviour testified weeping, " But ye would not."
One feels that in this region it is easy to
darken counsel with words without knowledge ;
there are deep mysteries on every hand. It
is well if we can find some clue to guide us
even a httle way. I am far from imagining that
I can dispose of the difficulty by a few weak
words. Had Egypt no vocation as well as Israel ?
It is a dark mystery. But we can see that, in
order to understand even a portion of God's ways,
we must recognize humanity at large and through
the ages, as weU as the individual man, as having
distinct existence before God. It is only on the
scale of the universal, that much of His method
can be understood. But how much remains dark
after all our efforts! " 0 the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! how
unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways
past finding out ! For who hath known the mind

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 45
of the Lord ? or who hath been His counsellor ?
Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be
recompensed to him again ? For of Him, and
through Him, and to Him, are all things : to
whom be glory for ever. Amen." Let us be
deeply thankful that God has given us His great
love to the world in Christ, as the clue to guide
us through the maze of His counsels. We cannot
err if, understanding all that love includes, we
take it as our constant guide. One shudders,
sometimes, at the flippant fluency with which
some theologians, standing consciously on the
safe side of the line of effectual calhng, expound
all that God is doing in judgment on the other.
Some say they " glory in a God of judgment."
I believe in the judgments of love, and hold the
judgments of love to be the most awful which can
be conceived ; but I am thankful that I have
learnt to glory, as I pray that you, my brother,
may be able to glory, in a God who " is love."
I find, then, the most perfect parallelism
between your case and the case of Israel. You
are called to an exodus. You are called to get up
from your slavish lusts, your sensual pleasures,
and go forth. He calls you all forth from Egypt
as His sons — calls you forth to the desert, the
fiery pillar, the manna, the spiritual rock ; and
while you aim at Canaan, His will, His heaH are

46 OUT OF EGYPT

on your side. Be loyal ; take His yoke upon you,
and dare His service, and the pursuers of Egypt
shall not reach you, the rangers of the desert
shall not spoil you, the usurpers of Canaan shall
not stay you from the mastery of the Promised
Land. I proceed, in the second place, to sketch,
II. The moral features of the exodus.
1. There was a life in Egypt which had become
insupportable to a man. A beast might bear it,
a slave with a slave's heart might bear it, but a
man with a spark of a man's spirit within him
would choose rather the alternative of death. I
have already painted the picture. I have shown
to you how the bondage became daily more
galling and profitless, until the slaves cried out
for death to set them free. It is the picture of
the state of a soul around which the devil's toils
are closing, which has given up the hope of living
in freedom, and leaps to death for change, at any
rate, if not oblivion.
Think you not that, every night while you are
calmly slumbering, there are poor devil-driven
wretches prowling about our streets and bridges,
looking down into the dark water rushing and
glancing beneath them, and singing to them a
song which the devil suggests will be a lullaby to
anguish and remorse ? Think you that in our

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 47
crowded streets, in broad daylight, you do not
brush by many a faithful servant of Satan, who
is agitating in his distracted heart the question,
Can hell itself be more burning than these flames
which consume me now ? Yea, amid all the hum
of the world's thronged thoroughfares, the drowsy
hymn of its sleek prosperities, there enters into
the ear of the Lord God who made it all, a cease
less bitter cry against the strain of the world's
bondage, over the sweat and blood of the soul
wrung out and wasted in the dust. And there is
not one of you that has not felt the iron searing,
scorching into the very heart's core. There is
not one of you that has not wearied, and sickened,
and cried out, though vaguely and fitfully, for aid.
And God is looking down upon it all. His patience
touches its limits. Hear His word ; translate it
into your modern speech ; it is His word to you
this day : — " And the Lord said, I have surely
seen the affliction of my people which are in
Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of
their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and
I am come down to deliver them out of the hand
of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of
that land unto a good land and a large." — Exod.
iii. 7, 8.
2. They saw the stroke of heaven fall on all
that adorns, enriches, and nourishes a worldly life.

48 OUT OF EGYPT.

There was a pomp, a pride, a sensual glow in
the life of teeming and magnificent Egypt, very
ensnaring to man's wanton heart. The sweet water
of the Nile — sweetest water in the world, sweeter
than wine and honey to an Egyptian — the broad
fields of corn, the teeming hfe everywhere, the
beautiful cattle, the crowded population, the elastic
air, the brilliant sun-light, the burning stars —
these Egyptians worshipped it all. What is good,
what is God, but these ? And the scathing curse
of heaven fell upon it all. The Israelites saw the
awful forms of the ministers of the Divine judg
ments moving amidst the pomp and splendour,
and it withered, crackled, and became as fuel to
the flame before their eyes. Never before or since
has the world had such a lesson, on the meaning
and worth of civilization without God. And when
the sword of the destroyer swung through the
heavy air, and smote every first-born in the land,
they understood, in the very core of their trembhng
consciences, that the world's wealth and splendour
without God may be Hell. And God hath revealed
it unto you. You have had your idols; they have
been ground to powder, and you have tasted their
bitter dust. Nothing that a soul can be tempted
to trust to in contempt of God has been spared.
Your business has failed, your cattle have fallen,
your children — a tender mercy it may be to them

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 49
— lie in the graveyard, and in bitterness of soul
you have been made to feel that the universe
itself, and all it^doth inherit, were an apple of
Sodom, unless it came to you from the hand of
the Lord, and were consecrated by His benediction
to your use. It is the dread hour of a soul's
vocation, when these plagues fall on its idols ;
God is calling it out of Egypt. Egypt is full, not
of flesh-pots, but of waning and death. To stay is
not only to grovel in bondage, it is to grope in
outer darkness ; it is to mate with the devils in
hell. For if God has shown to you the vanity of
your idols, the loathsomeness of your lusts, and
you still cling to them, it is the devil you worship,
it is hell you cling to : the cloak, which we name
" the world," is stripped from off them, and these
are the realities behind.
3. There is a Divine leader — a man commis
sioned and inspired by God.
Of all classes, slaves are the most dependent on
leaders; and, when led, most terrible to their
tyrants. When the Roman slaves found leaders,
they became the most formidable enemies of the
State. But how shall these poor Israelites be
free ? Unused to independent action, unskilled
in arms, unbraced for war, who shall organize
and head them; who shall uplift their banner.
strike the first stroke, and by his strength and
4

50 OUT OF EGYPT

courage inspire them with the hope of victory ?
In the very crisis of their history, when the inso
lence of their tyrants and the misery of their lot
had culminated, a divine leader stood in the midst
of them, and declared that the Lord God Almighty,
the Master of the Egyptians, the Master of the
universe, was on their side.
There are times when man is specially conscious
of his spiritual dependence, when his heart is
open to Divine monitions, when from the depth
of his spirit he prays, "Except thy presence go
with me, carry me not up hence." Man can
blink the aspect of the heavenly presences in his
daily tasks and pleasures ; but when the deeper
fountains are stirred, when the stagnant pool
of his serfdom is swept by the storms of hfe,
when his idols perish, his landmarks fail — how
piteous, how abject often, his cry to the God
whom he has forgotten or scorned, for aid ! Then
how gentle, how generous, how loving, how hope-
inspiring the response ! A man steps forth, clad
in all the meekness and patience of sorrowful
humanity, yet inspired with all the strength and
wisdom of the eternal Word of God, and clasping
us with the love of a brother, the strength of a
captain, bears us forth into open battle with our
foes. Moses stood forth, and all the heavenly
hosts stood with him. The people, yearning to

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 51
know if God was with them in their perilous en
terprise, heard his voice and dared the exodus.
The force that upholds the heavens and crushes
hell, expressed itself in that voice and gesture.
He stood there — the divine man — pledge to them
of an everlasting victory.
" And now, seeing ye are compassed about
with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every
weight and the sin which doth so easily beset
you, and run with patience the race which is set
before you, looking unto Jesus, the author and
finisher of your faith ; who, for the joy that was set
before Him, endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God." " Consider the Apostle and High
Priest of your profession, Christ Jesus," who in
the house and the work in which Moses wrought
as a servant, represents God as the Son. No
mere man can take the headship of humanity.
For us it has been assumed by "Emmanuel,"
" God with us." Hell is strong; but He who
hath the keys of death and hell is stronger ; and
He is with you, young pilgrim, and wiU bury the
universe in ruins before one hair of your head
shall, unpermitted, fall. Well may you cry, tor
mented by inward traitors and pressed by con
quering foes, " 0 miserable man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"
4—2

52 OUT OF EGYPT
Look up ! a glorious Captain of the Lord's host
is here ; His title is, " Mighty to save." Those
foes that press you, He has already grappled with
and conquered ; their blood empurples His tri
umphal raiment ; He waves his consecrated
banner — the Cross, by which He won the victory
—and passes onward, onward, to complete the
triumph and to gather the spoils of the war. Lift
your hand and swear to follow Him ; grasp His
banner and pass on, cross-bearing in His tracks,
and you shall fight a good fight on the arena of
life's battles; and, dying with a freeman's shout of
triumph on your lips, pass up to share the glory
of your Captain, and reign with Him on His
recovered throne.
4. We discern a condition of utter dependence
on the strength and faithfulness of God.
They were delivered by a Divine Work. Shut
up there in Pihahiroth, arm of flesh could not
help them ; the right hand of God was their only
aid. "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the sal
vation of God," is the word which is passed
through their host. If God comes forth, there
will be triumphant deliverance ; if God fail, there
will be slavery and death. I do not enter on any
theological argument to sustain the plain sense of
the words of St. Paul, "Wherefore we conclude
that a man is justified by faith without the works

HAVE I CALLED MY SON.

of the law." But I say to every one who is
beginning to stir in his bondage and pine for
freedom, pray God that the hour may come when,
it may be in anguish of heart over the wreck
of all your worldly hopes, you are brought to
cry, "What things were gain to me, those I
have counted loss for Christ ; yea doubtless and
I count all things but loss for the exceUency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and
do count them but dung that I may win Christ,
and be found in Him, not having on mine own
righteousness, which is of the law; but that which
is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith."
The time will come when it will be revealed to
you that, unless your salvation rests on a Divine
Work, it rests on a basis of sand : that unless
your righteousness is God's righteousness, it can
never bear the blaze of celestial sunlight ; that
unless your hfe is the Divine life, the heavenly
air will wear and waste it to a wreck. A God-
Man must your leader be, and a Divine deliver
ance must He work. Shftt up between Migdol
and the sea, you will one day look back with
dread on pursuing Egypt, forward to the moan
ing sea with despair ; and unless your soul,
emptied of self-trust, yet most trustful — cleared

54 OUT OF EGYPT

of worldly hopes, yet most hopeful — can stand
still and see the salvation of Christ, " of Christ
Jesus and Him crucified," that valley will be the
grave of your soul. But there, in the agony of
despair, is the Divine deliverance; for, "when
there was no eye to pity, His eye pitied ; when
there was no arm to save, His right hand and
His holy arm wrought salvation." Stand still !
not here in Egypt, among the flesh-pots; but
there, on Calvary, amid the deepening gloom,
by what seems to be the grave of a world's hope,
and see the salvation of God.
5. The last feature of the exodus which I
dwell upon is the free, broad desert ; the world,
the universe before them ; a broad, deep sea flow
ing between them and the land of bondage ; and
their tyrants dead upon the shore.
If you have ever come forth out of some deadly
agony — from watching the death-struggle and the
victory of life in one most dear — battling, with
winds and storms on a reef in the wild ocean
— or some commercial crisis through which you
dreaded that the fabric of your fortunes, which
you had been years in building, would melt like
a wave from under your feet — you may share
the joy of those redeemed ones when they stood
free in the wilderness, watched the broad sun
light gleaming on the track by which they were

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 55
to journey to their land of promise, and their
tyrants dead upon the shore. A broad sea swept
between them and Egypt for ever. The gate by
which they had passed to hberty was locked, by
God's own terrible hand, against the pursuit of
even the most daring foes. "Here, then, is free
dom. The air is bright, the scene is grand and
inspiring; here we can live as men, and be free."
Do not be misled by the word desert. As I shall
prove to you in my next discourse, there is very
much that is sublime, very much that is soft and
beautiful, in that wilderness. Life there was harder
than in Egpyt, but nobler ; though not harder —
not so hard — as that of our Scandinavian fore
fathers ; the grandest race that has ever quickened
the flow of the life-blood of our world ! To see
the stormy armies that were closing round them,
tossed as the sport of the stormier sea ; to know
that Egypt had met with such an overthrow as
would guard them for ages from any assault ; to
see that aU before them was their own, that by
that shore the past chapter of their captivity was
sealed up for ever, and that they commenced a
new life-course from that hour ; these were the
springs of the joy which inspired that magnificent
hymn, which rang over the waters their last fare
well to the land of their toils and tears; and
this joy of the Lord was to be their strength

56 OUT OF EGYPT

through the wilderness, and bear them, as on
eagles' wings, to their own beautiful and glorious
land. And so, when the burden of your guilt and
wretchedness rolls off before the Cross on Cal
vary, when the deep sea of the Divine forgiving
love sweeps over the past and obliterates its
shame, when you lift with the arm of a freeman
the consecrated banner, and cry, " Christ is my
Leader, the free wilderness is before me, and
Heaven ! " such joy shaU thrill in your heart as
shall burst forth in music, which may mingle
with the harpings of the seraphim before the
throne of God and the Lamb.
Oh, the glorious sense of hberty, of wealth, of
life, which gushes up in the heart of the man
who has made the exodus, and sees his tyrant
taskmasters dead behind him on the shore ! The
devil ? He is a beaten foeman ; Christ shattered
his throne and seized his spoils when he cried
out, " It is finished," " and ascended up on high,
leading captivity captive." The world ? The
plagues of God have stripped it of its beauty,
the painted and jewelled wanton is made bare,
and we loathe what once was our lust. Sorrows,
toils, struggles ? We hail them. A free man
exults in the manly exercise that is wasting to
a slave. We glory in tribulations, we delight

HAVE I CALLED MY SON. 57
in toil, we leap to conflict. Discipline is our life.
And Death ? See we not Him who grappled
with the grisly Terror, and tore the iron crown
from his brow? With a song, then, through
Christ, we affront him ; we pass with a victor's
step before the prison-house where he rules in
chains. " 0 death, where is thy sting ? 0 grave,
where is thy victory ? The sting of death is sin,
the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to
God who giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ."

58 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.

The Way of the Wilderness.
" But God led the people about, through the way of the
wilderness of the Red Sea." — Exod. xiii. 18.
These words expound to us a whole philosophy
of hfe. The Way of the Wilderness has become
a household word in Christendom, and this
decision of Jehovah is the proclamation of the
law of man's earthly hfe. It repeats, substan
tially on the same grounds, and for the same
reasons, the first sentence on the man who had
made himself a slave by sin. My text is a new
and illustrated comment on the words, " And unto
Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened to
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree
of which I commanded thee saying, Thou shalt
not eat of it : cursed is the ground for thy sake ;
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it aU the days of thy
life : thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth
to thee ; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ;
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till
thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast
thou taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 59
shalt thou return." Gen. iii. 17-19. Read also
Exodus xiii. 17 — 22. These passages should be
read together, for together they explain the toils,
struggles, sufferings, and desert wanderings of
this our life.
Palestine is the England of the East.* It is
the only natural home in those regions of a free,
independent, industrious, and noble people.
Cyrus expressed a deep truth, which is one of the
chief keys to human history, when he said sadly,
after the settlement of his hardy Persians in the
rich Mesopotamian plains, " The soil which
nourishes such fruits and flowers will not nourish
warriors." This relation between the people and
their home had more to do than any careless
student of history would suppose, with the
strength and liberty, the prosperity and glory of
the most remarkable race which has ever played
its part on the great theatre of the world.
Palestine presents a most striking contrast to
the physical character of both Egypt and Meso
potamia. Their rich soft luxuriant plains, their
tame and monotonous outlines, threw up in more
striking relief the brilliant variety of the hills and
the valleys, the brooks and the rivers, the mea
dows and the terraced mountain slopes of Canaan.
* A decided likeness, especially to the northern regions of
England, has been discerned by many observant travellers.

60 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
The vast plain of Mesopotamia offered no variety,
the ranges of mountains were too distant to enter
as living features into the composition of the
landscape. It was the dreariest of all monotones
— a rich one. In Egypt the monotony was of a
different but as complete a character. The land
of Egypt was a narrow strip of the richest and
greenest land conceivable, following the course
of the river for more than five hundred miles,
the river neither gaining nor losing much in
breadth or swiftness ; for it receives no tributaries
from the point, on the borders of Nubia, where it
issues forth from its first Cataract, to the broad
Delta through which it discharges its waters into
the bosom of the Mediterranean. This narrow
belt of soil, the average breadth of which is
hardly more than seven miles, is flanked on either
side by a range of most bare and desolate lime
stone mountains, whose plateaus are arid wastes,
whose cataracts and avalanches are streams of
sand. For some hundreds of miles these level
ranges enclose the river; above Thebes, the sand
stone crosses them, and about the quarries of
Silsilis lends, at any rate, the variety of brilliant
colour to the monotony of the narrow mountain
gorge, in the hollow of which green Egypt lies.
The range of the sandstone is but small ; it soon
yields place to the granite of Nubia, which, wild

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 61
and grand as the long level limestone table moun
tains are tame and expressionless, forms the
southern boundary of the most prolific region of
the earth. But the granite region is beyond the
boundary of Egypt proper, and its children play
but slight part in her history.
Thus, in every direction around Palestine, in
the contiguous habitable countries, there is a
somewhat dreary monotony in the landscape,
and a luxuriant, almost wanton, productiveness
in the land ; two conditions as unfit for the un
hiding of the higher and more godlike part of
humanity as can well be conceived. Palestine,
on the other hand, presented a winning variety,
both of form and expression : every hill, every
valley, every village, had its distinct feature of
character and beauty whereby it was known and
loved. The land received its people as a bride,
and they entered it with a lover's eagerness.
Read the Song of Solomon, if you would see
how every nook and corner of the country was
laden, to the eye of a Jew, with an expression of
human beauty. You might search long the
records of Mesopotamia or Egypt for such a wit
ness of the character and charm of their land.
Moreover, it was a country of mountain passes
and narrow defiles. Each range of mountain was
a battlement, each pass might be made a Ther-

62 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
mopylse by a free and determined people, as
Maccabseus proved. It was a home worth de
fending, and probably more easy to be defended
by a small but courageous people than any other
portion of that region of the world. The vast
monotony, the soft wanton air, the cloudless
skies, the luxuriant herbage of Egypt, formed a
background, which served as a relief to Palestine
in the memory of the people. For slaves, Egypt
might be the meet and sufficient habitation ;
but out of Egypt, into such a home as Canaan,
God must call His sons. But by what road ?
"And God led them not through the way of the land
of the Philistines, although that was near ; but God
led the people about through the way of the wilder
ness of the Red Sea." From Etham, on the edge
of the wilderness, there were two roads to Canaan.
The one in a north-easterly direction, across the
great northern hmestone plateau of the desert, to
the southernmost city of Palestine ; the way by
which Jacob " went down," and by wThich his
funeral procession "went up " to lay him in the
grave of his fathers. From Ramses to Gaza is a
journey of about ten days. The way is easy,
rapid, and safe ; but it was not the route selected
by Moses, under the guidance of the Lord. The
other route I will endeavour in a few words to
describe.

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 63
From the head of the Red Sea it takes a south
easterly course towards the lofty range of moun
tains which occupy the triangle, bounded on two
sides by the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba ; and on the
third or northern side, by an irregular sandy
plain, which divides the great mountain region
from the vast monotonous limestone tract which
forms the desert between Palestine and Egypt,
and which has its slope steadily towards the
Mediterranean Sea.
The mountains which occupy the angle of the
peninsula approach in their highest peaks 10,000
feet above the sea level; and it is through the
ravines about their northern slopes, and the
broken, sandy tract which sweeps almost in a
semi-circle from Suez to Edom, between the
sandstone and granite on the one hand, and the
limestone region of El Till on the other, that the
way of the wilderness lies from Egypt to Pales
tine — entering it by the south-east, on the shores
of the Dead Sea. I will endeavour to condense
the 'accounts of the most intelligent students of
the physical geography of this region whose
works I have met with, and give you, as far as I
can, a general notion of it in a few words.
The central mountain chain of Syria, the
Lebanon, falls off to the south into "the rolling
limestone hills " of Judea, and, continuing its

64 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
course towards Africa, forms a vast desert plateau
of an average elevation of two thousand feet :
this is the desert between Palestine and Egypt,
to which I have referred. This table-land, very
dreary and monotonous in expression, occupies
the whole country, from near the Mediterranean
on the north, to the broad sandy valley on the
south, which separates the long horizontal line
of limestone mountains supporting the desert
plateau from the angle of the peninsula occupied
by the range of Sinai. By the great desert
valley, which sweeps round by a grand circuit
between the limestone on the left and the bolder
sandstone and granite formations on the right,
from the head of the Gulf of Suez to Akaba, the
children of Israel journeyed with their armies.
The left, or northern, side of this "Debbet-er-
Ramleh " has little character or variety — it is the
old limestone rampart of the Nile valley prolonged
into the desert, with mainly the same features ;
but on the southern side the traveller finds a
scene of strange grandeur, of awful sublimity,
not perhaps to be paralleled by any other moun
tain region in the world. In many very im
portant points, its features are unique. It is a
mountain range of a twofold character. The
chain which immediately fronts the traveller, as
he takes his departure from the Egyptian edge of

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 65
the wilderness, is of rich red sandstone, singu
larly varied and magnificent in colour, which,
running down from the desert east of Jordan by
Edom, traverses the peninsula of Sinai, and,
crossing the Gulf of Suez, reappears in Upper
Egypt, in about latitude 26° N., where it forms
the quarry of many of the most magnificent cities
and temples in the land. This narrow belt
of sandstone mountain, all aglow, if not ablaze,
with colour, excites the enthusiasm of every
observant traveller. From the way in which it
is described to us by men whose eye is evidently
to be trusted, we are led to believe that nothing
more splendid, in point of colour, is to be met
with even in the most favoured regions of the
world. But this is no more than the outwork of
the granite range of Sinai, which tosses its black
and jagged peaks into the clear air beyond. The
rock of Sinai is granite and porphyry. We meet
with it again in Nubia, throtthng the Nile in its
narrow gorge at Syene, where it forms the quarry
out of which sphinx and obelisk had been carved
in successive ages, in monotonous repetition, which
is Egyptian to the heart's core.
In the Sinaitic peninsula this granite system is
remarkable for its stern sublimity, its awful still
ness, its singular resonance, and for the few lovely
valleys which nestle in its deep recesses, clothed
5

66 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
with the richest verdure, and adorned, if not with
stately, with shadowing palms. Along the base
of this wild region the pilgrim of the desert
passes, having the low limestone plateau on his
left, and on his right the bolder sandstone,
crowned by the sublime peaks of Serbal and
Sinai, with frequent and exquisite ghmpses of
the blue Gulfs of Suez and Akaba on either
hand. It is the way of the wilderness from Suez
to Palestine ; and I imagine, after some study
of what travellers of various lands have said about
it, one of the most striking and impressive routes
in the world.
I do not wish to anticipate the description
of the desert scenes which will illustrate the
successive stations, whose moral meanings and
lessons we have to trace. I simply wish to
present to you a glimpse of its broad features,
that we may enter more fully into the reason for
which it was selected as the way of the children
of God. I have said something on the general
geological character of the region — that is, its
skeleton; now let me give you some general notion
of its aspect — that is, the way in which its bones
are clothed with flesh. It will be'needful, as the
lawyers say, to dismiss from your minds the
notions which naturally associate themselves with
the word desert. We generally understand by

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 67

the word, broad, desolate, arid tracts of sand.
If you read the Pentateuch, you will find the
allusions to sand singularly few. The people
suffered httle or nothing from the sands of the
desert. The fact is, — and as Dr. Stanley well
observes, it affords a valuable negative testimony
to the truth of the narrative, — that sand is the
exception in the desert of Sinai. Such sand-
wastes as are found in the deserts of Lybia, are
here unknown. The word most commonly em
ployed to describe this region means literally "the
pasture." " The pastures of the wilderness " are
celebrated in the Psalms. The term describes the
broad open waste which affords pasture sufficient
for a nomad tribe wandering with their flocks.
Everywhere along the track which I have de
scribed, you meet with a thin and scanty vegeta
tion ; while, here and there, are scenes of splen
did beauty and luxuriance ,where a great people
might encamp and hve in plenty through succes
sive years.
These scenes of beauty, these oases of acacia,
tamarisk, and palm, are rare. Travellers reckon
but three, of any importance, between Suez and
Edom ; but there is ample evidence that in the
desert of Sinai, as in the inner recesses of Switzer
land,* nature has been growing more savage and
* I was much struck by the observation of a Grindelwald
0—2

68 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
barren for ages ; that as man's courage and
strength have compelled her to yield her habitable
parts to his dominion, she has made her wastes
more barren and desolate. I cannot stay to dwell
at length on the proofs ; but there is ample evi
dence that the desert, when Israel crossed it,
though presenting the same general features
which meet the eye of the modern traveller, was
more rich in wood, water, and verdure than now.
Within the memory of man, vast palm groves
have disappeared. Of the acacia (Shittim-wood) ,
of which there was sufficient in the region of
Sinai to make the whole framework of the taber
nacle, hardly a trace remains. About Rephidim,
Amalek— a strong people manifestly — strove with
Moses and his nation, where now a few Bedouins
can hardly find pastures for their flocks. It was
a waste then as now, incapable of cultivation; but
more richly clad with verdure, and offering more
numerous stations where, in the lap of plenty and
beauty, a great multitude might rest.
Murmuring against the barrenness of the waste
is not the chronic disease of the pilgrim-nation,
it is rather an acute symptom at rare intervals ;
pastor, whose hospitality I once enjoyed, that nature in that
region is becoming more savage every year. The old road
across the great plateau of the Oberland from Grindelwald to
the Vallais, is quite lost.

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 69
and this testifies to the general sufficiency of the
desert supplies, and tolerableness of the desert
life. I regard this as a point of very large im
portance, because it presents a striking analogy
between that desert and the way of man's pil
grimage until the present day. God leads none
of us by the rapid and easy path to knowledge,
fortune, or happiness. We all of us travel by a
path which has long stretches of barren and weary
march, and here and there only soft resting-places,
flashing like emeralds on the diadem of the desert,
where we may wait and sleep and play awhile,
before we gird up our loins and pursue our toil
some way. There is a Debbet-er-Ramleh of
grammar, arithmetic and logic, between the young
school-boy and his Canaan of knowledge. I sup
pose you are not altogether in love with your
daily tasks, whose monotony becomes wearisome ;
but they must be done before you can ungird and
lie down in some oasis of social communion, and
live for the moment a hfe whose sensation is bliss.
I say the oases are few, but, brethren, they are
sure. No true pilgrim can miss them. Not more
surely did Israel find sufficient though scanty
pasture through the whole desert way, with oases
of beauty and plenty at due intervals, than does
man find his bread sure under the hardest circum
stances, with appointed seasons of joy and even-

70 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
rapture ; mounting up, in the holiest and most
pilgrim-hke, to the "joys unspeakable and full of
glory." The short way might bring us to rest
and glory sooner, but the rest would relax, and
the glory blind us. We travel by a longer, harder
path ; that muscle may be disciplined by toil,
courage assured by conquest, and self-govern
ment studied in many a season of shame and
pain. Then the crown will fit us, rest will be
calm and noble activity, and glory we shall wear
like kings.
Such is the broad general reason of the way of
the wilderness to Canaan. When we come to
examine it more in detail, we shall find every
where suggestions which explain and justify God's
method in the ordering of our lives. The text
gives an indication, but not an explanation. There
was a clear reason why they should not go by the
way of the sea, which the dullest could compre
hend. The Philistines were there, a powerful
confederate people. The conquest of Canaan
would be too great an enterprise for a disor
ganized company of escaped slaves. God is the
author of order in the Church and everywhere.
His miraculous hand but makes the order of His
ways more sure. The disciphned only can win
and hold a kingdom. To be disciplined they
went forth — to grow into a nation, to be trained

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 71
to war, to be nursed to a noble manhood, and
then they would be able to fulfil the great counsel
of God. Among the special reasons of their
guidance by that path, the following may be
noted : —
I. They had been sated with the magnificence
of man's works; God led them forth into the
wilderness to show them His works in their
native grandeur, and to refresh their exhausted
hearts and spirits by the vision of the splendour
of His world.
The desert is, geographically, the mediator be
tween Egypt and Canaan, and in its physical
features it partakes strangely the character of
both. In the wilderness they learnt to mark and
cherish the physical features of their habitation —
a great step in the development of beings who
had been used to the rich but wearying monotony
of the Delta of the Nile. They saw both the
sublime and the beautiful in nature, and they
acquired a touch both of strength and softness
which was the first rudiment of the education of
then- souls. In Egypt they had seen the marvels
of man's handiwork. The pyramids were already
built, and clear from base to summit ; and there
the sphinx stood sentinel — a long avenue of the
most vast and impressive sculptures in the world.
They saw those scenes in all their splendour,

72 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
whose faded glories men now make long pilgrim
ages to behold. And then God led them forth
where they might see His temples, His pyramids
and obelisks of granite and porphyry, His pomp
of colour, and all the mystery and splendour of
His construction of the world. There can be
little question that the great Egyptian monu
ments borrowed their sublime forms from the
types of nature. The pyramids and obeKsks of
the granite range of Nubia suggested the monu
ments of Memphis and On. An obelisk stands
there still, amid the ruins of On, which shot its
delicate shaft into the brilliant air that morning
when Joseph wedded the daughter of Potipherah,
and penetrated the mysteries of the temple of
the Sun. Egypt copied God's works on a scale
of matchless grandeur, and then fell down to
worship them ; and God led his people forth
to see the Divine originals, and worship in
their solemn presences not the creature, but its
Lord. The glorious range of Horeb, blazing with
more brilliant colours than ever Egypt knew :
the black, jagged mountain peaks — one of them
virgin still — rent and tossed in the most massive,
impressive confusion ; the palm-groves nestling
in their deep recesses, and the torrents, though
rarely, rushing down their channelled flanks,

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 73
tuned the spirit of the people to a higher key
note than had been struck in Egypt, and com
menced, in purifying awe and stimulating wonder,
the education of their souls.
An extended knowledge of nature has always
attended — I do not say caused — all the great
eras of the outburst of the human intellect and
spirit. It were a curious question to consider
what the conquest of the East did for the
Augustan age of the Empire ; what the Crusades,
regarded as mere discoveries of a larger world,
did for the awakening European life of the
13th century, and what the discovery of a new
and wondrously beautiful hemisphere did for the
imagination and practical force of the men of
Elizabeth's day. And so God led His people
forth into the desert to see His rock-built palaces
and temples ; to hear the even fall amid the
breathless silence of the wilderness, to watch
the sunhght burning on the sublime peaks of
Serbal or Sinai, and then touching with a softer,
tenderer lustre each point and slope, till it
flashed gaily in the dewdrops which gemmed
the desert verdure at their feet ; and there they
learnt how solemn is hfe, how wonderful is
nature, how awful and glorious is God. Egypt
had killed this sense, which had been quick in
the breast of their patriarch sires ; God regene-

74 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
rated it under the peaks of Sinai, and consecrated
it to Himself.
And God has this vision for us. Twenty years
ago, we were tempted to complain that science
was stripping the mantle of wonder off creation ;
and in that marvellous book of wisdom, Sartor
Resartus, our Cato complains, " It has come
about that now, to many a royal society, the
creation of a world is little more mysterious than
the cooking of a dumpling ; concerning which
last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the
question, how the apples were got in, suggested
difficulties." But the process is hke scaling the
outer crust of the gem or shell. Science has
unfolded beneath, new marvels, new glories, before
which the boldest and most self-sufficient are
compelled to bow. God has filled the world with
forms, hues, tones, which are an everlasting
wonder, if we will go forth to enjoy them ; and
which will tend, if we live with them much and
lovingly, to keep pure and simple our easily
bewildered and sophisticated hearts. Nature is a
book which would confound the world's wisdom if
earnestly read. How small our passions amid
the strife of elements ; how petty our fancies and
follies under the solemn canopy of the stars !
God leads us as He led them, where we can see all
this and be rebuked and silenced; and blush with

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 75
shame at our beggarly idolatries, when we know
the name of Him who built and adorned the world.
II. God led them forth by the way of the
wilderness, that He might reveal not nature only
but Himself.
God sought to lead no tumultuous, uncultured
rabble to Canaan, but a people knowing them
selves and knowing Him. A rabble they were
when they came out of Egypt, with all the follies
and vices of a rabble ; when they entered Canaan
they were an organized nation of disciplined, self-
controlled, resistless men. He led them into the
wilderness as He leads us, that He might meet with
them, speak with them, reveal Himself to them, and
teach them to know themselves in knowing Him.
"Who is the Lord?" was their cry when
Moses came to them. The hfe in the wilder
ness was the answer. Ra — Ptah — Kneph — these
are no gods, mighty as are their images and
splendid as are their fanes. The Lord, on that
awful night when He led them forth from Egypt,
destroyed their reverence for Egypt's gods for
ever.* When He planted their feet on the free
soil of the desert, He began to make known to
them His power, character, and name. His
word brought the deluge of waters over the flower
* Even in their lapse into idolatry, Aaron " proclaimed a
feast unto the Lord."

76 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
of the Egyptian forces ; His visible splendour
marked out their mysterious way ; His hand
spread the manna under the dewy veil on the
bosom of the waste, and drew from " the flinty
rock" the living stream, to supply, purely and
freshly, their daily needs. His voice thundered
on Sinai, and declared a law to them ; His finger
traced, on the tables of stone, the fundamental
basis of a moral society ; He expounded the
sanctions of right and the meaning of truth ;
He made them know, as no nation before or
since has known, that all the force of world and I
devil cannot stay the man who is in the Lord's ¦
highway of duty; that curses cannot wither nor,
enchantments entangle him ; that the very stars in
their courses fight for him, and confound his foes."
To give room and time for this revelation, the
Lord led them round by Sinai, as He leads us
round the wilderness of the world. He takes
us "round" by ways of toil and want, that we
may learn to know Him as the master of our
tasks, and the husband of our need. He brings
us to sorrow and bitter complaining, that He
may work for us — while every sense is strained
to watch it — a deliverance greater than our
dreams. He leads us, conscience-stung, to the
mountain of testimony, that we may learn the
awful form of duty, the sacred limits of hfe ; and

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 77
sends us forth, as He sent Israel, men full-armed
for the moral conflict — wise, strong, resolute,
unconquerable, because knowing ourselves, our
way, our work, and Him.
III. God led them into the wilderness, that He
might there cultivate their manly qualities, and
fit them to hold the possessions they might win.
Discretion comes by experience, experience by
endurance of pains and toils. He led them, by
this way, " to prove them, and see what was in
their heart." He needed not to know ; He fore
cast their character. But He wished them to
know themselves, and to know that He knew
them, that He might place their relations with
Himself on a firm basis of wisdom and truth.
When they passed out of Egypt, they were the
weakest and most impatient of peoples ; when
they passed into Canaan, they were the strongest
and most enduring. A comparison of Num
bers xiv. and Joshua i. will make this abundantly
plain. This development was the work of the
wilderness ; they had to be educated there to
win and to hold the Promised Land. How nobly
does Paul develop this thought, in Galatians iv.
1-9 ! This is the key to the history — " The
child under tutors and governors, until the time
appointed of the Father ; " we shall have to use
it again and again to unlock the. meaning of the

78 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
wilderness life. To spare a child the toils and
pains of education, is the most grievous wrong
that a father can inflict on him. Thus did not
God spare His sons ! From the day when they
sang their triumphal hymn upon the desert
shore, to the day when they "passed over
Jordan," their hfe was one continued disci
pline : each station, each experience, had a dis
tinct office in relation to the formation of their
character; was sent to add to them a virtue which
would be an instrument of conquest or govern
ment, and a spring of strength, not in time only,
but eternity. Not simply to keep them out of
the way of the Philistines, but to drill them till
they could master their enemies ; to nurse them
till they could bring forth a Samson, a David,
who could compel the Philistines to own their
supremacy, He led them by Sinai, and trained
them, by self-conquest, to conquer the strongest
foes. They came at last on Canaan, not as a
scattered band of marauders, but with the shock
of a thunderbolt : you feel that the battle is won
the first moment that they set their feet on the
land. And those men in the desert, hard as was
their way and fare, were making history. Bunsen
says, — "History was born that night, when Moses
led forth his people from Goshen." The narra
tive of their toils and struggles is the oldest and

THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS. 79
most precious of historic records, and their way-
book has become the heirloom of the pilgrim world.
" Behold, we count them happy which endure."
And you who are out in the wilderness, faith
less and heartless, like a sailor on a dark sea unlit
by stars, learn from Israel the grand reason of
your pilgrim vocation, and the end to which it
will be guided if you follow the highway of God.
God finds you a slave : He would make you a
son. You are not the lawful slave of wanton
Egypt; you have'the King's mark upon you, —
the King of kings is waiting to redeem His own.
Come forth, then, come forth to freedom ! breathe /
the free air, scan the broad horizon — it is your
land of wandering ; see the soft blue hills swelling
in the distance, the gleaming of rivers, the shadow
of woodlands — it is your land of rest.
One word, in conclusion. The desert was the
vestibule of Canaan ; life — not the Egypt, but the
wilderness of life — is the vestibule of heaven.
The scenery of the desert was the transition
from the paralysing monotony of Egypt to the
stimulating variety of Palestine. Learning how
to live in the desert, they were learning how
to five in a more beautiful and wealthy land.
Not a day of their discipline could be spared.
There was not an act of their wilderness hfe
which was not a preparation for their home. Let

80 THE WAY OF THE WILDERNESS.
it consecrate life and the world to your appre
hension, and make all the deed and patience
of the present sacred, to know that it bears a
great future in its breast. There is not a line
of form, a tinge of colour, a tone of sound which
you reverently study here, which is not giving
you the key to the forms, the hues, the harmonies
of celestial worlds. All that is grand and beau
tiful on earth is an apocalypse, a glimpse through
the veil, of the pomp and beauty of eternity.
These earthly things, from the blade of grass that
crisps beneath your footsteps, to the Alp, that
hides its maiden peak in the white bosom of the
skies, are but images ; their ideal forms are the
realities of God's kingdom on high. The stripes
of chastisement, the sobbings of the new-born
spirit, the tears, the wailings, have their counter
parts there, in crowns, in joys, in songs. Live
boldly, then, and freely, hke the king's heirs in
the wilderness ; make all the beauty and blessing
of this broad world your own : and the day cometh
when you shall pass with solemn joy, with fami
liar boldness, into a wider universe, bathed in the
lustre of a more glorious sun. "Come, ye blessed
of my Father," ye who have sustained the toils
and learnt the lessons of the wilderness, " inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from before the
foundation of the world."

MARAH: THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 81

Marah : the Well of Bitterness.
" So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went
out into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the
wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah,
they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter :
therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people
murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink ? " —
Exod. xv. 22-24.
God led His sons by the way of the wilderness,
because it was capable of being the theatre of a
nobler, purer, freer hfe than they could have hved
in Egypt ; than they could have hved, till dis
ciplined, in Canaan. There was room for a man
to breathe there, and work, and prepare himself
by the development of all his nobler faculties to
take a high part in all the great battles of the
Lord. The word, as I have said, employed to
describe the region means "the pastures," sug
gesting anything but thoughts of desolation and
death. Waste it is in one sense, but everywhere
clothed with a thin vegetation, brightening, as
often occurs in limestone regions, wherever a
spring gushes up from its not utterly arid bosom,
6

82 MARAH

into some of the fairest, richest, sunniest pastures
which deck the mantle of our world. The moun
tain passes — for there are such between Suez and
Edom — with all their rich variety of scenery, are
peculiarly bold and splendid; most elevating to
the spirit of a nomad people, who had been nursed
in the lap of luxuriant wanton Egypt, to the
dulness and carelessness of slaves. The points of
beauty and interest are rare, but most rich when
reached. I know not that it is otherwise in life.
It is a full repayment for the toil of days of weary
march over burning plains, to rest beneath the
palm groves of Feiran, to wander amid the glens of
Mount Serbal, or from the peak of Sinai to sweep
the horizon of one of the most glorious prospects
in the world. God loves not monotony and bar
renness. These are not characteristic of the homes
of his elect races : and let us be sure that the
land of the pilgrimage of his first-born had scenes
of interest and features of fitness not easily to be
matched upon this earth. Mark you, it was no
Eden. Of that their first day's journey into the
wilderness gave unmistakeable witness. And earth
is no Eden ; but seamed and scarred though it be
with the lava-floods of evil, it is hker still to
heaven than to hell. And this wilderness was the
vestibule of Canaan ; its free broad horizon, its
hills and mountain peaks, its rare but exquisite

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 83
valleys, its springs and winter torrents, were in
contrast with Egypt, in concord with Canaan.
These were the first buddings of the beauties of
Palestine ; their first vision of the land of rich
freedom and variety in which God meant them to
spend their glorious days. It was no scene of
prison discipline, but of manly education ; no
home of mean furniture and narrow resources,
but rather of stimulating varieties and brave ex
citements ; the meet training-ground of the race
who were to guard the palladium of the law and
the liberty of man, amid those enervating Eastern
climates where despots lorded it easily over herds
of slaves. The wilderness offered a fair field for
a freeman's education ; each moment, he would
have impressed upon him that his maintenance
was in his own hand, and under God's. The indi
vidualizing process, which is the necessary prepa
ration for a high communion, would go on there
with singular rapidity. Each man would be edu
cated to take thought for himself and his depen
dants; while the common lot of so great a company,
their common sufferings, dangers, and dehverances,
would nurse their nationality and develop their
common, pari passu with their individual life. No
where on earth probably, could a bondman be
trained so readily to be a freeman and the mem
ber of a nation, as in that wilderness. 6— a

84 MARAH

It was, moreover, as I have said, the vestibule
of Canaan, more hke beautiful and fruitful Pales
tine, with all its wasteness, than was Egypt with
all its fertility ; much as this fair earth with its
soft beauties and shining splendours, its meadows
and mountains, its morning brilliance and tender
evening shadows, is the vestibule of heaven. The
earth was cursed for Adam's sake ; but, like the
wilderness, it had left in it vestiges neither faint
nor few of Eden. The rains break up the images
of stars and snow-peaks in the clear bosom of a
mountain lakelet ; but watch well the broken
mirror, and you wiU find strangely beautiful and
even perfect vestiges of the image which has been
destroyed. And thus, too, the pomp and the
splendour of our home, the flush of dawn and
the sunset glow, the clear stars and the gleaming
flowers, the broad snow-fields in their pure white
ness, and the virgin peaks which shoot up from
their bosom to lose themselves in the veils of
heaven, are images, broken images, but strangely
beautiful and true, of the glories of that heaven
of heavens which our sunhght doth not quicken,
and where we shall see the heavenly models after
which all that this world holds was made. This
great world of ours has dreary monotonies — broad
blank plains, steppes, and deserts, which are the
wandering grounds of our common life ; here and

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 85
there, like the desert of Sinai, it has oases of
sparkhng freshness and beauty, which light up
the dulness of our daily marches, and bear witness
of other worlds.
Forth then into such a wilderness, through
stormy walls of waters, the Children of Israel
passed with their armies. " Egypt, farewell for
ever ! Come toil, come struggle, come want, we
are pledged to a freeman's march through the
wilderness, to seek our ancient freeman's home."
This was the spirit of the exodus, the spirit which
inspired Miriam's hymn. And now we picture
them to ourselves as they stand ranged in ranks
on the shore of deliverance, filling the broken
plain which lies between the range of limestone
mountains, supporting the great central plateau
of the desert, and the sea. Doubtless there was
something in the freedom and breadth of the
desert landscape which exhilarated and inspired
them ; something, too, in its monotony and vast
ness which impressed them with a sense of the
solemnity of the life on which they were entering,
and its dependence upon God. Through the first
day's march the novelty of the scene, the fresh
ness of their experience, sustained and cheered
them. The deep blue waters of the gulf, crested
with foam, would he to the right hand of the
host ; and ever and anon we can fancy a bright

86 MARAH

band of youths and maidens darting forth on to
the sands where lay the wreck of the army of
their foes, and making the very air palpitate with
the chorus, " Sing unto the Lord, for He hath
triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath
He cast into the sea." Moses and the leaders
would hold on their careful way. The great mass
of the host would doubtless follow patiently in
their tracks ; but on either hand, we can imagine,
the more adventurous would spread out upon the
shore or in the desert, exploring the wonders of
the new world into which they had been led forth
so mightily by the right hand of God.
Some impression of the character of their first
days' experience may be gathered from the words
of a recent traveller by the same route : —
"Towards noon we left the shade of the old
palm, and launched out upon the scorching waste.
From a shght rise of sandhills, a burning region
spread out before us ; an irregular plain of sand
and gravel, extending from the foot of the moun
tains Er-Raheh, which support the great inland
central plateau of the desert, down to the shores
of the sea ; its surface is indented slightly by
occasional wadies or vaUeys, here merely irregular
depressions in the level, caused by the passage of
the winter floods from the mountains to the sea,
and dotted by scanty tufts of coarse grass and

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 87
withered gritty-looking shrubs, which the camels
in passing generally caught at with avidity, but
sometimes refused. After the continuance of
rains, however, these valleys freshen up and afford
pasturage to the flocks of the neighbouring small
tribe of Terabin Arabs, whose encampment lies
beneath a singular and conspicuous peak on the
left, called Taset Sudr, or the Cup of Sudr, from a
fountain there. The shipless sea appears on our
right, and the dark mountains of Attaka beyond,
with the opening of Wady Tawarik. In one of
these wadies we encamped at sunset.
" Oct. 5. — Off before sunrise, commencing the
labours of a most toilsome day. Plain, mountain
and wady in a blaze of white heat, ' lie hke a load
on the weary eye,' and seem as if they had just
passed, aU palpitating, through a fiery crucible.
Truly this beginning of their desert course must
have appalled the Israehtes. We picture them
toiling over the burning expanse — here, too, we
learn that they were destitute of water : a fearful
privation ! In the afternoon we leave this weari
some plain, and ascend the first range of the
white limestone hills, and get peeps of the moun
tain region beyond. Winding among these hills,
at sunset we reached the fountain Howarah,
and encamped, at a short distance beyond." —
Forty Days in the Desert, pp. 30, 31.

88 MARAH :

In considering the moral meaning of all this, I
remark, —
I. That the first day's journey, in spite of the
splendid scenery of the coasts of the gulf, is pro
bably the most wearisome and monotonous of the
whole way. Sand-storms, white limestone plains,
the dust caked into a hard surface intensely hot
and dazzling, no water, no trees — it is as if the
desert put on its dreariest dress to greet its pil
grims, and gave to them at once a full taste of
the toils, and wants which they must endure in
traversing its wastes. From Marah there is hardly
a single day's journey which does not cross the
track of some green oasis, some well or thin filmy
stream which clothes itself with verdure, and
makes itself known from far by its tamarisk or
palm. But from the shore on which they sang
their hymn of triumph over their despoiled and
beaten foes, they went three days' journey into
the wilderness, and found no water. Whether
they had filled their skins at the wells now called
Ayoun Mousa — or, as is probable, since they are
not mentioned in the narrative, had depended on
the supplies which they brought with them out of
Egypt, this terrible three • days' journey through
a land of drought, under a blazing sun, must have
filled them with dread forebodings and bitter
regrets. Travellers who knoiv the stations of the

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 89

wilderness, and when and where they shall come
upon water, describe the journey through those
dusty wastes as most disheartening. But this
people had come out into a strange land : what
knew they of the springs of Elim and the oasis of
Paran ? They knew only that they were in the
wilderness : was this to be its character ? As
they pressed on in the track of their leader, dust-
covered, parched, staggering in the blazing heat,
their very hearts melted within them. Who can
live in such a desert ? God, in very vengeance on
our sins and slavishness, hath brought us out into
this wilderness to die !
The first day's journey would probably pass
cheerfully enough. The novelty, the remembrance
of their miraculous deliverance, the sense of free
dom, and the sight of the deep blue waves rolling
between them and the land of bondage, would fill
them with confidence and hope. But, as they
pressed on during the second day, and found the
desert grow more waste and parched ; as they lost
sight of the mountains and the sea behind them,
and swept the near horizon in front — -treeless, life
less, and unutterably desolate and repulsive, their
hearts would sink, and they would exchange ex
pressions of distrust of Moses and doubt of God.
The second night they encamped out under the
lustrous star-lit tent of their desert home ; and

90 MARAH

they felt, probably, that the next day would decide
their destiny — that the next night would find them
at home in the desert, naturalized to its hfe, or
dead. The morning broke, and stiU the treeless
waste stretched out before them, silent, bare, and
blank as death. But one feature of the scene as
they advanced, we may well imagine, cheered them
to endurance. The far horizon in front was
bounded, not by a line of level sand, but by sharp
mountain summits, tossing their peaks into the
sky in wild disorder, and suggesting irresistibly
the thought of torrents, glens, the shadow of the
great rocks, and groves of palms. But for that
vision of mountains with its rich suggestions, we
may well question whether they could have en
dured. At length a dark fine on the bound of the
horizon took shape as they approached it, and
palm-trees and a belt of verdure promised water to
the thirsty host. Not more eagerly does the ship
wrecked seaman, floating on a crazy raft at the
mercy of the waves, strain his sight to catch the
first white speck in the distance which may be
token an approaching sail ; not more earnestly
does a mother watch the pallid face of an infant
in a death-crisis of fever, for the first calm breath
which may tell that life has gained the mastery
over death, than does the desert pilgrim watch for
the dark spot on the fine of his horizon which

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 91
tells him that water is within reach. An oasis,
with its springs, was in sight. New courage ani
mates the host. Each eye flashes — each hmb is
re-strung. " God has not failed us : He has but
tried our courage, and now He will richly supply
our need." Loud hallelujahs would ring through
the resonant air ; and, perhaps, a strain of their
triumphal hymn would break forth again, and
over the awful silence of the desert the solemn
exulting chorus would float : — " Sing unto the
Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously, the horse
and his rider He hath cast into the sea."
And now about those three dreary days in the wil
derness without water. Such a host must journey
slowly. They would easily consume three days in
traversing a distance which a modern traveller, well
mounted and guided, could travel in two days, or
even, by a great effort, in one. The distance
from Suez to Marah is not formidable, but it was
enough to try the patience and courage of a host,
so burdened, most severely ; and to lead them to
look at the desert not as a home, not even as a
land of pilgrimage, but as a grave. Mark you, it
was a wilderness, a waste country ; no home for
such a people, but a training-ground. Amalek
might be content with its scanty pastures and live,
dead to the world, dead to history, in the valleys
of Paran. But Israel was to move on to Canaan,

92 MARAH

to occupy the Eden of the East, to mingle in the
congress of mankind, and to make not a history
only, but History. And God made them see that
it was no home for them ; their first impression of
it never left them. " That great and terrible
wilderness wherein was no water," expressed
the memory of those first days' journeys. God
showed to them its sternest countenance, that
they might not grow wanton and lust after its
beauty ; and only when the desert character had
thoroughly impressed itself on every heart, did he
lead them into the groves of Ehm, the vast
luxuriant valleys of Paran, and unfold to them
the riches and splendours of the land.
And is it otherwise in life ? Is not the same
character impressed for us on earth and hfe, when
we enter on its sterner era, when we leave the
home of our childhood, the Egypt of our careless
half-developed youth, and go out into the wilder
ness, to wander freely there under the law of duty
and before the face of God. Does it not seem to
all of us strange and dreary ? Who ever found
the first aspects of duty pleasant ? Is it holiday
pastime, the first grappling with the realities of
hfe ? Who has not been choked and parched by
the hot dust of the great desert ! though it be full
of looms, and mill-wheels, and manifold activity,
it is a desert at first to us before we get accus-

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 93
tomed to its atmosphere and at home in its hfe.
The first march into any unexplored region of
duty or thought, is hke that three days' march into
a weary land. Well does the schoolboy know it
as he plods into the wilderness of study, and faints
under the first experience of its dryness and dust.
Let him but hold on awhile, and he will find
springs and palm-trees, where he may rest and
play ; but it wants large faith and a goad of
sharp necessity to get him through the weariness
of those first days. God does not conceal from
any one of us the hard and stern conditions of
our discipline. The very first step out, under His
guidance, brings us in front of the real perils and
privations of the way. We are, none of us, coaxed
on by soft slopes of sunny pasture, and meadows
enamelled with flowers, till we find ourselves
entangled in the desert and the way shut against
our return. It is all honest and open, if stern,
this method of Providence. Over the very thresh-
hold of our pilgrimage is written, as on those
glaring plains, " this is a land of wandering, not
of rest." " Through much tribulation we must
inherit the kingdom." " If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow me."
We are saved from repeating the errors and
follies of Egypt, or are at least warned against

94 MARAH :

them, by the pain of our first march out into the
free world. It bears witness to us of our present
condition; heirs as we are of the first sentence,
whose brand still blights the earth. That first
sentence on God's sinful child received prompt
execution : " So he drove out the man." That
very night, as the shadows fell over the waste
where no human footsteps had ever trodden,
Adam knew that God was in earnest, and that
he was to be a pilgrim to the end of his days.
More dread to him than the Desert of Sin to
Israel, was that broad Mesopotamian wilderness.
The shadow of his guilt fell around him blacker
than the night, and shrouded all things. The
memory of bright Eden, lost to him for ever,
filled him with anguish, and darkened all the
brightness of the world. And the young heir of
salvation, the son of the second Adam, must in
the flesh, on earth, master the same experience,
drink the same cup of bitterness, and be taught
all the lessons of pilgrimage the first moment
that he enters on his career. The echoes of the
hymn of deliverance have hardly died down in the
distance when some practical conflict, toil, or
sacrifice reveals to him the essential character of
the life which he undertakes. In the place of per
petual songs, some dry, dull plain of duty has to
be trodden ; and in place of all- sustaining Divine

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 95
strength, his first experience is of his own weak
ness and weariness, even in a heavenward way.
Oh brethren ! it is in the history of all pilgrims
of duty, that three days' thirsty march into the
wilderness. The first stage is the true trial. It
is along the first day's march that the bones of
the fallen whiten the sand.
But on the third day, as I have described to
you, an oasis appeared in the distance, and the
eager host struggled up to the springs to repay
themselves for their thirsty toil. " And when they
came to Marah they could not drink of the waters of
Marah, for they were bitter ; therefore the name of it
was called Marah. And the people murmured against
Moses, saying, What shall we drink ?"
There is nothing very striking or beautiful
about the well of Marah — nothing to redeem its
bitterness, of which quality the word has become
a symbol wherever the Pentateuch is read. We
do not find any hint of dying women and children
pressing up to the well to drink. They were pro
bably by no means in utter extremities. Their
supplies, fairly husbanded, would have spared
them the agonies of a caravan dying of thirst.
Still they were near enough to extremity to press
up to the spring with eager haste, and to feel the
full bitterness of the disappointment, when they
found that the water was nauseous and worthless.

96 MARAH

It was the certainty of supply, when they saw the
dusky verdure on the far horizon, which aggra
vated their sufferings, when they came up to it
and found it naught. For three days they had
borne up bravely — there were no wells in sight ;
they braced themselves to endure. But when a well
appeared they were ready for indulgence, the strain
was taken off ; all unbraced, they gave themselves
up to pleasure and rest. And then the disappoint
ment mastered them: " And the people murmured
against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?"
It is a trite saying, that disappointment is the
hardest of all things to bear. Hardest, because
it finds the soul unbraced to meet it — relaxed, at
ease, and tuned to indulgence and joy. A man
can make up his mind to anything, and take it
calmly. He can live under the hardest condi
tions, and bear them cheerily. There is nothing
so elastic and self-accommodating in the universe
as man. The conditions under which human
beings have hved and flourished are most starthng
to us in these easy days. Man dehghts to pro
claim himself king of circumstance, and can main
tain his royalty, though in want and exile. Tell
him what he must do and bear, and he will do and
bear it, and much more beside. He strikes his
average of expectation, and thinks himself happy
with but a little beyond. " Consider that thou

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 97
deservest to be hanged, and it will be a happiness
only to be shot," says Carlyle, somewhere, in a
sardonic mood. But disappointment embitters
and maddens. It may be the smallest fraction of
good, a little morsel of delight which a wealthier
or happier would spurn ; no matter if it be but the
killing of the prisoner's spider, or Mungo Park's bit
of moss discovered ; whatever we are not braced
to meet, saddens or gladdens us far beyond vastly
larger and more momentous things which we have
wrought up into the average of life. Who has not
muttered " Marah " over some well in the desert
which he strained himself to reach and found to
be bitterness ? Have you found no salt waters
where you thought to find sweetness and joy ?
Love, beauty, the world's bright throngs, marriage,
home, the things which once wooed you and pro
mised to slake the thirst of your soul for happi
ness, are they all Elims, sweet springs, and
palms? Oh, what fierce murmuringsof "Marah"
have I heard from hearts wrung with anguish,
from souls withered and blasted by a too fond
confidence in anything or any being but God!
Beheve it, no man, with a man's heart in him,
gets far on his wilderness way without some bitter
soul-searching disappointment ; happy he who is
brave enough to push on another stage of the
journey, and rest in Elim, "where there are

98 MARAH

twelve springs, living springs, of water, and three
score and ten palms."
But we must not leave Marah yet. No spring
so bitter that God cannot heal it ; no want and
misery so utter that a cry to Him will not bring
effectual aid. " And Moses cried unto the Lord;
and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had
cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet :
there He made for them a statute and an ordinance,
and there He proved them, and said, if thou wilt
diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God,
and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt
give ear to His commandments, and keep all His
statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee,
which I have brought upon the Egyptians : for
I am the Lord that healeth thee." Ex. xv. 25, 26.
This miracle completes the lessons of Marah,
and offers many pregnant suggestions.
Marah was no accident. It is according to the
law by which we aU hve, and under which we are
all trained. God led them thither. He spread
those dazzling sands for their first paths ; He
made their first well a bitter one ; and He was
near to watch their suffering, to make it minister
to their health as pilgrims, and to bring them,
wiser and stronger, on their way.
A question has been raised as to the precise
nature of the miracle. Did God create the trees

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 99
at that time for the purpose, and really give them
as well as show them to Moses ? Or had He
caused a tree to grow in the desert, which had
power to sweeten the brackish waters, and thus
help all travellers at their need ? The strict
letter of the narrative favours the latter view;
and travellers have sought out, in all ages, some
desert tree, or shrub, in which this healing
quality might be found. Many have been dis
covered possessing it, in some measure ; some
the Arabs use constantly for this purpose ; and
Dr. Johnston, in his Chemistry of Common Things,
explains at length how the bark of a certain tree
has power to precipitate the mineral particles
which embitter the waters, and to make them
sweet and clear. It is a beautiful provision of
Nature in lands where she deals hardly with her
children. The desert is full of such compensa
tions. As, when one sense is lost, the loss is
strangely supplied by the new activity of the
rest : so when the ordinary supplies fail the pil
grim of the wilderness, there are ready strange,
unknown helpers, hke ministering angels, to meet
his need.* And never, through your whole
wandering, shall you find a well of bitterness
* These mutual compensations of the senses are very
singular, and are worthy of the closest study. It would
seem as though each sense extended itself through the body ;
7—2

100 MARAH :

which God, if you cry to Him in faith and hope,
shall not turn to sweetness ; never shall you
miss some bright celestial messenger to show
you a talisman which shall turn your mourning
into dancing, your despondency into exulting
joy. Still, Marah was no resting-place : God
compelled it to yield them a moment's solace
and refreshment, that they might press on to
the bright valley which He had carpeted and
decked for them, where they might rest awhile
and brace themselves for more earnest toils.
" So God showed him a tree, which when he had
cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet."
That the tree was there in the desert at all, was
the grand miracle. That Moses should be led
to recognize and use its ministry, was but a
subordinate wonder: a declaration, not a sus
pension, of the order of God's world.
I make two notes on it.
1. That in God's benignant arrangement for
the good of His creatures, the bane and the anti
dote, the infection and the cure, the pain and
the solace, he close together. No man has to
wander far for healing, no man has to cry out
long for food. It is notorious that the most
so that the soul with all its organs is in presence in every
part, though it has its special presence-chamber, where it
transacts in detail the business of its life.

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 101
common sources of pain and injury, and their
cures, are found in close proximity. Old women's
simples have a deeper method than science
dreams. In the spiritual world, most surely
the word which saves is "nigh us, even in our
mouths, and in our hearts." If the world is
near and the devil, Christ and all good angels
are nearer. Cry, cry aloud ! cry promptly and
earnestly to a present Saviour ; and, as the
light parts and scatters the mists of the morn
ing, the Lord the Saviour, with all His powers,
breaks through the gloom, and is at your side.
This bitter well may be your first heart-searching
hour of anguish. " The Lord hath forsaken me,
and my God hath forgotten me," is the cry of
your desolate heart. " This first hope has
cheated me, all others are mockers. Go to !
the earth is bankrupt, and life is a snare."
" Stand still, my brother, and see the salvation
of God." There is a tree which God hath cast
into the fountain of the world's bitterness ; by
killing the sin which poisons it, He hath made
it sweet and clear. "Look unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of thy faith, who for the joy
which was set before Him, endured the cross,
despising the shame," and drink again, the water
shall refresh thee ; then hasten on, thy home is
in the land whose waters can never fail. " There

102 MARAH

is a stream there of water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the
Lamb. And there thou shalt hunger no more,
neither thirst any more; the sun shall not light on
thee nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the
midst of the throne shall feed thee, and shall lead
thee unto living fountains of waters ; and God shall
wipe away all tears from thine eyes."
2. It strikes me that we have, in this miracle,
most important suggestions as to the philosophy
of all miracles.
I believe that the object of all miracles is to
maintain, and not to violate — to reveal, and not
to confound — the order of God's world. All true
miracles are revealings of the living God in
nature ; blazing letters, to show to the blinded
and sensual what His hand is daily doing for
the beautifying and glorifying of the earth and
life. The Lord has planted virtues of healing
in drugs and balms; and the hand of Jesus,
touching that palsied limb, reveals to us the
fountain from which daily these blessed healings
flow. The Lord is showing thee thus who healed
that fever, who soothed that racking pain ; "who
forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy
diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruc
tion, and crowneth thee with His loving-kindness
and tender-mercies."

THE WELL OF BITTERNESS. 103
And what does the calming of the stormy waters
which St. Matthew describes to us expound ?
The Lord hath shut up the storms in the deep
ravines that open on that blue Galilean sea, and
the Lord's hand ever loosens their bands when
the land is thirsty, that they may sweep cool
showers over the panting plains. And the voice
of Jesus, shedding sweet peace as from an angel's
wing over the storm-vexed waters, reveals the
Being whose word maintains, calm and constant
through the ages, this commerce and circulation
of the elements — this ceaseless benediction of the
world. "This is the Lord's doing, and it is mar
vellous in our eyes."
The wonders reveal the wonder, the standing
wonder of creation. They strike again the key
note of its order, and tune again the concords of
these lower spheres. But let us understand that
God's miracles will remain but marvels, aimless
and voiceless, such as brutes tremble at in a
storm, until we learn that the thrilling of the
hfe along the nerve tissues of the body, as it
bathes its breast in the morning freshness or the
balmy sweetness of the spring; the melody of
birds, the dewy brilliance of flowers, and all the
grace and splendour of the universe, are " shown
unto us by the Lord."

104 ELIM

The Springs and the Palm- Trees of Elim.
"And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water,
and threescore and ten palm-trees : and they encamped there by
the waters." — Exodus, xv. 27.
The first stage out of Egypt into the desert of
Sinai is, as I have said, the most wearisome of the
whole route. Three days' journey into the wil
derness and no water ! and their first well Marah
— bitterness ! God help them, if this was to be
the common texture of their experience. There
was no lack of graves in Egypt ; all the toil and
pain of the exodus might have been spared. And
this history is profoundly true to life and to man's
experience. Who has not been rudely awakened
from his day-dreams of joyous hberty? Who, in
his young career, has not knelt to drink of many
a fountain which he found to be bitterness, and
straightway flung himself passionately on the
sand, cursing fate, life, and even God ?
I suppose that to all the young pilgrims of God
the first days of joy and bliss appear like a para
dise regained. Sin pardoned ; the chain of the

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 105
captor broken ; the land of bondage fading in
the distance ; the tyrants dead upon the shore.
The glow of victory, the sense of liberty, the vision
of glory, conspire to make the first day's journey
a rapturous triumphal progress, a realization of
our dream of heaven. We need the three days'
journey, and the springs of bitterness, to disen
chant us ; to reveal the wilderness around and
before us, and bring us to the condition of sober-
minded Christian warriors, entering on a battle
field, the prize of which, after long stern conflict,
will be victory in death. The humbling experience
of our first station remains through hfe a whole
some memory : we find Marah again whenever
we are tempted to forget the wilderness, and rest
as though our heaven were won. It is strange,
passing strange, to the carnal understanding, that
the first station of God's elect host should be a
well of bitterness ; but to those who consider it
steadily the strangeness will become familiar, and
they will recognize the most friendly form of the
fatherly discipline of God. And ever, that we
fail not utterly, close by Marah we shall find,
when we have learnt its humbling lessons, an
Elim with its springs and palms.
Few stations in the desert are so difficult to
identify as Elim, in spite of the marked features
which it presented when Israel encamped under

106 elim :
its shade. There are not a few halting-places
which might answer the description, between the
well of Howara and the desert of Sinai ; but as
we learn that the people subsequently encamped
by the Red Sea, in the Wilderness of Sin, in
Dophkah, in Alush, before they reached Rephidim
¦ — (compare the narrative in Exodus with the
table of their stations in Numbers xxxiii.) — it
seems manifest that Elim must be in the near
neighbourhood of Marah, and before, entering
the mountain region, they would lose sight of the
Red Sea finally. Looking at the matter from
this point of view, it seems safe to conclude that
Elim must have been the Wady Ghurundel, of
which the following description will convey a
tolerably clear idea :• —
' ' This proved a very interesting but fatiguing day. I left
the encampment at an early hour, and reached the edge of
Wady Ghurundel — a considerable valley, filled with wild tama
risk and other bushes — in about two hours. The principal
spring wells out at the foot of a sandstone rock, forming a
small pool of clear water, bordered by sedges, and looked
highly refreshing after Ayun Musa and Howara. There was
even, delightful sight ! a little grass, and birds were hopping
about, enjoying the rare luxury. The water, trickling off,
pursues its way some distance down the valley, forming a reedy
marsh, interspersed with thickets of bushes and dwarf palm-trees,
and a considerable quantity of tamarisk, with other shrubs ; and
as there are also considerable masses of similar vegetation above
this point, there are, probably, several other springs which

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 107
nourish it. Altogether it was a reviving sight in the thirsty
desert ; and I saw no spot which could so well correspond with
the wells and palm-trees of Elim, through the entire route to
Wady Feiran. Filling our water-skins, we proceeded down the
valley, encountering here and there a few straggling Arabs of
the Terabln, with their flocks, and passing more water and
Vegetation. In rather above an hour, the blue sea peeped in
through the western opening of the Wady, on the left of which,
like a portal, rises a noble mass of slaty stone, deeply hollowed
out, and throwing a broad cool shadow into the sandy valley,
truly ' the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' " — Forty
Days in the Desert, p. 33, 34.
Such was the scene in which they rested, but
without doubt fairer and brighter far than it
appears to the modern traveUer. They seem to
have remained some days, at any rate, in this
encampment and its neighbourhood, for it was
not until " the fifteenth day of the second month
after their departing from the land of Egypt" that
they came into the Wilderness of Sin. And here
I must interpose a remark, which will need to be
borne in ¦ mind as we follow the course of the
people on their path to Canaan. We must by no
means suppose that when " the people" is spoken
of, the whole mass of 2,000,000 — men, women,
and children — is necessarily meant. Such a body
could not travel in one band. Moses and the
leaders with a considerable company would travel
by one path ; great companies, pursuing the same

108 elim :
main track, would travel by others. Ghurundel,
with its springs and palm-trees, would be the
head-quarters of Moses and the chieftains ; but
there are springs in the vaUeys all round, and
the people would doubtless distribute themselves
under their leaders, and find water and shelter as
they could around the central camp, which is
recorded by name in the Sacred Text. This con
sideration, together with the fact that the desert
was manifestly more fruitful in those days than at
present, will help us to understand how so vast
a host could find food and shelter there. You will
not fail to note that the miraculous interpositions
are, on the whole, but rare. Until they encamped
in the Wilderness of Sin they seem to have found
supply, partly from the natural productions of the
country, and partly from the stores which they
brought with them from Egypt. As they plunged
into the wilder regions of the desert, the hand of
God was disclosed to them, miraculously supplying
their need ; and they learnt that " man doth not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God doth man live."
Let me beg you to consider —
I. That Elim rises before us as the representa
tive of the green oases, the spots of sunny verdure,
the scenes of heavenly beauty, wherewith God

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 109
hath enriched, though sparingly, our wilderness
world. "And they encamped there by the waters." How
cool and fresh the words fall upon the ear ! So
fell the gurgling of the springs on the ear of
the thirsty host, as they flung themselves on the
grass under the thick shadow of the palm-trees,
and drank a draught which for the moment was a
draught of bliss. The hot, blank silence of the
desert had been around them — not a sound in
the air, not a moving thing upon the sand. It
is the very drearihood of silence — that desert
stillness, the desolation of death. Suddenly the
freshest, brightest, most living music of nature
gushes out into the silence, water babbles and
glances, grass springs, tamarisks and palm-trees
spread ; and a very paradise nestles in the bosom
of the waste. We must tread that weary silent
path if we would know the full breadth of the
music of those fountains, and share the joy of
those parched and exhausted pilgrims, who en
camped there by the waters, and cast them
selves under the shadow of the palms. And
Elim stands not alone, the one oasis of the desert ; .
scenes yet brighter and fresher, broader tracts of
fertility, we shall meet with as we attend their
march. There is no desert upon earth which has
not its Elims. Even the vast wastes of Central

110 elim :
Africa are known to engirdle tracts of beautiful
and densely peopled table-land. It is the broad
character of earth. Were it all Marah, life would
not be tolerable, even for sinners and slaves. Its.
Elims make it a marching-ground to freemen
and saints. Marah is the mark of the curse.
God has burnt His sentence deep into the bosom
of a sin-stricken world. But He seeks to set the
heart of the sinner, not towards the wastes of
desolation in despair, but towards Himself and
His heaven in hope ; and He has brightened the
desert of hfe with many a scene of beauty and
splendour which are a prophecy of the better
world. We cannot walk far on earth without
stumbhng upon the springs of bitterness ; but he
who is led of God shall not want the groves and
fountains of Elim to cheer and strengthen him in
his way. I think it very deeply important to
bring out the mixed character of Israel's desert
experience, believing as I do that it furnishes the
key to our experience of life.
This world is not all bad ; its marches are not
all bare. " Cursed is the ground for thy sake "
— and because for thy sake, it is not cursed
utterly. It is not all black, bare, lifeless, as
the crust of a cold lava flood ; a prison-house for
reprobates, instead of a training school for sons.
Sin broke up its Eden for ever ; brushed the

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. Ill
bloom from its beauty, the freshness and bright
ness from its smile. There is a sad tone about
the world's countenance. On the whole, it is a
careworn and death-stricken world ; and it looks
like it. The shadows lie more thickly than the
sunbeams ; the winter reigns more mightily than
the spring. The deepest undertone of poetry and
art is a lamentation ; earth is dressed to be the
theatre of a tragedy of life. The optimists are
ever mastered, in the end, by the severities of
reality; and Epicurus, in the long-run, sets the
fashion of suicide. It is tragic, is life ; all
peoples have felt it ; and earth is fashioned and
draped to be the theatre of man. I do not
indulge here in platitudes about the falling leaves
of autumn, and the deepening shadows of night,
because I believe that any particular phenomenon
of nature may be tuned by man to his mood if
he will. But I think that I have on my side
man's firmest convictions and earth's clearest
expressions when I say, that in the half-lights
of man's hfe here the shadow predominates, and
that the minor rules the music of the world.
They were not the most foolish and shallow-
hearted of people who believed that night was
more potent and prolific than day. (Tacitus,
Germania, sec. XL) But while I see this broad
character on life and man, and read in it the

112 elim :
fulfilment of God's sentence on His sinful child —
I say His, for He distinctly refused to cast off
and disown him ; He rather sought, by the pro
mise of a Redeemer, in that very hour to link him
at once in gratitude and hope more firmly to
Himself. — I see further, that God has not given
earth up, any more than man, to be the devil's
portion ; and keeps alive, in the heart of its wil
dernesses, scenes of verdant freshness, of radiant
beauty, which link it in close kindred with heaven.
I believe of this earth of ours that there are scenes
where heavenly visitants might fondly linger,
which need but the transfiguring celestial sun
light to be beautiful and glorious as the heavenly
land. I have seen, from mountain summits, the
mists part for the moment, and through the rift —
apparently in the heavens, the landscape beneath
and around being all veiled from sight — I have
seen the hills and meadows, the cities and rivers
of a fair island, floating in the midst of a sea of
intensest blue, touched here and there by silvery
crests of foam. I have seen the vision glow in
the lustre of such sunlight, as seemed to realize
the images of the Apocalypse ; and then, as I
watched it swimming in this sea of golden glory,
the mists have gathered again on the vision, and
left me only the memory of a glimpse of a celestial
land.

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 113
Such Christian saw from the summit of the
Delectable Mountains, such Moses from Pisgah's
crest ; such John, when he saw heaven opened in
the Apocalypse ; such we may see, some day, when
the mists and veils of hfe are parted for ever,
and the whole breadth of the heavenly Canaan
appears. Mere fancy ! some of you say. I think
not. Our world is as our being; and if in us
there are here, in the midst of the dust and
sweat of the conflict, fore-shinings, rare but clear,
of the glories in store, let us be well assured that
it is not otherwise with our world. But the.
outer sphere attends the inner, and is but its
index and expositor. And inwardly to those who
seek them, in the very stress and strain of the
battle, there come moments when they mix with
angels and taste the sweetness of the fellowship
of heaven. I often think of Jacob at Mahanaim,
where the angels of God met him ; and I am
well assured that, were we purer and simpler-
hearted, we might more often meet them. It is
not that they are cold and reticent, for what is
their joy, their work for Christ ? "are they not all
ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them
who shall be heirs of salvation ? " And these
Elims of the soul, these seasons of deep repose
and joy, these hours of unspeakably dear and
tender communion with the Saviour, when He brings
8

114 ELIM :
us into His banqueting-house, and His banner
over us is love, when we drink of the river of
the water of hfe, and eat of the fruit of the tree
which, self-willed, in Adam we lost, but which,
humble and believing, in Christ we regain, are
like these oases, of heavenly texture. They are
sent by Christ to teach us tenderly that the
ground is cursed, not to torment, but to task and
train us ; and that even here we may find, if we
will it, much both within and without us which is
most like heaven.
This, then, is the first teaching of Elim — its
perennial sermon. Those fountains gurgle, those
palm-trees wave through all the ages, to refresh
the wilderness of the world.
II. The nearness of Elim to Marah opens up
to us a deep truth in the spiritual history of man.
Had they pushed on instead of murmuring at
Marah, they would have found all they sought,
and more than they hoped for, at Elim. Ah !
the time we waste in repining and rebelling —
scheming to mend God's counsels ! How many
Elims would it find for us, if employed in courage
and faith ! But that is not the main point here.
It was quite natural that the people, after three
days' weary march, should rest at Marah ; and
the Lord, in mercy, heard their cry, and sweet
ened the bitter waters, as we have seen. But the

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 115
next stage, from Marah to Elim, was a short one
— a brief day's march — some six miles, no more ;
" and they encamped there by the waters." How
near is the sweetness to the bitterness in every
trial ! it is but a short step to Elim, where we
may encamp and rest. The brightest spots of
earth are amidst its most savage wildernesses,
and the richest joys of the Christian spring ever
out of his sharpest pains. Think you that Paul
had not found a Marah, and an Elim not far from
it, when he wrote this chapter of his history? " I
knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago,
(whether in the body, I cannot tell ; or whether out
of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth ;) such
an one caught up to the third heaven. And I
knew such a man, (whether in the body or out
of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth ;) how
that he was caught up into paradise, and heard
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a
man to utter. Of such an one will I glory : yet
of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.
For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be
a fool ; for I will say the truth : but now I for
bear, lest any man should think of me above that
which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of
me. And lest I should be exalted above measure
through the abundance of the revelations, there
was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the mes-
8—2

116 ELIM :
senger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be
exalted above measure. For this thing I besought
the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient
for thee : for My strength is made perfect in
weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather
glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ
may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in
infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in perse
cutions, in distresses for Christ's sake : for when
I am weak, then am I strong." — 2 Cor. xii. 2 — 10.
These abundant revelations were hke a weU in
the wilderness ; but how soon did he find its
sweetness bitterness, until he was led down from
his high places to the spring of Christ's suffi
ciency, and the shadow of His love ! This again
is no accident, this nearness of Marah to Elim.
The humbling pains of disappointment tune the
soul for the joys which the next station of the
journey affords. It is when we have learnt the
lessons of the wilderness, have girt our souls to
its toils and privations, and are resolved to press
on, cost what it may, in our heavenly path, that
springs of unexpected sweetness gush up at our
very feet, and we find shade and rest, which give
foretaste of heaven. The fresh young pilgrim,
full of natural force and fire, content to trust
to the common supplies of the desert, scant

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 117
as they may be, if he may but press through
to a home beyond, will find springs of bitter
ness enough. His first well will fail him ;
his natural courage and strength will die down
in murmurs ; and, unless he can look humbly
to a Father's eye and hand, and cry unto Him
who is able to deliver, he will lie down and
die at his first station, and leave his bones to
whiten the sand. Many such dread records has
the desert. Pilgrims, who started high in heart
and high in hope as you, but who never got
beyond Marah; they looked to an arm of flesh —
a man's courage and endurance — and, when it
failed them, their carcases fell in the wilderness.
Those only who march in faith, under the hea
venly Leader, reach the next station, and encamp
there by the waters of God's strong grace and
quickening love. And through our whole career
the same truth meets us. Emptied of self, we
are filled with the joy of God ; when we are
weakest, then are we strongest in Christ ; dying,
we hve. " We are troubled on every side, yet not
distressed ; perplexed, but not in despair ; perse
cuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not
destroyed : always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of
Jesus might be made manifest in our body."
Let a man, in the bitterness of his disappoint-

118 ELIM :
ment, when some spring of this world to which
he had trusted has failed him, have faith to say —
" 0 send out Thy light and Thy truth : let them
lead me ; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill,
and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the
altar of God, unto God, my exceeding joy : yea,
upon the harp will I praise Thee, 0 God my God.
Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul ? and why
art thou disquieted within me ? Hope in God :
for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health
of my countenance, and my God" — (Psalm
xliii. 3-5) — and you shall soon see him en
camping under the palm-trees, and making the
very air resonant with the song — " Bless the Lord,
0 my soul : and all that is within me, bless His
holy name. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and for
get not all His benefits : who forgiveth all thine
iniquities ; who healeth all thy diseases ; who re-
deemeth thy life from destruction ; who crowneth
thee with loving-kindness and tender-mercies." —
Psalm ciii. 1 — 4.
"Let not your heart be troubled." "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and
lament, but the world shah rejoice : and ye shall
be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into
joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sor
row, because her hour is come : but as soon as
she is dehvered of the child, she remembereth no

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 119
more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into
the world. And ye now, therefore, have sorrow :
but I wiU see you again, and your heart shall
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you."
—John, xvi. 20—22.
Marah and Ehm are together everywhere.
Life is born out of the womb of death.
It is to me very significant, that Moses made
the people enter into a kind of fresh covenant at
Marah. He rebuked their murmurs, proved and
confirmed their faith, rekindled their hope, and
straightway they found themselves in Elim. My
brother ! weeping by some salt fountain, groaning
under the burdens or writhing under the stings of
life, get thou up and renew thy covenant ; cry
unto God thy maker, who giveth songs in the
night : and hearken ! there is the gurgling of
water in the distance, the song of birds, the
breath of flowers, the shade and fruit of palms, —
go down to Elim and rest. "The Lord is my
shepherd ; I shall not want. He maketh me to
he down in green pastures : He leadeth me beside
the still waters. He restoreth my soul : He leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness for His name's
sake. 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. Thou preparest a table before me in the

120 elim :

presence of mine enemies : Thou anointest my
head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the
Lord for ever." — Ps. xxiii. "And when they
came to Marah, they could not drink of the
waters of Marah, for they were bitter : therefore
the name of it was called Marah. And the people
murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we
drink ? And he cried unto the Lord ; and the
Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast
into the waters the waters were made sweet :
there he made for them a statute and an ordi
nance, and there he proved them, and said, If
thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the
Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in
His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments,
and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these
diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon
the Egyptians : . for I am the Lord that healeth
thee. And they came to Ehm, where were twelve
wells of water, and three-score and ten palm
trees : and they encamped there by the waters." —
Exodus, xv. 23—27.
III. Let us endeavour to discern the principle
of this alternate sweetness and bitterness of
life.
" They came to Marah, and they could not drink

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 121
of the waters, for they were bitter." How is this?
Why are the promises of nature so delusive ; why
are the brightest things so treacherous ? does God
make things to deceive ; does heaven stamp falsely
the coin it issues ? are these false shows — these
trees that fruit not, these springs that refresh not
— God's work or the devil's ? are they the signs
that God has left the world to the evil one, and
these the fruits of his baneful sway ? The fairest
spots of His earth are seamed with lava floods.
The gardens of the world, Naples, Sicily, Lisbon,
are arched over caldrons of seething fire. How
shaU we explain this ? " God is good and doeth
good;" the Scripture saith it, and we gladly
beheve it ; our hearts clasp the truth, and refuse
to let it go ; but how shall we understand this ?
God refuses to be judged by these things : they
are His work, and in His world ; but they are not
final ; they exist not for themselves, nor because
He loves them. They but attend the human as
satellites : nature is as man is ; if you would
understand the sweetness and bitterness of Nature,
you must study not her, but man and God. To
study nature otherwise, separate from man, a crea
ture complete in itself, and, as far as it reaches,
the complete expression of the mind of God, is to
fall at last into hopeless confusion. These hghts
and shadows of nature, this glow and gloom, are

122 elim :
caught from a higher sphere. Nature is but the
reverse of the medal whose obverse is man. The
ultimate reason of the bitterness of Marah, is the
sin in the heart of Israel and all pilgrims ; the
ultimate reason of the sweetness and freshness of
Elim, is the mercy that is in the heart of God. I
am not saying that God put either the weU or the
palm-trees there with a special view to that par
ticular journey, and the private sins of Israel's
heart. But just as their particular sin was a stream
from the fountain of all sin, so that particular
Marah was a rill from the fountain of bitterness
with which sin has poisoned the waters of the
world. Nature has become hard, stern, and frugal
of her stores, because we have become selfish and
wrongful. It is we who make the bitterness ; the
malign elements in nature are all our work. Eden
had none of them : an evil spirit has marred the -
good constitution of the world. How manifest it
is that an evil heart is at the bottom of aU the
bitterness and harshness of nature, let our daily
experience teach us. There is not a day in which
we are not fouling some bright stream of good
ness, or turning some sweet fountain into bitter
ness by sin. Our own spirits cannot alter the
essential qualities of things, but they can alter
their character to and effect on us. We cannot
make gloom daylight, or harshness sweetness, but

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 123
we can smile at the harshness, and make the
night bright with song.
There is a fearful power in the human spirit
to make God's brightest blessings bitter curses.
Who was it who wanted to die, because God had
found a dehverance for a great city in which were
half a million of doomed men ? And there is, too,
a royal power in the human spirit to transmute
curses into blessings, and to be happier by Marah
than another shall be in Elim, who has the bitter
waters of selfishness at his heart. There is no
suffering so terrible that man cannot smile at it,
no blessing so pure that man cannot make it a
source of misery and shame. At the door of your
own spirit lie all the pangs and wretchedness you
have known. You have cursed fate and fortune,
and protested that you were the most wronged
and persecuted of men. But the mischief lies
not in God's constitution of the world, nor in His
government of it, but in your hearts. You have
found, in trifles, that Marah became Elim in an
instant, when you swept envy, malice, and
selfishness, for the moment, clean out of your
breast. Look into your own spirits when you
are moaning with anguish or shrieking with
fury, and see what hell-born passions are raging
there ; what corrosive poison of hate or lust is
searching with malignant fangs for the very vitals

124 elim :
of your soul. You, persecuted, tormented, the
victim of Fate ! Why you would moan and curse
if you were standing, with all bright spirits round
you, in the bowers of Paradise, or before the
Eternal Throne! Sweep the heart clean of lust
and passion; slay not sins, but sin; sacrifice, not
selfishness, but self; and there is no Marah be
tween you and Canaan, unless you raise self from
its tomb again, and set it up in your heart beside
the Lord.
It is fearful to hear men blaspheme the good
ness of Providence and the order of God's world,
when their hearts are not resting on them, but
wrestling against them with suicidal energy, inflict
ing, with their own hands, the wounds that drain
the very life-blood of their souls. Many a pure
spring you have thus filled with bitterness. Busi
ness, home, the marriage bond, the parental tie,
some rich success, some new acquisition, study, or
friend, some fresh apocalypse of the beauty and
glory of the world, — you have blighted and black
ened aU of it by lust, selfishness, passion, or
hate ; and now, by your bitter well, which your
own lustful and envious heart has poisoned, you
are crying out in anger and frenzy against God.
How beautiful is earth, how blessed is life, to the
man who rests his heart on the bosom of his
Saviour! The bitterest water he drinks with a

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 125
blessing, and it becomes sweeter than honey in
his mouth. How earnestly do I wish that I could
make you understand, that the springs of the
sorrow of hfe are in you ; of the sweetness, the
Ehm, in God ! Elim, as we have seen, was close
to Marah. Jesus, " when he had overcome the
sharpness of death, opened the kingdom of heaven
to all believers." That last drop of bitterness
He drank, and then passed up to His throne.
Songs of celestial gladness hailed His entrance.
" Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre
of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom.
Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity,
and therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed
Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows."
It is true everywhere, through the whole scale of
life. The Divine Master and Captain, the hum
blest pilgrim, "shall drink of the brook by the
way, and therefore shall he lift up the head."
The spring of our Elim is Faith. We may he
down beside the still waters, and bless the shep
herd who has led us into the green pastures; and
straightway, growing wanton, change our Elim
into a waste. The Elim of the soul is the presence
of the Saviour — the word of His mouth, and the
touch of His hand. Lose that and your springs
sink, choked by sand; your pastures wither and
become burnt and bare; your sun goes down at

126 elim :
noon, and a thick Egyptian darkness draws its
pall over the soul. Earth has no Elim where you
are secure against the devil's seductions. One
Eden he has destroyed, and its very place,
" Like an image in a mountain lake
Which rains disturb,"
is lost. And sin will destroy every Eden, unless
Christ is your rock in the desert, and your cool
shadow in a weary land. What baffled energies
and wasted days we have spent in working out, by;
the strength of our own arm, some conquest, or
wrestling against some great evil in the world ! At
last, weary and desolate, we have cried out to Him
to whom we should have sought at first, and a
heavenly peace has spread through the stormy
regions of passion, — a soft rest has bathed our
strained energies, a new quick life has thriUed
through every vein and fibre, and, " believing," we
have entered into rest.
I said that earth had scenes whose beauty is of
heavenly texture — whence, as from some Pisgah
summit, we might look into the heavenly land. I
now say that we may make hfe of heavenly tex
ture, and live on earth as already at home with
God. Who realizes this, is another question ;
but there is no barrier, physical or metaphysical,
to hinder it. Let us live in holy and loving inter
course with Jesus, and the flowers shall spring

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 127
out beneath our footsteps, and the music of run
ning waters shall attend us through the whole
journey to the close. There are some whose clear,
pure, childhke hearts seem to have won this privi
lege. Earth is to them an Elim : to their clear
sight there is, in common things, a radiance, a
glory, which we scarce discern in miracles. Each
daily mercy is touched as a gift from the warm
hand of Christ, and wakens musical thanksgiv
ings ; and each common trouble loses all its bit
terness, being sweetened inexpressibly by the
assurance of the Saviour's love. I have known
men — I have one now in my mind's eye — whose
citizenship of both worlds seems already perfect ;
who here, through purity, see a beauty and enjoy a
bliss which we must be purged by death to make
our own. Blessed pilgrims ! they rebuke our
faintness and stir our courage. The end is no
dream ; they see and touch it ; let us be strong
and valiant, we too shaU grasp it at last. "Thou
wilt show me the path of life ; in Thy presence
there is fulness of joy, at Thy right hand there
are pleasures for evermore." " As for me, I shall
behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall be
satisfied when I awake with thy likeness."
It may be that I am speaking to some whom God
has led forth into bitterness as of death. It seems
as though He had mingled His strongest cup for

128 elim:
you. " Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of
Thy water- spouts ; all Thy waves and billows are
gone over me," is the cry of your spirit. And
now He is making a "statute and an ordinance"
to prove you. Again and again He has led you
out to the edge of the wilderness, and you have
trembled and recoiled as you looked abroad over
its free wastes. And then He has laid the yoke
upon you more heavily. You have groaned and
fainted under the tyrannous cruelty of sin. And
now, in the last extremity, you go forth again, and
you halt by the first springs : Marah ! it is all
bitterness, everywhere ! I may as well go back
and die ! " Turn thee, turn thee, why wilt thou
die ?" To go back is to die among the flesh-pots,
and rot there hke the brutes. Turn thee ! gather
all thy courage ; call the all-conquering Spirit of
God to aid thee. Lift thine hand now, in a per
petual covenant. Give an everlasting yea to the
vocation of God, and lo ! there wave the palms,
there gush the fountains of Ehm ; encamp there
by the waters, and meditate on a pilgrim's life
and "the rest that remaineth" beyond.
Thus we may transmute through life, if we will,
Marah into Elim by faith. Shall I be departing
from the true monitions of my subject, if I speak
for a moment of the bitterness of death ? You may
conquer every trial, but the last trial still awaits

THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS. 129
you. You may sweeten every fountain of bitter
ness, but who shall sweeten the bitterness of
death ? Death is the second and completer Exodus
— the passage of the pilgrim soul to a world of which
the wilderness had bright foreshinings; whose
gates through the whole pilgrimage gleam staiiike
in the blue distance, whose brightening glories
measure our growing nearness to our home. But
the river of death runs cold and drear between the
pilgrim and those homes of the blessed. We may
take a brave heart up to its brink, but there is a
pang of sharp anguish to be mastered as its waves
swell up around the breast and choke us ; as with
long gasps the spirit struggles to breathe still the
air of a world it loves the better as it is to pass
forth from it for ever. To die ! It is the bitter
ness of life ! — the last and sharpest struggle with
the tyrannous king. Blessed be Christ, that as
the moon which lights our pilgrimage sets in the
wilderness, and casts a last pale gleam on the
wastes where we have fought and suffered, the
sunlight of the higher world flings the glow of its
dawning splendour over an Ehm, brighter, softer,
more blessed, than even our most daring dreams.
And there the victorious sufferers, " having con
quered the sharpness of death," are resting, en
camped by the waters ; they share the triumphs of
courage and patience, and wait till we join them,
9

130 THE SPRINGS AND THE PALMS.
to seek with us the Jerusalem of the skies. " And
there the sun shall no more go down, nor the
moon withdraw itself, for the Lord God shall be
their everlasting light, and the days of their
mourning shall be ended for ever."

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 131

The Bread of the Wilderness.
" He fed thee with manna (which thou kneivest not, neither did
thy fathers know) ; that he might make thee know that man doth
not lire by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of the Lord doth man lire." — Deut. viii. 3.
The people broke up from their encampment by
the waters in Elim, and resumed their wilderness
march. The next stages of their pilgrimage
would lead them through some of the most
strangely magnificent mountain scenery in the
world. They had first to traverse the successive
wadys of the sandstone region, whose intensely
brilliant colour surpasses anything which is to be
met with, at any rate within the ordinary tracks
of civilized man ; and then the wilder and grander
granite world spread its grim peaks and passes
before them; conducting them, by approaches
which cast the sphinx avenues of Egypt into
the shade, into the inner court of that sublime
temple, where they were to hear the voice and
behold the glory of Jehovah, and pass through
the great crisis of their history.
9—2

132 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
The higher mountains of the peninsula of Sinai
gather themselves into three chief clusters, whose
loftiest peaks are known as Mount Serbal, Mount
St. Catherine, and Um-Shomer — the most dis
tant and the loftiest, whose peak, until recently
at any rate, no human foot has scaled. The
broad character of this region is sterile sublimity.
The silence, the desolation, the grand form and
colour of the mountains, produce an impression
on the mind of every imaginative traveller, which
remains sacred, wholly apart from aU the other
experiences of hfe.
The sublimity of the grandest Alpine peak is
tempered by a veil of grace ; the exquisite soft
ness and roundness of the snow outhne, the
murmurs of cascades which fill the air with
music, and the bright starry flowers which gem
the earth at your very feet, lend a touch of grace
and even gentleness to the most awful mountain
forms. But in front of Sinai no brook, no tree,
no flower, no bird, gives animation to the scene :
it is blank desolation ; grandeur — but as of a
Titan petrified in death. Into this region they
were steadily advancing. The horizon in front
of them was already cut by hnes of rich variety
and beauty. It was an education to look upon
them, and to learn that by that path God would
have them pursue their way. Elim has many

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 133
sisters, in the neighbouring valleys. There is
some exquisite scenery in the passes between
Ehm and Rephidim, with visions here and there
of the blue waters of the gulf, one peep of which
Dr. Stanley thus describes : —
" Another glorious day. We passed a third claimant to the
title of Elim, the Wady Tayibeh, palms, and tamarisks, vene
rable as before ; then down one of those river-beds, between
vast cliffs, white on the one side, and on the other, of a black
calcined colour, between which hurst upon us once more the
deep blue waters of the Red Sea, bright with their white foam.
Beautiful was that brilliant contrast ; and more beautiful and
delightful still, to go down upon the beach and see the waves
breaking on that shell-strewn, weed-strewn shore, and pro
montory after promontory breaking into those waters right
and left : most delightful of all the certainty — I believe I may
here say the certainty (thanks to that inestimable verse in
Numbers xxxiii.), — that here the Israelites, coming down
through that very valley, burst upon that very view — the view
of their old enemy and old friend, — that mysterious sea, and
one more glimpse of Egypt, dim in the distance in the shadowy
hills beyond it. Above the blue sea rose the white marbly
terraces, then blackened by the passage of the vast multitude.
High above those terraces ranged the brown cliffs of the Desert,
streaked here and there with the purple bands which now first
began to display themselves. And as the bright blue sea
formed the base of the view, so it was lost above in a sky
of the deepest blue I have ever observed in the East." —
Stanley : Sinai and Palestine, p. 69.
This was their last vision of Egypt. Their
sea was thenceforth to be the Mediterranean, the

134 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
highway of the Tyrian commerce, the focus of
all the activity of the ancient world. We turn
with them somewhat sadly from their last view of
their old home, though it had been a bitter
one. Memory clings even to scenes of pain and
sorrow. It is not without sadness that we bid
any haunt, however mournful, farewell. But
the call, " Speak unto the children of Israel that
they go forward," rings again through the host,
and they pass on across the burning plain of
Murka, and by the gorgeous valleys which lead
into Rephidim, the entrance to the great oasis of
Paran — now the Wady Feiran — beyond whose
palm-groves the solemn peaks of Serbal rise.
The sites of Dophkah and Alush (Num. xxxiii. 13)
are quite lost, but Rephidim can be identified with
tolerable certainty. It means "the resting-place,"
and must have been in the near neighbourhood of
the great resting-place of the Desert, the paradise
of the Bedouins. The plain of Murka, the
wilderness of Sin, was the scene of their first
murmuring for food; but it will be more con
venient to trace their course to Rephidim, and
consider together the whole question of their
miraculous supphes, and their first battle with
and victory over their foes.
The oasis of Paran — the Wady Feiran — is the
widest and the richest of those splendid luxuriant

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 135
valleys, which here and there, at rare intervals,
relieve the monotony of the Desert route. It lies
at the foot of Mount Serbal, of which Dr. Stanley
testifies, "it is one of the finest forms I have ever
seen." The combination of the wild granite
peaks of the mountain, its black shadows, its
sterile silences, with the sparkling beauty of the
broad oasis which nestled in its breast, presents
a spectacle which I suppose can be seen only in
those sublime deserts, through which God led His
sons. This oasis was, in the days of Moses, the
home of a people strong enough to dispute with
Israel the passes of the mountains ; and, down to
the sixth century, was the seat of a settlement
which was a bishopric of the Christian Church.
We identify Rephidim the more readily with
Wady Feiran, because nature seems herself to
have marked it out as the inevitable resting-place
of the people on such a march. The fact that
Dophkah and Alush were between Elim and
Rephidim, compels us to look for the latter far on
in the direction of Sinai. Again, it is evident
that the people called Amalek (possibly a generic
name for the rovers of the Desert) were established
there. There had been no time since the exodus
for an Idumsean people to have taken the alarm,
and sent an expedition southwards to close the
first passes of the Desert against the heirs of

136 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
Palestine. This resistance was evidently offered
by a people on the spot, fighting for their altars
and homes ; and as Paran was the only region of
the Desert where such a people could find an
abode, the identification of Rephidim with the
Wady Fieran becomes almost a matter of neces
sity. The chief difficulty arises from the want of
water; Feiran being abundantly supplied. But
it is noted by travellers that the entrance of the
valley, which drains southwards into the Red
Sea, is twelve miles from the springs which feed
its verdure ; and there, doubtless, Amalek met
Israel in arms to defend the entrance to their fair
oasis, which Israel forced, and enjoyed during a
long halt the beauty and fatness of the land.
There may be seen still, in aU probabihty, the
very " hill" — the word in the original is specific,
not "mountain" but "hill"- — on which Moses
wrestled in prayer for the victory of his people in
their first battle with the foes of the Desert ; and
there, amid the glens and peaks of Serbal, he
meditated and matured his plans, and prepared
himself for the next great act in the drama of his
life — the greatest act in the drama of the world's
life, before the advent of the Lord.
Some slight description of the aspect which
this oasis now presents to the traveller, will serve
to justify the views which I have presented as to

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 137

the rich variety, the splendid beauty, and, occa
sionally, the rare luxuriance of this way of the
wilderness by which the people were led forth by
the Lord : —
" But a sudden change awaited us ; about noon, at a turn of
the road, the scene that burst upon us was more hke the dream
of a poet, than any reality in this arid wilderness. The cliffs
on either hand still towered, bare and perpendicular, to an
immense height ; but instead of a gravelly valley, collecting
and condensing the fiery rays of the sun, arose, as by enchant
ment, tufted groves of palm and fruit trees, producing on my
mind a more vivid impression of romantic luxuriance than had
been left by anything I had yet beheld in the East 
Here, in the heart of that terrible wilderness of rock and sand,
of the stunted bush and nauseous scanty pool, I pitched
my tent beneath a tall group of palms, which bent shelter-
ingly over it ; the spring coming down the valley, and rippling
among green sedges, formed a small transparent basin at the
foot of a fragment of limestone rock, fallen from the mountain
wall above ; a beautiful natural altar, as it were, decorated
with the light pensile foliage of overhanging turfeh-trees. The
camels, relieved of their burdens, after drinking their fill, were
scattered about the bowery thickets, cropping the thick blossom
with avidity and unusual relish ; whilst the Arabs spread among
the shady trees, revelling in the choicest beauty of their Desert
home, the proverbial "paradise of the Bedouins." The palms
beneath which I encamped were not the solitary ornament of
a small oasis ; but the outskirts of a dense grove, extending
for miles far up the narrow valley. On stepping out of my
tent, I was at once in the midst of an almost tropical wilder
ness. In the palm-groves of Egypt the stems are trimmed
and straight, and placed generally at regular intervals ; but

138 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
here this most graceful of trees is half untended, its boughs
spring direct from the earth, and form tufts and avenues, and
dense overarching thickets of the most luxuriant growth,
through which the sunlight falls tremblingly upon the shaded
turf. Among them some few, shooting upright, lift high above
the rest their lovely coronal of rustling fans and glowing
bunches of dates ; but the greater part assume that fantastic
variety of form which only untended nature can originate ;
some, wildly throwing forth their branches, droop to the
ground like heavy plumes, laden with a graceful burden of
fan-like boughs which almost kiss the turf ; others, crossing
and intertwined, form mazy alleys of exquisite verdure ; the
clear stream bubbles freshly on the edge of these arcades, and
the deep solitude is vocal with the song of birds ; the wind,
sweeping down the rocks, plays over the rustling foliage with
the gentlest murmur ; and, shut in by two lofty walls of rock
from the dreary Desert without, the traveller, lulled in a
dreamy and delicious repose, heightened by his past weari
ness, forgets awhile its perils and privations, and the long
distance he has yet to accomplish across its drouthy sands." —
Forty Days in the Desert; pp. 51, 52.
Having thus sketched the scene, and traced
the history, let us study its moral meanings, and
draw forth some portion of the rich instruction
which it affords.
I. They broke up from their encampment in
Elim in an enervated and murmuring mood.
" And they took their journey from Elim, and all
the congregation of the children of Israel came into
the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and
Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 139
their departure out of the land of Egypt. And the
whole congregation of the children of Israel mur
mured against Moses and Aaron in tlie wilderness :
and the children of Israel said unto them, Would to
God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land
of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, and when we
did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth
into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with
hunger." — Exod. xvi. 1-3.
They had eaten of the fat of the wilderness and
become wanton, and they began to lust even for
the fat of Egypt, the slave's portion ; the lot of
the freeman already seemed too spare and hard. —
Wisely, indeed, was the wilderness appointed for
our wanderings. Wisely was Adam sent forth
into the land in which "in the sweat of his brow he
must eat bread." Bread won more cheaply may
fatten the body, but it sends "leanness into the
soul." I never heard that money won by gam
bling or thieving brought a blessing with it to
its possessor. Did you ever hear of speculation
enriching either mind or heart ? At the time of
the great railway mania, any lad who could squint
along a level could earn large sums by surveying,
while the fever lasted, especially in the early days
of November. One, who knew the whole thing
thoroughly, told me that he had never met one of
them who had been blessed by his gains. Money

140 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
which comes cheaply goes cheaply, and leaves no
benediction. God's inscription on His coin is
labour. It is of another mintage, when that im
pression cannot be traced. Men dream away hfe
at Naples, Palermo, or Constantinople. It is the
men who have to battle with the Northern seas,
and wring a harvest from the Northern climate,
who support the great characters in the drama of
history. God does not multiply our Elims, for He can
not trust us there. He gems the earth with them,
to teach us that it is not all blasted, that we are
not a cursed race in a cursed world. He sets
them before our eyes as witnesses that there are
worlds where there is no bitterness in the foun
tains, and where man shall find more than a
Paradise regained. But He suffers us not to
linger there ; and when He leads us forth, He
knows that we shah be but murmuring pilgrims,
till privation and toil have braced our moral
muscles again, and restored the poise of the
pilgrim soul. How many of us have come out
of our Elim strengthened ? From out some cold
salt-bath of calamity we have come forth again
and again renewed. But Ehm ! who can bear its
sweetness and softness ! who does not grow wanton
by its gurghng waters and rustling palms ?
They are the very finest and purest natures

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 141
which are tuned to a higher key in Elim ; most
of us get let down to the level of the key-note of
this wanton world. To enjoy the season of rest
and refreshment with a high-souled resolution to
hold on the way, as soon as the rest has renewed
us, how hard ! how rare ! God's richest mercies
we steep in bitterness ; His most beautiful gifts
and seasons we abuse to His loss. Rare are these
palm-groves on earth. The marvel is, that they
are not rarer ; but that God's wisdom is merciful,
it would be an utter waste. But it is a bitter
thing that rest and plenty make men wanton,
and that our Father is driven to the severer
methods in dealing with our sensual souls. Rest
in Elim, but dare not to ungird. Drink ; but like
Gideon's men, " lap " as in haste. Sleeping,
let your loins be girt, your lamps burning, your
staves ready to your hand — prompt at the first
signal to renew the wilderness way. Grow wanton
there, and you make, as I have said more at
large, the whole world a wilderness ; and your
next station will find you crying for the flesh-pots
of Egypt — the fodder of slaves.
II. The first stage of their journey brought
them out into a vast sandy plain, where there
was real danger, to the eye of sense, of their dying
of hunger.
Elim had re-heartened them after Marah. But

142 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
the wilderness of Sin renewed their pains and
terrors, and "the whole congregation of the
children of Israel murmured against Moses and
Aaron." Their cry after the flesh-pots was the fruit of
Elim. They had renewed there the blunted edge
of their lust. The old appetites resumed their
sway, as they sat by the waters and ate of their
flocks ; when they went forth their murmurs broke
out with new fierceness, as of lust rekindled, and
in spirit, at any rate, they gave themselves again
to be slaves. Beware of rekindling the flame of
a dying lust or appetite. Starve it — it is the only
policy. Let it taste again, let it but look again,
it flushes up into full fever glow, and you are
once more enslaved. The thirst for blood may
lie latent in a tiger while blood is denied ; let
him but lap a drop of it, and the passion is all
aflame. Still the danger, to the eye of sense, was a real
one. Their flocks and herds had been nourished
in the pastures of Elim, and had revived after
their three days' burning march ; but what hope
was there of saving them in the end ? A new
course was before them ; still no pasture, no
water ! and when the flocks and herds were dead
what should nourish them in the waste ? The
danger to men who had no vision of the Invisible,

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 143
was pressing and real. Their dread of it was faith
less and shameful. God was the God of the
waste and of the flesh-pots; the plenty of Egypt
and the dearth of the Desert were alike from His
hand. He ha-d broken for them every morsel
they had eaten in Egypt ; His hand, curbing the
stormy waters from their path, had led them
forth into the wilderness ; and what were its
wastes that they should frustrate His purposes,
or refuse to nourish His beloved ?
Then follows the history of two of the most
stupendous miracles recorded in the Word of
God. " Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will
rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall
go out and gather by a certain rate every day, that I
may prove them, whether they will walk in my law,
or no. And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth
day they shall prepare that which they bring in ; and
it shall be twice as much as they gather daily."
" And ichen the dew that lay was gone up, behold,
upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small
round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground.
And when the children of Israel saiv it, they said one
to another, It is manna : for they wist not what it
was. And Mosesisaid unto them, This is the bread
which the Lord hath given you to eat. This is the
thing which the Lord hath commanded, Gather of it

144 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
every man according to his eating, an omer for every
man, according to the number of your persons ; take
ye every man for them which are in his tents. And
the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more,
some less." . . . "And the people thirsted there
for water ; and the people murmured against Moses,
and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us
up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our
cattle with thirst ? And Moses cried unto the Lord,
saijing, What shall I do unto this people ? they be
almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto
Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the
elders of Israel ; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest
the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will
stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb ; and
thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water
out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did
so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called
the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because
of the chiding of thc children of Israel, and because
they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us
or notV Exod. xvi. 4, 5, 14-17; xvii. 3-7.
Such is the startling statement of God's book ;
such the strong belief of the Jewish people
through all their generations, confirmed by the
words of the Lord Jesus. And I firmly believe
it simply as it is here set down. God was
beginning the education of an infant race ; He

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 145
was teaching again the lessons which in the dark
ness consequent on the Fall had been forgotten or
obscured. And this was among the first : " Man
SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY
WORD THAT COMETH OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GoD."
The reality of this miracle has been attacked
in all ages. Travellers have brought back won
derful accounts of the honey dew which falls in
the Desert, and nourishes the exhausted traveller;
also of the tree manna, which exudes in large
quantities from the tamarisk-tree, and covers the
whole ground ; both which answer, in some very
qualified degree, to the description in the text.
There seems to be no doubt about the natural
productions of the Desert, though it is difficult
to get at the whole truth about them. It seems
to me that the Arabs are clever cicerone, and
tell the traveller what it pleases him most to
hear. The Rationalists come back with explicit
Arab testimony in one direction, and the Orthodox
with as clear statements in the opposite one.
Doubtless they are prompt to answer leading
questions, and he liberally, we fear, when well
paid. But we may freely accept the account of
travellers on the subject of the natural manna.
I should be as little inclined to doubt that many
natural rills are found springing out of the rocks
of the Desert. God does not contradict Himself,
10

146 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
or dishonour nature, by his miracles. I should
anticipate that this miracle, hke all miracles,
would be a revelation ; an unfolding of the inner
springs of the mechanism of nature there ; an
exaltation and perfecting of some handiwork of
nature for His people's good. It seems most hkely
to me that there should be some natural substance
there, to be the bread of the desert to the few
wanderers ; and that God, as with the loaves and
fishes, and the wine at Cana, multiplied and
purified it exceedingly, and made it a perennial
store for the supply of His children's need. The
gift of the manna was unquestionably a miracle ;
the quality, the constancy, the Sabbath supply,
and its cessation, as reported in Joshua v. 12, all
mark it out as a miraculous supply of what was
truly a marvellous need — for the miracle of
miracles was the presence of that people there —
and it does not trouble me, it rather instructs me
and deepens my sense of the wonder of the
works of God, when I hear that manna is still in
smaU quantities to be found in the Desert, and
that streams start freshly out of rocks in a very
remarkable and unexpected way. God's care of
His people is not a constant suspension of the
laws which govern and bless His creatures, but a
more full and rich application of them, that they
may bestow the whole blessing which their hands

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 147
contain. The order of things is good ; God's
miracles even cannot mend it ; they but disclose
it, and apply its blessing directly to the child
whom He instructs and tends.*
Israel had to learn that it was quite as wonder
ful that they should have been fed in Egypt, as
that they should eat bread in the Desert ; that
the one as well as the other was the distinct and
wonderful handiwork of God. Many streams
they had passed gushing out of the rocks as they
had journeyed, and had drunk, unmindful of the
hand which held the cup to their lips. It needed
that they should be perishing, and be visibly sup
plied by the hand of God, before they understood
the great wonder, their daily sustenance, and
learnt that daily "by the word that cometh out
of the mouth of God doth man live." That
bread and that water were in a sense living — fresh
angels' food. They must have had a special
sweetness in them, compared with the waters of
the cisterns which we hew — puddles fouled and
muddied by the hoofs of our vagrant desires and
lusts. But this bread even, the angels' food,
* See, on the whole subject of the miraculous, the masterly
Discourse on Revelation, published many years ago by
A. J. Scott, A.M. ; which seems to me to be the quarry from
which many views on miracles, now fully current, have been
hewn.
10—2

148 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
nourishes not a spirit : " The Father giveth us
the true bread from heaven." " The bread of
God is He which cometh down from heaven and
giveth life unto the world."
And think you, brother pilgrim ! that in any
waste to which you are led forth by God's angel,
His bread and water can fail you ? Think you
that if you go up out of Egypt, shake off the
fetters of any bondage that weakens and de
grades you, He will leave you to starve in the
desert ? Man of business ! struggling to live
honestly and bravely, flinging off the bonds of
the habits which reign in the Goshen of commer
cial wealth and splendour, think you that your
bread and water are other than sure ? Let this
history of Israel teach you : it was written for
your learning. Go forth, and the dews shall feed
you, the rock shall give you drink ; but not one
hair of your head or of those who depend on you,
be you but brave and faithful, shall be harmed.
Oh ! how fearful are we when we get out of
our Egypt into new scenes, where the familiar
supplies and associations fail. So long as we had
it in our own hand, our own garden, our own
cooking-pot, none so confident as we ! But
abroad in the desert, among rocks and sands !
Can waters spring from the flinty rock, and bread
grow out of the dry ground ? Yea, all this is

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 149
possible — easy to Him as your leek and melon
beds in Egypt ; but one thing is impossible, im
possible for ever, for the supphes of God to fail a
trusting believing soul. Men lay up for their
children " where moth and rust corrupt, and
thieves break through to steal," and think they
have done well, and made all sure ; while the
riches of faculty and character, which can never
perish, and the blessing of God, which can never
grow old, seems to us but an uncertain heritage
for our beloved. And so we, blind as we are to
the real presence of God everywhen and every
where, have to be brought low, and made to cry
out of misery ; and then He shows to us, in our
want and sorrow, what He had shown to us in
our joy and plenty, but we would not see it, that
every thing is by " the word that cometh out of
the mouth of God."
Neither did they learn the lesson from these
miracles perfectly. They had to be brought down
again, and again, and again, and the lesson had
to be reiterated, with indignant judgments, Be
ware ! " how is it that ye do not understand 1 " Deep
teaching of spiritual truth is there in these
miracles, wonderful unfoldings of the mysteries of
man's spiritual hfe. The outer life is the key to
the inner ; as the body lives by bread, so the soul
must live by Christ or perish. As they ate of

150 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
that manna and drank of that brook, they were
called to commune in love and confidence with
their God, and be nourished unto hfe.
Alas ! how few won the double blessing. They
drank of that well and thirsted again, they ate of
that bread and died. The world's food cannot
nourish spirits, the world's pleasures cannot
satisfy the infinite longings of a human heart.
" Take thy fill, eat the fat and drink the sweet;"
and then, if that be all, the fever of insatiate long
ing, the fire of ravening lust, through eternity.
How calm and deep, amid the stirrings and
rushings of the thirsty host to fill their water-
cups at the rill which was flashing and gurgling
through the sand — meet type of the wrestling,
panting multitude who are thronging all the plea
sure springs of the world — do the words of Jesus
fall upon the ear: "Whosoever drinketh of this
water shall thirst again ; but whosoever drinketh of
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but
the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well
of water, springing up into everlasting life."
III. Rephidim was the scene of their first
battle and their first victory.
In the first great act of the drama of deliver
ance, their duty had been simply to " Stand still
and see the salvation of God." The hour was
now come when they must " quit them like men

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 151
and fight." Not otherwise is it in the Christian
hfe. To rest on Christ, to " stand still and see
His salvation," is the true deliverance of a spirit:
this is redemption. But we must fight hard, as
if the victory depended on ourselves; — not for
redemption, but as redeemed, if we would reap
all its glorious fruits.
The first foes of Israel were their kinsmen.
"And a man's foes shaU be they of his own
house." Notably so in the first ages, and in
heathen lands ; but even here, how hard it is to
take up an independent standing-ground among
one's kinsmen and familiars, and to be a saint
among one's friends ! But come whence they
may, foes soon beset the young pilgrim : before
he has gone far, a long day's battle will test his
courage and strain his strength. Lusts and pas
sions, which he thought he had slain for ever,
stand forth alive, and renew the conflict. The
Egyptians slain, new enemies throng round us.
Our pilgrimage must be a war-march, with battle-
music and banners : " Jehovah nissi," " the
Lord my banner," we cry, and renew the fight.
How prone is the young soldier of Christ to think
that his first victory is a final one ! But the out
ward tyranny beaten, the external enemy slain,
he finds, as Israel found, that the true battle of
life commences ; that things and beings dear to

152 THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS.
him as his own soul range themselves to oppose
his progress, or lurk as traitors within the citadel
of his own heart, ready to render it meanly to the
foe. "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off
and cast it from thee," is the charge which is laid
upon him. " Thou therefore endure hardness,
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ," is the inspiring
cry of his Chief. But the battle goes hard, the
foemen are many and strong, the heart faints,
the strength fails, the banner droops, and Amalek
raises the shout of victory. " Who is sufficient
for these things?" Who can- bear the strain
and stress of this war ? Lift up your eyes and
behold the great Intercessor ! Behold the up
lifted arms of Jesus, pleading your cause before
the Eternal Throne. Pray! wrestle in prayer!
fight with heart uplifted ! The hand brave,
strong, prompt as Joshua's; the heart humble,
dependent, prayerful, as Moses', and hell has not
strength to master you :
"By all hell's hosts withstood,
We all hell's hosts o'erthrow,
And conquering them by Jesus' blood,
We still to conquest go."
Let your heart lose its hold on Jesus, your ban
ner sinks, the enemy closes round it, the battle is
lost ! Nay, look once more. Grasp once more
the consecrated standard, cross-bearing, renew the

THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS. 153
fight ; and that banner shall float victorious on
all the storms that rage through the field of
conflict ; your steps shaU be heard at length at
heaven's gate as the steps of a conqueror, and
shouts of triumph shah ring through the arches
of the heavenly temple, as you bend before the
Captain of salvation to receive your crown.

154 THE REVELATION

(Swpon mi.
Sinai. The Revelation of the Divine
Name.
" I am the Lord thy God." — Exod. xx. 2.
If we are right in the identification of Rephidim
with the Wady Feiran, the great Oasis of the
Desert, we shall have the less difficulty in deter
mining the site of the Mountain of the Law.
This giving of the law to the Jewish people, is the
most solemn and pregnant event before the Chris
tian era ; it has but one parallel — the advent of
Him who giveth the law to the whole human
world. The sentence is profoundly true, that
that day was the birthday of history. The whole
significance of the exodus was developed before
Sinai ; and History, as well as Israel, was baptized
there in the name of the Lord God "of ah the
earth." In the heart of that terrible and magni
ficent wilderness, He wrote His name above the
tabernacle of man's history. Like the name of
the architect of the Pharos, it has been overlaid
by that of the kings, conquerors, and divine heroes
of this world; but the clay crumbles away through

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 155
the wear of the ages, and the name of the Lord
God of Israel stands out grandly before us as at
first. The general term, Sinai, is applied to the
centre group of the great mountain system of red
and grey granite, which occupies the southern
portion of the angle enclosed by the two arms of
the Red Sea. The western group is known by
the name of Serbal, the eastern is Um-Shomer,
the highest peak of the region ; and the central
group, loftier than Serbal, lower than Um-Shomer,
is Sinai. It consists of a cluster of summits, of
which the highest, Djebel Katherin, commands a
most magnificent panoramic view of the whole
peninsula, and the two Gulfs, Suez and Akaba,
intensely blue. The second and lower peak,
Djebel Mousa, is the traditional scene of the
giving of the law. Towards the north those two
ridges blend in an elevated rocky plateau, which
stretches some miles in a northerly direction, and
flinging up some of the wildest and sharpest peaks
in those regions (Ras Saseafeh), descend sud
denly in a sheer precipice on a perfectly level plain,
enclosed by mountains on every hand, except to
the east ; there it bends round the spurs of the
mountains, and joins the Wady-es-Sheykh, the
great highway of that part of the Desert. Every
traveller describes this scene as peculiarly grand,

156 THE REVELATION
and even sublime. The plain, the Wady-er-
Raheh, is about a mile and a half in length,
perfectly level, surrounded by steep cliffs on every
hand; and in front of the traveUer, as he descends
the rough mountain pass, Nakb Howy, which is
the nearest though most difficult route from the
Wady Feiran to the Convent of Sinai, there is
this range of magnificent precipices, Ras Saseafeh,
descending sheer into the level of the plain, and
forming one of the most impressive panoramas
which can be contemplated by the eye of man.
As the traveller looks down on this level plain
from the wild pass, Nakb Howy (the Pass of the
Wind), it seems to be locked on every side by
mountains ; only on advancing it is seen to bend
to the left round a bold promontory of rock, and
to mingle with the great highway of the Desert ;
which, avoiding the Nakb Howy, sweeps round
the outside of the mountain chain, from the en
trance of the Wady Feiran to Sinai and Akaba.
The desolation in this land-locked sea of sand
is utter; the silence profound. It is the inner
sanctuary of Nature's great mountain temple.
" If I were to make a model of the end of the
world," writes one, "I would make it from the
Convent of Mount Sinai." The forms of the
granite cliffs which enclose the plain are singu
larly bold and strong. They have, at the same

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 157
time, a certain grand uniformity, like the avenue
— the dromos — of sublime sculptured forms which
led on to the shrine of the Egyptian temples.
God carved and piled the approaches to this great
mountain sanctuary, where His subhmity was to
be revealed.
I dwell on these particular features because
I believe in their significance. I believe that
God has established a special relation between
races of men and the forms of nature in the
country they inhabit ; and that, further, there
is both mental and moral discipline to an
awakened, attentive spirit in the haunts of
nature which it frequents, and in the midst of
which the inner hfe brings forth its fruits. The
jaded head and heart, in our day, fly for solace
and refreshment to the glorious mountain regions,
where, amid the solemnities of glaciers and snow
peaks, our fretful spirits may gather strength and
calm. The valley of Chamounix, the Grindel
wald, the Bay of Naples, the orange groves of
Sorrento, have been temples of worship and reve
lation to many an over-weary heart and spirit.
God is not more there than here, but our spirits
catch there more quickly the key-note of com
munion ; they put off their veils, and pass more
simply, more wholly, from before the face of
nature to the face of God. Mere fancy ! one tells

158 THE REVELATION
me, to whom Fleet Street is the oasis of the
desert of life. To you, doubtless, it is mere
fancy. But tell me, why did God lead forth
this people into the heart of subhme mountain
scenery, through its most difficult passes, to the
very core of its grandest expression, when He
would reveal to them His law and Himself ? It
was not the nearest way, it was not the easiest
way, it was not the pleasantest way ; but it was
the right way, because beauty, splendour, sub
limity, were there. The people, probably, would
not journey by the narrow and difficult " Pass
of the Wind," which I have described as leading
from the Wady Feiran to the head of this small
plain Er Raheh. The host, with the impedi
menta, would follow the vast crescent-shaped
Wady-Es-Sheykh, which bends round the out
side of the mountains, and join Moses and the
leaders in this narrow plain, on which they would
look down from the summit of the pass, and see
the level sand stretching like a sea up to the very
foot of the Mount of God. They looked upon
a scene which was destined to be ever memo
rable in the history of earth and eternity. Let
me present to you the description, of a recent
and most observant traveller : —
"We started at five, a.m. The camels went round by
Wady Es-Sheykh ; we took the direct route by Wady Solab,

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 159
which, passing by several deserted Bedouin villages of the
Arab serfs of the convent, with their lonely burial-grounds,
brought us to the foot of the Nakb H6wy, the ' Pass of the
Wind,' a stair of rock, like that by which we had mounted to
the cluster of Serbal, and by which we were to mount again
into the second and highest stage of the great mountain laby
rinth. . . . We reached the head of the pass ; and, far in
the bosom of the mountains before us, I saw the well-known
shapes of the cliffs which form the front of Sinai. At each
successive advance these cliffs disengaged themselves from the
intervening and surrounding hills, and at last they stood out —
alone against the sky. On each side the infinite complications
of twisted and jagged mountains fell away from it. On each
side the sky encompassed it round, as though it were alone
in the wilderness. And to this giant mass we approached
through a wide valley, a long continued plain, which, enclosed
as it was between two precipitous mountain ranges of black
and yellow granite, and having always at its end this pro
digious mountain block, I could compare to nothing else than
the immense avenue — ' the dronios,' as it is technically called
— through which the approach was made to the great Egyptian
temples. One extraordinary sensation was the foreknowledge
at each successive opening of the view of every object that
would next appear ; as cliff and plain, and the deep gorges on
each side, and, lastly, the convent with its gardens burst
before me ; it was the unfolding of the sight of sights, of
which I had heard and read for years, till each part of it
seemed as familiar as if I had seen it again and again. Was
it the same or not ? The colours, and the scale of the scene,
were not precisely what I should have gathered from descrip
tions ; the colours less remarkable, the scale less grand. But
the whole impression of that long approach was even more
wonderful than I had expected. Whatever may have been the
scene of the events in Exodus, I cannot imagine that any

160 THE REVELATION
human being could pass up that plain and not feel that he was
entering a place above all others suited for the most august of
the sights of earth. We encamped outside the convent, at the
point where the great WMy Es-Sheykh falls into the Wady
Er-Raheh, immediately under the corner of the cliff." — Sinai
and Palestine, pp. 73, 74.
Here, then, in this plain, and not in any of
the narrow gullies and broken ravines of the
mountain,, doubtless the Israelites encamped ;
and the pile of jagged cliffs rising sheer out of
the plain, and not the more distant summits,
would be the scene of the giving of the Law. In
this site alone are to be found fulfilled ah the
conditions which the narrative requires : — " A
mount which might be touched," — which seems
to exclude the distant summits ; a plain at the
foot of the mount, whence a complete view might
be gained by a great host ; a situation in which
Moses might be able to hear the sound of song
in the camp, but not be able to see, as in some
of the lateral ravines by which he would have
to descend the precipitous cliff; room for the
idolatrous festival, and a brook coming down
from the mount, where the ashes might be
scattered, and the people compelled to drink.
There, too, bounds could easily be set about
the mount, lest the people should break through ;
and, in a word, all the important conditions are

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 161
fulfilled. Dr. Robinson and Dr. Stanley join in
affirming that the general aspect of this site is
a most convincing argument ; and that nothing
but the most conclusive evidence could induce
any one, who has carefully surveyed the localities,
to give up the belief that the Wady-er-Raheh
and the cliffs of Sasafeh which overhang it, were
the scene of the giving of the law. The view
of the plain from the summit completes this
impression. " The first thing to be done was, therefore, to gain the
summit of the other end of the range called the Ras Sasafeh
(Willow Head), overlooking the Er-Raheh from above. The
whole party descended, and after winding through the various
basins and cliffs which make up the range, we reached the
rocky point overlooking the approach we had come the pre
ceding day. The effect on us, as on every one who has seen
and described it, was instantaneous. It was like the seat on
the top of Serbal, but with the difference, that here was the
deep, wide, yellow plain sweeping down to the very base of the
cliffs ; exactly answering to the plain on which the people
' removed and stood afar off.' . . . There is yet a
higher mass of granite immediately above this point, which
should be ascended, for the greater completeness of view
which it affords. The plain below is then seen extending not
only between the ranges of Tlaha and Furei'a, but also into
the lateral valleys, which, on the north-east, unite it with the
wide Wady of the Sheykh. This is important, as showing how
far the encampment may have been spread below, still within
sight of the same summit. Behind extends the granite mass
of the range of Gebel Mousa, cloven into deep gullies and
11

162 THE REVELATION
basins, and ending in the traditional peak, crowned by the
memorials of its double sanctity." — Sinai and Palestine,
pp. 75, 76.
Now let us try to analyze and realize the moral
meaning of the scene.
The first grand, all-comprehensive fact which
we meet with is, that they were led up into the
wilderness that they might enter into covenant
with God.
" And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord
called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus
shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the
children of Israel ; Ye have seen what I did unto
the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings,
and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye
will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all
people : for all the earth is mine : and ye shall be
unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.
These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the
children of Israel. And Moses came and called for
the elders of the people, and laid before their faces
all these words which the Lord commanded him.
And all the people answered together, and said, All
that the Lord hath spoken we will do. And Moses
returned the words of the people unto the Lord." —
Exod. xix. 3-8.
This is the prologue of the scene which follows,

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 163
which gives to it all its significance ; a people
entering into covenant with the " High and holy
One who inhabits eternity;" "Who doeth
according to His own will among the armies
of heaven, whose hand none of the inhabitants
of the earth can stay, or say unto Him what
doest Thou?" "Who is above all things, and
was before all things," "for whose pleasure all
things are and were created."
I. God in covenant with man, is the condi
tion of the existence and development of man's
spiritual hfe.
Man is either a sinner under sentence, which it
may please the Judge at any moment to execute ;
or he is a sinner spared on the distinct under
standing that God is seeking his life and not his
death. In the first case, no spiritual hfe is pos
sible ; if death, the death of the soul as tho
penalty of sin, is certain sooner or later, then
morals have no meaning for man. The sooner it
is over the better : " Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die." But this is not the condition
in which a merciful God has left us. Adam did
not so understand it when he went out from
Eden. The occurrences of his life, and the par
ticulars of his intercourse with God, are hidden
from us ; but thus much we gather from what is
recorded of his history, that Adam cherished till
11—2

164 THE REVELATION
death a pious and thankful confidence in God,
built on the first promise ; which confidence
implies, of necessity, that he felt that his sin
might be forgiven, that his wounds might be
healed. However dark the wilderness might be
compared with Eden, its twilight was the dawning
which would not darken into night, but flash up
into rosy day. Noah did not understand it so.
He cherished the hope of his sire, that the cursed
earth and the afflicted soul might look up with
hope to God. Abraham did not understand it so.
No malefactor, respited for a moment but surely
doomed, did he walk with God in Palestine, but
a man in covenant with his Maker — a man whom
God had called His friend.
Now this sense, that man is not only reprieved
for a time, but is a being concerning whom God
has an object and a hope, a being with life before
him and not death, unless he wills to die, under
lies all human moral activity and progress. And
this is, in other terms, a covenant of God. It
may not be expressed in what remains of the
history of Adam ; it is expressed in the history of
Noah and Abraham, and we are made to see that
this was the rock on which they edified their lives;
and it is every man's rock who would have a
foundation stronger than the quicksands of fancy
and listless expectation ; who is not content just

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 165
to take his chance with the creature which perishes
and shall perish, but seeks to connect his life with
God, who endures and shall endure. In some
shape or other, some covenant of God must
underhe the hfe and progress of the world.
You may say the sentences, which are here set
down as the words of God's own lips, cannot be
the words of Him whom "the heaven, even the
heaven of heavens, cannot contain" — so serene, so
lofty, so infinitely removed from our comprehen
sion and thought. The idea of God speaking
to men, making a covenant with men, enacting a
code of express regulations, descending even to
the minutest details of hfe, must be a dream of
man's, not a thought of the mind of God. You
may say that the very idea of a covenant with
fallen sinners, the kind of expression of Himself
which a covenant implies, is dishonouring to the
ideas which we are bound to cherish concerning
the absolute, infinite, and immutable God; who
has established the system of the universe with
that excellent wisdom, that He has left no room
for any accident or contingency which might call
for such a transaction as that which this passage
records. But, in addition to the fact, that the
most deep and serious history in the world de
clares that the world's chief heroes and saints did
live by faith in a covenanting God — did accept

166 THE REVELATION
and seal a covenant with Him, and made their
lives noble and glorious by the resolution and
struggle to keep it, — you will find, if you consider
it closely, that without some distinct, exact expres
sion of God's mind and will on the subject of man
and his future, the Fall must have buried man in
the darkness of death for ever. Remember the
sentence is in man, in every man, by nature.
Adam hid himself, every man hides himself,
when sin forces itself on his conscience ; and he
knows that the doom is, and must be, death. The
despair of the sinner, but for God's mercy, would
crush him, would crush ah of us, into the nether
deeps. And what know we of God's mercy ? We
may spin fine words and fine thoughts about it
out of the stuff of our own imagination ; but no
imagination of man has ever proved strong enough
to be the foundation of his higher hfe. We
may have learnt to think and talk of it familiarly
as a thing unquestionable ; but for ages our fore
fathers have been hving consciously in a covenant,
and all our ideas of God have been formed by it.
But ask that agonized father, plunging the bare
knife into the throat of his daughter, or flinging
his tender infant into that seething cauldron of
fire, what man, ignorant of the covenant, knows
of the mercy and forgiveness of God. Man lives
on the covenant ; he builds his hfe on the

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 167
promises ; it is the condition of his living at ah
in the sense in which a man may live. The notion
of this wells up even in the midst of the pagan
desert, and makes some green oases. It is the
office of revelation to bring out the terms of that
covenant (which, like ah the higher bonds of
relation between spiritual beings, becomes less
explicit in terms as its spirit is better understood),
that man may know and live by it, and attain to
the strength and dignity of a being who is in
solemn covenant with God.
God led that people out that He might make
them understand the full terms of that covenant
which He sought to establish with them, and call
out their intelligence and spiritual activity in
response. There their moral life began : there
every man's moral hfe begins. No man lives — he
only exists — till he has set his hand to the record
of his divine relations and duties, and said in a
covenant which he would rather shed his heart's
best blood than abandon, " I will serve the
Lord." II. The second broad fact of the narrative is
that God was seeking the covenant, not man.
Man was not finding God, God was finding
man, and bringing him near unto Himself. And
this is the profoundest fact in the history of the
great universe. Redemption, spiritual hfe, the

168 THE REVELATION
glory and bhss of heaven, all spring out of it.
God seeking man, laying hold on man when
rebellious and forgetful ; pledge of all long-
suffering patience and tender love. The people
were bondsmen, slaves, " dead in trespasses and
sins," sitting by the flesh-pots, and forgetting
utterly in their rank flavour the bread of heaven,-
when God's hand touched them, rekindled the
dying memories, and re-ihumined the faded records
of their race. His hand led them out, having
nerved them for the path of peril by the prodigies
He wrought for their dehverance ; and He guided
them by ways they knew not, feeding them daily
from His own hand in heaven, until He set them
in front of those beetling cliffs in that vast silence,
and expounded to them the terms of a fuller cove
nant with Himself. It is God who acts, man who
accepts ; God who gives, man who receives ; and
thus the hope of man has its strong resting-place,
not on the strivings of his own weak will, not on
the searchings of his own too easily bewildered
and blinded intellect, but on the eternal purpose
and love of God.
God cannot dispense with man's heart, wiU,
and intellect ; He led that people there that He
might engage them in His service. Refuse Him
that service, and the covenant is worthless to you,
nay, is a witness against you to condemnation ;

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 169

yield them to Him, and rest in the assurance that
your salvation depends not on your own weak
work, but on the strong arm of God. I find in
this idea, so powerfuUy developed in the narrative
of the exodus, a strong prophetic preaching of the
Gospel, which St. Paul more fully expounds : —
" For by grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not
of works, lest any man should boast. For we are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them." — Ephes. ii. 8-10. We
talk of a covenant of works. The Jews under
stood it so ; but there was a Gospel — a Gospel of
the grace of God in the heart of it. "I call
heaven and earth to record this day against you,
that I have set before you hfe and death, blessing
and cursing : therefore choose hfe, that both thou
and thy seed may live : that thou mayest love the
Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his
voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him : for
he is thy hfe, and the length of thy days : that
thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord
sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and
to Jacob, to give them." — Deut. xxx. 19, 20.
Man seeking to propitiate God, to lay down the
terms of a covenant under which he will consent
to hve, to offer that which may make him accept-

170 THE REVELATION
able in His sight, in whose hand " is the soul of
every hving creature, and the breath of all man
kind," passeth down inevitably into the darkness ;
man believing in and loving a God seeking him,
goeth up into the eternal day.
III. You will find two grand features in that
which was transacted there on the Mount of God :
God revealing Himself — God declaring His law.
This was God's covenant ; the people had but to
say in heart and with voice "Amen." I shall
consider the first, in what remains of this dis
course ; the second, the philosophy of the dis
pensation of law, will need fuller consideration by
itself. God declares His name.
The first hnes of the Covenant were traced
when God declared Himself to Moses, "And
Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto
the children of Israel, and shall say unto them,
The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you ;
and they shall say to me, What is His name ? what
shall I sat) unto them ? And God said unto Moses,
I AM THAT I AM: and He said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent
me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The
Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 171

me unto you : this is my name for ever, and this is
my memorial unto all generations." — Exodus iii.,
13-15. An awful question for a people to have to ask,
What is the name of God ? To us, familiar as
we are with the Divine name, the question is
hardly comprehensible. Nothing is so difficult
for a Christian in this nineteenth century to
realize, as the experience of a man looking round
with awe and wonder on this vast universe, and
asking himself, without a clue to the answer,
what meaneth this mystery of life? To the
infants of humanity, each dawn and each spring
was a fresh and prolific wonder. The Yedas
contain passionate questions, whether the sun
will rise again from the lap of ocean; whether
the night, as it falls, is to be the grave of the
world ? We see behind the curtain ; we see
the scope and capacity of the mechanism of
creation ; and wonder — informed, instinct with
knowledge, — gives place to faith, whereby, in a
measure we are little conscious of, day by day we
hve. But, in the early ages, wonder was kept
watching ; every seed, every river, every reptile,
every child, was enveloped in mystery : who
could expound the whence and the whither of
this manifold teeming hfe of the world ? Every
where, in the springing corn, in the globe of fire,

172 THE REVELATION
which by some unknown unfathomable power
daily traversed the sky, was an element of
mystery which eluded man's keenest searchings.
Should he call this " God ? " Should he bow
down and worship the unsearchable, in every
form of nature, in every movement and manifes
tation of hfe ? Egypt had no better answer to
the question. She worshipped birds, and beasts,
and loathsome reptiles ; and knew neither the
name of man, nor the name of God. A calm,
blank look of baffled wonder is her most divine
expression ; her sphinx, too, is but half a man.
To know God is the glory of a man ; that is
manhood, and that alone.
There is nothing to lift a man out of the
whirl and suction of the great world engine, to
stay him from swinging round helplessly with it
in its circles as a mere atom of creation, but the
knowledge of the name of God. This raises a man
at once into the higher hemisphere of being.
There is an eternal distinction between him and
the creation which claims him, and will have
him, unless he set up this protest, " I know
and am known of God." And God declared His
name — the Maker of the world, the Author and
the Ruler of this manifold, mazy labyrinth of hfe.
He laid His hand on every element in Egypt,
and showed that it served Him. Bread and

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 173
water, the staff of life, in the desert He had
visibly consecrated with His hand. And- now He
set them before His grandest handiwork, and
from the summit of the mount of God He pro
claimed His name. The Lord, who had shown
Himself king of every element and creature that
Egypt worshipped, was there before them, in a
cloud of splendour on which their eyes could
not prevail to look. To some a nearer vision
was vouchsafed. " Then went up Moses, and
Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the
elders of Israel ; and they saw the God of Israel ;
and there was under His feet as it were a paved
work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the
body of heaven in his clearness." — Exodus xxiv.,
9-10. But ah heard Him ; all bowed down and
worshipped Him ; all heard from His own hps
the solution of the baffling mystery. " I am
the Lord your God." What an emancipation !
Life was no longer a riddle, earth was no longer
a maze. Egypt worshipped ah things. Israel
knew the Lord whom all things worshipped ;
they could look with a man's free and mastering
glance on all beings and ah things around them
in the world.
The name of God is the key to the cipher of
creation. Without the key, it baffles the finest
intellect ; given the key, it is open to the under-

174 THE REVELATION
standing of a child. Those hoary peaks, glowing
with sunset splendour, that pallid moonhght,
which threw a softening veil over their rough
ness, and left the shadows deeper in the hollows,
were the creatures, the servitors of the Lord of
Hosts. They felt that a new and grander dis
tinction grew up between themselves and wanton,
slavish Egypt. She confounded, they could dis
tinguish, reverence, and magnify, the name of God.
It is the true secret of hfe for every one of us.
Nature, circumstance, the currents of hfe, master
us, till we know the Divine Name. We know
ourselves in knowing Him, and find in ourselves
the broken features of His likeness. We become
conscious of a life which it is foul shame, wrong,
and wretchedness to bury in the perdition of the
creature. Nature may still present to us many
insoluble problems. We may feel that there is
still an awful mystery in life — in the mixture of
good and evil in us, and in the world. But we
have the key. We can face the sphinx, we can
hold up the head in front of the mass, force, and
witchery of nature, for we know the name of the
Lord. The first step towards the establishment
of the covenant was the revelation of the Divine
name. 2. It was a merciful name which the Lord
made known : "I am the Lord thy God, which

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 175
have brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage. I am the God of
thy fathers." How tender, how blessed the
assurance ! There was something awful in the
revelation of the Divine name, though it emanci
pated them from all meaner dread. Like the
riU of bright gushing water amid those sterile
giant rocks ; hke a clump of fair, sweet flowers
amid a waste of desolate grandeur, else crush
ing to sense and soul, was this soft word, " the
God of thy fathers," from such lips. To
know God, is the first step out to spiritual
freedom and manhood. To know that He is my
God, the God of my fathers, the God of my
pilgrimage, the God of my redemption, — that He
yearns over me, clings to me, and with a strong
right hand will save me, — lifts me up from the
freedom of a man to the joy and fellowship of a
son. God's revelation of Himself to Israel is full
of such touches of tenderness. What a principle
of unity, what a cement of national life is here !
" The God of our fathers " hath appeared to us ;
we are a chosen and peculiar people, we have a
name which God, the God of our fathers, has
bestowed and consecrated ; we can only lose it by
apostacy ; we cannot be despoiled of it by death. ' '
Most blessed to Israel, most blessed to us, is
the revelation of the merciful name. What are

176 THE REVELATION
the toils and perils of the wilderness, what the
pangs of thirst and hunger, what the hate and
violence of foes ? The Lord our God bears
us as on eagles' wings through the privations,
and dangers, and sufferings of the Desert, and
sets us unharmed, unstained in the Promised
Land. Consider then, faint-hearted one, " that
as a nurse cherisheth her child, so the Lord thy
God cherisheth thee."
3. The Lord's name is holy. " The Lord thy
God is a holy Lord."
A sensual-hearted man will fashion gods hke
unto himself. A wise and earnest-hearted man
will " give thanks at the remembrance of God's
holiness." There is something affecting in the
struggle of man's heart, in all ages, to hold fast
the belief in the holiness of God. The lust of
man was too strong for his convictions, and his
gods grew to be as sensual as himself. But he
soon began to loathe and scorn them. Rome, in
the age of Christ, made merry with her gods.*
To persuade man that God winks at sin, and is
ready to go partners in pleasure, is to make man
* It is a very interesting question how far the atheism of
such a deep thinker as Lucretius was an earnest protest against
such gods as Rome told him of ; a search after a more universal
law of creation than Jupiter could explain to him, and so far
his poem was constructive work.

OF THE DIVINE NAME. 177
blaspheme his Creator, and hate his very life.
To tell man that God hates sin, is to open up a
spring of hope and life to him, if he has heard the
merciful name of God ; " may I but know Him,"
he cries, "my soul may be saved." The covenant
declares such a God — " glorious in holiness," " a
hater of sin." Many and terrible were the wit
nesses to this in their national history ; but the
loss of the sense of it would have been national
death. It is the great test of character. Can
you rejoice in the holiness of the Lord ? Would
you have a God like unto yourself, or a God such
as the Scripture reveals to you, like whom you
may hope to become ? To beheve in the perfect
hohness is essential to ah who seek to be sanc
tified — to be made pure in heart that they may
see God. How blessed the revelation that this
God of awful holiness, " who cannot so much as
look upon sin," has in mercy entered our world,
to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
That He has made acquaintance with all the
experiences of our nature, has been " tempted in
all points like as we are," that He might succour
our need. Those who can give thanks at the
remembrance of His holiness are those who have
seen Jesus, the great high-priest, before the
throne. The law implies and necessitates the
Gospel. Moses is the sure forerunner of Christ.
12

178 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.

jetynmm vm.
Sinai. The Golden Calf— the Essential
Nature of Idolatry.
" Up, make us gods, which shall go before us." — Exod. xxxii. 1.
The most patent fact of man's history as a
spiritual being is idolatry. It is man's dull form
of the recognition of the spiritual powers. It is
man's Amen to the sentence of the perplexed and
baffled intellect, " Canst thou by searching find
out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty to
perfection ? It is as high as heaven ; what
canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst
thou know?" The 32nd chapter of Exodus is
its complete natural history. In one day that
people lived through the experience of the idola
trous world, from the first cry of the yearning
want which begets the lust after an idol, to the
last drop of bitterness in which, when it is
ground to powder, we have to drink its dust.
Israel lived a typical hfe. The history of this
people is in httle all history ; and idolatry, the
world's rehgion, receives its richest illustration from
this record of Israel's life. It is manifestly a very

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 179
deep question, and related very profoundly to
man's spiritual nature in its present condition
before God. It appears, not in paganism only,
a substitute for God among an ignorant and
godless people, it appears in Judaism, it appears
even in the Christian ages in the bosom of the
Christian Church ; it is the great temptation,
the easily besetting sin of all time. That surely
must have a deeper root than mere ignorance of
God, which sets up its images in the full blaze of
the sunhght of the noon of the Christian ages,
and fills the temples where the Ten Command
ments are blazoned on the walls, with idols which
poor ignorant souls are tempted to bow down to
instead of to Him.
The history and philosophy of idolatry is too
large a subject to be treated, even in outline, in
such a discourse as this. But if we consider
steadily this act of idolatry of the Jewish people,
we shah discover some principles which will help
us to understand its history and manifestations
in the wide world.
The common conception of idolatry is, that it
is the refuge to which the soul betakes itself in
utter ignorance of God, and when too debased
and bhnded to form any higher conception of
His nature than the visible forms of creation can
set forth. The idolater recognizes in nature the
12—2

180 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
workings of a life which he cannot understand,
which fill him with wonder, and which he gladly
bows down to as divine. The idols of the heathen
are mostly either dull imitations of the forms ol
nature ; or the result of an effort to express sym
bolically, by a combination of natural forms in
one unnatural image, the idea of a power dwell
ing and working in various forms, but not to be
identified with any particular creature. And this
is in fact an effort of the human intellect to free
itself from the mere creature worship, which in
the long-run is the inevitable end of a turning
away in spirit from the Lord.
But let us consider it more closely; we may
find occasion to modify this view. I observe,
taking this history for my guide, —
I. The very essence of idolatry is, not spiritual
ignorance and obtuseness, but a wilful turning
away from the spiritual knowledge and worship
of God.
I have already said in effect, that to understand
idolatry you must not go to the stupid savage,
the aboriginal Australian, or the South Sea
Islander, who, knowing no better, takes a bit of
stone or wood and makes it, or gets it made, into
a god. Idolatry has degenerated into this, and
it is its native tendency to bring men to this;
but its essence is quite other than this, and

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 181
must be sought for in the higher region of man's
being and the nobler strata of man's history.
You could never understand man by studying the
savage form of him, by supposing that the savage
is his original and typical image, and that the
higher forms of human life present to us what
man may grow to by culture and civilization.
The savage is a degenerate man. The earliest
records of the human race, in all countries, are
"golden" legends : man in a golden age, man as
we find him in Genesis, with much of the divine
original about him, which in the savage is almost
wholly lost. Civihzation, society, moral and
mental power and dignity, these present the
normal status of man. You must study him
under these his highest conditions, if you would
understand his lowest ; Adam explains both
Plato and the savage ; the savage explains not
even himself. And the principle of these remarks
bears directly on idolatry. The gross forms of
it, to which it has sunk during the lapse of ages,
must be explained by the finer and subtler, but
equally fatal form, which is to be met with in
the records of the historic races and the nobler
times. Of all these records, unquestionably the
most important, the most pregnant, is this. Let
us study it, and get from it what hght we
may.

182 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
1. This act of idolatry was in the very front of
the majesty and splendour of Jehovah, revealed
on Sinai. It was in the very face of the mount
that might be touched and that burned with fire,
and the sound of the trumpet, and the voice of
words, by which the Lord God of Hosts was
declaring Himself to them there.
Let me beg you to note these words : —
" And it came to pass, on the third day in the
morning, that there were thunders and hghtnings
and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice
of the trumpet exceeding loud ; so that aU the
people that was in the camp trembled. And
Moses brought forth the people out of the camp
to meet with God ; and they stood at the nether
part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was alto
gether on a smoke, because the Lord descended
upon it in fire : and the smoke thereof ascended
as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount
quaked greatly. And when the voice of the
trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and
louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by
a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount
Sinai, on the top of the mount. And the Lord
called Moses up to the top of the mount, and
Moses went up." — Exod. xix. 16-20.
"And ah the people saw the thunderings, and
the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 183

the mountain smoking : and when the people
saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And
they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and
we will hear : but let not God speak with us,
lest we die. And Moses said unto the people,
Fear not : for God is come to prove you, and
that His fear may be before your faces, that ye
sin not. And the people stood afar off, and
Moses drew near unto the thick darkness, where
God was."— Exod. xx. 18-21.
Now it was in front of ah this, while the
splendour still shone, while the cloud still
lowered, while the thunders still echoed through
the gorges of the resonant mountains, and the
ground still quivered beneath their feet, " that
the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron
and said unto him, Up, make us gods which shall
go before us ; for as for this Moses, the man that
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not
what is become of him."
We have here a mental condition, at any rate,
far removed from ignorance. They had heard
the Divine Name ; they had entered into a solemn,
explicit, binding covenant with God; "all that
the Lord hath spoken will we do." Their elders
had "seen the God of Israel." Nor could they
have forgotten it. That dense shroud over the
brow of the mountain, from whose deep recesses

184 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
ever and anon flashed forth the glory of the
Lord, was, we may be sure, a sufficient memorial ;
and yet filled with fear — that fear which is terror
and " hath torment " — they made to them
selves a molten image and sang, " These be thy
gods, 0 Israel." It is a very awful chapter of
man's history ; incredible, but that its comment
is in our own hearts. It is the history of the
genesis of all idolatries. Idolatry has not been
born, after ages of degeneracy, to fill up a dread
chasm in man's circle of knowledge, with some
images which, at any rate, may stand as signs of
the divine. We meet with idolatry in the morn
ing age, and in the morning land of history.
Terah was idolatrous ; Laban was idolatrous ;
Egypt was idolatrous; Assyria was idolatrous ; and
that at a time when the echoes of the Divine Name,
as it had been proclaimed to Noah, had not sunk
in silence, and the traditions of divine truth had
not faded from the memory of the most careless
of mankind. God wrote His name over the
temple of creation; man's art has blotted and
obscured it. But. while it was yet fresh, and
man could read it reverently, idols were set up,
and "the glory of the incorruptible God was
changed into an image made like to corruptible
man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and
creeping things." Not more magnificently was

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 185
the name of God emblazoned there in the heart
of that mountain wilderness, than in the grandeur,
the beauty, and the brightness of the world.
" The heavens declare His glory, and the firma
ment showeth His handiwork. Day unto day
uttereth speech of Him, and night unto night
showeth knowledge." And the early idolaters
heard it. The eye was not closed to the divine
glory of creation, the ear was not shut to the
tones of the divine voice which still lingered in
the silent places of the world, when men " dark
ened their foolish hearts " into idolatry.
Paul's argument on the origin of idolatry dis
tinctly asserts that it was when men " knew God,
they glorified Him not as God," and sank into
this deadly sin. — Rom. i. 18, 23. St. Paul's
profound moral analysis of idolatry expounds this
chapter, and this chapter of history sustains the
conclusions of St. Paul. Neither the visible
manifestation of the glory of the Lord in a spe
cially awful and impressive form on Sinai ; nor the
declaration of the Divine Name as the wise and
good One, the Author of order, the Fountain of
blessing — in the harmony of the heavenly motions
above us, in the grace, the sweetness, the bright
ness of the melodies of the earth around us,
which bathe us in their atmospheres, and lift the
spirit in joy to the footstool of the King who

186 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
makes such music in His palaces, for the dehght
and instruction of His sons — can struggle against
this prone tendency of the human heart to wor
ship idols, which first broke out in the very face
of the revelation of Jehovah in His temple of
creation, and has wrought on until it has ren
dered man by nature incapable of a pure know
ledge of and communion with Himself.
Remember, the people saw the glory of the
God of Israel, and while the vision was there,
and all its impressions fresh on their hearts, they
made themselves a molten calf and sang, " These,
0 Israel, be thy gods."
2. The second remarkable and characteristic
feature of this scene which I notice is, that after
Aaron " had fashioned the molten calf with a
graving-tool," and the people had said, "These
be thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out
of the land of Egypt," " he built an altar before
it ; and made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a
feast to the Lord." — Exod. xxxii. 5.
With the idol before him, the priest proclaimed
a feast unto the Lord ; and the people evidently
entered into his thought, and with some dim
notion that they were celebrating a divine festival,
" they sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to
dance." So this people, like the Samaritans in
after ages, pleased themselves with the thought

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 187
that they were " fearing the Lord, while they
served their own gods." And I believe that the
real heart of idolatry is here laid bare. It is, in
plain terms, an effort to bring God within
reach; to escape the trouble, pain, and weari
ness of spiritual effort, and substitute the effort
of the eye, hand, and tongue for the labour of
the soul.
You may find idolaters in throngs up and down
the world, whose conception of God is no higher
than the bit of stone, brass, or mud which they
worship. But a missionary to the heathen would
make but little way with them, if he were to pre
sume, in his appeals to them, that they imagined
their idol to be God. The more thoughtful and
earnest would testify that they have no such idea
of God ; that God is above and beyond all repre
sentations ; that He is above even aU particular
deities ; but that this unknown Being connects
Himself with certain places and images, so that
the worshipper through them finds a way to Him.
There are thoughtful men among idolaters in ah
ages, and this is what they say that they mean by
their idol : that it is a thing with which God has
connected Himself — through which He may be
addressed, and by which He communicates with
man. The ' ' winking Virgin " and the fetish of the
Gold Coast are on a level here ; each is conceived

188 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
of as an agent or instrument — a means of mani
festation of the Divine. As we study the history
of the earlier idolatries, tracking back the stream
of time, this fact comes out with increasing clear
ness, until we meet with men who seem to have
had a considerably intelligent behef in Jehovah,
and yet to have sought to help that faith by
images. A very remarkable instance and proof of
this, the following passage will supply : —
" Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon
camels ; and he carried away all his cattle, and all his goods
which he had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had
gotten in Padan-aram, for to go to Isaac his father in the land
of Canaan. And Laban went to shear his sheep : and Rachel
had stolen the images that were her father's. And Jacob stole
away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not
that he fled. So he fled with all that he had ; and he rose up,
and passed over the river, and set his face toward the mount
Gilead. And it was told Laban, on the third day, that Jacob
was fled. And he took his brethren with him, and pursued
after him seven days' journey ; and they overtook him in the
mount Gilead. And God came to Laban the Syrian in a
dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak
not to Jacob either good or bad. Then Laban overtook Jacob.
Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mount : and Laban
with his brethren pitched in the mount of Gilead. And Laban
said to Jacob, What hast thou done, that thou hast stolen
away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters, as
captives taken with the sword ? Wherefore didst thou flee
away secretly, and steal away from me ; and didst not tell me,
that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs,

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 189
with tabret, and with harp ? And hast not suffered me to kiss
my sons and my daughters ? Thou hast now done foolishly
in so doing. It is in the power of my hand to do you hurt :
but the God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying,
Take thou heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.
And now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou
sore longedst after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast
thou stolen my gods ? And Jacob answered and said to
Laban, Because I was afraid : for I said, Peradventure thou
wouldest take by force thy daughters from me." — Gen. xxxi.
17-31. Again : the Egyptians were the worst, the most
complete idolaters, in the ancient world. Per
haps it was at them that St. Paul was specially
glancing in the passage which I have quoted from
the Romans ; for a Roman satirist, of about the
same age, assails their multitude of idols with
his keen scorn. Now, in Exod. iii. 1, Mount
Horeb is styled " the mount of God ; " and in all
the communications between Moses and Pharaoh
it is taken for granted that Pharaoh would under
stand their ahusion to that mount of God, and
their desire to sacrifice there. There is strong
reason to believe that Mount Serbal, the nearest
mountain of the Sinaitic chain to Egypt, was an
old Egyptian sanctuary, and sacred to a more
awful name than those of their domestic and
municipal gods. I do not press this, but it is
worth noting.

190 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
Let me turn your attention to 2 Bangs,
xviii. 1-6. I extract the most important verse :
— "Hezekiah removed the high places, and brake
the images, and cut down the groves, and brake
in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had
made ; for unto those days the children of Israel
did burn incense to it : and he called it Nehush-
tan," — that is, a piece of brass.
This piece of brass the Lord Himself had ex
pressly appointed to be looked to. His name
was associated with it. It is impossible that the
history of it could be quite forgotten ; and yet the
people made it an idol, and Hezekiah ground
it to powder.
The preceding chapter, 2 Kings, xvii. 24-41,
gives us the history of some idolaters who do not
seem to have been very far from Laban's state of
mind. The whole passage is of deep interest.
But this is the leading point: — "Then one of
the priests, whom they had carried away from
Samaria, came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught
them how they should fear the Lord. Howbeit
every nation made gods of their own, and put
them in the houses of the high places. . . So
these nations feared the Lord, and served their
graven images, both their children, and their
children's children : as did their fathers, so do
they unto this day."

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 191
These are deeply important and instructive
chapters in the history of idolatry ; and they sug
gest the principle which hes at the heart of it,
which explains at once the idolatry of the igno
rant savage, and that of the enlightened Church,
which, knowing God, is prone to this deadly sin. It
is the endeavour of the weak and faithless human
spirit to connect God with something which he
can handle and possess, so as to have a perpetual
and palpable assurance of the presence and favour
of Deity. In fact, it is an attempt to deal with
that, by means of the senses and understanding,
which only reveals itself to the spiritual faculties
of the soul. I cannot too strongly impress upon
you my conviction that the essence of idolatry is
not the saying, " I do not care for the God of
heaven ; I will not have the God of heaven to be
my God, but will worship these." It is the say
ing, " I do not know the God of heaven; I do
not know what He is, or where He is ; and I
thankfuUy believe that He has associated Himself
with this object which I do see and know, and
that I hold this pledge of His presence and care."
It is impossible to suppose that Israel had
forgotten, intellectually, the Lord who had led
them. They had seen His wonders in the land
of Ham ; they had been fed by His bounty every
morning in the Wilderness ; they had the most

192 THE ESSENCE OFIDOLATRY.
terrible manifestations of His power at that moment
before their eyes. Had Aaron wished them to
declare themselves traitors to the Lord, to believe
that their deliverance and guidance was all a mis
take, and that the Lord God of their fathers was
all a delusion, I beheve that they would have
risen up and stoned him before the mount. They
thought, in their ignorant and sensual hearts, that
they were helping themselves to beheve in Him ;
and their old Egyptian memories rising up, they
took the sacred image of Memphis, the buh
Apis, and made that the image of their Lord.
Moses, while he had been with them, had been
their channel of communication ; God had visibly
been with him, and he had been to Aaron and to
them in the place of God. But his long absence,
leaving them there shut up in the terrible wilder
ness, destroyed their confidence ; with Moses, God
seemed to have abandoned them ; or rather, what
knew they of God apart from him ? Moses was
marked out to them as the man of God, by many
infallible proofs ; and when he was gone, God
faded into a mere name. It was the blackest
ingratitude and faithlessness. The God who had
led them thus far, could not have led them out to
perish. Clouds and darkness were round about
Him ; but within those clouds they might be well
assured that He was at work for them, devising

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 193
fresh purposes of mercy, and perfecting fresh mini
stries of love. But it has its parallel in our history.
You have been fed and guided in a way not less
wonderful by the Lord's hand ; yet in some wilder
ness, when your guide has for a moment left you,
and darkness has settled on the plain, I hear you
crying, " The Lord has forsaken me, and my God
has forgotten me;" and I see some of you setting
up a golden image and saying, " Let this be to
us instead of God." How much of what is called
"rest in the Church" — rest in some infallible
human guidance — springs out of this root? So
Aaron made them their molten calf, and pro
claimed through the host, " To-morrow is a feast
unto the Lord."
3. In God's sight, that is, in reality, this is a
turning away from Him.
They meant this bull to be an image of God,
their Leader. God saw that it was an image of
their own idolatrous and sensual hearts. They
had, as every man has, the means of knowing the
mind and will of God. From none who seek Him
in faith wih He hide Himself ; none who cry, in
believing supphcation, can be sent empty away.
But faith and prayer, involving purity, come not
readily to human hearts. It is easier and plea-
santer to the flesh to have some nearer and
morally cheaper guide : to have something which
13

194 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
will at once allow us to choose our own course,
and yet appear to lend to it the sanction of the
Divine name. Idolatry is just the act of a man
who declines to seek the Lord in faith, and says,
" Let the Lord be made plain to sense, and meet
me in my daily customs, in the habits of my
sensual life, that I may believe." It is a dull
recognition of God, so far. The man does not
dare to go on with his hfe unless he can beheve
that God goes with him ; but he dreads the Lord,
and, like Rachel, takes the image with him in
stead. Does not this explain the idolatry of Judaism,
where God was known — the idolatry of Romanism,
where the God-man is known — the idolatry of
Protestantism, where the Church, the letter of
the Word, or the traditions of the religious world,
are idols to careless, ease-loving, and sensual
hearts ? The heart of man yearns after a fuller
knowledge of God than our own intellectual
searchings can give us. But God reveals Him
self only to faith : and faith is a power ; it
changes the heart, it purges the hfe, it sets a
man's back to the world, while it sets his face to
God and heaven. But, suppose the face of the
heart is turned to the world still, and the pure
Lord, the pure Christ, only reveals Himself to
those whose faces are set the other way ? Then

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 195
man makes gods of saints and martyrs; "they
are more pitiful to sin and weakness ; they are
men like us, and we shall be able, worshipping
them, to keep a feast unto the Lord, and rise up
to dance." " These be thy gods, 0 Israel."
To us the temptation to idolatry presents itself
in a more subtle form. We dare not take any
image and treat it as a god. Protestantism lives
to protest against all that. But there is a habit
of thought about God, which grows up in a mind
not momently awake to the spiritual presence — a
way of conceiving of Him as He looks upon and
deals with us — the direct effect of which is to sus
pend the free, fresh, and constant spiritual com
munion with Him, by which alone can we come to
know Him ; and to reduce spiritual life to a mere
habit of thought or action, which, hke a golden
calf, may be made to go with us in any track we
please. This habit of thought about God and
divine things, which comes between the eye of
the soul and the living God, may be embodied in
elaborate church institutions, or it may reign
among those who protest against elaborate church
institutions, in the popular sentiment and judg
ment of a community ; which of all spiritual des
potisms is perhaps the most formidable, because the
least visible and avowed ; but reign where it may,
its work is everywhere the same, and its fruit.
13—2

196 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
The advantage of an idol is, that we can take
it with us, and its way becomes very pleasantly
our way. God will not go with us, we must go
with Him; and the multitude, who see not the
issues of either way, their own or God's, cleave
to their idols even before His face. Thus men
take their own course, and get, as they fondly
hope, a divine benediction upon it, tih the prophet
appears, and their idol gets ground to dust.
II. Let us consider the contrast between the
prophet and the priest.
The priests and the prophets divide the spiritual
empire of humanity between them. The priest's
function is to conduct for man his divine relations
and transactions ; the prophet's, to speak to man
the truth of- God. The priest's office here sup
poses a system of intercourse between man and
God already established and recognized ; the
prophet's pre-supposes nothing but the two beings
— the human soul and God. The priests have,
in all ages, been the willing ministers of idolatry ;
at least, as an order, they have rarely lifted up
their voice against it, unless inspired by the pro
phets of truth. There is something in a formal
official duty which identifies a man with the cus
tomary and common, which gives him a direct
interest in the status in quo, which is never the
best. If the people are set on idolatry, they can

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 197
always find priests to help them, and to lend the
sanction of their great authority to the dishonour
of the Divine name.
But God has a band of men upon earth — they
are not an order, they wear no badge, and know
no traditions — through whom He speaks to man
kind. They are men whom the cloud and the
fire do not drive to a distance ; whose eagle sight
can pierce the cloud and gaze on the glory, and
who can bear the "burden" of the Lord's word
in trust for their fellow-men. The man who pro
fesses to conduct man's transactions with the
spiritual world, and the man who has to declare
God's truth to men, rarely, in any age, are at one.
The prophet becomes the censor of the priest
hood ; while the priesthood marks the prophet as
a man to be silenced, and, if possible, put down.
The perfect Mediator is both priest and prophet :
He reveals God to man in conducting man to
God. The Christian priesthood — in the only
sense in which I understand the term, the whole
body of those who are kings and priests to God
through Christ — partakes of this double character.
But what age has found it up to the mark of the
idea of God ? Aaron led the people, or rather
helped the people — the professional priest is
rarely leader in anything — into idolatry. Moses
rescued them, at what cost we will briefly trace.

198 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
Idolatry dishonours God doubly. It disobeys
Him, it tramples in the dust His most solemn
commandments ; and it dishonours the faculties
which He has endowed man withal, that he may
be able to know and commune with Himself. Its
fruit in all countries, in all ages, and under ah
forms, is bitterness and death. As a symbol of
this, Moses ground their calf to powder, and
made them drink it with their daily food. And
the world is drinking stiU the dust of its idola
tries. There are few who are not expiating some
creature-worship, whereby they have robbed the
Lord. Man, disusing the god-hke faculty, ceases
to be god-like ; his holiest powers shrivel, and he
becomes at last the mere shell or husk of himself.
The penalty of making an image of God to the
sense, instead of seeking God with the soul, is
the destruction of all in man which has affinity
with the Divine. The soul, turning from its true
activity, is palsied ; the senses take possession of
the man, and make havoc at their will. The
connection between idolatry and the grossest sen
suality is universal : there has never been an
idolatry which has not borne this fruit. I am not
saying that idolaters have never struggled against
this ; some have struggled against it heroically.
Pagan Revivals, too, have a history. But the pres
sure has been too strong for them ; and the sen-

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 199
sual passions have, in the end, never failed to
drag down whole peoples, a whole world, to wallow
in tae grossest sin. This is no accident. The
soul expands and grows to strength and mastery
in the sunhght of the Divine presence ; let that
be shaded, and the man, hke the children of an
Arctic winter, becomes inevitably gross and carnal
as the brutes. Greece and Rome were drinking
the very dregs of the cup of the idol when Paul
went forth to preach to them. Words of man
caanot describe the bitterness, the heart-sickness,
of the whole pagan world when the Lord ap
peared. And man's lower nature is bloodthirsty.
" "Whence come wars and fightings among you ?
Cone they not hence, even of your lusts ? " And
whence come lusts ? Come they not of this
effort to set the creature and the creature-god in
the place of the Lord ? The bloody tragedy in
which this brief idolatry ended, is a most signifi
cant picture. Man's idols have gathered his hosts
to fields of ensanguined slaughter, have led the
shock of his armies, and heaped up the trophies
of his slain, from the day when Levi made him
self a name by his zeal in the work of retribu
tion, to the day when the nations shall close in
vengeance on the seat of the idolatrous church.
III. I said that the central principle of idolatry
is the shrinking of the spirit from the God of

200 THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY.
heaven ; * which soon passes into spiritual igno
rance, and utters itself in the cry, " I do not
know the God of heaven ; give me some form,
some visible, tangible shape, to persuade me He
is near." It is the glory of the incarnation, that
it presents that image of the invisible God, "th3
express image of His substance," which is not so.
idol ; that it gives into the arms of the yearning,
straining spirit a man, a brother, a husband of
the heart, and declares that He — the man Christ
Jesus, the man of sorrows and sympathies, tie
brother born for adversities — is the God of
heaven. Moses longed for such a revelation
when he cried, ' ' I beseech Thee show me Thy
glory." God recognized the need of the people
in the ark and the mercy-seat, and in the visible
glory which dwelt among them. But the tiue
glory is man. Man, the image of God, is the
true shekinah ; and the cry grew strong and pas
sionate through the ages, which uttered itself )y
the lips of Philip, " Lord, show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us." Jesus answered, "He that
HATH SEEN Me, HATH SEEN THE FATHER ; " and
put away that ground of idolatry for ever.
It is to deny Jesus, to rob his incarnation oi
reality, his brotherhood of tenderness, his com
munion of completeness, to set up a mediator
between man and the Brother of every human

THE ESSENCE OF IDOLATRY. 201
heart. The Romanist thinks that the Virgin, the
woman, will be nearer and more pitiful than
Jesus, and makes her his idol ; if she seems too
far, too pure, he has his saint. But to turn to an
idol is to deny, not the unknown King of heaven,
but the man Christ Jesus. "It is to trample
under foot the Son of God, and to count the
blood of the covenant wherewith He sanctified
Himself an unholy thing, and to do despite to
the spirit of grace." To turn from the splendours
of Sinai, which revealed the Lord Jehovah, to
worship a golden image, was corruption ; to turn
from the God-man, the true shekinah, to worship
an image, or to interpose a second mediator, is
death.

202 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.

Sinai : The Dispensation of Law.
"And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to
fear the Lord our God, for our good always." — Deut. vi. 24.
The dispensation of law ! The unfolding to
man's intehigence the inner principle of all
the concords of the universe — the thoughts of
the mind of God. This is what a dispensation
of law means, if we look into its depths. The
idea of the Divine mind is the principle of the
exquisite concord of creation. It shaped itself,
or rather, it lay from eternity shaped and com
pacted in His mind, so perfect in its composure
that the expression of it in form would be music ;
and so, when God's eternal thought clothed itself
in creation, the melody floated upward, and all
the morning stars, it is pictured, sang together
for joy. Each thing on the earth and in the
heaven was fashioned according to the pattern in
the sanctuary of the heaven of heavens — the
mind of God. And each thing received, with its
form, the principle of its relations and movements,

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 203
the observing of which, through the ages, is the
condition of the beauty and order of the world.
The rhythm of the march of the forms and forces
of creation was then established ; the axis of the
earth with its very nutations, the orbits of the
stars, the tint and fragrance of the flowers, were
then decreed. These — the inner principles and
methods of the life of the universe, expressed in
forms cognizable by the understanding — are the
laws of creation ; to know them, as we have come
to know the truth of the movements of the starry
heavens, is to be within the council-chamber of
the Eternal, and to be able to think out, after
Him, the thoughts of God. To know the laws
which inhere in all things is the highest glory,
the completest triumph of the intellect ; as the
glory of a spirit is to know, by spiritual senses,
and commune with God. We have a fashion of
thinking and speaking of law at large, as though
it were a humiliation, to the spirit at any rate, to
deal with it — as though, to be under the law, even
to God, were the badge of serfdom instead of the
condition of freedom, as it is, and shall be through
eternity. "Under the law to Christ" is Paul's
description of the freest Christian life to which
man has ever attained. That is, under the law,
not to a code written on tables, but to a Being
whom the heart knows and loves, whom the spirit

204 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
recognizes as its centre and its sun ; and this is
the secret of glorious life.
Law to a transgressor stands out in a new rela
tion ; it acts as a constraint from without, not as
a life moving the muscles of action from within.
This is a degradation, but the degradation is in
the transgressor and not in the law. The law is
still holy, good, and beautiful ; it is still God's
thought expressed. It represents what the trans
gressor was made to be, and should be, in order
to enter into God's concord, and fill his appointed
space in the scale of creation. Let the trans
gressor take the law into his heart and love it,
and it will move him as blessedly, as the sun-
quickened sap in the veins of a plant stirs the
buds to bursting, and presses out, with soft com
pulsion, the leaves, the branches, the flowers, the
fruit. We have this guarantee about God's law.
Its principle is harmony, order, perfect blessed
ness. His law is not strange or arbitrary. None
can obey it and be still out of concord with the
universe and with Him. If He says to a child,
" Honour thy father and thy mother," and to a
parent, "Provoke not thy child to wrath," He
says that which, if fulfilled, is the secret of the
concord of homes. If He says to the merchant,
" Thou shalt not go beyond nor defraud thy
brother in anything," He says that which, if ml-

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 205
filled, will make order in the jarring world of
commerce. Nothing which he ordains can be
of the nature of a peremptory or despotic com
mand, the only reason of which is the despot's
will ; the doing of which may lift us into his
favour and buy his benediction, but which adds
no blessing or riches to our inner hfe. Every
word which He speaks man can live by. Let him
take the word into his heart, and its fruit must
be concord ; it must bring the hfe into harmony
with the universal life and with Himself. This is
the point which the Jews quite missed. They
lost the key to their dispensation, and turned it
into a yoke which neither they nor their sons
were able to bear. Instead of feeling that there
was a grand reality in it, that this was the form
of a perfect life, sketched out by God's own
hand, for a people in a mental, moral, and social
condition like theirs, and that living it would
make exquisite order in their homes and hearts,
they set themselves wearily to do it ; as you would
do a despot's will, seeing no reason in it and
having no hope, save that you might win the
despot's favour and secure his rewards. And thus
it became a bondage, a yoke of serfdom ; not
because of its own bright nature, but because of
the corruption of the nature out of which it had
to bring forth its fruits.

206 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
Imagine, if you can, the automatic processes of
our body suspended, and that we were com
manded to expand and contract the heart by a
distinct volition, and to distend and exhaust the
lungs ; what a fearful bondage would our ex
istence become ! Life carries on these operations
gaily ; it halts not, it wearies not ; it is conscious
of no stress or strain through the years. So
the Jews made to themselves a yoke of bondage
out of the living and loving commandments of
the Lord. They lost the vital principle of ful
filment ; the hfe within, becoming cold and
feeble, refused to work out the complete idea
of God. Then having it as a mere command
ment, having lost the reason and love of it,
they made ghastly spasmodic efforts to fulfil
it, and became the most lifeless of formalists,
the most abject of intellectual and spiritual
slaves. But I cannot consent, for one moment, to the
idea that God's law, as proclaimed on Sinai, was
other than good and beautiful — most germane, in
every jot and tittle of it, to a noble personal and
national hfe. We often speak of it hastily, and
with a certain outward truth — as when we say
that the sun rises and sets — as a system of bond
age. It became so ; with such a people it could
not fail to become so ; but in itself it claims to be

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 207
handled reverently. There was a sensual-hearted
people before the face of God, a mere rabble of
enslaved souls; and the law which they heard
from Sinai was the complete dehverance of the
mind of God, as to what would make them a
nation of noble freemen, and secure order, har
mony, and blessedness in their personal, domestic,
and national hfe. Very sublime are the words of
Moses, God's great witness to this view of the
law: — "For this commandment which I com
mand thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,
neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that
thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to
heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear
it, and do it ? Neither is it beyond the sea,
that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the
sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may
hear it, and do it ? But the word is very nigh
unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that
thou mayest do it. ... I call heaven and earth
to record this day against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing :
therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed
may live : that thou mayest love the Lord thy
God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and
that thou mayest cleave unto Him : for He is thy
life, and the length of thy days : that thou mayest
dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy

208 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to
give them."— Deut. xxx. 11-14; 19, 20.
I. Let us examine a little more closely the
popular idea as to the excessive severity and for
mality of this law. To a transgressor who had
not in him the hving principle of obedience, it
was, without doubt, fearfully formal and stern.
So is our statute-book to a felon, while on you
and me it sits lightly as the air. We are quietly,
without being the least conscious of it, hving out
a whole statute-book every day. If you talk of
formality and severity, consult the statute-book
of the starry heavens ; conceive the order of the
procession of the planets written out on tables —
each movement, through orbits the units of whose
measures no brain can carry, defined to the breadth
of a hair. There is form, sublime in its formality,
severity, awful in its righteousness and constancy.
Equally overwhelming, as we have already hinted,
would be the revelation of the laws of bodily,
domestic, or pohtical hfe, in the form of a statute-
book. We should start with horror to find what
formalists we are in our freedom ; how prescribed
are the motions of the most complete and royal
faculties of sense and soul. In fact, to find the
law is to find freedom. A flower, ordained to the
sunlight, is a serf in the darkness ; a soul, or
dained to hohness, is a slave in sin. Outlaws are

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 209
ever outcasts ; — out of law, out of fellowship,
order, happiness, as long as the outlawry lasts.
St. James speaks of a perfect law of hberty, and
he utters deep truth. Liberty is perfect, in per
fect obedience to the perfect law. The powers
are free, and have free play, when they find their
full expression and action in harmony with the
mind of Him who fashioned them, and touched
them to that particular use.
The Jewish system, as I understand it, is the
complete statute-book of a life under those par
ticular conditions ; not for you and me in all its
details, but for you and me wherever it deals with
that common human nature wherein they and we
are one. But in its details it is for them — a
people in a particular country, climate, and stage
of development ; and it contains in these spe
cialities the sentence of its own abolition when it
had done its appointed work. Most formal it
would be to us, in such a state of development
as we have reached to ; to us it could but be, in
its sacrificial system, for instance, an arbitrary
and despotic law ; but to them most perfect in
its adaptation ; the one condition then and there
of a complete national life.
Many seek the key to it in the future. They
say that it was provisional and preparatory, and
that the Jews were shut up under their law as in
14

210 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
a kind of prison-house, until the emancipation
day of the Gospel. There is a great truth in
this way of representing it, and a great untruth.
God sees the end from the beginning, and every
thing which is, has relation to something which
is to be. What else does " natura " mean ?
There is strict concatenation in nature ; ah things
are knit by golden chains, of which the links
deeply interlace, to the throne of God. There
would have been no Judaism if there had been
no Gospel ; but we dare go further, and say that
there would have been no Eden, no Man, if there
had been no Gospel. The Gospel underlies the
whole of man's history ; and wherever the inte
rest of that history deepens and becomes con
centrated, as at Sinai, be sure that its relation
to the Gospel will come out with singular fulness
and force.
But it is false to conceive of any age as merely
a stalking-horse for a future age. It is a mistake
to conceive of the Jews as laden with special
burdens, sacrificial or otherwise, that we in the
fulness of time might better understand and profit
by the Gospel. It is fatal to all just thought,
thus to interpret the equal ways of the Lord.
Judaism was given from Sinai to that people, for
that people's good. There was no forethought,
no afterthought — except as the Divine reason

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 211
looks ever before and after. It was God's best
gift to them as they stood there before the moun
tain ; and there was nothing in it which was not
a good gift to them there. Its relation to the
future was their relation to the future ; in train
ing, educating, and developing them, it was
making a future possible to their nation and to
the world.
I observe —
II. That the very heart's core of a dispensa
tion of law is duty, and duty is the master-key
to life.
God led them forth to give them a law in
Horeb — that is, to train them in duty, to make
them servants of duty, and lead them thus into
the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies of life.
That is what is meant by a dispensation of law.
I say the very core and kernel of the idea of law,
in its relation to a moral agent, is duty. Law is
the buttress of right : its object is to fortify the
dutiful soul. There must be a precedent right
in the claim which the law makes, or it is
immoral, and tends to confusion in the soul
and in the world. The real object of law is to
help men to do right, and thus most effectually
restrain from wrong; unless there be a sentiment
of duty latent, which the law can appeal to and
ehcit, it is heartless and hopeless work. Law,
14—2

212 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
explicit and mandatory, declares the right, and
man's heart and conscience respond Amen.
To bring forth that Amen, a manly, outspoken
consent to the law, that it was good, God led
that people forth from Egypt into the heart of
those sublime and magnificent mountains ; where,
like as on another mountain, after a yet diviner
fashion, He opened his mouth and taught them
out of His law. It was the first clear revelation
of duty to them. There are laws which are right
by a higher sanction than the voice of our own
hearts, which but echoes the sanction. The
echo we can trifle and tamper with ; we can
make it by our cunning babble fohy or false
hood ; but who shall dare tamper with the word
of Him who speaks by that awful thunder, whose
words glow and glare in that blazing lightning,
the sight of whose glory, the touch of whose
hand, is death ? Those lightnings of Sinai lit up
a whole heaven of duty. From the first word of
the law to the last, there was not a letter which
did not demand attention and obedience on
grounds deep as infinity, lasting as eternity,
and sacred as the name of God. They became
the soldiers of duty from that hour. They gave
instant consent to the covenant of God. "And
Moses came and told the people all the words
of the Lord, and all the judgments : and all the

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 243
people answered with one voice, and said, All
the words which the Lord hath said will we do.
And Moses wrote ah the words of the Lord, and
rose up early in the morning, and builded an
altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according
to the twelve tribes of Israel. . . . And he
took the book of the covenant, and read in the
audience of the people : and they said, All that
the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on
the people, and said, Behold the blood of the
covenant, which the Lord hath made with you
concerning all these words. — Exod. xxiv. 3, 4
—7,8. They felt that there was a right, all-pervading
as the air of Heaven ; and that their lives had
become sacred to duty. Not as men who accepted
a law which they could not help submitting to,
but as men who said Amen to a law which they
heartily believed, which they knew to be right,
and which they accepted as spiritual beings be
cause of its rightness, they sealed their covenant
with God. It was duty which God preached
from Sinai ; and duty is, as I have said, the
master-key of man's hfe. Let a man hve for
duty, and he lives nobly ; his life will be a bene
diction to men. Let a man live carelessly, aim
lessly, walking in the sight of his own eyes, and

214 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
the imagination of his own heart, and he lives
weakly, shamefuhy ; his hfe becomes a snare and
a curse to himself and to mankind.
Sinai was to the world the revelation of duty,
which grows out of the revelation of the name of
God. Earth knew the meaning of duty from that
hour, for she knew the name of her King. The
vague convictions of righteousness and sanctity
which floated through pagan consciences, and
ever and anon wrung such fearful sacrifices from
agonized pagan hearts, have received form and
certainty from the declarations of Sinai. The
words which were then written on tables of stone
with God's own finger are still, and ever will be,
the commandments of the world. Life dies down
in a soul, in a people, when the sentiment of
duty is not matured into a principle, and does
not rule the conduct. A hfe which has no
duties, no offices of trust and obhgation, which
has simply to expand itself in bland enjoyment,
wearies at last the most weak and babyish heart.
Man, out of the bond of duty, explains all
the world's disorders, all its frustrated hopes,
all its withered, ruined lives. Man, the servant
of duty, explains all noble, manlike, beautiful
deeds and ministries — a life bright as the sun
light, and musical as the symphonies of heaven.
Our hves mean nothing, and produce nothmg,

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 215
till the revelation of duty breaks on us ; tih we,
led forth to some silent wilderness, see a form
and hear a voice, which makes us the bound
servants of righteousness to the end of our days.
Ah hfe's real concords and true pleasures spring
out of its duties. The soul set to this key is in
that presence, " where there is fulness of joy and
pleasures for evermore."
To some, duty, hke law, seems a cheerless and
rayless thing. The sun thinks not thus, when
he "rejoiceth as a bridegroom coming out of
his chamber, or a strong man to run a race."
There is a sunny joy in the motion, the hfe,
of ah creatures, which to the tuned and attentive
ear is music — which is but the hum of duty in
the acting. The song of the creation is the
hymn of duty. Every bird that sings, every
bee that hums, every flower that lifts its tremu
lous voice of praise to Him who has made so
good a world, every star,
" Which in its motion hke an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins,"
bears its part in the great flood of harmony which
floats the tributes of the duty of creation before
the Eternal throne. For man, duty in the doing
is glory in the winning. " To them who by
patient continuance in well-doing " — the com
plete picture of duty — "seek glory, honour, and

216 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
immortality, eternal hfe." Duty stands watching
like the guardian spirit, with folded wings and
eyes dewy with tears, over the cradle where an
infant sobs and gasps into life. Duty, in the
mien and dress of a mother, feeds the young
nurshng with self-forgetful tenderness, and guides
its feeble steps as it explores the limits of the
kingdom to which the child beheves himself heir.
Duty, when he steps out of his charmed home
into hfe's highway, leads him by the hand into
the great forum, and there leaves him to his
heaven-appointed work. He may turn his back
and slink through hfe, with craven branded on
his brow; or he may face it manfully, giving
open-hearted welcome to a man's cares and
sorrows, knowing that they bring with them in
their train a man's consolations and joys. Such
an one will find that the most costly services are
richest in blessing ; the self-denials and deeds of
duty which have scared the very root of self in
the soul, and racked him with sharp agony, have
become, when the agony was over, perennial
bubbling fountains of consolation and bhss.
Which are your richest memories, your most
hving springs of joy and hope ? Those, I well
know, which you opened in some hour of solemn
sadness, when you yoked yourself to a duty to
which you did not easily tame a rebellious heart,

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 217
Perish gold, fame, knowledge ! but leave me my
memory of duty — those tablets, blotted with tears,
but precious, inexpressibly precious, to my soul
through eternity ! Are there any echoes to this
in the inner chambers of your being, or have you
yet to be led out to the wilderness to listen to the
law ? It is the first step into hfe, to see the
heaven of duty, and, clear shining in its zenith,
beaming down on us with unutterable benignity,
ineffable serenity, as of one who, though the
Lord of duty, had " learnt obedience by suffering,"
the face of Emanuel, God with us. The people
had learnt to exist by the flesh-pots of Egypt;
but they must go forth into the wilderness, and
stand before the Lord in Horeb, to learn to hve.
III. The receiving of a law was the first step of
the people in a new and glorious career of per
sonal and national development ; which, though
they have missed the crown, has left them the
most notable, powerful, and capable race in the
world. In other words, it opened a noble man's career
to them ; it will open the same to you.
They came out of Egypt a straggling, dis
orderly throng ; they broke up and marched from
Sinai in orderly array — -an army, a nation, a
church. The key to their transformation was this
dispensation of law. It gave them a standard ;

218 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
thenceforth they had unity, and a history. When
a man says, " this is right; I am very far from
fulfilling it, but I beheve in it, I will work up to
it;" his life has a meaning and a result which
the mere child of the world, however brilliant his
talents, never attains. In this case the whole
people had a law of conduct, a standard of action,
remaining changeless through the ages, with
which the national character and life might com
pare itself ; and by which the nation attained to
a completer liberty than has ever been realized
by any nation upon earth, except, perhaps, our
own. Let the character of the legal dispensa
tion be tested by its results in the history of the
people, and it will appear, as Paul says, to be
glorious. Formal as it appears to us, burden-
somely minute in detail and severe in discipline,
yet it made incomparably the most noble, free,
deep-hearted, and fruitful people in the ancient
world. The real liberties of man, the real dignity of
woman, the nature of the home, the state, the
church, were never so well understood and so
fully set forth in the hfe of a people, until that
most heaven-ordained and fruitful of all marriages
was consummated, the marriage of the Anglo-
Saxon race to Christianity. The Jews were the
Anglo-Saxons of the old world. The nation was

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 219
a community of freemen ; each with his allot
ment of land — a freeholder whose rights were
guarded with most jealous vigilance, who was
forbidden to sell or ahenate his land under the
severest penalties : and thus they were able to
maintain the pohtical freedom of each member of
the nation, against that fearful propension to
slavery, which we see destroying, in turn, every
great empire of the ancient world. The world,
in old times, gravitated towards slavery. The
Greeks and the Romans saw the fatal tendency,
but found no remedy. The real cancer of the
Empire was slavery ; this was the fell disease
which preyed upon its vitals and dragged it down
to perdition. The Jews alone bore up against
the temptation heroicahy. They remained a
nation of freemen, even to the very last. So
deeply was this passion for pohtical liberty rooted,
that the Romans found it necessary to deal with
them more cautiously than with the other con
quered nations ; and to respect the form, at
any rate, of freedom, until the nation, by suicide,
asserted its freedom in death.
These words, in Deuteronomy xv., implanted a
seed which bore fruit in the national history for
1,500 years: —
" And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an
Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve

220 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
thee six years ; then in the seventh year thou
shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou
sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let
him go away empty : thou shalt furnish him
hberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor,
and out of thy wine-press : of that wherewith the
Lord thy God hath blessed thee, thou shalt give
unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou
wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the
Lord thy God redeemed thee : therefore I com
mand thee this thing to-day. And it shah be, if
he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee
(because he loveth thee and thine house, because
he is weh with thee) ; then thou shalt take an
awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door,
and he shah be thy servant for ever. And also
unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do hkewise. It
shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest
him away free from thee ; for he hath been worth
a double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six
years : and the Lord thy God shah bless thee in
aU that thou doest." — Deut. xv. 12-18.
I wish you would carefully contrast the history
of their tumultuous and disorderly exodus, with
the history of their breaking up from the encamp
ment before Sinai, and resumption of the Canaan-
ward march. It is wonderful what their law
had already done for them. There is something

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 221
sublime in the order with which that band of
fugitive bondmen arranged themselves around
their tabernacle, and took their way through the
dreary wilderness. In the midst of the vast
wastes, with many temptations to stray or to tarry,
they took their march in the exactest order, and
encompassed, with a resolution which could not
be vanquished, the shrine of their national faith.
When settled in Canaan, and scattered at first in
tribes, and even in families, amidst a hostile
population — engaged much hke the Anglo-Saxons
in England, in hand-to-hand conflicts with the
former masters of the soil— one thing alone pre
served their unity, and brought them forth from
this stage of national trial and temptation — their
law, and the ark of the testimony and the Taber
nacle in Shiloh. That was the centre of the
scattered bands of Israel, the heart which main
tained vital communications with the remotest
members of the national frame. Settled at length
more completely, and organized as a nation, their
law set them on high above all the nations of the
earth, in every point which is material to national
greatness. It stirred the deep fountains of their
deep hearts, and produced a literature whose
influence at this day, through the length and
breadth of the civilized world, is incomparably
the mightiest motor of the human intellect and

222 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
spirit ; and which, in the breadth and depth of
human passion which it awakens, and human
power which it wields, casts the rarest produc
tions of classical antiquity into the shade. Plato's
Republic may be a store of political wisdom for
the accomphshed scholar; there is rare honey
stored there for the use of even modern society.
But Isaiah's prophecies — Isaiah's glowing picture
of what a State must be to fulfil the idea of God,
and develop instead of dwarfing its citizens — is a
book which you should keep in your counting-
house in the heart of the bustling city, and is at
this day as true and fruitful for Cheapside and
Clapham, as it was for the traffic and the homes
of Jerusalem.
When I consider the history of this great
people, constituted a people there before the rock
of Horeb ; their gallant conquest of Canaan ;
their heroic victory over the temptation to scatter
themselves and be lost to history during the era
of the Judges ; their deep-thoughted prophets ;
their wise-hearted kings ; the freedom of their
pohtical, and the sacredness of their domestic life ;
their hatred of serfdom ; their noble defence of
their mountain home against the massive strength
of the two greatest monarchies of the earth ; their
splendid and profound literature ; their world-
renowned hymns ; — and consider further that by

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 223
God's law they were what they were — I magnify
the grace and wisdom which led them forth to
the shrine of that sublime and awful temple of
Sinai ; and I join reverently in the hymn of the
heavenly temple, which blends the song of Moses
and of the Lamb, " Great and marvellous are Thy
works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are all
Thy ways, 0 thou King of saints."
I wish I could make you feel more deeply, that
putting yourself under the law to God, is the first
step out into a true man's life. " Man lives and
works in the Idea," says a deep thinker. Unless
a man has set himself a standard of action, and
made a covenant with his soul that he will make
it the work of his life to fulfil it, his life is aimless,
hopeless, " without understanding, and like the
brutes that perish." If a man has an inward idea
of duty, and daily seeks strength to deny and
conquer himself, that he may come nearer to it,
there is a true growth and progress — that man
has a character and a history. I say to you,
come under the law to Christ, " for the grace of
God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto
all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness
and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righte
ously, and godly, in this present world ; looking
for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing
of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ,"

224 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
(Titus ii. 11, 12) — because this is the standard,
and here the true idea of hfe is to be found.
Hereby shall every conviction cherished by your
spiritual nature be nourished, and herein shall
every passion of your soul rejoice. Your man's
life, buried in dust and darkness in Adam, comes
forth and aims at glory in Christ ; to whom it
passes under the law, and through whom, " the
righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit."
The first step out into life is to put yourself under
the yoke of duty to the Lord Jesus ; and to make
it the aim of your being to hve up to your cove
nant with Him.
Alas ! what a dreary, aimless, joyless, hopeless
life many of you are living, who have never found
courage to get out into the wilderness, and there
in silence and solitude make covenant with God.
Your days are slipping away, and you are gaining
nothing ; many a battle you have had, with here
and there a victory; many a resolution has been
formed, acted on for a space, and then forsaken ;
and you are as far from a real Christian life and
the kingdom of heaven as at first. Why, what a
life is this ! Like the sands through the hour
glass your days flow on, and then you turn it and
the sand flows through again, but no fruit —
nothing that remains, endures, and must endure

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 225
through eternity. Build on the rock, course by
course, with calm and patient courage, that the
edifice of life may grow stronger and stronger
against the marauding temptations which throng
this wilderness, and promise to stand fair and
stately amid the last wreck and crash of all things,
and to be a habitation of the soul for eternity.
No longer let Egypt waste and spoil the treasures
of your being, after this vile fashion ; say now in
heart, I will play at living no longer, I will go out
into the wilderness and be awhile there, alone
with God.
IV. But, however we may magnify it, and
however justly, the law is not a Gospel, and can
in nowise supply the place of a Gospel to the
world. The legal dispensation was, historically, the
great stage of preparation for the fulness of times,
and for the advent of Him who " is the end of
the law for righteousness to every one that
believeth." And the dispensation of law, in our
individual histories, is but " a schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ." Man can only be blessed
by being brought into the peace of God ; into
harmony with God's constitution of things, and
with God Himself. The Gospel is the instrument
of the reconciliation which the law declares to be
needful, but cannot secure. If you want to
15

226 THE DISPENSATION OF LAW.
master the relations of Law and Gospel, study
closely the passage from Romans vii. 1 to viii. 4.
You will see there how a man, who has seen the
solemnly serene and beautiful aspect of law, re
pelling him from God, revealing the awful sacred-
ness of the divine constitution of things, which he
profanes and tramples on every hour, cries out in
ecstacy when he hears the name of Jesus, "I thank
my God through Jesus Christ my Lord." To that
man the righteousness of the law becomes a solemn
reality. Without righteousness he will not dare
to appear before God, and he joys in Him who is
the " Lord our righteousness ;" whose righteous
ness by faith is in us as weh as on us, for "the
righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk
not after the flesh but after the spirit."
No man who has not felt the sacredness of
duty, the divine strength and glory of law, under
stands all that is in the Gospel. Those who have
stood before the mount, see most of the glory of
the cross on Calvary. The ear that is harassed
and oppressed by the roarings of the thunder of
the mount of testimony — and it becomes terrible
to the sinner — catches joyfully the ineffable sweet
ness of the voice of the Redeemer, " And I, if I
be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."
We talk familiarly of the abolition of the law
of commandments. Let us understand what it

THE DISPENSATION OF LAW. 227
means. I know but of one way of abolishing
law — hiding it in the heart. Let it be read there
in hving characters, and the law is abolished, as
I hope you have abohshed it. Abolish it by so
hiding it within that your whole nature is instinct
with it, and fulfils it calmly and noiselessly, as a
sensitive-plant shrinks from contact, or an angel
shrinks from sin. But let no man dare to think
that the Gospel loosens the tightness of our moral
obhgation, or lowers by one half-tone the pitch of
that concord into which the Saviour calls us —
such heap to themselves a double damnation.
But blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jeses Christ, that while the law remains as a
witness, the Gospel is preached as the means of
reconciliation; "For God is in Christ reconciling
the world unto Himself, not imputing our tres
passes unto us ; 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."

15-

228 TH-& GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.

The Gospel under the Law.
"And thou shalt put the mercy -seat above upon the ark; and
in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee."
— Exod. xxv. 21.
God is one. There can be but one Gospel of
God. There is but one way of salvation for man,
every when and every where. Unity of dispensa
tion, is a conception imperatively demanded by
the unity of God. If dispensations appear to us
to be diverse and progressive, establishing, in suc
cessive ages, various terms of relation between
man and God, the progress is in the apprehen
sion of the beings who are the subjects of the
dispensation, and not in the Divine idea. God's
basis of intercourse with the fallen sinner, in all
countries and in ah ages, and in ah stages of his
culture, is ultimately one and simple — Himself.
In God Himself is, and ever has been, that on
which the reconcihation of the sinner to the
Divine holiness rests. That eldest word of pro
mise, which lit the first steps of the weary march
of man — the pilgrim of the ages, and the last

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 229
word of benediction when the pilgrimage is over,
spring from the same fountain, rest on the same
basis, and express the same fundamental purpose
— a great moral necessity to a being who loves
as God loves — to redeem man by sacrifice to
Himself. Speaking more closely to the truth of things,
there could have been no basis of reconciliation,
no justification, pecuhar to the patriarchal or the
Jewish ages, differing essentially from that which
was reserved for revelation to these Christian
times. If a patriarch, or a Jew under the law,
received forgiveness of sins, and walked as a
friend, a child, in holy fellowship with God, it
must have been on the same ground, and by the
same way as that by which a Christian walks with
God, and receives and exercises the power to
become a son. For God remains One through
the ages ; and the relation of man to Him being
a spiritual thing, is a simple and absolute thing,
and must, likewise, remain one : so that the
faith by which Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
and David walked, is the identical faith by which
St. Paul hved his hfe in the flesh ; and the salva
tion at which they aimed, and which, by faith,
they realized, is essentially the same salvation as
that in which St. Paul gloried, " the receiving the
adoption of a son." Spiritual things do not

230 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
change, die, and reappear. Their dress changes,
their form of manifestation changes, the measure
in which they are apprehended by the intellect,
and the mode in which they are set forth, change ;
but the thing itself, the spiritual state of a being
reconciled, and in living fellowship with God, does
not change ; that abides one, as God is One,
through all time, through ah eternity.
To discern the principle of man's reconciliation
with God in one age, is to discern it for ah ages.
The Gospel can but unfold exphcitly what was
enfolded implicitly — not in the formal words and
institutions — but in the whole dispensation of the
law. God's promise to Adam, was God's Gospel
to Adam. God's covenant with the Jewish people,
was the Gospel to the Jewish people ; and it is
substantially the same Gospel, springing out of
the same fountain in Himself, and resting on the
same basis in His work, as that which reveals the
whole heaven of His redeeming wisdom and love,
in the redemption which is by Christ Jesus.
God cannot alter His terms of relation with
human beings. A Jew cannot be saved on one
ground, and we on another. It is confusion to
imagine that there was a basis of a more formal
and narrower kind open to them, which is open
no longer ; a new ground having been revealed
in Christ, as that on which alone, in these Chris-

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 231
tian ages, a man can rest. Discover the ground
of relation between man and God anywhere, and,
liko the plutonic bed of the earth, it is universal.
It is the Gospel of ah ages which the Bible un
folds to us ; and I think that its selectest and com-
pletest symbol is the image presented in my text
— a mercy-seat above an ark of testimony. Law
looking up to enthroned and regnant mercy ;
mercy guarding, cherishing, and glorifying law.
In studying, as I feel it is very important to
study, what was presented as a Gospel to the
Jewish people, and which, if my position be true,
must contain substantiahy the broad truths of the
universal Gospel, the Gospel which is preached
also unto us, I observe —
I. We have here the very core of the sym
bolical ordinances of the Jewish Church.
I have no call to enter here into the general
question of ecclesiastical symbolism. Neither is
it needful to dwell at length on the special signi
ficance and worth of the symbolism of the Jewish
dispensation. Probably we are all agreed that
the worth of a sign is the measure of the thing
signified which it presents to the mind or soul.
We shall be equahy agreed that, organized as we
are, clothed spirits, the contemning of symbols —
the resolution to deal with what we may choose
to consider the naked reality of things — is a con-

232 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
tenming of the counsels of God ; who, whatever
He has made us, has not made us naked spirits in
a naked world.
The word of God, the essential truth of things,
has forms in which it presents itself, according
to their several natures, to body, mind, and spirit.
The whole visible creation is a garment, or body,
in which God presents what of Himself can be so
presented, to the touch of the senses, and the facul
ties which correspond with the senses, in the soul.
The unity of Him, whose thought runs through
the whole scale of creation, fills the universe
with analogues. Each note contains the chord,
and the octaves carry it forth beyond our bounds.
Truth, again, consents to take shape in formal
propositions, that it may furnish matter for the
exercise of the intellect, — the final function of
which is, not to know as if knowing were the
end of being, but to enlarge and lift the spirit ;
that, by its own royal faculty, it may know truth,
by knowing Him who is the truth, whom to know
is life. But the propositions in which the truth
unfolds itself to the cognizance of the intellectual
faculty, though true, are not the Truth. That
ever transcends them ; that inheres in a Being.
And only by that in a man which is capable of
knowing a spiritual being,, can the Truth be
known. But it is when ideas, which have to

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 233
do directly and absolutely with the spiritual in
man, clothe so much of themselves as can be
clothed in sensuous forms, and address him by
the methods by which creation addresses him
on behalf of God, that the difficult question
arises — How far is such symbolism helpful or
hurtful to the spiritual faculty, whose direct and
healthy action on the realities of spiritual truth
it seems to supersede ? And there is no general
form of answer. The question of milk or meat as
food for children, cannot be answered in generals;
it is entirely a matter of wise discernment, whether
the higher form of nourishment will clog the
immature digestion, or, whether the continued
administration of the lower form will keep in
chronic impotence the maturing powers of the
frame. One thing let us note, that meat, ma
terial and spiritual, demands the higher effort ;
and as man is indisposed to high effort in the
upper hemisphere of his nature, there is a stand
ing danger lest the rehgious symbol should be
come the downy sleeping-bed of the indolent and
faithless soul.
The Jewish dispensation was largely symbolic.
It dealt in tropes, figures, pictures, suited to an
avowed infancy of mankind. But that which we
seek to convey to a child by pictures, is surely
not a thought or a fact which is true for children

234 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
only, and has no truth for a man. It is the very
thing which is hereafter to occupy his manly hours,
which you are seeking to impart to him in ways
suited to the feeble insight and weak digestion of
an infantile soul. The question is, after all, not
of the sign, but of the thing signified : how much
of that can in any way be made known ? Let
men's supreme attention be bent on that — the
end of the symbol, and they wih cease wrangling
about the forms. Any dress, any speech, any ges
ture, will do to bring a much-loved friend into
the presence of the soul. There were those in
Judaism to whom the milk of the symbol was
almost more than they could take in. There were
those, in various grades of development, whose
spiritual concern was but shght with the signs of
their dispensation : " Thou desirest not sacrifice,
else would I give it ; Thou delightest not in burnt
offering " (Ps. Ii. 16) , said one when he fell into
the depths. The forms of the dispensation, at such
a moment to such an one, were no more than are
the garb and manner of the friend in whose clear
eyes one is reading the responses of a devoted
heart. We speak familiarly of the dispensation as a
symbolic dispensation. The symbols were there;
they are here ; they are everywhere. There were
those who, under that order of things, lived life-

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 23i

long in a world of shadows ; there are such here,
under this. While there were those to whom the
veil, so opaque to others, was translucent, they
saw a vague light beyond it ; to some, again, it
was fully transparent, and they (call them patri
archs, Jews, or what you wih) were the free citi
zens of the kingdom of heaven. Read St. Paul,
in 2 Cor. iii. The whole chapter is full of light
on this subject. In the 14th verse he says : —
" But their minds were blinded  Even
unto this day, when Moses is read the veil is upon
their heart." The veil was not on the things, but
in the heart of the people ; if we see more purely,
it is because we bring an open face to behold the
glory — because, through Christ, the veil is lifted
off our hearts.
We have, as I have said, the very core of the
ritual dispensation here. There was a tabernacle
— a holy place ; then there was a portion shut off
by a veil, and called the most holy place; (shall
we say that these correspond, the one to the whole
mass of the called nation, and the other to the
inner circle of those who were walking humbly
and lovingly with their God) ; and then in the very
centre — the core and marrow of the whole — there
was the ark, with its mercy-seat above, and the
veiling cherubim of glory, presenting that which
was in the heart of the Jewish nation, the one

236 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
essential principle of its moral vitality — the mer
ciful, righteous God.
At this point ah the interest of the dispensa
tion is concentrated. The days of that people's
hfe as a spiritual community ah array themselves
around that day, when their high-priest, their
daysman — who represented their nation in
shadow, as Christ, in substance, represents the
world — entered that inner sanctuary with the in
cense of his people's prayers and the blood of his
people's sacrifice, and received commission from
the Lord God who dwelt between the cherubim,
to lay the sins of the nation on a victim, who
should bear them into the wilderness away. Here,
then, is the focus of the spiritual power of the
dispensation, I mean its power to order man's
spiritual relations with ah things and with God.
And hither, to this mercy-seat above the ark, we
are to look — if my principle, that this is a typical
people, typical of you and me, be a right one — for
those elements of the good word of God to the
men of that dispensation, which relate it to the
universal Gospel of God to man, and to all worlds
— God's method of "reconciling ah things to
Himself." II. Let us pass within the shrine, and behold
what it has to reveal.
"And thou shalt make an ark of shittim wood;

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 237
and thou shalt overlay it with pure
gold. . . . And thou shalt put into the ark the
testimony which I shall give thee. And thou shalt
make a mercy-seat of pure gold  And
thou shalt make two cherubims of gold . in
the two ends of the mercy-seat . . . And thou
shalt put the mercy-seat above upon the ark ; and in
the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give
thee. And there I will meet with, thee, and I will
commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from
between the two cherubims which are upon the ark
of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee
in commandment unto the children of Israel." —
Exod. xxv. 10-22, passim.
1. What is the supreme symbol here ?
The last, the highest, the crown of the whole,
is the mercy-seat.
And this appears to me to mean more, infinitely
more, than a promise of forgiveness, upon certain
terms. The fact that with the mercy-seat God
completed and crowned the symbolism of the
Jewish dispensation ; that He only felt it fit to
be His habitation and organ of expression when
that mercy-seat was set there over the ark ; that
till then it was a mere sheh of a dispensation — as
Adam's body was a mere sheh of a man until
God had breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life — but that when the mercy-seat was set, it

238 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
became capable of entertaining the Divine glory,
and became, in fact, inspired ; this fact, I say, is
the broad, grand declaration to Judaism of the
essential nature of God. It was the utterance to
that age, of the word which by ten thousand half-
articulate voices has been uttering itself to man
since the first days of the creation, and has now
become fully articulate in Christ, — God is Love.
The mercy-seat being the chosen place of
God's presence and manifestation, seems intended
to declare solemnly something about God Himself,
His name, His nature, that out of which ah His
purposes and operations proceed. It proclaims not
the mercy of God, but that God is merciful ; not
that God will love, but that God is Love. It asso
ciates, as indissoluble, the name of God with the
quality of mercy. Righteousness is His attribute ;
law is His utterance ; they are there within the
ark which His glory shrouds ; but He, the living
Lord, is on the mercy-seat — He is Love.
I believe, brethren, that we shall be very far
from the true teaching of this passage if we un
derstand by it, that God was willing, at times, to
appear on that mercy-seat, as a monarch on his
throne, in benignant mood, to hear and answer
the prayers of His people. It means much more
than that : it means that God is merciful, that
God ever was merciful, that God must be merciful ;

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 239
that there is in His heart that deep fount of mercy,
deep as His own being, out of which all actual
forgivenesses and reconciliations spring.
The mercy-seat above the ark. I dwell specially
on that. Not Seyond it, not behind it, so that
the ark was the only approach to it ; but above it,
crowning it as a flower crowns its leaves, or a
head its hmbs.
Understand that God's mercy, God's great love
to man, goes before all acts of forgiveness. God
does not forgive on conditions, when men seek
Him. He forgives because it delights Him to
forgive. The conditions, as they appear to us,
prescribe the way in which alone, in the very
nature of things, His forgiveness can be bestowed,
on the one hand, and enjoyed on the other. Mercy
is precedent to forgiveness. The knowledge of
the essential love and mercifulness of God kindles
the desire and hope of forgiveness in the sinner's
heart. It is the sight of the mercy-seat as God's
dwelling-place which makes sin dreadful to the
awakened sinner. " With Thee there is mercy that
Thou mayest be feared," cried one who had
fathomed the depths of the subject. God shows
Himself in Christ, reconciling the world unto
Himself, as His strong appeal to the world to be
reconciled to Him. God has proclaimed before
humanity in ah generations His merciful name ;

240 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
it is the primeval fact on which the life of
humanity rests. Man's uprightness perished
from beneath him, melted like a wave from under
his feet, in the hour of the first transgression ; he
had plunged down then and there into the nether
abyss of darkness to which gravitate all waste and
wreck, but that God spread beneath his feet in
that hour, firm and strong as the pihars of His
eternal throne, His own merciful name. There
man's redemption begins. The Lamb was slain
in that hour, on the true altar, the Father's heart.
And there redemption completes itself, in the
satisfaction of that merciful heart of God.
In the ordering of the mercy-seat, then, above
the ark of the testimony, crowning the ritual of
the dispensation — the special seat of the manifes
tation of the Eternal — I discern the proclamation
of that foundation truth of the universal Gospel
out of which all redemption springs, — God is Love.
The truth is the same for them and for us ; the
substance of the proclamation is the same ; the
difference lies here, they heard the word, and
saw the glory, but "Hereby enow we the
love oe God, because He laid down His life
fob us."
2. Beneath the mercy-seat, within its bosom,
as it were, was the ark of the testimony, and in
it the word of the law.

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 241
It would be a great mistake to imagine that
the two tables of stone are exclusively referred to,
when we meet with the words " testimony " or
" law " in the Old Testament scripture. The
two tables are but portions of a legal code,
it may be the very essence of the code, the
whole summed in brief — though the Lord teaches
us that it is capable of a yet briefer summary —
but still to be looked at and dealt with in connec
tion with the whole system of commandments,
of which they were the most prominent features.
When we speak of the mercy-seat as above the
ark, and in inseparable connection with it, we
regard the whole Jewish system as ministrant to
that mercy which the mercy-seat declares. The
image here reveals a harmony — the tables of stone
in the ark, the mercy-seat above it, crowning
it, and the glory of the Lord enveloping the
whole. The two ideas are inseparable — mercy
and righteousness — when we connect them with
the Divine name. "Mercy and truth have met
together, righteousness and peace have kissed
each other," in every manifestation of the love of
God to man.
In order to enter fully into this idea, we must
remember that the declaration of the mercifulness
of God, the assertion, however solemn may be
the form, that God is Love, is not a Gospel to
16

242 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
man. The Gospel is " a way of salvation ; " the
way in which that pure love and man's impurity
may be brought into relation with each other ;
the way in which a lost image may be recovered,
a lost harmony restored, a lost home regained.
And therefore, within the bosom of the ark, over
which the Mercy brooded with outstretched wings,
was hidden the testimony of God. The mercy-
seat declares His love, it reveals His essential
nature, as the fundamental basis on which the
Gospel rests, or rather the root out of which it
springs. But we must turn to the testimonies, to
understand the way in which alone the mercy
which is reigning there can work towards its
victory. i. The first aspect which the testimonies pre
sent to man in his present moral condition is, as
a witness against sin.
This is not in their essential nature, as we
have seen, but it is inevitable in the present moral
condition of mankind. The very first aim of
God's testimony to the Jewish people was to force
home on their consciences the conviction of sin.
God is merciful ; God is Love. But until you
have added to that, the confession, "I am sinful,
I am alienated from that Love," the Gospel is
still hidden from your heart. The law, full of a
benign meaning to the obedient soul, is full of

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 243
deadly menace to the corrupt and erring. " The
law is holy," says St. Paul, " and the command
ment holy, and just, and good;" but to me,
the convicted sinner, it becomes the minister of
death. And God set His testimonies beneath
His mercy-seat, that they might convmce us,
convict us, and terrify us, if we will not be drawn,
into an intense concern about our spiritual state ;
that they might probe the depth of our nature,
lay bare the diseased centres of action, and bring
us to cry, crushed down to the very dust in an
agony of self-abasement and despair, "0 miser
able man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?" It is between man, the
sinner, and God, the Saviour, that those most
blessed relations have to be established, which are
to fill heaven with glory and bliss. To show man
as the manifest sinner, and to show Himself as
the manifest Saviour, is the deep purpose of God :
and he begins — under the law, under the Gospel,
the method is one — by laying bare the deadly,
and, out of Him, the hopeless malady of the
human heart. Any other Gospel, any Gospel
which began its work by making light of the
transgressions which it undertook to cure, man's
conscience would spurn.*
* I have treated this subject much more at large in the
earlier portion of a former volume, "The Divine Life of Man.''
16—2

244 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
I say that the method is one under the law and
under the Gospel. Here are the burning words
of the commandment, flashing the light of heaven
in upon the sinner's heart and life ; and there,
under the Gospel, the very first work of the Holy
Ghost, the Comforter, is conviction, for "He,
when He is come, shall convince the world of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment." The first
Gospel sermon filled men with an awful terror.
They thought of the deed which they had done —
and it was not their private deed, it was man's ;
had we been there we had done it — and they
trembled and quaked to the innermost chambers
of their hearts. We may say that one great
object of the death of Christ was to reveal what
sin was capable of, and to drive the conviction
home. Never till the world had slain the Holy
One and the Just, and exposed the Divine love
to the shame and torture of the Cross,'" did sin
reveal to man its deadly, damning"] character ;
never tih then were the deepest fountains of
contrition unsealed in human hearts. The law
was there, under the mercy-seat, that the sinner,
self-convinced and self- condemned, might stand
there, and know, as such only can know, the
depth of the riches of the love of God.
But we must explore the testimonies further.
ii. No man can study the commandments of

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 245
God to the Jewish people, without coming across
the idea of sacrifice; without the blood of a victim,
without an offering of atonement, the high-priest
of the Jewish people, their mediator, durst not
lift that veil, or stand before that throne, lest the
splendour should wither him away.
" And Aaron shall take of the congregation of the children
of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram
for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the
sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for
himself, and for his house. And he shall take the two goats,
and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two
goats ; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scape
goat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's
lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on
which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive
before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let
him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. And Aaron shall
bring the bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and
shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house, and
shall kill the bullock of the sin offering which is tor himself :
And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from
off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet
incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil : and he
shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the
cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is upon the
testimony, that he die not : and he shall take of the blood of
the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-
seat eastward ; and before the mercy-seat shall he sprinkle of
the blood with his finger seven times. Then shall he kill the
goat of the sin offering, that is for his people, and bring his

246 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did with
the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy-seat,
and before the mercy-seat : and he shall make an atonement
for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children
of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins :
and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that
remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness. And
there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation
when he goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place,
until he come out, and have made an atonement for himself,
and for his household, and for all the congregation of Israel.
And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the Lord, and
make an atonement for it ; and shall take of the blood of the
bullock, and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the
horns of the altar round about. And he shall sprinkle of the
blood upon it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and
hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. And
when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and
the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall
bring the live goat : and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon
the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities
of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their
sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send
him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness : and
the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities linto a land not
inhabited : and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." —
Levit. xvi. 3-22.
This shedding of the blood of the appointed
sacrifice, was the condition of the manifestation of
mercy from the throne. And here we open up
questions which it is easier to bury under plati
tudes than to solve. My object in the present

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 247
series of discourses is to consider, what the
wilderness history presents to us; the human
conditions and experiences of those who are
brought into a relation to God like that of the
Jewish people, rather than to analyze the con
ditions and methods of the self-manifestation
of God in reconciling His rebellious children to
Himself. This is a book of experience rather
than of theology. I therefore do not enter into
any elaborate argument on the subject of sacrifice
generally. Indeed there is httle need that I
should do so, as in a recent pamphlet on the
" Divine Fatherhood in Relation to the Atone
ment," I have expressed my views upon that
subject fuhy.
But in glancing at this subject, the Jewish
sacrifices, shah we say that God has many kinds
of sacrifice, which, under various conditions, He
holds to be acceptable and sufficient ? that the
terms of His relation with men vary in successive
generations ; that a people in old time, who
sprinkled the blood of a slain buhock, offered to
Him a sufficient and acceptable atonement ; while
from us, if we offered a hecatomb, He would turn
sternly away. This is a notion about God's ways
largely entertained in some theological schools,
but it seems to me most full of peril. I believe
that there is no more fertile source of wrong

248 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
thinking about Divine things, and its fruit,
unbelief, than the notion that there is "yea
and nay," about a matter as fundamental and
essential as sacrifice, with God.
Must we not say, that before God there is,
there can be, but one sufficient sacrifice for sins ?
That from the hour when Adam fell, to the hour
when the last of the redeemed shah be gathered
home, there is but one simple, absolute, sufficient
ground of the justification of souls. That every
transaction of God in relation to man's trans
gression not only rests on it, but springs out of
it. That every act of forgiveness, every promise
to the transgressor, seeks its justification there.
So that for Jew, for Gentile, for patriarchal,
legal, and Christian dispensations, there is but
one atonement before the Father, one Daysman,
one Mediator, one High Priest, who, through
death, has become also King. I beheve that this
is the simple, absolute truth; and that we shall
get into utter confusion if we suppose, as the
whole truth of the matter, that God forgave the
Jewish penitent on the ground of his animal
sacrifice, as being the thing enjoined on him,
while he deals upon deeper grounds with us.
The truth is, that God looked upon that Jewish
penitent and his bleeding victim, and dealt with
him on the ground of His own great sacrifice,

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 249
which even then was before Him ; and that all
the feelings, thoughts, and associations which
clustered around the Jewish institution of sacri
fice, drew ah their virtue from the unseen foun
tain of the perfect sacrifice, as moons absorb the
lustre of an unseen sun.
The sacrifice of Christ, when offered visibly on
earth, was at once to justify — that is, to reveal
the unseen basis of— past forgivenesses, and to
show to the future the ground on which all its
divine relations must rest. God had this before
Him from the first, as the deep ground of His
acts of mercy; and revealed it in progressive
measures, as it could be borne by the strengthen
ing spiritual vision of man.
I say, " in progressive measures." Nothing
can be further from the truth of things, than
to maintain that the Jew who derived any vital
help from his sacrificial institutions, must have
been intellectually conscious of the real basis on
which his justification rested, and been thus a
conscious prophet of the suffering of our Lord.
He was a prophet, but a mute one. There were
men who from the height of their prophetic
eyrie looked over the gulf of ages, and " spake
beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the
glory that should follow." But the Scripture
assures us that they themselves saw but dimly,

250 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
and understood but feebly, that whereof they
spake ; and we may be sure that the multitude
of their countrymen understood still less. But
God understood it— that was the great matter.
God offered the sacrifice ; God accepted it ; and
on the ground of it justified every Jewish wor
shipper who put himself into spiritual relation
with Himself. This last point is essential. To
justify is a spiritual act ; to be justified is a
spiritual reception of an act. A careless, sen
sual soul can no more appropriate the virtue
of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, than can a
shut eye take in the dayhght, or a stopped ear
the concord of sounds. But just as hght may
flood the atmosphere and gladden watching eyes,
though the sun be hidden ; so did the hght of
the great Atonement gladden ah waking hearts
in the old time, before its form was visible in
our world.
I regard, then, the offering of sacrifice by the
Jewish worshipper as a spiritual act. If I am
to regard it as a formal act, the mind of the
man having nothing to do with it, I should find
it impossible to disentangle the confusion into
which such a view would plunge the whole
counsel of God. The act, to have been worth
anything, must have been spiritual ; that is,
must have exercised the spiritual faculties of the

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 251

worshipper by whom, or on behalf of whom, the
sacrifice was offered.
The connection of the atonement for sin with
the life of a victim, had most important teach
ings, as we more fully understand. All that was
meant by that, they only can comprehend who
have seen " the Lamb of God, who beareth away
the sins of the world." But to the thoughtful
Jew there would be much solemn suggestion in
the institution. The blood is the life : life is
sacred — the life even of the meanest creature —
and life is offered. Sin, then, touches the life ;
it tinctures the very blood : by the shedding of
blood only can it be purged away. The sign
can only be fully understood when the thing
signified appears. The types were dim, tih that
which they mutely prophesied was revealed.
Then, and not tih then, was it understood, —
though the awful form of some of the pagan
sacrifices shows terribly that the blood of bulls
and of goats brings no real release to man — that
the true atonement cannot be a life which God
can claim, a creature life, but a hfe which God
can offer — Himself. Some dim glimpse of this
thought would be caught by the more earnest
worshippers under the law, but to many it would
be quite veiled, as is the depth of Gospel truth
to many behevers now. But this truth about

252 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
sin was reahy, however dimly, expressed to and
by the worshipper, whenever the high-priest
passed with the blood of atonement before the
mercy-seat, and proclaimed to Israel the Lord's
passover of sin.
And the Jew was specially taught to connect
his forgiveness, not with a basis which he could
improvise, which he could either invent or create;
but with a work which was God's ordinance,
which was God's appointed way of access to
Himself. It was by God's way, and not by his
own, that the Jew sought to be justified ; and
this renunciation of his own way and acceptance
of God's, was an act of obedience essentiahy
spiritual. What if it appeared to lead him but
into the outer court of the tabernacle ? the spirit
which led him thither was that same spirit
of faith, by which, when the way to the inner
court, the Holy of Holies, was laid open by the
blood of Christ, he would enter with reverent
boldness, and bow with open face before the
throne. Here, then, are two fundamental principles of
God's universal way of reconciling sinners to
Himself, unfolded to Judaism by the Divine
testimonies ; principles which are meaningless
utterly, delusions, mockeries, snares to souls, if
there be no great propitiation, whose work of

THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW. 253
atonement was at length in full measure to be
revealed to the world. Thus it appears that the
milk of the children contained ah the essential
principles of the nutriment, which was to feed
the intelligent manhood of mankind.
3. The third lesson of the symbol, perhaps
the highest, is to be gathered from the contem
plation of its unity.
We have considered it in its parts, but it is
essentiahy one. An ark, with a mercy-seat above
it, the cherubim shadowing both, and the Divine
glory, the light which was the sign of God's per
sonal presence, bathing the whole.
I have spoken of the truth which is thus set
forth, at large, in my discourse on law. It tells
us that mercy only crowns us fully with its bene
diction, where the Divine testimonies are hidden
within the heart. Man is the true Shekinah.
The glory shines from him when the Word is
enshrined within him. " Christ is the end of
the law for righteousness to every one that
believeth." In Him it is no law of words
addressed sternly to the understanding, but a
law of life shrined lovingly within the soul. We
talk of the abolition of the legal dispensation,
but, as I have said, there is but one way of
abolishing the law — hiding it within the heart.
Abolish it there, and thus : " Sin shall not have

254 THE GOSPEL UNDER THE LAW.
dominion over you, for ye are not under the law
but under grace."
There were Christians in the apostolic age, as
there are in ah ages, who thought that it was
abolished otherwise ; to whom Gospel hberty was
the proclaimed saturnaha of sin. How terribly
does the apostle warn such, that through Christ
they were more absolutely bound to God's law
than ever : " Not without law to God, but under
the law to Christ." And if any one wishes to
know what that includes within its range, let him
read it here, Col. hi. 5-17. And let him learn
that to have within the heart such dehght in
the testimonies of God, that His statutes become
our songs in the house of our pilgrimage, was
in old time, is now, and shall be through eternity,
life, liberty, glory, and bliss.

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 255

Alone : yet not alone.
" And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give
thee rest." — Exod. xxxiii. 14.
These are the words of God's assurance, in
answer to an almost agonizing supplication of
Moses, " Except thy presence, my God, go with
me, carry us not up hence." The prayer was
uttered on the edge of the great wilderness,
when he was about to loose his hold on his last
famihar resting-place, and commit himself and
his people to its unknown wilds. All the magni
tude of his grand undertaking was pressing on
him at that moment. "Who is sufficient for
these things," he cried, hke one who, after the
lapse of ages — a pilgrim of Sinai, too — set his
hand to the conversion of a world. And the
prayer is a high exemplar for us. The Divine
guidance was the one question which to them,
to us, is absolutely a question of life or death.
Thus far the ground over which they had passed
was familiar marching-ground to their great
leader. Moreover, their march had been a tri-

256 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
umphal exodus from bondage. Up to Sinai,
Egypt was behind them, and they had the joyous
sense that they were escaping from hated and
tyrannous foes. From Sinai, Canaan was before
them, and the grand difficulties and perils of
their enterprise began. It was the great critical
point of their course. Verily they had need of
a vision of a Divine leader, whose pillar of flame
should shine, not on their march only, but in
their hearts. I have said already that Moses
was the Man of Israel, the man in whom ah
the higher life and aim of the whole community
expressed itself. We study Israel through him ;
and I am persuaded that we shall get nearer
to the heart of this great matter — the Lord's
guidance of the host — if we listen to his wrestling
supplication, in which the intercessor was utter
ing the cry of a whole people, and catch the words
of the answer of God, than if we were to study,
as we might, the external form of the guiding
angel, marvehous, miraculous, and richly sym
bolic as it unquestionably is. " And the Lord
went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to
lead them in the way ; and by night in a pihar
of fire to give them hght ; to go by day and
night. He took not away the pillar of cloud
by day, nor the pihar of fire by night, from
before the people." A grand, sublime, symbol —

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 257
amongst the greatest things in history. What a
picture is this ! " And on the day that the taber
nacle was reared up the cloud covered the taber
nacle, namely, the tent of the testimony : and at
even there was upon the tabernacle as it were
the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it
was alway : the cloud covered it by day, and the
appearance of fire by night. And when the cloud
was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that
the children of Israel journeyed : and in the place
where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel
pitched their tents. At the commandment of the
Lord the children of Israel journeyed, and at the
commandment of the Lord they pitched : as long
as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they
rested in their tents." — Numb. ix. 15-18.
Imagine that mighty host winding through the
dreary paths of the desert, lonely there as a
people among peoples, as their Lord became
lonely as a man among men ; cut off utterly from
ah national associations and sympathies; the
strongest people in the world behind them, ani
mated by the most deadly hatred, and powerful
nations in front, armed to receive them, and to
dispute with them every inch of the inheritance
they were resolved to win; marching on along
those solemn desert pathways, with the visible
sign in the midst of them of the presence in
17

258 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
person of the Lord God of the whole world.
There, under the blazing rays of the burning noon,
a soft cloud spread its cool shadow on the weary
plain, and refreshed imagination at any rate — and
what pure refreshment that is— with the picture
of the shadowing love of the Lord God Almighty
over the whole wearying pilgrimage and battle
march of life ! And then, as evening fell, and
the glooms of night began to drop their awful
shroud — for nightfall is awful in the lonely waste
— over the weird forms and hues of those beetling
cliffs, or the gaunt outlines of the desert palms,
the cloud began to glow and lighten, tih it cast a
broad flood of living lustre, such as we see on
earth only in dreams, on the whole scene of the
desert encampment. It touched the spurs and
peaks of the mountains, till they stood glowing
like angel sentinels around the camp of God's
redeemed, and filled the night watchers — and let
us be sure that there were a multitude, and not the
least earnest-hearted of the people — with some
vision of what might be seen, if, as at Elisha's
prayer, the veils were lifted, and all the heavenly
armies appeared attending the path of God's
host through battles and perils, through foaming
seas and dreary deserts, to their glorious rest.
But magnificent as was the sign, the thing signi
fied transcended it. In vain had the Divine

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 259
presence been shewn to them in that miraculous
cloud and glory, if there had been no inner sense
of the Divine presence in their hearts. It is in the
communion between Moses and the Divine Leader
of the host, that we are admitted into the true
sanctuary of that people's strength. Just so far s
as their spirits went with Moses in this prayer, in
this yearning for the inner presence and guidance
of God, did they march joyously and triumphantly
on their way ; and when that failed, the visible cloud
of splendour helped them no longer ; they dropped
like blighted fruit from the living tree, and their
carcases fell in the wilderness. So we will enter
with Moses within the cloud that sweeps round
Sinai, and consider our sources of strength and
guidance for the pilgrimage of life.
Remember that Moses was about to quit the
familiar ground, the old home of his exile, the
mountain region of Horeb. The path onward
lay through unknown deserts, and would most
surely be beset by daring and experienced foes.
It was a prospect before which even a soul of such
heroic mould might faint. Would God go with
him, not in a pihar of cloud, as the national
leader, but as friend, companion, comrade of
his spirit ? Let him have that promise, and he
would bravely on. But well he knew that the
loftiest sphere, unlit by God's presence, is but a
17—2

260 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
sunleris world ; that a life of the grandest orbit, :
unquickened by His sniile, is joyless, barren, un-,
blessing and unblessed. We moan sometimes,?
or maunder, over the uncongenial scenes into-
which duty leads us, the distasteful tasks to which;
we seem to be yoked by the will of God. When
you next make your moan, try to reahze that man's-
life. Scholar, statesman, profound and accom
plished thinker, used to mix as a master in the
foremost circle of the foremost society of the world
in his day, God had cast his lonely lot amongst
a people utterly uninstructed and unintelligent,
unable to understand, indisposed to reverence his
thoughts, and ever breaking in on the meditations
and communings on which the fate of unborn
ages was hanging, with their sensual outcries,
"Hast thou brought out this whole nation into
the wilderness, that it may perish with hunger ?"
A man, moreover, who had deeper thoughts about
the Divine nature and character than any other
man of his day ; to whom the meaning of hfe and
the sacredness of duty were more plain. For,
had he not entered into the inner court of the
Divine presence, and gazed on the glory which no
eye but his had prevailed to look upon, and talked
with God face to face, as a man talketh with his
friend ? And see him there, among a people who
clung to the outer court, for it was less dreadful

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.

than the inner; who had no conception of the
solemnity of a Divine command, except when it
was enforced by plagues, and who assailed him,
when he came forth from this Divine communion,
with the very glory on his countenance, full of
that " favour" which is the hfe of men and peoples,
with scornful questions about graves ! Never,
perhaps, was man so lonely. Not Elijah, when
he flung himself in fierce wrath on the floor of the
cave of Horeb, and the very ravens rebuked his
despair ; not Paul, when he stood, aged and
friendless, before the bloody tribunal of pagan
empire ; not Alfred, when alone in the neat-herd's
hut, that winter when, in Asser's simple words,
" he lived an unquiet life in the woodlands of
Somerset," and the destinies of England rested in
his single hand ; not Columbus, with the weary
waste of waters still round him, and the land
which God had called that pious and patient
captain to discover, still far away : none of them,
perhaps, ever felt so utterly lonely as Moses at
that moment ; and yet not alone— not alone — for
God was with him. Servants of duty, pilgrims of
disciphne ! others, greater than you, have passed
through it all before you ; others have laid on that
altar a sacrifice which you cannot mate ; others,
the world's elect spirits, have accepted this word
of the Eternal — " My presence shall go with thee,

262 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
and I wih give thee rest," as the mariner accepts
the pole-star, as the world accepts the sunhght, as
an army accepts a renowned leader, as an age
sick of revolution accepts its king.
I cannot see that this choice of Moses, to walk
in God's way, if but assured of God's presence,
differs in anywise from the choice which that
people was called on to make at that moment,
and which God is ever pressing upon us ah. In
considering it in its broad human aspect, I
observe —
I. Here are two ways on which the choice is
to be exercised — two paths, which very plainly
diverge. It is the old, old choice — worldhness, god
liness — duty, pleasure — God's wih, self-will —
the passions and appetites of the flesh or of
the mind, the convictions of conscience and the
word of God. We may fence with these ques
tions concerning right, truth, and duty ; but
every man in his secret soul knows full well what
they mean. And there come great crises in the
history of our lives in which the two ways lie very
plainly before us, and when, by our own delibe
rate election of the one or the other, our life-
course gets shaped, and our eternity. It was
such a crisis in the history of Israel. They stood
there before God an independent nation, capable

alone: yet not alone. 263

of national action and national choice. No longer
slaves, driven in gangs by a taskmaster's lash, but
conscious freemen, with ah the dignity and all the
burden of the freeman's lot upon them, they stood
there in the heart of the great wilderness, through
which lay the path to beautiful and wealthy lands.
Straight over the desert a Divine guide pointed
their way. He had hidden from them nothing of
the toils, perils, battles, famines of their pil
grimage ; there, before the Mount of God, He had
unveiled to them Himself, themselves, and their
future. They had had a full taste of what a
desert life must be, as they journeyed thither, and
He gave them no hope that it could be otherwise
to the close, — as He passed the word of command
once more through their host, " set forward." On
the other hand, in soft contrast to this stem and
awful desert, lay Egypt, swimming in the sun
light ; her wanton beauty and lavish plenty wooed
them eagerly to return. Unholy passions and
longings, never so fierce as when they tremble for
their sway, flashed up to frenzy ; and the old cry,
" Better, far better, slavery with food and plea
sure, than liberty with God and death," trembled
on their hps. Here were the two paths : Divine
duty, with privation and suffering ; worldly plea
sure, with bondage and degradation : the one, on
through the wilderness to Canaan; the other,

264 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
back, one step, one brief step, to Egyptian bon
dage and night. They went on, but half-hearted.
Moses alone went on beheving; they, compelled
by an overmastering awe ; their hearts went back
to Egypt, and in the desert, not in Canaan, they
found their graves.
And now let me show forth the same history
in yourselves. These Jews are our exemplars ;
God wrote this page of their history for us. To
every man who has a soul to be saved or damned
God opens at some time, in some way, the ques
tion of duty and life, or pleasure and death.
And it is often after this fashion : He takes you,
by some striking visitation or overpowering
influence, a step out of the Egypt of your daily
natural bondage ; shows to you the wilderness,
tells you of Canaan, and whispers the assurance,
"My presence shah go with thee, I wih give
thee rest." I cannot analyse your experience.'
I state the matter broadly. In. some way, at
some time — and it is now in the broad dayhght
of memory — God makes you hear His vocation,
and asks for the possession of your hearts. It
may have been by some preacher, who seemed
that day to speak with the power and truth of an
angel to your spirits ; it may have been by some
stroke which shattered your idols round you, and
bowed you down mute before the footstool of

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 265
your King ; it may have been by the hps of some
dying saint, or by the holy and beautiful life of one
who has gone to walk in white before the Lamb.
I know not, but God knows, and you know.
For the time, a strange change came over all your
feelings, thoughts, and hopes. God took you out
one step from the drudgery, the circle of slavish
tasks, the reeking flesh-pots, and the tyrant's
lash ; out into the clear air, the bright heaven,
the free earth of the wilderness — and what was
the world to you then ? what the wealth of
Croesus, the throne of Caesar ? Another world
enveloped you with its atmosphere, and ravished
you with its music — a world where Croesus is a
beggar, and Nero a slave. You caught some
gleaming of its splendour, some echoes of its
choral hymns. You learnt there, that all God's
universe is not as dark as the sin-begotten gloom
s>f this world ; that ah man's being is not earthly ;
that all man's life need not be consuming and
degrading toil ; that there is a world open to him
in which the longings of his spirit — that aspira
tion which kills the pleasures of sin, though it
wins not the joys of virtue — can find free play
and progress, and, gaining power from Christ to
master flesh and world, make the very air around
him musical with loud hosannas and shouts of
victory ; a world in whose sphere, though sense

266 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
may pine, spirit rejoices ; though gold may waste,
riches grow ; though the outer man with its
infirm purposes and vain passions may perish,
the inner man is renewed daily, stands up in
freedom, rejoices in disciphne, and exults in hope
of the glory of God.
All this, at such moments — and to ah at some
time is the vision sent — God shows to us ; and
He cahs us to make our final election ; to go on
with His pillar of cloud and flame through the
desert, conscious freemen, or if the flesh-pots are
too sweet, to go back to Egypt, conscious slaves.
Thus God calls you, claims you, stirs you up to
the great enterprise of hfe ; and I dare not mock
Him by supposing that He does not wish or
mean you to go on. But then, just as you are
realizing the truth of these impressions, the
majesty of eternal things, and the glory of
spiritual conquest, and are about to commit
yourself to the Divine hand, you bethink your
self — the devil takes care that you shall not
forget it — of the sacrifice it demands, the dangers,
wanderings, and difficulties which it wih entail,
the dear associations from which it will sever
you, the loved companions it wih compel you to
forsake ; you look on, the drear, dread desert
sweeps out before you, you hear the night wind
moan through its desolate wastes ; you know

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 267
that its farther bounds are thronged by foe-
men armed for your destruction ; you ask, how
many in fulfilling the will of God have found not
kingdoms, but graves, and forgetting for the
moment that the bosom of Jesus is their sleeping
bed, you let the sensual cry break forth once
more, " It is better for us to serve the Egyptians
than that we should die here in the wilderness."
The cry of the spirit is choked and silenced ; the
choice is made.
I do not ask you whether this be a chapter of
your experience ; I know it is. God has not
formed each human spirit to be the heir of im
mortality, laid on it responsibilities of fearful
moment, and sent it forth to a probation in which
sin is the harbinger of death eternal, without
coming to that soul, whose destiny He has so
fearfully interwoven with its duty, to talk to it of
duty, to urge it to action, to kindle its aspira
tions for freedom, life, and glory, ere He leaves
it to its carnal, earthly passions, to bury it in
eternal night.
" 0 Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! thou that kihest
the prophets, and stonest them which are sent
unto thee ; how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, but ye would not ! "
is Christ's lament over every self-immolated soul.

268 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
II. The cry of the human spirit for rest.
The longing of man's spirit amid all these
strifes, discords, and confusions, is for rest. We
are made for rest, and have a right to cry for it,
if we do but understand what it really means.
Nothing can eradicate man's conviction that strife
and discord have no right in the universe ; that
they are abnormal : that the normal condition of
things and beings is harmony, and that harmony
is the music of rest. God must rest — rest even
in working ; and all that is of God and from
God, has the longing and the tending to rest.
I believe that some dull notion that they will
have more rest in the hfe of the world, that they
will escape many cares and distractions, and, at
any rate, be at peace in sin, hes at the bottom of
many a backsliding to Egypt in human hearts.
No man at first is content to let the question
alone — to leave the riddle of life unread. The
inward and the outward carry on the conflict,
and refuse to settle it on the cheap terms of sin.
Hence arises the long discord in him who has
not found the principle of the Divine harmony :
"the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the
spirit striveth against the flesh, and the two are
contrary the one to the other." We long to find
some truth which shah release us from the agony,
and make some kind of harmony in our lives.

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 269
We find this battle of life inexplicable ; it some
times shakes our faith in the wisdom and good
ness of our God. We shout into the Sibyl cave
and hsten for the responses ; we take the whis
pers of sense for the answer, and then we go on
our way. But the conflict again begins, the
perplexities again return ; again and again we
cry, each time in a more frenzied mood, "Who
wih show us any good ? " " Who will give us
rest ? " Now, to find peace, we are wihing to
abandon the world for God, for Christ, for a holy
life, and the rest of heaven. But then the
magnitude of the sacrifice appals us ; we fall
back again, and take to shouting, "Peace, peace !"
where there is no peace, instead. At times, in
the full flood of the reaction, we blasphemously
pray that the Spirit may be withdrawn, that the
Light may be quenched : ' ' What have we to do
with thee, Jesus, thou son of God ; why art thou
come to torment us before our time ? "
We search passionatsly after a true philosophy
of life ; we ask to understand the reason of this
conflict, and to see on to its end. Is there no
truth which can cast light for us over these
troubled waters, and show us, though from afar,
that all is not rough and dangerous — that beyond
them is a calm ocean, a Pacific unswept by
storms, and studded with the peaceful islands

270 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
of the blessed. Or is ah to be darkness, and for
ever ? Are we to wrestle ah night with the
moaning surge, until morning casts us shattered
on the strand of eternity? Tell us why these
storms are raging ; why only through that deep
dark sea and howling wilderness hes the path to
the better land. Above all, show us a light
which can guide us through the glooms and lead
us into rest.
Listen : there is such a word of guidance, and
but one. Amid all the storms which duty calls
you to brave, all the sacrifices that God calls
you to make, the perils, pains, and battles
through which your heavenward path may lead
you, voices come down, calm and clear, from
those who have fought and suffered, and are at
rest with Christ, —
Mortal, they softly say,
Peace to thy heart :
We too, yes ! mortal,
Have been as thou art ;
Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,
Seeing in part ;
Tried, troubled, tempted,
Sustained as thou art.
While, above all the voices of the creature, from
the midst of the glow of glory which surrounds
the throne, the word of the Son of God, the

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 271
great Captain of the human host, comes down to
every earnest, struggling spirit : " My presence
SHALL GO WITH THEE, I WILL GIVE THEE BEST."
We pass on, to complete the subject, by con
sidering —
III. The Divine assurance, which was to Moses,
and should be to us, an all-sufficient warrant to
leave the world and the pleasures of sin, and
commit ourselves to the desert under God's
guidance, as the path to the heavenly rest.
" He endured as seeing Him who is invisible."
Such only can endure. We have talked hitherto
of the two hves, the two paths, mainly in their
present aspects, as they seem to man, not as they
are before the eye of God. We have spoken of
sacrifices, struggles, and sufferings ; of earth, to
the child of God, as a wilderness, and life as a
long and weary night. Now let us lift our eyes
and see with what stars of God this night is
illumined, what arms of Divine love enfold the
pilgrim, what heavenly voices, amid the storms of
hfe's wild sea, the surgings of passion, and even
the wreck of our sensual existence, can hush the
pilgrim to rest. " My presence shah go with
thee." Now there arises a light in the darkness.
There is compensation, yea, infinitely more,
something for which earth has no name, " a far
more exceeding, even an eternal weight of

272 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
glory." Not by striking out pains and strifes,
but by crowding in conquests, joys, and glories,
do we set our fraction of life square with the
measures of the Eternal. " For the joy that was
set before Him, he endured the cross, and despised
the shame." He is the ensample unto us. With
all that we have pictured of the aspects of the
wilderness, there is a Divine presence with the
soul, which is its joy, its strength, its life, its
heaven — yes, even on earth its heaven. " The
best of all is, God is with us."
I shall speak briefly of the reality of this Divine
presence, and its fruits.
1. Its reahty.
We can come nearer to the heart of this great
matter than even Moses can lead us. "Jesus
answered them, do ye now beheve ? Behold the
hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shah be
scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave
me alone ; and yet I am not alone, because
the Father is with me. These things have
I spoken unto you that in me ye might have
peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation :
but be of good cheer : I have overcome the
world." John xvi. 31-33.
Let me ask you to study, in the light of this
train of thought, this passage of our Lord's
history — John xviii. 28 — xix. 12.

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 273
Is this the strongest reality or the deepest
delusion known to man ? It is one or the other.
We are here in the presence of an awful fact, or
a more awful lie. You may use fine words about
" the Divine idea," " the higher self-consciousness
of Jesus," "the subjective reality of a Divine
presence with him there ;" but I confess that all
such talk seems to me blank blasphemy when
intruded into such scenes as these. Either there
was One, above the world, who was with the Lord
in that hour, whose word represented to Him all
truth, whose touch represented to Him ah
power, whose ministries represented to Him all
love ; or the arch-delusion triumphed in that
hour, and for ever, over man. He who stood
there unarmed and friendless before Pilate, had
One to stand by Him, in whom all power, wisdom,
truth, and hfe were centred. The roots of the
witness to the truth which the Lord then bore,
were deeper than the everlasting mountains,
deeper than heaven, deeper than hell ; they were
firm in the Being of the Living God.
I have no other key to this awful transaction.
If the Lord mistook His own idea for that Living
God, and gave an "objective" reality to what
was but the phantom of a longing and aching
heart, then there is no reahty anywhere around
us or above us; nothing to justify, purify, and
18

274 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
hft us out of ourselves. He who is enamoured of
or content with himself may find this a gospel ;
but for me, if there be no hving God my Saviour,
to redeem me from myseK, to inform me with His
truth, and inspire me with His life, why then,
" Let us eat, and drink — and die, and let it be
soon." No ! the one real thing in this universe
is God's presence with the human spirit ; having
that we have ah things, missing that we lack all
things ; ah things collapse, and vanish like a
dream away.
Think you that he did not find it a rock, who
stood up before kings and an angry world, and
said, " This is God's word. I can speak no
other. Here stand I, God help me." What to
him were kings and popes and hostile armies?
What, as he said himself, ah the devils in hell ?
And what did they do to harm him ! He finished
his course with joy, he died peacefully in his bed,
a conqueror, and filled the world with his immortal
fame. And I would rather see the weakest and
most trembhng being that I loved, in the right
path, following Christ through tribulations, than
lapped in ease and worldly indulgence, and lulled
by soft strains to voluptuous repose. And why ?
Because I beheve that ah blessing is compre
hended in the promise, " My presence shall go
with thee, and I will give thee rest." Pray for

alone: yet not alone. 275
this, for your children and for your dearest : give
God no rest tih He has promised to guide them,
and then leave them in His hand for life and for
eternity. Let God appear, and hght rises on the troubled
pilgrimage with soft healing wings. The dark
drear night flushes with auroral splendour, herald
of the celestial dawn. In the fiercest fires that
man can kindle, a grand and godlike form is by
the martyrs, and the tyrant world shudders as it
sees that the flame touches nothing but their
bonds. The Captain of the Lord's host is ever at
the right hand of the child of duty, covering him
with his shield in all deadly perils, and in sorrows
drawing him closer to his heart. And moments
there wih be, when the moaning surges of the
stormy life-sea around him are silenced, and he
hears with strange joy and wonder the calm but
mighty heavings of that eternal ocean, which
bears the rushing tides of being back to their great
fountain, God.
2. The fruits. " I will give thee rest."
I have already said that the longing of the
human spirit amid ah this is for rest. There are
two kinds of rest, or rather what goes by the
name of rest, within reach of man. The secret
of the one is, escape from trouble ; the secret of
the other is, entering into life. Life is the harmo-
18—2

276 alone: yet not alone.
nious balance of conflicting forces, the calm con
trol of all opposite powers. Escape from trouble
is not permitted to man, though he thinks it is.
" This same shah comfort us concerning our
work and toil of our hands, because of the ground
which the Lord hath cursed," said Lamech,
on the eve of the deluge. Even thus saith the
worldling, "Peace, peace," while "there is no
peace, saith my God, to the wicked." It is a won
derful feature in man's constitution that he can
find rest only in his highest, in the full culture
and activity of all his powers. He tries to rest in
a luxurious home, in a feverish orgy, on a wanton's
breast. But who shall paint the anguish of the
rest of the wicked ? How many a man has gone
out from a scene of uproarious merriment, to
blow out his brains, in blank despair ! There is
no rest but in God. Man rests only in the ful
ness of his existence, in the completeness of his
life. Moses found no rest in communion with
earthly natures, but there was rest for him — it
bathed his soul like the dewy moonlight the
flowers — when he entered into that which is within
the veil, and talked " of things unspeakable" with
God. " Brethren, they which believe do enter
into rest." Having faith in the blood of atone
ment, in the God and Father reconciled in Christ
Jesus, the conscience rests in the sense of recon-

ALONE : YET NOT ALONE. 277
cihation. Having faith in the Saviour's power
and love, the spirit rests amid the severities of
discipline, yea sleeps sometimes, as Jesus did
while the storm was highest ; for ever when the
danger is imminent, and the foaming surges are
parting to engulf their prey, the Divine presence
within shines forth around, and immediately there
is a great calm, and the spirit rests stih. " And
I heard a voice from heaven saying, Blessed are
the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth :
yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from
their labours; and their works do follow
them." To that world we must carry on our gaze, if
we would see the issues of the divergent paths,
whose various courses on earth we have attempted
to scan. The behever, he who "endures as
seeing the invisible," is led by the Divine angel,
the angel of the presence of God, through a storm
of conflicts to a glorious rest. The lover of
pleasure is led by his angel, the angel whose pre
sence he loves, through the sensual joys which
are but the painted mask of the inward miseries,
to the outer darkness, " where the worm dieth
not, and their fire is not quenched for ever." In
life the behever has the assurance, " My presence
shall go with thee, I will give thee rest;" in
death, " Yea, though I walk through the valley

278 ALONE : YET NOT ALONE.
of the shadow of death, I wih fear no evil, for
Thou art with me, Thy rod and staff, they com
fort me." " As for me, I shall behold Thy face
in righteousness; I shah be satisfied when I
awake, with Thy likeness."
Then, having done the will of God, he rests in
the bosom of Jesus, midst the unveiled splendours
of the Eternal Light, and the fuh outflowings of
the Infinite Love, until the trumpet of the arch
angel summons him to exchange that rest for
glory. And then, what eye hath not seen, what
ear hath not heard, shall be disclosed in that
last great day of God ; when the redeemed spirit,
fresh from the rest of Paradise, shah put on the
radiant form, immortal as itself, and know all
that the Divine love, which saved the helpless
sinner, can show to the glorified son, through ah
the ages of eternity.

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 279

Kibroth-hattaavah : the Graves of Lust.
" And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought
quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a
day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the
other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high
upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that
day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered
the quails : he that gathered least gathered ten homers : and they
spread them all abroad for themselves round about tlie camp.
And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere itioas chewed,
the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the
Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called
the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah : because there they
buried the people that lusted." — Numb. xi. 31-34.
The eleventh chapter in the Book of Numbers is
one of the gravest and saddest in history. The
tenth chapter shows to us the people developed
into a nation and a church, before the face of the
Lord in Sinai. They set forth, with a grand order
liness and courage, on their Canaanward march ; I
cah it grand, for the root of it was in heaven, with
God. The tumultuous throng had found its relation
to God, and understood, through Him, itself and its

280 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
vocation. Full of a new dignity and bravery, fuh
of a high sense of the sacredness of its mission,
it marshahed itself as an army, and marched
on to victory. Doubtless the people felt, in their
intense and lofty emotion, that the fohies and
lusts which had erst defiled and dishonoured them,
were done with for ever. Which of us has not
felt it, and been disenchanted, perhaps that very
day, in bitterness of soul ? They would have a
brief march, a sharp conflict, a swift conquest, a
glorious possession of their promised land. But,
alas ! quite another future was before them : aspi
ration is not achievement, hope is not endurance.
But two of that mighty army ever trod the sacred
ground. It seems that they had a " mixed multitude"
among them. "And a mixed multitude went up
with them." Exod. xii. 38. There is sure to be
trouble with that mixed multitude. These con
cessions through indifference, weakness, or mere
softness of heart, rarely fail to breed mischief in
companies and souls. They are the alloys in
the pure metal of hfe, and, hke the tin in the
silver, make it brittle and apt to flaw. They were
pleased, perhaps proud, to take a great company
with them. Lovers, mistresses, servants ; all
bound to them by some tie, but not that tie which
bound them to God and to each other, their

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 281
calling to the promised land. That which we
tolerate in the coasts of our homes and hearts,
too good to expel, too bad to assimilate, and
which we suffer therefore to lodge with us, rarely
fads to make havoc in our lives.
I think it probable that this mixed multitude
felt that there was something unsatisfactory in
their position, after the organization of the nation
before Sinai. The children of Israel marched
thenceforth by tribes under their banners, arrayed
in a grand order around the shrine of the national
faith; while the mixed multitude struggled on as
they could in their tracks. Be that as it may,
they feh a lusting, the host caught the infection,
and there fell a multitude before the fire of the
Lord, ere the murmuring and lusting were stayed.
Then fohows an intercession of Moses with God,
or rather let us cah it a remonstrance, so bold
and outspoken that we hear it with awe ; but so
honest, so simple-hearted, so full of a thorough
willingness to bear the burden if there was no
help for it, as to draw forth from the Lord a
compassionate and sympathetic answer. Then
follows the communication of the spirit of wisdom
and guidance to the seventy elders, the Pente
costal baptism of the Old Testament dispensation ;
then the prophesying of Eldad and Medad in the
camp, whereat the bold young spirits, jealous for

282 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH.
official dignity, were indignant ; but the wise and
careworn elder, eager for help from any quarter,
nor thinking that a single man or order can con
tain a blessing large enough for a nation or a
world, was glad. And then came flights of quails
from the sea, and feh in showers around the camp,
juicy and nourishing meat, meat by acres ; that
they might know how httle the Lord's arm was
shortened, how little His store was spent when it
pleased Him to open His hand and give. The
rest our text reveals: "And while the flesh was
yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath
of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the
Lord smote the people with a very great plague.
And he called the name of that place Kibroth-
hattaavah ; because there they buried the people that
lustedJ" Kibboth-hattaavah ; the graves of
lust. Now, this is a most rich chapter of .human
history. We wih stand by those graves,,and hsten
to their teachings ; they may save us from stand
ing by the graves of the idols of our own hearts.
I shah endeavour to ihustrate this subject by
dwelling on three principles : —
I. There are perpetual resurrections of easily
besetting sins.
II. The time comes, in the history of the indul
gence of besetting sins, when God ceases to strive

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 283
for us against them, and lets them have their
way. III. The end of that way is inevitably and
speedily a grave.
I. The perpetual resurrections of easily beset
ting sins.
This lusting was no novelty in their experience ;
it was the besetting temptation of the desert, and
the besetting sin of their hearts. But they ought
to have known. They ought to have viewed the
first rising of its ghastly shape in their camps
with horror; there were graves enough, in the
path from Egypt, to remind them of its deadly
work. God had been at great pains to teach
them the lesson of dependence, that " man doth
not hve by bread alone, but by every word which
proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man
live." " And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of
Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians
marched after them ; and they were sore afraid : and
the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. And
they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves
in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wil
derness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to
carry us forth out of Egypt ? Is not this the word
that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone,
that we may serve the Egyptians ? For it had been

284 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we
should die in the wilderness. And Moses said unto
the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the sal
vation of the Lord, which He will show to you to-day:
for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall
see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall
fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. And
the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto
me ? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go
forward : but lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out
thine hand over the sea, and divide it : and the
children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the
midst of the sea." Exod. xiv. 10-16.
"And they took their journey from Elim, and all
the congregation of the children of Israel came unto
the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and
Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after
their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the
whole congregation of the children of Israel mur
mured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness :
And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to
God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the
land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, and
when we did eat bread to tlie full; for ye have
brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this
whole assembly with hunger. Then said the Lord
unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven
for you ; and the people shall go out and gather a

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 285
certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether
they will walk in my law, or no. And it shall come
to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that
which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much
as they gather daily." Exod. xvi. 1-5.
" And all the congregation of the children of Israel
journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their
journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord,
and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water
for the people to drink. Wherefore the people did
chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we
may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide
ye with me ? wherefore do ye tempt the Lord ? And
the people thirsted there for water ; and the people
murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this
that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us
and our children and our cattle with thirst ? And
Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do
unto this people ? they be almost ready to stone me.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the
people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel ;
and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in
thine hand and go. Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb ; and thou shalt smite
the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that
the people may drink. And Moses did so in the
sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the
name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of

286 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
the chiding of the children of Israel, and because
they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among
us, or not?" Exod. xvii. 1-7.
And now, with firmer assurance than ever that
God was in the midst of them, to bring them
into the place which He had prepared, they re
sumed their march through the unknown desert
paths. The tabernacle, the ark, the order of the
camp, the pillar of cloud and flame, were all
among them, the pledge of His presence. But
ah in vain. They must have flesh, or they would
give up the enterprise, and die in despair. And
they had flesh; they were fed, were crammed
with it to nauseation, and with it " God sent
leanness into their souls."
I dwell on two points of large importance for
the understanding of this history.
1. The side from which the temptation came
to them.
2. The special season at which they were
assailed. 1. The side from which it came.
" And the mixed multitude that was among them
fell a lusting . and the children of Israel also wept
again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat ? We
remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt
freely ; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks,
and the onions, and the garlick : But now our

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 287
soul is dried away : there is nothing at all, beside
this manna, before our eyes." Numb. xi. 4-6.
This mixed multitude corresponds precisely to
the troop of disorderly passions and appetites,
with which we suffer ourselves to march through
the desert of hfe. Passions, desires, ever mad
for indulgence, and reckless, scornful, of Divine
law. The mixed multitude was but loosely
attached to them. They had no cah, no ancient
traditions, no national hopes, no right to cah
Canaan a home. They might have won all these.
Judaism was ever benignant to the stranger.
God's elections are ever inclusive and not exclu
sive ; but the title was not to be won by lust.
They were a loose, coarse, common company,
with nothing to dignify, elevate, inspire.* No
wonder they fainted, murmured, lusted ; and
thought flesh for to-day was better than Canaan
to-morrow, and heaven beyond. They had come
into the wilderness with the people, perhaps
to escape from bitter bondage, perhaps to make
what they could out of the people's necessi
ties in the desert; the camp-fohowers of the
great army, greedy, vicious, disorderly, and hable
to ah sorts of senseless panics, which not seldom
* It is noteworthy, that the strangers, after the long com
mon experience and discipline of the wilderness, are spoken of
in much higher terms, as " the strangers that were conversant
among them." — Josh. viii. 35.

288 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
imperil the whole host. I say, again, there
was no ban upon them, because they were not of
the heirs of promise ; a nobler sympathy with a
great people's destiny had won them a nobler
place in history. There was one once, one of a
mixed multitude, " a Syrophoenician woman,"
who would take no denial. Even " It is not meet
to take the children's bread and cast it unto the
dogs," would not drive her away. " Yea, Lord,
yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from
the master's table," was her faithful response.
The word, "0 woman, great is thy faith, be it
unto thee even as thou wilt ! " received her into
the elect circle of those who had power with
God and with man to prevail.
But this mixed multitude was of another sort,
an ignoble rabble, to whom uncleanness was
native, hke the disorderly rout we lead about
with us through life's pilgrimage ; and rarely
does a day pass that they do not drag us into
mischief, and expose us to burning shame.
The question was not one of sustenance. It
rose not out of the healthy action of the appetites
which God had implanted for the nourishment of
the bodily life. " God gave them bread from
heaven to eat." It was distinctly a question of
lust. Enough for appetite was there; enough
for ah the uses of hfe, guaranteed by God; " but

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 289
they wept again, saying, who shah give us flesh
to eat ; we remember the fish which we did eat
in Egypt freely — the cucumbers, and the melons,
and the leeks, and the onions, and the garhc ;
but now our soul is dried away " — they meant
their fat, their notion of a soul lay there — " there
is nothing at all beside this manna before our
eyes." Lust was strong in them, the love of the
satisfaction of the bodily appetites for the sake
of the momentary pleasure they bring. And
appetite runs swiftly into lust in every one of
us ; each act of indulgence opens a fresh mouth
which craves to be fed. And till this troop of
desires is taken in hand and curbed with an iron
bit by a resolute wih, there is no orderly march
for us, no manly progress ; there are the seeds
of panic and confusion in our array, and the
devil's own terminus, a grave, awaiting us, before
our pilgrimage is half done. The moment you
take pleasure in the indulgence of appetite beyond
the use for which it was ordained by God, you
take an element into your life which wih humble
it, and drag its glory in the dust. Look back
and see what deadly humiliation lust has already
brought you ; what ulcerous sores, through which
wehs out so much of the pith and life-blood of
your being. It is the grand battle of hfe, to
teach lust the hmits of Divine law, to break it
19

290 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH:
in to the taste of the bread of heaven, and make
it understand, that " man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that cometh out of the
mouth of God."
2. The special season when the easily beset
ting sin rose up and again made them its slave.
We have ah of us a shrinking from a hfe-long
struggle. One sharp battle we can stand ; yes,
and one sharp pain — however sharp. Oh, could
we but gather up our sins to one head, and sever
it by one sweep of the Spirit's sword ! No matter
how keen the agoDy, no matter if we bleed
inwardly, and have to cauterize the wound ; we
can stand all that, if we might but feel that sin
was done with, was slain to rise again no more for
ever. So strong is the passion for this complete
deliverance, that we easily persuade ourselves
that it is accomplished. The wish is father to
the thought which sometimes, in moments of
high and rapturous vision, visits us. Well, we
say, that sin which has haunted me hke a spectre,
attended me like my double, is slain at last, I
have laid it in its tomb ; other battles I may have
to fight, but that slain foe I shah see no more.
Look round ! yes, while the word is on your hp
and the glad thought in your heart, look round.
There, close by you, is the ghastly shape, ghastlier
than ever, with a wicked Mephistopheles grin of

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 291
satisfaction, that its clutch is tight upon you still.
Oh, the sickening thought which then fills us !
Am I ever to be thus haunted ? Shall I ever
shake off this infirmity ? Will it follow me to
my grave, wih it rise with me, and make a hell
of my heaven ?
Look at this orderly and gallant host. They
had been baptized as God's soldiers by the splen
dours of the Mount of the Law. Full of Divine
joy, zeal, courage, hope, they set forward ; their
hearts bounding with gladness, as the sound of
the silver trumpets rang through the desert air
and marshahed them on. " Scant fare, hard
marching, fierce battles, but exhilarate us. The
flesh-pots, the melons, the garhc, they belong
to the days of our bondage ; we are free men
now, and their power to tempt us is gone."
And so many a gallant young spirit, having
heard the trumpet-cah of the Gospel, having girt
on the armour of godly battle, and joined the
glorious company of the soldiers of the Cross,
the pilgrims of eternity, feels in the first pride
of strength and flush of joy that the flesh is so
bruised as to be broken and crushed for ever.
There seems but to remain a merry speedy march
to the possession of the goodly land. While the
first flush of excitement lasts, it is so. You
could pass then quite calmly through scenes of
19—2

292 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
temptation which once would have set your
passions in a blaze. But dread the hour when
the glow begins to die down ; when the practical
burdens, pains, trials which you stih meet with,
prove to you that the Divine hfe on earth is no
paradise regained ; when you find your strength
barely equal to the demands made upon it, and
see stretching on through long years a path of
struggle, denial, and mortification of the flesh,
the end of which is not yet in sight. A chill
despondency is wont at such a time to take the
place of the glow of exhilaration ; and wonder
not if in that moment the old demon of tempta
tion returns. And dread lest the rush of old
associations, long repressed, should burst forth,
and sweep you from your firm standing-ground
into what may prove worse than the grave of your
lust — the grave of your soul.
It is a fact which ah close students of human
character must have observed, that there is a
back-water of temptation, if I may so speak,
which is more deadly than its direct assaults.
You may fight hard against a temptation, and
fight victoriously. You may beat it off, and
crush it down ; and then, when, weary with the
conflict, you suffer the strain of vigilance to
relax, it shall steal in and easily master the
citadel, which lately it spent ah its force in vain

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 293
to win. Beware of your best moments, as well
as of your worst ; or rather the moments which
succeed the best. They are the most perilous of
ah. Just when the consciousness of a triumph
seems to permit and justify disarmament for a
moment, the subtle foe with whom you have to
deal wih steal in on you, and win a treacherous
victory. Never relax the strain. Never allow tempta
tion within arm's-length. Never forget that each
new victory opens a new danger, and gives fresh
cah for vigilance and courage to keep what has
been won. Never beheve that the devil is asleep ;
never beheve that a besetting sin is eradicated ;
never boast of a crowning victory ; lest Kibroth-
Hattaavah, the graves of lust, be written on the
head-stones that mark the chief stations of your
pilgrimage ; but " lay aside every weight, and
the sin that doth so easily beset you, and run
with patience the race that is set before you.
Looking unto Jesus." Like Him, " resist even
unto blood striving against sin."
II. There comes a point in the history of the
indulgence of besetting sins, when God ceases
to strive with us and for us against them, and
lets them have their way.
Remember, this was not the simple appetite
for flesh, it was lusting for flesh, against the

294 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
provisions of the wisdom and love of God. Quite
otherwise did God respond even to their faithless
murmuring for water and for bread, as we have
seen. Bread and water He had provided out of
His store with generous hand. But they would
have flesh in spite of Him, and He let them have
their way to its only end — the only bourne of
self-will- — a grave. It is worth our while to
study closely this spiritual history, and to analyse
the conditions out of which its catastrophe springs.
1. God has great patience with the weaknesses
and sins of the flesh. No one can read this
history, and the life of the Saviour, without
feeling how mercifully God deals with those who
are overtaken in sin which springs out of the
infirmities, appetites, and passions which belong
to the bodily life. But it is a dreadful mistake
to suppose that therefore He thinks lightly of
them. He regards them as sins that must be
conquered, and, no matter by what sharp discip
line, extirpated and kihed. He knows that, if
tolerated, they become the most deadly of spiri
tual evils, and rot body and spirit together in hell.
2. Hence all the severer discipline by which
the Lord seeks to purge them, the various agen
cies by which He fights with us and for us against
their tyrannous power.
What is life but one long discipline of God for

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 295
the cleansing of the flesh ? Are not the after-
pains of departed sensual joys among its chief
stings and thorns ? God has made a sure link
of connection between such sins and their penal
ties. The body itself is made the index of its
indulgence ; and the man and society are so
organized, that their transgressions of God's laws
bear a rapid harvest of sorrow and shame. Does
He not give us the bread of heaven, that He
may waken within us a taste for purer pleasures,
and lead us out of the coils of the fleshly
tempters by giving us the food of a Diviner life ?
Doubtless the manna was something very different
from the flesh-pots of Egypt ; purer, fresher,
more hke the heaven from which it came. Less
palatable probably to a gross taste, used to
gorging ; more sweet to a fine and disciplined
palate, to the man who ate simply to strengthen
himself for higher things. Perhaps it symbo
lizes the whole of the higher interests and pur
suits of men as social and intellectual beings,
which God supphes to wean them from gross
feeding of the flesh ; as weh as the true heavenly
bread of righteousness, which if a man eat he
hungers no more. It is only when a man will
not enter into his Father's counsel in this ; will
not suffer the higher tastes to develop themselves,
and the higher appetites to indulge their cravings

296 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
with the bread of God ; will grovel when God
gives him wings to soar; will go on the behy,
snake-like, when God hfts him and sets his front
face to face with heaven ; will clamour for flesh
when the bread of God is in his very hand : it is
only then, when the evil becomes deadly, and
deepens into spiritual sin of the darkest dye and
most incurable malignity, that God stays His
hand, closes His witness, withdraws His guar
dian angel, and leaves the will to itself.
Some into whose hands this book may fall are,
I fear, being let alone by the Lord. He has
witnessed, striven, smitten ; and ah in mercy.
There is a grave-stone in some churchyard which
He has reared as a witness against lust and self-
will in your life. Many an ill-gotten heap of
gain He has scattered ; many an idol He has
broken ; many a picture, sermon, book, He has
brought before your eyes to scare you, just when
hot passion was in fuh pursuit of the prize ; but
He does not seem so busy with you now. With
a kind of easy assurance you now walk freely,
where once you stepped as on a thin crust, which
might crack and let you into an abyss. Beware,
beware! God is letting you alone; and if " it
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
living God," it is more awful to be left by Him,
to take your own road to death.

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 297
3. Let alone by God.
" Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone ! "
is to my mind among the most awful sentences in
the word of God.
How often does it happen, in the history of
these whful sinners of the flesh, that after a
while ah things seem to smile upon them and
prosper them according to their heart's desires.
Are they mad for gold ? gold seems to roll in upon
them. Are they mad for pleasure ? their seduc
tive arts are successful, and victims come readily
to their lure. Are they mad for drink ? those
around them, kindred, friends, cease to strive
with them, and give it up as hopeless ; shame,
too, abandons them, they may wallow in beer
or gin, nobody cares. It is very wonderful to
see how often, if a man is bent on an end
which is not God's end, God gives it him, and
it becomes his curse. God does not curse us ;
He leaves us to ourselves ; that is curse enough,
and from that curse what arm can save us ! We
will have it, and we shall have it. We leap
through all the barriers which He has raised
around us to hmit us, yea, though they be rings
of blazing fire, we wih through them and indulge
our lust ; and in a moment He sweeps them all
out of our path — perhaps roses spring to beguile,
where flames so lately blazed to warn. " Flesh,

298 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
give us flesh to eat ! This manna does not tickle
the palate nor fire the blood. We will have
flesh ! " " Yes ! here is flesh. You shah have it ;
see here, in this blank wilderness, the flesh is
falling round you in showers. Kill and eat;
there is nothing to hinder you ; gorge yourselves,
here is plenty ; and then he down to sleep- — the
sleep of sated lust shah be your grave." This
leads me on to observe —
III. The end of that way is, inevitably and
speedily, a grave.
The grave of lust is one of the most awful of
the inscriptions on the head-stones of the great
cemetery, the world.
The words in Psalm evi. 13-15, " They soon
forgat His works, they waited not for His counsel ;
but lusted exceedingly in tlie wilderness, and tempted
God in the desert. And He gave them their
REQUEST, BUT SENT LEANNESS INTO THEIB SOUL,"
cast much light on this passage. There the lust
is spoken of as the grave of the soul. And I
believe that it is the common form of God's judg
ment. Where He buries one in the wilderness,
He suffers a thousand to bury themselves in their
lust. It is the inevitable end of ah wanton self-
indulgence; either a sharp judgment, or that slow
pining of soul which makes the body its grave.
Graves ! why there are a hundred before me at

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 299
this moment. Where is the promise of your
youth, sensualist ! where the resolution of your
manhood ? Where is the purpose which that
night on bended knees you uttered, and asked to
have registered in heaven ? where the protesta
tions and vows to live " a godly, righteous, and
sober life, looking for that blessed hope, the
glorious appearing of the great God, and our
Saviour Jesus Christ ? " Where ? — dead as the
leaves of summer ! And where are the graves ?
I need only look on that sensual face, that bloated
form, that dull and glassy eye, that brazen brow,
to tell. They are buried there, deep down in the
flesh you pamper ; and there they rot, and rot the
flesh that shrouds them, and wih rot on till the
last great burning day. How many of us are
growing in wisdom, pureness, nobleness, charity,
and grace, as the years roh on ; more Christlike,
less disfigured and flawed by the blemishes of the
flesh ? In how many do we now search in vain
for fruits whose flowers once bloomed there ; for
generous emotions, swift responses to the appeals
of sorrow, unselfish ministries, and stern integ
rity ? How many have leamt now to laugh at
emotions which once had a holy beauty in their
sight ; to fence skilfully with appeals which once
would have thrilled to the very core of their
hearts ; to grasp at advantages which once they

300 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
would have passed with a scornful anathema, and
to clutch at the gold which was once the glad
instrument of diffusing benefits around ! Yes !
there are graves enough around us — graves of
passion, graves of self-will, graves of lust.
There is that pompous and impressive mil-
lionnaire, a man whose word is good for millions,
to whom the leaders of commerce pay deference,
as to a great power in their state. He is most
admirably correct in all his transactions; a good
giver, too, liberal by repute, his name is against a
large sum in all public subscriptions. Go to him
with a case which the rulers and Pharisees believe
in, and you will never be sent empty away ; but let
a poor wretch cross his private path and whine for
a morsel, a dog would hardly get such a brutal
rebuff. Let a servant in his employ yield in a
dark hour to temptation, wrong him, and throw
himself on his mercy, you may get blood out of a
rock sooner than one compassionate word from
that ruthless heart. There is a whited sepulchre
of a soul ! Once he was a poor boy ; he had but
a crust in the wide world, and he shared it with a
poorer comrade, without a regret, without a care.
Once he loved, too, and was beloved. His heart
was large, warm, genial. He valued life for its
friendships and relationships ; its claims glad
dened him, its duties inspired. But that has

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 301
long, long been buried. A cold sneer, whenever
he thinks of it, is its epitaph. One day, when he
is dead, and they bear him pompously to his
splendid tomb, there wih be lawyers and heirs at
his strong-box, to rifle the secrets which he has
so jealously and successfully hid. Pile on pile of
papers and securities is arranged there in admi
rable order. But there is an inner cabinet, a
secret drawer — surely the sum of the whole is
treasured there, the coveted balance-sheet of his
affairs. No key is found, no spring can be dis
covered ; they burst it open at length, and find
there — a faded letter, a withered flower, and a
lock of a woman's hair ! He buried them there
years ago, when he buried his higher nature, of
which they are the memorial, in — himself.
There is a brilliant woman of society ; so gay,
so witty, so genial, so friendly, the life of her
circle, the idol of a crowd of empty friends. At
home — and she is rarely to be found there — there
is a chill, bad atmosphere. The children are
made over to a careless governess; the mother
cannot bear their worry. The husband is simply
the sponge which she squeezes with ruthless con
stancy for her expenses, and casts aside as ruth
lessly when that one end is gained. Society is
her idol ; a place, a name, an influence, she will
have, at any cost ; and she is digging another of

302 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
the Kibroth-hattaavah — the graves of lust. Once
there was a warm, wifely, motherly heart in her ;
once she looked up fondly in that man's face, and
vowed to be the joy and sunlight of his life. Once,
beautiful, holy tears filled her eyes as she gazed
down on her first-born on her bosom, and vowed
a mother's love and tenderness to the httle nurs
ling of her heart. But that was all buried long
ago. The world possesses her wholly ; she is the
mere charnel-house of a soul. The finer natures
feel it already, and avoid, her ; and soon ah will
see it and shrink from its corruption. Your worn-
out woman of the world looks more like a
sepulchre than anything else upon this earth.
There is another man ; a father, let us say,
with a cheerful home, wife, children, and suffi
cient comforts round him, who persuades himself
that misfortune has marked him for her prey.
His son, the pride of his heart, may have dis
honoured his name, or his daughter sullied the
purity of his home ; his circumstances have be
come embarrassed ; he struggles hard to keep
pace with the time, but finds himself falhng slowly
but hopelessly into the rear. He struggles all
the harder because the process is a slow one, and
he can fight against ruin inch by inch. But the
battle is against him. At home he has no joy ;
abroad no hope. Little by little he begins to find

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 303
some comfort in the passing exhilaration of drink ;
for the moment it enables him to laugh, and to
snap his fingers at fate. The habit, once esta
blished, becomes tyrannous. He has no re
sources of mind or spirit to fall back upon, and
no will to cry to Him who, when " all His waves
and billows" were surging over David, "com
manded His loving-kindness in the daytime, and
His songs in the night." He begins to come home
in the evening excited ; he stutters out his re
quests ; often he is plainly intoxicated ; they have
to lead him to bed like an idiot. Then he sits
boozing alone, by his own fireside, till his children
get sick at heart, perhaps fierce against him ; per
haps they fly his home to escape" the atmosphere of
misery he has created there. His wife, well-nigh
broken-hearted, begins to seek refuge in the same
excitements. They sit drinking together in their
abandoned home; they exchange drunken caresses,
or curses, as the case may be ; they abuse each
other's vices, they swear, fight, clutch each other
by the throat, and their neighbours or children
part them ; they are overwhelmed with shame for
the moment, but soon bury shame, too, in lust.
The scene recurs, it gets talked of in the neighbour
hood, whispered among friends ; acquaintances
cut them, friends remonstrate in vain, and forsake
them, and their home becomes fairly a hell. The

304 KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH :
accursed lust sets its mark on their forehead.
Bloated features, trembhng limbs, stuttering
speech, and a mad thirst that goads them on to
deeper orgies. Friends, let us drop the veil.
God keep us from the temptation to bury misery
in a grave of lust !
Beware, young men ; young women, beware !
The grave-diggers began their work far back, in
those wretched histories. The first step was the
reahy fatal one : the first flying, in sorrow and
heart-ache, to any refuge but God. Beware ! for
the dead things buried in these graves wih not he
quiet ; they stir and start, and ever and anon
come forth in their ghastly shrouds and scare you
at your feasts. No ghosts so sure to haunt their
graves, as the ghosts of immolated faculties and
violated vows. That purpose, that prayer, that
ennobling friendship or love, sacrificed to interest,
that high ideal of relationship abandoned for lust,
they are dead, but they have their resurrections.
The memories which haunt the worn-out world
ling's bed of impotence or lust, are the true
avengers of Heaven. The brain loses power to
repel them, but retains power to fashion them.
Once it could drive away thoughts and memories;
now it can only retain them, and fix them in a
horrid permanent session on their thrones. Each
act of indulgence makes the grave wider and

THE GRAVES OF LUST. 805
deeper, where the whole breadth of God-like
faculty wih at length he buried ; and it fixes in
the brain a memory which wih one day turn
tyrant, and be the dread avenger of a murdered
hope. I know that the thought, "Rejoice, 0
young man, in thy youth," is strong in the young
heart. " God is merciful to these young follies,"
you say ; "age will give soberness, and repair the
waste." If ever the devil is tempting you to
beheve that, and to break down the barriers which
you have built up against the impetuosities of
passion and the ragings of lust ; if ever you feel
that the firm hand is trembling, and that the
reins of control are slipping from the strong grasp
of the wih, then open the eleventh chapter of
Numbers ; go out alone into that desert ; look at
those mounds which break its weary monotony,
and speh out the word which is burnt into their
headstones, sharp and clear at this moment as
when the finger of God inscribed it, "Kibboth-
HATTAAVAH — THE GRAVES OF LUST ! "

20

306 " THE WANDERINGS.'

The Common Levels of Life.
" And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee,
and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou
wouldest keep his commandments, or no." — Deut. viii. 2.
Tiniest insects build up loftiest mountains.
Broad bands of sohd rock, which undergird the
earth, have been welded by the patient, constant
toil of invisible creatures, working on through the
ages unhasting, unresting, fulfilling their Maker's
will. On the shores of primaeval oceans, watched
only by the patient stars, these silent workmen
have been building for us the structure of the
world. And thus the obscure work of unknown
nameless ages appears at last in the sunhght, the
adorned and noble theatre of that life of man,
which, of ah that is done in this universe, is
fullest before God of interest and hope.
It is thus too in life. The quiet moments
build the years. The labours of obscure and
unremembered hours edify that palace of the
soul, in which it is to abide, and fabricate that

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 307
organ whereby it is to work and express itself,
through eternity. It is of these common places,
or common levels of hfe, that I have now to speak
to you, the obscure records of long wanderings
through dull and dusty pathways in our wilder
ness world.
The history of this people must again be our
guide. We left the Israelites mourning beside
the graves of lust : we find them on the very
borders of the promised land. The Desert behind
them, bright Canaan before them, God's angel in
the midst of them, waiting to lead them to
victory and glorious rest. The fact that they are
there, speaks an inspiring word to all of us.
Blessed be Christ, we are none of us doomed to lie
moaning by graves. Forth from the heart of the
deepest darkness that ever settled over a grave,
even of lust, the word of Him who is the resur
rection and the life cometh unto the mourner,
' ' He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall lie live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die." It is well that we should
stand by our graves and feel their awfulness ; it is
weh that we should taste the agony of the chastised
and smitten soul. But that man is false to
Christ, and faithless, who suffers himself to be
tempted to say, " There in that grave lie buried
ah my treasures ; hope is bankrupt ; a grave
20—2

308 " THE WANDERINGS."
henceforth is the sanctuary of my spirit ; that
headstone epitaphs my life."
I know that the temptation often presses
heavily. In the first anguish of chastisement, it
seems to us as if hope were fairly killed. But
just as Kibroth-hattaavah was near to the border
of Canaan, so are the graves by which our
bitterest tears are wept, near to the bounds of
heaven. The saddest and most hopeless case
before man, is when a man has made a grave of
himself, and has buried deep down in the slough
of a worldly or sensual nature every bud and
promise of his soul. Yet even these deep graves
can be broken by the Saviour's voice. Even
these dead men can rise. His hope is deeper
than man's despair, for His arm is stronger than
man's destroyer. You have but to cry to Him
with the long strong outcry of a soul ready to
perish, sinking into the graves of lust, and even
thence His arm can snatch you, and set you in
front of the promised land.
To me it is fuh of the grandest meaning. And
oh ! what a gospel it should be to you, who feel
the soul well nigh buried in some sensual tomb,
that the angel who led them did not destroy them
there in the mass, every man of them, while the
flesh was yet between their teeth, and passion was
mad ; he but smote them sharply, and then led

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 309
them on to the vision of the land of rest. It was
a weary march on from Kibroth-hattaavah to
Kadesh, probably as far as we can identify the
stations, the dreariest of the whole route, (it is
never a bright path', that onward march from a
grave) : but their next station set them actually
within sight, within reach of rest. Their merci
ful God did not accept their lusting for flesh as
their final decision. One act of sensual lust,
dark, deadly as it was, was not to be the turning
point of their lives. Once more they were to go
forth one step out into a clearer air than that
which steams around the fleshpots, and under a
brighter heaven ; and then it should be settled,
and settled finally. Shall it be a brief stern
battle march to Canaan and triumph, or a shame
ful rout to the wilderness and death ? Whatever
may seem, it is never on one hasty act of passion
that destiny hinges; it is on the broad, calm,
decisive elections of the soul. Men curse the
passionate acts, or the unpremeditated moments
which seem to cast a shadow upon the whole of
their life course, and give a new character to their
future. The roots of the acts lie in the depths
of their being, and such unpremeditated moments
are the fruits of the meditations of years. It is
the whole aspect of the soul, as its vision ranges
over the field of life's enterprise, counts the costs,

310 " THE WANDERINGS."
measures the perils, and balances the chances of
defeat or victory, that Christ is watching. The
vision is then clear, bright, enchanting. " The
land is a good land," cry the heavenly voices ;
" surely it floweth with milk and honey, and thou
art well able to overcome it." " Nay," cry the
earthly, "but the Anakim are there; the cities
are walled and strong ; the battle must be long
and desperate, and we are but as grasshoppers
in the presence of those gigantic foes. The case
is hopeless, the strain of the battle is harder than
we can bear; even Canaan is not worth win
ning at such a cost. Back ! back ! We are not
fit for great enterprises. Sadly enough we feel
it ; the fleshpots must be our portion, and Egypt
must be our grave."
There is one grand damning sin of man —
unbelief. That people " beheved not, and their
carcases feh in the wilderness." It is not on any
isolated sin or even crime, but on the deep unbehef
of our hearts, broadly, strongly, finally expressed,
that the angel sets our faces decisively to the
wilderness, and trains us there in long marches,
wanderings, and conflicts, for a glorious possession
of the promised land. This is the root sin of all
of us. A comparison of the topic of the eleventh
chapter of the Hebrews, with the first verse of the
twelfth, wih show that this is the sin of which the

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 311
apostle is speaking, when he warns us of the sin
" which doth so easily beset us." It is just this
faithlessness. And it is when this root sin of our
nature is laid bare, as it is laid bare in every one
of us before the eye of God, that He turns us
back into the desert from the very edge of the
land of rest. " And thou shalt remember all the
way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty
years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove
thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou
wouldest keep His commandments, or no. And He
humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed
thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did
thy fathers know ; that He might make thee know
that man doth not live by bread only, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord
doth man live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon
thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.
Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man
chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee.
Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments oftheLord
thy God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him."
(Deut. viii. 2—6.)
The forty years' wanderings ! What remains
of them? A list of unknown names, no more.
The dust of time has settled on the stations ;
and the events, big at the time with in
terest to millions, are without a note in history.

312 " THE WANDERINGS."
What weary years of plodding marches through
a dark unheavenly country ; what dreads and
dangers, what wants and distresses, what keen
agonies and fierce complaints, that oblivious silence
covers ! They are all there, days of fighting,
nights of weeping, years of trudging. They
seemed at the moment as if they were burning
an indelible mark deep into life's records ; as if
things were done and suffered there, the memory
of which would ache or glow through eternity ;
but they are already behind us, dim in the distance,
a softening veil has fahen over the whole pil
grimage : a broad sense of pain conquered, shame
endured, duty done ; the consciousness that we
have come out of the wanderings richer, braver,
stronger, more earnest, but sadder, than when we
entered the Desert, is all that is left to us. And
this is the heritage which the obscure paths and
hours hand down to all of us, to bear with us,
if found faithful, into the inheritance of the
promised land.
And this brief abstract of the wanderings is a
chapter out of your life and mine. Who knows
anything about ninety-nine out of every hundred
of the moments which make our hves ? Do we
know much about them ourselves ? Very many
of the most important of our bodily movements
are automatic. We contract the heart, expand

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 313
the lungs, exhale the breath, without the slightest
consciousness that we are at work in the very
laboratory of life ; and that if that work were
stopped for an instant, this fair fabric would fall
straightway into waste and death.
And how much of our higher activity, as
intelligent and moral beings, is automatic too !
It is no very conscious or noble act of volition
which takes us down daily to our accustomed
tasks, seats us at the accustomed desk, marches
us through the same wearisome waste of figures,
or yokes us to the same duh mill-wheel, where
we grind, grind, grind, and make grist for the
hungry mouths at home. It is just matter of
strong and stern compulsion, as with those
Israehtes of old. We should like, when the
reality of the life forces itself on us, a shorter
and swifter path to our end. " Nay, but we
will go up." We will storm fortune by a bold
stroke, we will seize by a spurt of enthusiasm
what will give us rest and plenty, and spare
ourselves this monotony of toil and trouble all
our days. But we are not fit for rest and plenty.
It would be but indolence and surfeit ; we have
shown our faithlessness too lately to be trusted.
God wih not let us go. He leads us out into the
desert, where we must wander till our lusts, at
any rate, are killed, where we must work and

314 " THE WANDERINGS."
wait till the appetite gets tamed, where we must
watch the bands of robbers who prowl around our
encampments, till vigilance become perfect, and we
are thus prepared by the daily habit of energy and
patience to wield nobly the sceptre of the kingdom
which we shall win. How much of our lives is hard
dull duty, blank, bare, and dust-stained as that
level plain — the El Tih, the vast dry limestone
plateau of the desert which I have described to
you * — contrasting so strangely with the rich
interest of the Sinai desert — the dreariest scene
of wanderings that can be conceived ! It answers
to the common levels of life ; the unremembered
years of undistinguished toil. The years of work
to which we were bound, pining the while for
nobler, and thinking that we were fit for it, though
God did not; kicking under the yoke — something
like the poor camels in those wastes, moaning
and shrieking piteously under their burdens — but
on the whole struggling on, bearing them manfully,
not daring to unbind them, but pining — oh, how
longingly ! — for the hour when God should release
us, and lead us, inured to duty, into the sunny
pastures, by the living waters, of the long-lost,
long-sought home !
Nothing of all these marches survives but a
* The name by which this dreary region of the Desert is
known is El Tih, which means " The Wanderings."

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 315
vague memory of pain, patience, and hope. Those
stations of our journey which stand out against
the common background of life, the touches of
form and colour which hght up its neutral tints,
— the Marahs, Elims, Rephidims, — are clear in
memory at this moment, after the lapse of years,
and will be clear through eternity. There I
buried Rachel; there I wrestled with the Angel,
and prevailed ; there the angels of God met me ;
there I took my father's blessing ; there I sealed
my covenant with God ; there my vows were
shamefuhy broken ; there I grovelled in peni
tence, and was uplifted in prayer ; there I fainted
under the burden of my cross ; there my soul
sweat blood-drops in its Gethsemane, and there
appeared unto me an angel from God strengthen
ing me ; — we recall them ah, clear as though the
sunlight were on them, defining their outlines
and blackening their shadows. These are the
sacred treasures — these memories — which we bear
with us weeping through our life-course here, and
these are the fruit which shall enrich, the trophies
which shall glorify, eternity.
In order that we may better understand the
method of God in ordering our wilderness
marches, let us consider —
I. The reason of " the wanderings." Why is
so large a portion of our years spent under the

316 " THE WANDERINGS."
yoke of undistinguished duties, leaving no record
but " the wanderings" behind ?
Briefly, because a few critical experiences do
not make a character ; a few impassioned, enthu
siastic moments do not make a hfe. We must
remember that this people had passed through a
series of exciting and impressive scenes, unparal
leled in history. There had been crowded into
their last months, events which have made an era
in the history of eternity. They had lived rapidly
through the stages of experience which mark the
development of a hfe. They had passed from
infancy to manhood at a bound. The " stations"
had succeeded each other in swift succession ; and
on each they had spent a treasure of thought and
feeling which, if husbanded, would have formed
the wealth of years. Higher and deeper expe
riences they could not have. Providence had
exhausted the art of impression, and the people
had exhausted the power of being impressed.
They had been awed, affrighted, warned, in
structed, guided, inspired, but they had not had
time to live ; that is, to work the fruit of these
extraordinary moments of vision or suffering into
the common texture of their lives.
We are all, in fact, unconscious poets, and live
in the ideal. The commonest lover, after some
fashion, sings. We all dream our dream of Utopia.

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 317
We have ah our Atlantis there across the waters ;
or visions of an Eden, contrasting strangely with
the dry and dull daily wastes of life. We have
our moments of high excitement, when the spirit
is sth-red, and asserts its mastery. Thick films
seem to fall from the eyes of sense, and the
nerves are strung to catch the most tremulous
vibrations of that finer fluid, which is the channel
of ah the higher communications of our world.
It seems, at such moments, as if the organ of
capacity had grown within us to grand pro
portions ; as if we had but to wih, to throw off
the fleshly clog for ever, and step forth into a
world in which the soul's volitions, sympathies,
and elections should be supreme. We dream a
poet's dream of life, and we awake, thinking for
the moment that we hold what we touched in
dreams. The day of duty disenchants us. We find
that the glow of the spirit, fired with momentary
passion, is not strength ; that the vision of what
life may be, is not life.
The children of Israel there before the Mount,
saw the vision. The glorious splendour, the
thunderings, lightnings, and the voice of God, so
overawed their spirits, so crushed down their
sensual lusts and choked back their faithless
murmurs, that it seemed for the moment the
most glorious and noble hfe, to serve such a Lord

318 " THE WANDERINGS."
Jehovah as this. "All that the Lord" hath said
unto us that will we do," they cried to Moses,
when he rehearsed before them all the Lord's
commandments ; and they meant it heartily, as
you have meant it, when the spell of the world
has been broken for the moment, when under the
word of some inspiring preacher, or under the
shade of some terrible calamity, or in some of
those high moments of visitation, which — how,
why, we know not — do at times bring the reality
of God and heavenly things most blessedly near
to our hearts. You have then lifted your heart
to God with a passion of supphcation that He
would take you to be His pilgrim, and lead you
by His own good path to His home. How long
was it before those Israelites were dancing around
their golden calf, and singing, " These be thy gods,
0 Israel, that led thee out of the land of Egypt."
And where are your vows ? Where the sword and
shield which you then girt to you ? Where the
crown which was then in sight ? May God help us
not to live by dreams ! We have our moments of
vision, blessed be God, before the pilgrimage
begins ; clearer, brighter, more blessed moments,
like Moses, hke Paul, we have before the pilgri
mage ends. But a moment's intense vision, high
resolution, earnest endeavour, glorious victory,
will not expand into a grand Eternity. God will

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 319
try us, what metal we are of within ; what lies
under all exceptional experience ; what He can
rely upon to maintain in constancy a high, full
pulse of life.
Hence we are taken forth to Kadesh. The
whole country is spread before us ; God's vocation
reaches us, — clear, solemn, decisive ; He calls on
us to go up to possess the land. To every human
spirit the vocation comes once at any rate. " Go
up and possess thy land of promise ; make real
thy dreams. Thou hast had a vision of this to
sustain thee through many an earlier desert march ;
and now it is here, go up and take it. Have done
with sin, with tremor, with murmuring, for ever ;
hve a divine man in a broad and wealthy land."
And none of us is able. No man lives up to the
level of his young resolutions and aspirations ;
no man keeps his heel firmly on the lusts and
passions which in moments of divine visitation
he scorned. Who is able to square his hfe by
the heavenly rules which at such moments seem
so grand and fair ? The moment comes when
the senses fire again, and grow mad after their
idols ; when the heavenly rules have a veil dropped
over them, they are too pure for a world like
this ! And at last the vision comes to be remem
bered with a kind of contemptuous wonder,

320 " THE WANDERINGS."
" Was I ever fool enough to entertain in earnest
such a dream of life ! "
The inevitable falling off of the common hours
and experiences, from the level of the moments
when our life gets up into the world which was
made to be its home, seems to me to be the great
teaching of this passage of Israel's history. It
is a broad fact in the history of every hfe ; in a
measure, of every day's hfe, for the great cycles
repeat themselves in httle, as the organs of the
body are present potentiahy in every part. But
these narratives gather up the scattered incidents
of our moral hfe into one grand incident, and
show us with a large dramatic point and emphasis,
what we are daily doing under the eye of the
great Leader, which makes these long, dry, unnoted
wanderings inevitable ; what it is which compels
Him to impose what I have cahed the yoke of
undistinguished duty, and to lead us up and
down in the wilderness, that we may, if we wih
yield ourselves to His hand, work the sublime
lessons, which we cannot learn and practise in a
moment, into the common daily texture of hfe,
that is, of eternity. We will now pass on to
consider, II. The purpose of the wanderings.
Briefly, again, to work godly principles of
action into the common texture of our daily

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 321
lives. To make it a matter of perpetual, quiet
choice and habit to square every action by the
rule of the mind of God.
There are two states of mind possible, and more
than possible, about these wanderings. There are
two states of mind with which we are constantly
meeting, with regard to the commonplace cha
racter of so much of our daily lives. We may
say, " It is weary work, but we must do it ; God
yokes us to it, and there is no escape from Him.
But we have no call to put anything into it but
submission. Submit we must, and will ; but we
have no need to do more, for the thing we hate.
We must just go through with it, if God compels
us, — by those modes of moral compulsion which
preserve our liberty, and yet necessitate action in the
direction which He has decreed — to waste almost
the whole of our fives in a round of busy occupa
tions which simply wearies us ; to which, perhaps,
by some act of a half-awakened nature, we bound
ourselves in youth, by a bond which we have to
honour sorrowfully with matured sympathies and
developed powers. We must just go through with
it. We shall not flinch. The work shall be done,
the round shah be tramped as speedily as may be,
and then we will give ourselves up to thoughts,
reminiscences, or longings, which will embody the
true aspiration and bias of our hearts." Or we
21

322 " THE WANDERINGS."
may say, " God has bound us thus, because He
loves us most tenderly ; not to compel us by His
bare will, but because He is Himself compehed by
His great love. Not in bitterness, not in wrath,
not even in judgment, if we could fathom the
deepest springs of His will, has he relegated us to
this wilderness. It is before Him, less a judgment
on the past than an education for the future,
though it partakes of both characters : it is
because of the great world — a good land and a
large — into which He wih bring us out, and the
God-hke work He has for us in eternity, that He
has sent us hither, and bound us to tasks which
fret and exhaust us. We shah be in the way of
blessing in doing them heartily, in exercising our
noblest faculties on our most common duties, in
making the sphere of our daily toils and frets
illustrious by heavenly strength, patience, and
hope : content, if we miss the fruit in the present,
if, like seed-corn cast on the waters, it vanishes
from touch and sight, to beheve that we shall find
it again — the fruit of every grain with royal in
crease — in the long day of eternity."
I say there are these two states of mind possible
about those wanderings — the first common, the
last, alas ! more rare. There are no records to
teh us, but I know weh which this people elected.
I can see it in their gahant courage when they

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 323
stood again before the gates of Palestine ; in their
prompt submission to every divine behest ; in their
brave endurance of the toils and perils under which
once they fainted ; and in their manly resolute
adherence to their covenant with God, in the face
of all the discouragement which drove their fathers
into the desert, and made them ready to fly to
Egypt, to fly anywhere, if they might but escape
from a God who seemed to demand so much of
them, — who seemed to expect of poor weak
mortals that they should aim, at any rate, at that
lofty life which would liken them unto Himself.*
The following passage out of the book of Joshua
wih amply sustain my words, and show how much
this people had gained : — " And if it seem evil
unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day
whom ye will serve : whether the gods which your
fathers served that were on the other side of the
flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land
ye dweh : but as for me and my house, we will
serve the Lord. And the people answered and
said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord,
* It is no answer to this view to say that those who went
into Canaan were the sons — the sires fell in the wilderness.
We have a right to speak of the nation as a unity ; and more
than this, if the fathers had continued in a slavish or murmur
ing mood, their sons had never been nursed to such godly
manhood.
21—2

324 " THE WANDERINGS."
to serve other, gods ; for the Lord our God, He it
is that brought us up and our fathers out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and
which did those great signs in our sight, and pre
served us in all the way wherein we went, and
among all the people through whom we passed :
and the Lord drave out from before us ah the
people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the
land : therefore wih we also serve the Lord ; for
He is our God. And Joshua said unto the people,
Ye cannot serve the Lord : for He is an holy God ;
He is a jealous God; He wih not forgive your
transgressions nor your sins. If ye forsake the
Lord, and serve strange gods, then He wih turn
and do you hurt, and consume you, after that He
hath done you good. And the people said unto
Joshua, Nay ; but we will serve the Lord. And
Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses
against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord,
to serve Him. And they said, We are witnesses.
Now, therefore, put away, said he, the strange
gods which are among you, and incline your heart
unto the Lord God of Israel. And the people
said unto Joshua, The Lord our God will we serve,
and His voice will we obey. So Joshua made a
covenant with the people that day, and set them
a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. And
Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 325
of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there
under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the
Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people,
Behold, this stone shah be a witness unto us ; for
it hath heard all the words of the Lord which He
spake unto us : it shall be therefore a witness unto
you, lest ye deny your God. So Joshua let the
people depart, every man unto his inheritance."
— Josh. xxiv. 15-28.
There is the fruit of the forty years' wanderings,
the commonplaces, the common events of their
lives. They became noble, daring, patient soldiers
of the Lord God of Hosts, who was able to speak
to them with a plainness, and wield them with a
force, unparaheled in any other period of their or
the world's history. And how did they attain to
it ? We can answer absolutely, by repeating, day ,
by day, day by day, day by day, the lessons which
they had learnt in those high moments in which
they had seemed to be exalted above the human
level, and to be admitted within the veil to God.
Daily, during those forty years, we may be well
assured, the Lord was repeating the lessons of
Marah, Ehm, Rephidim, and Sinai ; not under
the high excitements which lifted those stations
so far above the ordinary human ranges of ex
perience, but in the quiet hours of daily pilgrimage,
daily hunger, thirst, sickness, temptation, and terror

326 " THE WANDERINGS."
of foes. Each day of their obscure wanderings was
a high day in miniature ; nay, perhaps more
blessed than a high day, because the Lord could
come nearer to the common levels of their ex
perience, and edify there the structure of a noble
and godly life.
Brethren, if our holy days are to shed no
sacredness on our work days, we are better, far
better, without them. Better Egypt, the flesh-
pots, the fish, the melons, the garhc, and the
slave's carelessness about his daily bread, than a
life with visions of Heaven which remain ever no
more than dreams. If you keep all the richer
interest of your spirit for the holy days of life, if
you concentrate all your thought and fervour in
the moments when you seem to be hfted into
the empyrean regions, and breathe the air of a
diviner world than this, you are doing your best
to turn into foolishness God's counsels about your
wanderings in the wilderness of life. You can do
it if you will. Man can turn God's -wisdom into
foolishness. He may make his forty years'
wanderings — the term of an average manhood —
a weary, hateful drudge, and fall ignobly at the
end of it, leaving his bones to bleach on the
sand. But this people judged more nobly of their
vocation. They learnt bravely, in their years of
toil and trudge, the lessons which, in the high

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 327
days of their wilderness career, had slipped so
swiftly out of their hearts. They accepted the
daily disciphne ; failed often, murmured often,
repented often, and renewed their way ; but
always with a clear growth of strength and wisdom,
a higher spring after each recoil ; until God saw
that they were fit for the enterprise at the sight
of which their fathers fainted, and led them up to
the swift conquest and armed possession of the
land. And now tell me, brother, is the wilderness a
loathed and soul-wearying pilgrimage, or a grand
training-ground of God ? Are you despising your
dahy tasks, or magnifying them ? Do you cry
wildly, " Why does God tie me here to tasks which
I abominate ? Oh ! for some work which wih meet
and satisfy the finer appetites and subtler sym
pathies of my soul ; but this whohy expends my
higher faculty : it makes life a waste, and the
future a blank." Or do you say, " God, my God,
has bound me here, because He knows what
eternity means, and what I have to do there.
Because of the grandeur of my future, He is not
ashamed to make the scene of my present dis
cipline so bare and poor. He is training me to be
faithful in the few things thoroughly ; to rule the
httle that is under my power with the bold, free,
royal hand of the heir of a kingdom ; then He

328 " THE WANDERINGS."
will lift me to a throne. Be my one work here to
make the commonplaces and levels as full of His
presence as the Holy of Hohes, where His glory
dwells ; so to beautify earth's dull paths by
heavenly patience and joyfulness, that the angels
of God may frequent them ; and to handle the
commonest tools and materials as a man who is
daily building up a character and a destiny, which
will rise, stately and fair, not among the perishmg
fabrics that shah share the wreck of earth's dissolu
tion, but in the calm heaven of eternity.
This leads me to speak of —
III. The "wanderings," in view of their eternal
results. They, obscure and unprofitable as they may
seem, are the builders for eternity. It is easy to
say that the great crises make the common ex
periences of our lives, and determine both their
track and character. There is a surface truth in
such an impression. It is at the great crises that
the changes in character and course become mani
fest ; and we are ready to believe easily that the
reasons of them, too, are there. The grand direc
tion of our hfe-course seems to be determined
by what transpires in critical moments, in which,
as far as our consciousness is concerned, our
will is well nigh powerless, while the current of
external influence eddies around us, and whirls us

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 329
away. True enough : it does seem just to seize
us and sweep us, away. But what makes the
"us?" What makes that within us which will
yield to it, and be swept along pleasantly by its
current, luhed by the soft music of its waters, tih
they cast it up, a wreck, on some rock-bound,
eternal shore ; or which will battle against the
current, wih sooner or later make some landing,
it may be but on some dreary, marshy islet, and
will begin at once to edify there a fortress of life ?
What makes that ? First, fundamentally, effec
tually, the Spirit of the living God, the Holy
Ghost, who "worketh in us to will and to do of
His own good pleasure." "Not by might, not
by power, but by My Spirit," saith the Lord, and
saith the awakened human conscience, of every
effectual stand against evil, of every fortress of
hfe which is edified against sin. But there must
be concert of the chnging and trusting human
will with the victorious force of the Spirit, in order
to the reahzation of the fruits of spiritual hfe.
That the faithless multitude in all ages is swept
away by the current, must have some other reason
than that the Spirit — who with the Father and
the Son is Love — is not wilhng to put forth effec
tual power to save them. Those men there, before
the gates of Canaan, settled their own destiny,
against the commands of God and the testimony

330 " THE WANDERINGS."
of His witnesses. Stephen testifies that this was
a resisting the Holy Ghost ; and.against the same,
the multitude are settling their destinies still. And
it appears to me most important that we should
understand that no mere moment, no isolated act
of choice, under a pressure of temptation, settles
destinies. The quiet, undistinguished years decide
the matter for the moments when the election is
finally and openly made. It takes years to give a
form and bent to a character. / Temperament we
are born with, character we have to make ; and
that not in the grand moments, when the eyes of
men or of angels are visibly upon us, but in the
daily quiet paths of phgrimage, when the work is
being done within in secret, which wih be revealed
in the daylight of eternity.
Habits, hke paths, are the result of constant ,
actions. It is the multitude of daily footsteps-
which go to and fro which shapes them. Let it'
hght up your daily wanderings to know that there —
in the quiet bracing of the soul to uncongenial
duty, the patient bearing of unwelcome burdens,
the loving acceptance of unlovely companionship
— and not on the grand occasions, you are making
your eternal future. It is the multitude of httle
actions which make the great ones. I mean this
absolutely. Teh me the habit of a man's soul in
his daily undistinguished wanderings, and I will

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 331
tell you the part he is destined to play in the
great crises of hfe. As I have said, they appear
to be independent of the common hours. As if a
man were lifted out from among the looms of time,
above their rush and din, into the calm presence
of the Eternal. It may be so. God has wondrous
power to hft us out of ourselves, to set the naked
spirit before His face ; but the man has already
settled it in his quiet years of wandering whether,
like the Israel of the old generation, he shall sink
down from that lofty height to grovel among the
fleshpots, or whether that moment of vision shall
hft his whole life nearer to heaven and to God.
And much of the work of these quiet hours will
never appear on earth. It lies deep down in the
very framework of the being ; or is gathered as
nourishment around its germ — the albumen of the
seed of the everlasting future. Much discipline
appears to be wasted even in God's elect pilgrims.
Had we seen that host as they approached the
term of their wanderings, I doubt if we should
have estimated them as God estimated them — fit
for a conquest and a kingdom. Much of the work
was done in them, is done in us, where no eye
sees it but God's. The deeper it lies, the less it
often shows on the surface. The exterior habits
of the life, and the customs of the dull, unheavenly
world, may hide for awhile much of the fruit of

332 " THE WANDERINGS.

the long wilderness discipline from every eye but
His. But let a great crisis come, let the trumpet
sound for some great battle, let the giant hosts be
marshalled to hold the entrance to the promised
land, and then all earth, all heaven, shall see
how much has been gained. The soul, braced .
by its obscure years of discipline, shakes off the ',
tatters of its desert dress, and the tricks of its /
desert life, and stands erect, compact, with armour '
bright and trenchant sword, the resistless heir of j
the kingdom, the fell foe of the devil and his
works. And then shall the way of God be justi
fied by its issues — then shall the wisdom of God
be magnified in His sons.
Would to God, brethren, that I could convey
to you the earnestness of my conviction that
these obscure moments are the parents of the
ages ; that when we least think it we are edifying
our eternity. These are the tiny insects which,
with constant toil, are building the structure of
the palace of the soul. The finer touches, the
higher expressions, may be impressed in the
critical moments ; but the great substance out of
which the individual features grow, and of which
they are the revelation, you are fabricating day
by day in your daily marches on the common
levels of life. I am persuaded that, were our
senses fine enough, we should see how that ex-

THE COMMON LEVELS OF LIFE. 333
pression of feature which is the man's charac
teristic, runs through every atom of him ; not
otherwise is it with the expression of the higher
life. I have spoken of Israel here as a unity. I
have but touched lightly on the fact that one
generation perished, and another was trained in
the wilderness for conquest. For the nation is a
unity, and as a unity we are bound to treat it ; it
is the nation which is doctrinal to us. The
nation was driven forth into the wilderness to its
temptations ; the nation was trained there for
Canaan and rest. Each generation has those
who fall and those who endure ; and that means
very largely, those who are reverent and those who
are contemptuous of their daily lives. Despise.
the moments, young spirit, and the years will
avenge it ; and your carcase, when the wander
ings are over, will lie and rot in the waste.
Honour the moments, the years, the ages will
reward it ; and God will crown that faithfulness
with the fadeless crown in the day of the mani
festation of His sons.

334 pisgah: the visions.

Pisgah : The Visions.
" And Moses icent up from the plains of Moab into the
mountaht, of Xebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against
Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land." — Deut.
xxxiv. 1.
God help us, if there is to be no open vision !
no ghmpses of what hes above and beyond the
darkness and dulness of our world ! The soul
can hve on httle, but it must have its taste of
the food of angels ; it can hope against hope, but
it must have its vision, however rarely, to refresh
its sight. A path which never rises above the
dreary level of its wilderness march, ends at last
in madness or paralysis. It is the mountain
summits which make " the pastures " bearable.
If the common hours, the monotonous daily
rounds, are building life's fabric as we have seen,
these moments of vision add the head- stones of
beauty and the touches of grace. The solid
substance of the structure is the work of the
busy, undistinguished moments ; but the plan was
drawn in some brief hour which concentrated the

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 335
thought and emotion of a hfetime, which other
suns than that which quickens this world lighted,
and other voices than those which make the hum
of this world's business filled.
We belong to two worlds. Neither the one
nor the other completes our life. It is the action
and reaction of their influences, the intermingling
of their currents, which ministers to our vital pro
gress. But if the one world claims us chiefly in
quantity, and ninety-nine out of every hundred
of our moments are given to undistinguished duty,
the one in which we rise into the clear celestial
atmosphere, and sweep the eagle eye of the spirit
round the horizon of a wider world, is intense in
proportion, and loads itself with some divine
nectar wherewith to sweeten the bitterness of our
common cup, or rather fills itself, like the face
of Moses, with a glory which shines on in the
glooms of the lower world. Who does not pity
the man, with a pity from which it is hard to
exclude a touch of scorn, who is content, if con
tent be not too divine a name, to plod the mill-
round with a constant brute -hke regularity of
motion ; what men cah a life of " action," if
that is worthy of the name of action which is
un cheered by vision, unlit by hope.
And whence is the hope to spring ? If the
dahy trudge through the monotonous pastures be

336 pisgah: the visions.
all that is open to us — if to eat, to drink, to
march, to sleep, be the brief chronicle of every
hfe — man is already at the end of all that life
can offer. Worlds in fee could not help him ;
oceans of pleasures, and an appetite to compass
them — there is a near end to ah that ; and you
wih soon hear a passionate cry that the end may
come soon, "Let us die, and have done with
this beggarly world for ever." It is, it must
be, in what is lying beyond his sight and touch
that the springs of hope are opened for man.
In some world — is there such a world ? — where
he may touch with the finer senses of his being
the reahties of which the shadows only mock him
here ; where the bhss for which the inner organs
ache, sometimes to desperation, may be tasted —
full deep draughts which satisfy even a spirit ;
where the soul's demands shall be met with full
satisfaction, and the soul's elections shall be
ratified eternally. These moments of vision are
the answer. Get thee up, God-led, into thy moun
tain summit — it rises there close by thy wilderness
path — and satiate thine eye with the vision of the
glorious land. It lies there swimming in the sun
hght ; the very air seems to palpitate with joy ;
rivers, plains, soft mountain ranges, gleaming
meadows, fair white cities, lakes that flash like
gems, and mountain crests that glow hke crowns

pisgah: the visions. 337
— it lies there beneath thee, softer, more lustrous,
as earth is ever from mountain summits, than
even thy dreams. And it is thine ; thy heritage ;
thine for ever. Gaze, drink thy fill, stretch every
sense to grasp the vision, and then rest awhile ;
rest, till God cahs thee. Not here, not now,
canst thou possess it ; soon the dark rolhng river
shah be breasted ; one struggle, one gasp, one
plunge as into an unknown abyss — thou art there.
A being of two worlds ! Oh ! for some law of
just subordination ; some truth which shall strike
justly the balance of their conflicting claims ;
some power of life, which shall extract by its
potent chemistry the saps and juices with which
the soil of earth can furnish us, while it lifts the
divine part into diviner regions, and unfolds the
beauty, and exhales the fragrance of our nobler
nature in the air of its native spiritual world.
The two worlds were more one in Eden than
they have ever been since, or can ever be again,
until the very memory of Eden is lost in the
transcendent glory and bliss of heaven. Adam
lived a simple life, we a double. His whole
faculty exercised itself serenely on the visible
around him, in calm intercourse with nature and
with God. Sense, imagination, spirit, were all
satisfied ; at least as far as they were developed.
Adam in Eden was still an undeveloped man.
22

338 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
In the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, the
developed man, the complete image of God,
alone appears. But to Adam it was not strange
that the voice of the Lord God should be heard
amidst the trees of the garden in the cool of
the day : when he had fallen out of the pristine
harmony by sin, then it became awful. Then,
for the first time, he felt, what has been the
source of the keenest suffering, but at the same
time the school of the divinest disciphne, to his
children in all ages, that he belonged to two
worlds which had lost their harmony ; which
would battle for the possession of his nature ;
whose conflicts, too, would be the torment, but
also — for was not God on one side !— the hope of
his life. And now there are two worlds, two
natures : how to marry them is the one great
question ; how of the twain to make one flesh.
The world around man has fahen out of harmony
with the highest in man. He is strongly beset
by the temptation to divide himself, and give
himself part to one, part to the other world.
To let the daily round, the common task, have
the share which they claim of his time and
energy, in dull submission to the inevitable ; and
then to live what he calls his life in another, it
may be a higher, but, alas ! it tends terribly to
become a lower, world.

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 339
In my last discourse I spoke of these common
'"~Ts. I asked why our loving Father has bound
hus tightly by the yoke of duties which dis-
and afflict us ; which seem to consume our
le life in tasks which yield us none of the
aer satisfactions, and in which it is often
possible to find any vital interest at all. And
sserted that there is but one answer. It is
^ daily round which makes life : and God wih
e us live. Therefore He keeps us there. He
have us put interest into them, if we cannot
i it in them. He will have us, through these
ig, weary marches, work godly principles of
;ion into the vital texture of our being; and
' the dahy reiteration of endeavour, the daily
exercise of vigilance, the daily play of the muscles
and organs of the inner man, in the effort to
make each humble act and passion of our lives
harmonious with the will of God, dignify and
finally glorify life.
This is the meaning of our El Tih — the wan
derings. The dahy, hourly repetition of heavenly
acts and efforts is training us for the life of heaven.
But we are weak and dim of sight. " Who is
sufficient for these things ? " we cry. Who can
realize this ideal of a daily life ? Not one of us,
alas! The idea, "the glory of God," of which
we all come short in ah things, is ever above us,
22—2

340 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.

far, far above us ; but those, methinks, realize
most of it who know most what the mountain of
vision means ; who sometimes give loose to the
imagination of the spirit, and suffer God to show
them, through that organ, some glimpses of the
things unseen, unheard, unknown, which abide
with Him on high.
To Moses was entrusted the noblest, but at
the same time the weariest, life-task ever com
mitted to the hand of man. As a nurse with a
sick and fractious child, he had borne through the
life of a long generation the burden of that people's
follies and sins. The same sensual cry, " What
shah we eat, what shah we drink ? " was ever,
with a few bright intervals, sounding in his ears ;
and the dread foreboding, that the Lord in
righteous anger would break forth on them and
consume them, was ever weighing on his heart.
Moses had fathomed the meaning of intercession.
He had hved for years the hfe of an intercessor,
standing between God and a faithless and sensual
race. " Let me alone," the Lord had said, " that
I may consume them in a moment, and I wih
make of thee a greater nation." " Nay, 0 my
Lord," the father of his people had answered,
"let me perish; but for the glory of thine own
name, let this nation be saved." That man had
a right to talk of intercession. He took the

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 341
burden of those whom he represented before God
on his own heart. We utter a slight prayer for
our fehow-men, under a passing emotion, and
cah it intercession. Let us learn from this great
leader, type in many deep ways of the One
Intercessor, what this awful privilege and power
imphes. History, I think, has few greater records
than these: "And it came to pass on the morrow,
that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned
a great sin : and now I will go up unto the Lord;
peradventure I shall make an atonement for your
sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord, and
said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and
have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if Thou
wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I
pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast
written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Who
soever hath sinned against me, him will I blot
out of my book. Therefore now go, lead the
people unto the place of which I have spoken unto
"thee : behold, mine Angel shall go before thee :
nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit
their sin upon them. And the Lord plagued the
people, because they made the calf, which Aaron
made."— (Exod. xxxii. 30-35) . " And the Lord
said unto Moses, How long will this people pro
voke me ? and how long will it be ere they
beheve me, for all the signs which I have showed

342 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
among them ? I will smite them with the pesti
lence, and disinherit them, and wih make of thee
a greater nation and mightier than they. And
Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians
shall hear it, (for Thou broughtest up this people
in Thy might from among them ;) And they will
tell it to the inhabitants of this land : for they
have heard that Thou, Lord, art among this people,
that Thou, Lord, art seen face to face, and that
Thy cloud standeth over them, and that Thou goest
before them, by day time in a pihar of a cloud,
and in a pihar of fire by night. Now if Thou
shalt kill ah this people as one man, then the
nations which have heard the fame of Thee wih
speak, saying, because the Lord was not able
to bring this people into the land which He sware
unto them, therefore He hath slain them in the
wilderness. And now, I beseech Thee, let the
power of my Lord be great, according as Thou
hast spoken, saying, The Lord is longsuffering,
and great of mercy, forgiving iniquity and trans
gression, and by no means clearing the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation.
Pardon, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of this
people, according unto the greatness of Thy
mercy, and as Thou hast forgiven this people,
from Egypt even until now. And the Lord

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 343
said, I have pardoned according to thy word :
But as truly as I hve, all the earth shall be
filled with the glory of the Lord." — Numb. xiv.
11-21. Happy for the people that it was with
the great Intercessor that he pleaded ; that he
spake with One who had the plea which Moses
urged, present with overmastering force within
His own heart ; One who bore the whole burden
of that people's sin, the whole burden of the
world's sin, before the righteous Father; and
was Himself, at what cost we know, surety for
their future, when He yielded to the prayer of
His servant, and " pardoned according to his
word." The people pined for a human mediator,
a human organ of communication between them
selves and God. " And the people said unto
Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear;
but let not God speak with us lest we die."
How little did they understand that the Lord,
whom they dreaded, loved them with a tender
ness and pitied them with a compassion, of which
the love and pity of Moses were faint shadows — ¦
a love and compassion which would draw Him
from the heart of His glory to abide with them in
shame and suffering, and to pour out His soul
unto death that their souls might be saved. But
it is the cry of the human in all ages. How
grandly does Job utter it, " For He is not a

344 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
man as I am, that I should answer Him, and
we should come together in judgment. Neither
is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay
his hand upon us both. Let Him take His rod
away from me, and let not His fear terrify me ;
then would I speak and not fear Him ; but it is
not so with me." — Job ix. 32-35. And how finely
does Ehhu conceive of the necessary conditions
of mediation, though too swift to conclude, in his
fresh, young zeal, that in himself the conditions
were fulfilled. "Behold, I am according to thy
wish in God's stead ; I also am formed out of
the clay. Behold, my terror shall not make thee
afraid, neither shall my hand be heavy upon
thee." — Job xxxiii. 6, 7. There is but One who
can stand instead of God ; who can lay His
hand upon us both. Elihu, and all mere human
daysmen, retire before the dark, deep problem,
avowedly impotent (Job xxxvii. 19, 20); He
only can stand for us before God, and stand for
God before us, who "was in the beginning,"
" who was with God, who was God ; " and " who
became flesh," " bone of our bone, and flesh
of our flesh ; " and manifested unto us the awful
glory of the Father, fuh, in the human Mediator's
countenance, of grace and truth.
But Moses came as near as man could come
to the conditions. A Godlike man verily, a man

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 345
not afraid of suffering for men ; a man willing,
if he might, to save men by the sacrifice of him
self, like God. The burden of that people he
bore through life ; never for one instant was he
permitted to lay it down. And to him, as to all
such, were visions vouchsafed of diviner bright
ness than meaner men could look upon. It was
when fresh from beholding the form of the glory
of the Lord, and with the sublime word of pro
mise, " Doubtless I wih be with thee," still ring
ing in his ear, that he prayed that prayer, and
prevailed to save that host from death. But for
that moment of open vision he had never faced
the drearihood of the desert ; but for that word
of ample promise he had never borne so patiently
their murmurs and cries of lust. The glooms of
his dahy marches were ht by the glory which still
streamed down from that cleft of the rock on
Sinai ; and the discords that jarred around him
were lost, were blent into some grand breadth
of harmony, by the music of that everlasting pro
mise of his Lord. He had visions such as no
other man has seen of what was behind the veil;
for he had to do, before the veil, such work as no
other man has done.
And for him, as for many a faithful pilgrim,
the brightest and most blessed vision was the
last, from the last mountain-summit which lies on

346 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
the hither side of the river of death. The long,
long wandering of that people was over ; El Tih,
with its dreary levels, its dusty tracks, its name
less stations, was behind them. Before them was
all of which they and their fathers for generations
had dreamed. But one man, in all the mighty
host which stood there before the gates of Canaan,
should never press its sod — and he their prophet-
leader ; the man who for forty years had borne
their burdens, led their marches, and been to
them the pledge of the promised land. The hope
of it had filled his heart through that weary pil
grimage, from the hour when he struck the first
blow of deliverance in Egypt, to that in which he
stood, with the army he had trained to order and
hardihood, before its gates. But the word had
gone forth, " Get thee up into this Pisgah, and
die." Why ? Because Canaan was too rich a
reward for such a life course, or because God had
awaiting him a better Canaan in heaven ?
There is something profoundly touching in this
narration of Moses : " And I besought the Lord at
that time, saying, 0 Lord God, Thou hast begun to
show Thy servant Thy greatness, and Thy mighty
hand : for what God is there in heaven or in earth,
that can do, according to Thy works, and according
to Thy might ? I pray Thee, let me go over, and
see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 347
goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the Lord was
wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear
me : and the Lord said unto me, Let it suffice
thee ; speak no more unto me of this matter.
Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up
thine eyes westward, and northward, and south
ward, and eastward, and behold it with thine
eyes : for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.
But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and
strengthen him : for he shall go over before this
people, and he shall cause them to inherit the
land which thou shalt see." — Deut. iii. 23-28.
" For your sakes," always, for your sakes !
For your sakes even I must die here, while you
go over to possess the land. There is judgment
here without doubt. "And Moses and Aaron
went from the presence of the assembly unto the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and
they fell upon their faces : and the glory of the
Lord appeared unto them. And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying, Take the rod, and gather
thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy
brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their
eyes ; and it shall give forth his water, and thou
shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock :
so thou shalt give the congregation and their
beasts drink. And Moses took the rod from
before the Lord, as He commanded him. And

348 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation
together before the rock, and he said unto them,
Hear now, ye rebels ; must we fetch you water
out of this rock ? And Moses lifted up his hand,
and with his rod he smote the rock twice : and
the water came out abundantly, and the congre
gation drank, and their beasts also. And the
Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye
believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the
children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring
this congregation into the land which I have given
them. This is the water of Meribah ; because
the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and
He was sanctified in them." — Numb. xx. 6-13.
I say there is judgment here ; but as with all
God's judgments there is mercy behind it. There
is always mercy in judgment here, if we will have
it, and let God work His benignant will. There
was judgment in the expulsion from Eden, the first
sentence on the human race ; but to those who
review the wilderness from the battlements of the
heavenly city, that very expulsion will be the
theme of an outburst of praise. In mercy to
this man of God, this aged shepherd of Israel,
God led him up to that summit of Pisgah, and
showed him all the goodly land, but suffered not
his foot to press its sods. The people entered
that land as the Lord's avengers. As with

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 349
Pompeii, as with Sodom, the land was weary of
the vice and pollution of its people, " the land
itself vomiteth out its inhabitants," the Lord
said, when He put the exterminating sword into
the people's hand.* And what had the aged
shepherd of Israel in common with scenes of
struggle and slaughter? The fresh young race,
hardy, daring, braced to a nobler manhood than
that of their sires by the discipline of the desert,
were ready for the shock. Armed for war they
went up, to conquer with a red right hand their
own. But that deep-thoughted, deep-hearted old
man, who had found the desert silences the con
genial comrades of his spirit, had caught the
glow of the dawn on the mountain summits, and
watched the dewy evenfah on the bosom of the
parched waste for twice forty years, with an ever
fresh wonder at the beauty and richness of His
world who was leading Israel hke a flock by His
prophet's hand ; whose work had been the creating
of a nation, the calhng of a church, the leading
of a great multitude into an ever closer and
deeper knowledge of the word and the ways of
God — let him see the goodly land, with the sun-
glow on it, shining through the transparent air ;
let him roam in imagination through the future
* It is most important to bear this in mind, when considering
the exterminating character of the Jewish warfare in Canaan.

350 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
scenes of the glorious life of the people he had
loved and led ; let him sweep his gaze over the
length and the breadth of the vision, from the
solemn peaks of Sinai, dim there in the distance,
to the swelling slopes of the far-off Hermon —
where one day he should leave his mountain tomb
to meet his transfigured Lord* — and away from
the many-tinted mountains of Moab, on whose
crest he stood, to the broad blue ocean sleeping
there in the distant haze ; let him survey it ah,
let his eye behold, let his heart clasp ah the
beauty of the goodly land which had been his star
of hope through the desert ; but let it be before
one blood-drop stains it, before those hills give
back one echo of the shout of infuriated foes.
In judgment, but fuh of deep tenderness, his
Father led him forth from the camp which he was
to guide no' longer. His eye was not dim, nor
his natural force abated, as he climbed that sum
mit — his eye ranging with a solemn joy as he
ascended, over fresh breadths of his promised land.
Was the sunset glow upon it when he reached
his resting-place ? Was the land, in that splendid
transparent air, bathed in the lustrous sunset tones
* I am indebted for this thought to a passage in the
fourth volume of Mr. Ruskin's Modern Painters; in which he
describes this mountain vision, in words which are conspicuous
by their splendid eloquence even in his writings.

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 351
of which we have all had vision sometimes, and
dreamed of the glories of celestial worlds ? We
know not : nor know we how, as the gloom
settled on the vision, a darker, colder shadow fell
around his spirit ; but this we know, the Angel of
Death who met him there had no unwilling fol
lower ; the spirits who watched for the spoils of
mortality had not long to wait for their prize.
Something of that longing for rest, which
seizes on the faithful servants of duty when their
work is well nigh done, he bore with him up those
mountain paths, where the steps of his young
manhood had first learnt strength and swiftness,
where his aged feet were now bearing him, how
joyfully, to his rest. And some deep sense of the
tenderness of His hand who had thus ordained for
him, the perfect love of the Lord whom he should
see at length in His glory face to face, inspired
thanksgiving, as he prepared to pass from the
solemn summits of that mountain world which
had long been the sanctuary of his spirit, and in
the sublime moment of vision, to that land of rest
of which the Canaan at his feet was but the dim
foreshining, the rest where all the faithful ones
are at home with God, and for ever.
There was a full depth of tenderness in the
counsel that led him thither ; for who on earth,
in this hard world, has realized his dreams ?

352 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
To him Canaan could have been but a disen
chantment. The Canaan of such men is to be
found only on high. His land of promise was
larger, fairer, more glorious, than that which lay
basking in the sunlight at his feet. He had seen
it through the eyes of hope, and in the light
of the revelation of God. To tread its soil,
abide in its cities, hve with its inhabitants, whom
his people with a fatal self-indulgence would
spare — how fatal the narration of Bochim, in
Judges ii., reveals — would have been to him no
heavenly work. He had dreamt a dream of
Canaan, and his God took him to a world where
alone such dreams could be fulfilled. It seems
like a hard sentence, but we may be assured that
his spirit rejoiced when the summons came ; as
the mature and holy are ever glad when they
catch the tread of the angel of death. To such,
tempered to such fineness, purged to such pure-
ness, earth can be but a scene of sorrowful and
toilsome ministry ; ever, but that it is checked by
that care for others which they have learnt of
Christ, they have " a desire to depart and to be
with Christ, which is far better." He could not
go into that land ; no land of earth could be
a home to such a spirit ; God's judgment was a
merciful angel, to conduct the worn-out soldier to
his eternal rest.

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 353
Never had man so noble a lifework ; never had
man so grand a burial. How, where, no man
knoweth. Somewhere, among those clear moun
tain heights, they laid him ; God and the angels
performed his obsequies ; when earth next sees
him, he is glorified with Christ. For when the
Lord was transfigured, " there talked with him
two men, which were Moses and Elias, who
appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which
he should accomphsh at Jerusalem."
Brethren ! am I talking idly, when I talk to you
of visions ? Have you never scaled the mountains
that edge your wilderness, and swept your eye
round a wider world than this ? Israel's history,
of which the life of Moses is the core, paints in
visible form your life. Mountains, deserts, oases,
wastes of sand, are there in solemn, if not dread,
reahty ; but they are more dreadly real in the
history of your hves. I know that the vision is
not hidden from any one of you. I know that
God wih have you chmb sometimes, and see some
glimpses of what a man may be, and what, life.
There is not an abandoned profligate who has not
abandoned his vision to become profligate. Judas
had once his vision — a vision of what a divine
man might be, and a divinely governed world ;
perhaps, it was clearest in those days when he
first joined the Lord. There are times when
23

354 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
there breaks in, on most of us at least, an awful
sense of the wealth of faculty with which God has
endowed us, and the glorious beauty and richness
of His world. It comes to us but in gleams ;
there are those to whom the vision is ever
present. " I never saw that in nature," said a
critic to Turner. " I dare say not," was the
answer ; " but don't you wish you could, though ? "
His open eye saw what you and I can but dimly
trace in nature ; but you and I shall see it, ay,
and things infinitely more grand and fair, if the
spirit, quickened by Christ, and purged by disci
pline, bears up its faculty to the heavenly world.
I am not speaking here of that sense of the
Divine presence which attends the resolute and
earnest pilgrim, making his desert bright with
glory, and his night-watches glad with songs. I
am speaking of moments when the spirit grows
intense, gathers all its force and fire, and takes a
horoscope of its powers and its destiny. I believe
it is oftenest in sorrow that these sublime moments
come to us. The spirit, oppressed with its burden
of cares, stirs itself to shake them off, and in
shaking them off, bounds at once to the mountain
summits of its world. And there it ranges freely ;
it breathes a pure bright air, and sees the mists
rohing over the scene of its wanderings, while
above there is a clear heaven and God. There is

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 355

an essential vigour in a God-sustained soul which
a world's burdens could not crush to annihilation.
It exults to feel that its springs of life lie deeper,
and rouses itself in reaction to assert and wield a
mastery over the world. ' ' Why should a living
man complain?" asks Jeremiah. A living man,
one inscribed among the living in Jerusalem.
Why, when he has life, God, and the future ? A
hving soul ! have you never had a vision of what
a living soul may be, may do, may suffer, may
know — the infinite capacity of hfe. I think
sometimes, when I study the harmonies of this
body of ours and the creation — the exquisite con
cords which, even through the dull menstruum of
our sin thickened senses are the springs of the
intensest joys — of the rapture with which they
shall one day fill the spirit, when these sensual
films are shed, and the organ comes fairly into
contact with its world.
I suppose that Angelo, Shakspeare, Milton,
Turner, carried aching hearts about with them
sometimes, when they caught the glow of a glory
in the creation, which they could only partially
behold. The sense of the infinite splendour, the
glory of colour, tone, and form, of which God
gave them vision, that they might show some
part at least of what He had revealed to them to
the world, saddened and oppressed them. It is
23—2

356 pisgah: the visions.

a " burden of the Lord " too, which His prophets
ever bear. Who was it who wept much when he
beheld the vision ? It was too high, too glorious,
for a mortal to take in. There are moments
when the humblest of us see that the infinite
beauty, the infinite splendour, the infinite love
enfold us everywhere. Is the finite other than the
portion of the infinite which we take in ? And
those who have stretched out nearest to its bounds,
have the most intense sense of the boundless
beyond. It is no human culture which affords us
this vision, which makes the soul ache and thrill,
as the senses ache with longing for their pleasures,
or the nerves thrill under the breath of love.
If I wanted to find men and women who live
much in vision, who " groan in this earthly
tabernacle being burdened," who tremble some
times with an awful joy when God takes them
aside — takes them up into His mount, and shows
them the whole breadth of the heavenly land — I
would rather search in the homes of the weavers
of the Yorkshire valleys than in kings' palaces :
among those whose patient sinewy toil has
crowned our England with the imperial crown of
industry, and whose daily tasks and poor sur
roundings show strange contrasts to the dreams
which haunt them, finding free utterance only in
their prayers, of what a home might be, what a

PISGAH : THE VISIONS. 357
kingdom might be, what a human spirit might be,
and what a world. If we want to find prophets in
these days — men who live near to the Eternal, and
whose vision ranges through the Infinite — I think
that it is among the poor of this world that they
are chiefly to be sought.
And perhaps a kindred reason may explain to
us why our chief mountain of vision is on the
hither side of the river of death. Death is pro
phetic. The seers who see most of the things
unspeakable, are amongst those who are appointed
to' die. For those whom the Lord leads through
the wilderness homewards, the last stage is a.
chmbing of Pisgah. I have seen many such a
dying, and I have rarely failed to mark, in those
who were summoned, a sublime preparation for
death. I have seen a light in dying eyes which
was lit from no earthly fountain ; I have heard
broken murmurs on dying lips, whose heavenly
meanings no mortal brain might know; songs
gasped out by faltering tongues already tuned to
concord with the hymns of angels; and smiles
flitting over pallid, stiffening features, lighting
up the mask of death with the likeness of the
countenance which the departing spirit would wear
before the Throne.
And why do the visions cluster most thickly
around death ? Because those who know what it

358 PISGAH : THE VISIONS.
is to hve must die to realize their dreams. Like
Moses, they may see the land, but they must die
to inherit it — die with the vision before their
spirits, which fades for the moment as they die,
but when they pass, it is heaven. To recover
Eden here is granted, thank God ! to none of us.
There is no man living who finds earth realize his
hope. The ease-loving pilgrim never fails to find
his Goshen a bondage ; the man of pleasure
never fads to find his Elysium a heh. The ex
citement of pursuit is grand, insphing. "Let
me win this prize, let me clasp this treasure,
0 my God, and I am satisfied ; ' Joy, joy for ever,'
shah be my song in my Paradise regained." And
where is your Paradise ? and your Eve ? You
have struggled hard to substantiate your vision.
" This same shah comfort us," you have said hke
Lamech, of being after being, and thing after
thing. Wealth, knowledge, power, pleasure,
friendship, love, all have been wooed to restore you
Eden, and in none of them are you at rest. All
of them have been, according to your use of them,
either a spur, a noble stimulus to higher achieve
ment, or a mass of corruption, which has lain
since, lies still, rotting upon your soul. No ! you
must die, to possess what your spirit touches in its
dreams. We are long in learning this ; we fight
hard against the stern necessity ; and we spend

pisgah: the visions. 359
rich strength of brain and heart in realizing our
ideal. The struggle is appointed, and the failure.
The struggle, to brace and educate our spirits —
for the aspirations, which have shaped themselves
into efforts here, become the habits of eternity ;
the failure, because God hath provided some
better thing for us than our ideal, even His own,
on high. Hope on, then, hope ever, faint pilgrim !
Strengthen the hands that hang down, and the
feeble knees, and make a straight path onward
through the desolate wastes of life. If vision
fades, get thee up into the mountain and renew
it, move to the music of heavenly choirs, work in
the brightness of heavenly sunlight, rest in the
bosom of heavenly love. Bless the hand which
breaks up thine Edens, and shows to thee visions
which earth must be purged and glorified to make
real. Be strong in patience, brave in suffering,
large, boundless, in hope. Be the pilgrim of
Canaan, led forth into the desert by the angel of
God's presence ; not the exile of Eden driven out
by the cherub into the waste. Brace thy soul
for a hfe-long march through a desert of wander
ings, for a ceaseless conflict with stern and un
compromising foes ; but keep thine eye on that
mountain in the distance : it lifts its solemn
peak into the clear calm air, bathed in the hght
of some hidden celestial sun. The day cometh

360 pisgah: the visions.
when an unseen hand shall guide you up its
rugged slopes, panting, trembling, but pressing
bravely on ; the goodly land, unseen tih then but
in the mirror of hope, unfolding its breadth of
beauty and glory as you chmb ; and when at
length, from the summit, the whole stretch of the
field of vision is beneath you, the angel who led
you thither shall lift you to see the worlds, of
which the vision is but a picture, on high.

361

Canaan : the Rest.
" The good land that is beyond Jordan." — Deut. iii. 25.
It is there, a seer has seen it ; and God gave him
words to paint the vision for us. A good land ;
glorious in beauty, yet homehke ; famihar in every
form and feature, but stih a transfigured world.
It is the hope that lights the way of the wilder
ness — the hope that we may one day behold it,
that we may one day tread the paths and gaze
on the glories of a creation, which has been
" dehvered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the sons of God."
If the wilderness marches of this people, which
we have traced to the edge of Jordan, be a pic
ture of man's pilgrimage, the goodly land which
is beyond the dark rolhng river must have some
pregnant suggestions of heaven. Its foreshinings
of what God has in store for the souls He loves
could be but dim, or Moses had been suffered to
go over to possess it ; but they must have been
real, or the vision of it had never so gladdened

362 THE GOOD land
and uplifted his heart. In truth, the vision is
the best part of all earthly satisfactions. To
those who cannot look with the inner eye on all
the prospects of this earth, and catch the glow of
heaven's transfiguring sunhght upon them, that
which may be seen of earth is bare as desert and
black as night.
For long years this vision of Canaan had floated
before his sight. It had led his marches through
the wanderings, it had fed his imagination and
filled his dreams. And the sight of the actual
Canaan was granted. It was ah of Canaan that
was heaven-like. Imagination, not disenchanted
by the bare and hard reality, gazed from that
mountain brow over the splendid beauty and
richness of the land, which spread, flooded with
sunlight, at his feet. More hke heaven to Moses
in that hour, than even to Joshua and the heroes
who won and held it ; more worth the quest of a
hfetime, more able to satisfy a spirit's hope.
To one only, the seer of the new Jerusalem,
has a fairer vision been vouchsafed. To him
heaven opened and the invisible appeared. He
saw the Apocalypse of a world transfigured, as
he had once seen transfigured the way-worn and
tear-stained body of his Lord.
" And I saw a new heaven and a new earth :
for the first heaven and the first earth were passed

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 363
away; and there was no more sea. And I John
saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down
from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband. And I heard a great
voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle
of God is with men, and He will dwell with them,
and they shah be His people, and God Himself
shah be with them, and be their God. And God
shall wipe away ah tears from their eyes; and
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor
crying, neither shah there be any more pain : for
the former things are passed away." — Rev. xxi. 1-4.
I suppose that earth needs but the heavenly
lustre upon it to glow and shine like heaven.
Thus Moses saw the goodly land which had been
the dream of a lifetime, and had mingled its
beauty as the golden thread in the texture of the
noblest, manliest, godhest life-work ever accom
plished in this world. Canaan had inspired it, if
duty had constrained it. It was the vision that
gleamed there over the dim bounds of the desert
to his prophetic sight, that ht those dreary
marches with touches of glory, such as on mists
that surge round the mountain peaks and steam
down their rugged flanks, warn night-weary
pilgrims of the advent of joyous day.
Brethren, it is the inspiration to ah of us. The
dullest, darkest hearts have some dim prospect

364 THE GOOD LAND
of a better land, which makes it easier to endure.
None believe that the present is final. There is
no man's life, be his creed as atheistic as it may,
which does not, in its dahy marches, toils, and
ministries, assume the existence of the God whom
it discredits, and the heaven which it denies.
Legends, golden legends, among all peoples, tell
of the heroic deeds of some divine leaders, —
Prometheus, Krishna, Beowulf, what matter their
names ? — who, by toil or suffering, have wrought
deliverances for man. The idea is there, en
shrined in the heart of all the nobler peoples,
and uttered in their literature — there is a sense
in which it makes hterature — and it prophesies,
with more or less explicit tones, the advent of
the righteous King. And men, dreaming of a
delivered humanity, have dreamed, too, of a
delivered world. The King who should come,
should deliver earth as well as man — should
reclaim its wastes, light up its gloom, and weave
its discords into the universal harmonies which
fill the sphere from which He came. How
grandly does the vision of a ransomed earth
cross the prophetic imagination of Isaiah, the
most regal, and, therefore, the most evangehc
of the seers. " Whereas thou hast been forsaken
and hated, so that no man went through thee,
I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 365
many generations. Thou shalt also suck the
milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast
of kings : and thou shalt know that I the Lord
am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty
One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and
for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass,
and for stones iron : I wih also make thy officers
peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence
shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor
destruction within thy borders ; but thou shalt
call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.
The sun shah be no more thy light by day ;
neither for brightness shall the moon give light
unto thee : but the Lord shall be unto thee an
everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy
sun shall no more go down ; neither shall thy
moon withdraw itself : for the Lord shah be thine
everlasting hght, and the days of thy mourning
shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all
righteous ; they shall inherit the land for ever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I may be glorified. A httle one shall become
a thousand, and a small one a strong nation : I the
Lord wih hasten it in his time." — Isa. Ix. 15-22.
A world, a home to dwell in, not cursed as this
is, with all its prophetic beauty — a world without
wastes, marshes, lava-floods, blights, famines,
plagues — a world that shall fit a redeemed, as this

366 THE GOOD LAND
fits a fahen, nature — a world whose paths shah
be the highways of angels, whose sun shall be
the face of God. " This same shall comfort us,"
said Lamech ; ' ' concerning our work and the toil
of our Jiands, because of the ground which the Lord
hath cursed." The Deluge, as I have said above,
was gathering then, but he saw it not : he saw
beyond it. The cry of his heart, the cry of man's
heart, stretched out beyond the diluvial waters,
borne on the wings of an immortal dove. The
hope which he uttered, the Deluge could not bury;
the man Christ Jesus came to substantiate it ; in
the "new heavens and the new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness," the faithful shall see it
fulfilled. It is easy to talk sentiment or platitude about
heaven. It is less easy so to conceive of it, as to let
the vision brace the muscles of a patient, manly
life ; and yet, be it what it may, this must be its
vestibule. A manly thoroughness in all occupa
tions, toils, and duties, whether of heart, mind,
or body, must be the condition of a victorious
entrance into the land of promise, and of a session
on its throne. A vision which should make man
uneasy, unquiet here, is a child's notion of a
future, not God's. There is no uprooting, no
transplanting, essential to God's plan for us —
simply a growth through life to glory.

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 367
We will strive to climb our Pisgah, if we may,
and survey the land. It will explain the past, it will
justify the present, it will make the future more
glorious than our dreams. It is there, close by
us : behind the veil — a veil which the hand can
touch ; nay, the hand of faith may lift it at any
moment, may hft it now. There are not two
worlds, but one, with its fore-court curtained,
wherein, for the present, is our abode. But
these bars of flesh are no adamantine barriers.
Light permeates veils ; and sound. There are those
into whose hands these words may come, on
whose lives the hght which lights the angels to
their tasks is calmly shining, and whose ears are
gladdened in night-watches by the echoes of
angelic hymns ; and for us ah, the fact that that
world is there— vivid, loving, glorious — makes
this world brighter, its tasks less hard, its sor
rows less intense. We may not see, nay, we
may choose dehberately to ignore, the source
from which our inspirations come to us ; but
such a world of vivid life spread round us, with
only a veil to hide it, must kindle and quicken
us. It makes our world other than a Hades :
hke the great burning African plain beyond our
horizon, it modulates the atmosphere of our con
tinent of hfe. There are those who could not
drag themselves through their dahy marches, if

368 THE GOOD LAND
they did not catch some inspiration from its
visions ; but the great world of men, uncon
sciously or half-consciously, extracts or inhales
from it something, which runs like an under-tone
of promise through life.
A land whose physical features should be in
bright contrast to Egypt's monotonous plains,
was the picture which Moses held up before that
people's sight : and the contrast is most in
structive. "For the land, whither thou goest in to pos
sess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence
ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and
wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs :
But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a
land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of
the rain of heaven : A land which the Lord thy
God careth for : the eyes of the Lord thy God
are always upon it, from the beginning of the
year even unto the end of the year. And it
shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently
unto my commandments, which I command you
this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve
Him with all your heart and with all your soul,
that I will give you the rain of your land in his
due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that
thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine,
and thine oil. And I wih send grass in thy fields

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 369
for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be
fuh."— Deut. xi. 10-15.
In Egypt, man's toil is the prominent feature ;
man made its fertility : in Canaan, God's bounty
is the prominent feature ; "It drinketh water of
the rain of heaven." Egypt is the field in which
a man, by a low form of labour, might exist
amply ; Canaan the home in which a man, by
joyful concert with God, might nobly live. The
eye of man was upon the one, and the flesh only
was fattened by it ; the eye of the Lord was upon
the other, and the whole manly power was nou
rished there, and trained to some God-like pro
portion ; for there were gathered up and treasured
all the features which make the beauty, and all
the elements which minister to the richness, of the
world. " For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a
good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of valleys and hills ; a
land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-
trees, and pomegranates ; a land of olive oil, and
honey : a land wherein thou shalt eat bread
without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in
it ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose
hihs thou mayest dig brass." — Deut. viii. 7-9.
No vision of a land fairer, no produce of a land
richer, than that which is presented here. But
24

370 THE GOOD LAND
above ah, the light of God upon it, the joy of
God in blessing His people, and crowning their
lives with His love, patent in ah its expressions ;
its beauty, a constant smile of God on His be
loved. Egypt is the worldly land; toil, drudge
there, it wih feed and fatten you. Canaan is the
heavenly land; live there, it will be the noble
theatre and home of your life.
In treating this subject, the rest which re-
maineth for the people of God, to the earthly
image of which Canaan received the weary pil
grims of the desert, I shah speak in the first place
of its nature, the conceptions which we are to
form of the heavenly rest ; and, in the second
place, of the springs of its joys.
Its nature wih, for the present, occupy our
attention. I. It was a land, a good land, the slope of that
goodly mountain, even Lebanon, which Moses
looked upon ; it was a land of promise, which God
had prepared.
I beheve in the heavenly land. I beheve that
we are so sublimely immaterial in these days, that
we are prone to conceive of things invisible so as
to touch nothing more substantial than the
vapours of a dream. God gives us an earth like
this to tread upon, that we may have some solid
notions about heaven. I suppose that earth, at

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 371
its best, must be strangely heaven-like. When
the Lord had finished the work of creation, and
left the earth with the glory of the last touch of His
hand upon it, He looked upon His handiwork,
and said, " Behold, it is very good ! " There are
no comparatives of goodness with God. There is
no "yea and nay" with Him. He meant that He
had made it perfect in its beauty, perfect as His
hand could make it ; and man, in all his ages, has
caught the thought, and mused upon an image
of an Eden restored. All man's imaginings about
the world behind the veil, instinctively make an
earth like this the starting-point. It is a trans
figured world which we look for — the familiar
forms, with the heavenly sunlight on them ; the
hints of beauty which earth suggests, wrought out
into broad expression ; the gleams of brightness
expanded into brilliant day ! *
Canaan was in a sense the heaven of Israel's
hope : the more heaven-hke, perhaps, because it
was so fair a feature of our world ; because it was
a land on which a foot could be firmly and joy
fully planted ; a home in which a man, a family, a
nation, could nobly dwell. A world behind the
veil is the instinctive belief of every human spirit :
a world, with all the attributes of a world hke
this, in which all the promises of this flawed and
fractured creation shah be reahzed ; wherein no
24—2

372 THE GOOD LAND
hope shall be frustrated, no cord of association
broken, which has been consecrated by holy com
munion upon earth.
This is man's vision, inseparable, too, from his
condition here. Imagination! we may say; blank
dreams, no more ! and pass it by. Imagination
surely ! but who inspired the imagination ? Who
but the Being who is the Maker of the reahty, which
He has kept, for ages, before the imagination of the
world. I accept imagination here as a witness to
reality. The imagination of the seer of Patmos
was the organ by which was set before him the
image of a divine reality — the "new heavens, and
the new earth," wherein, saith St. Peter, " dwel
leth righteousness." I cling to these words, " the
new heaven and the new earth," most earnestly.
They are pregnant words, pregnant with heavenly
truth. St. Peter and St. John looked for a scene
which should be famihar, however transfigured; a
scene which should keep its home-hke character,
however transformed.
Heaven is a state, and not a place, we are
assured by our present illuminati. Most surely :
places do not constitute spirits, but spirits places.
And yet one may hope that heaven is a state in
which there will be firm footing, free air, and
room to work. God has not double types of
created things. The one for heaven, even the

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 373
heaven of heavens where He abides ; the other
poorer, grosser, made in clay after commoner
forms, for the uses of this world. God is One ;
His thought is one. He has but one way, and
that the way of manifesting himself in creation —
but one idea, whose reahzation through infinite
variety He ever pursues. We speak familiarly of
the boundless varieties of form in the kingdom of
nature, tasking the strongest brain beyond its
powers to name and catalogue them. Naturalists
come home from their world-wide rambles, and
bewilder us with the hst of species, till then un
known to fame, which they have discovered. But
as the myriad lenses in the eye of that marvellous
beetle form after all but one eye, so there is a
unity underlying the variety, whose image science
ever pursues.- For science, looking under the
cloak of the visible, discourses sagely of simplicity
— the few primary elements out of which all things
are developed, the simplicities of form and struc
ture, of which we have but slight modulations in
all the infinite varieties of created things which
surround us here. It was a poet's eye which first
recovered this track of thought in the modern
world. Goethe's suggestions, modern science still
pursues. There is a double process at present,
nay in all ages of scientific expansion: — the dis
covery of variety, and the discernment of unity.

374 THE GOOD LAND
The constructive minds — the builders of the future
— are at work earnestly upon the last. The most
instructed believe that we are on the eve of mar
vellous discoveries of the unity of nature, or
rather disclosures — for it is a thing to be seen
with the inner eye, not hunted after by the under
standing — and that, ere long, the scientific world
will substitute the word unity for simphcity, and
discern with awe — for these unities are the awful
things in nature — how one thought runs through
the whole scale of the visible universe, and seems
to prolong itself, as far as we can trace it, into
the invisible beyond. And I mean to affirm, that
St. Peter was not stooping to our weakness, and
helping us by an image which we do know, to an
invisible of a diverse nature, which is beyond our
range ; but was describing what is, what must be,
when he says, that as there are heavens and earth
around us here, so there must be new heavens
and a new earth around us there, struck from the
same moulds, though in more heavenly substance,
according to the pureness of the things and beings
which abide in God's eternal heaven : — •
" Seeing then that ah these things shall be
dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be
in ah holy conversation and godliness, looking for
and hasting unto the coming of the day of God,
wherein the heavens being on fire shah be dis-

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 375

solved, and the elements shah melt with fervent
heat ? Nevertheless we, according to His promise,
look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, see
ing that ye look for such things, be diligent that
ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot
and blameless." — 2 Peter iii. 11-14.
One is sickened sometimes, at least I frankly
confess that I am, by the vague and vapid concep
tions of a heaven with which many delight them
selves, whose chief business upon earth seems
to be to rail at it, or, like priest and Levite, pass
it by, with upturned eye and hand, on the other
side. Everything which is not here, nothing
which is here, seems to be their aspiration :
as if God had made the world at random or
angrily; or as if the devil had been strong enough
to undo and remould God's constitution of things
below ! The world is a good world ; goodly as
Canaan was — beautiful, heavenly, glorious, were
but God in it as He walked in Eden. It is a
light which has gone from it, and a veil has fallen
on its beauty ; but it is just the glory that gleams
through the veil, which makes us pine and sigh for
its lifting as a revelation of heaven. Moses saw
it lifted, from Pisgah's crest. He saw in Canaan
what none who trod its sod could find. We may
well beheve that there was a glory upon it to

376 THE GOOD LAND
his dying eye, such as the dying only can discern
here, for
" To death it is given
To see how this earth lies embosomed in heaven."
I often think that the removing of the taber
nacle outside the camp, after the dark idolatry of
the people — that is, the moving of the visible
symbol of God's presence out from the midst of
them, not to abandon them to their fate, but, as
it were, to watch and guide them from a distance,
— is a picture of the God-forsaken, but not God-
abandoned, world of sin. Let me beg of you to
consider this passage carefully: it casts much
light on man's history, in every age and chme.
" And the Lord said unto Moses, Depart, and go
up hence, thou and the people which thou hast
brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the
land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and
to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed wih I give it :
and I will send an angel before thee ; and I
wih drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and
the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and
the Jebusite : unto a land flowing with milk
and honey : for I will not go up in the midst of
thee ; for thou art a stiff-necked people : lest I
consume thee in the way. And when the people
heard these evil tidings, they mourned : and no
man did put on him his ornaments. For the

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 377
Lord had said unto Moses, Say unto the children
of Israel, Ye are a stiff-necked people : I will come
up into the midst of thee in a moment, and con
sume thee : therefore now put off thy ornaments
from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.
And the children of Israel stripped themselves of
their ornaments by the mount Horeb. And Moses
took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the
camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the
Tabernacle of the Congregation. And it came to
pass, that every one which sought the Lord went
out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which
was without the camp. And it came to pass, when
Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that ah the
people rose up, and stood every man at his tent
door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone
into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as
Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy
pihar descended and stood at the door of the
tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And
ah the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the
tabernacle door : and all the people rose up and
worshipped, every man in his tent door."— Exod.
xxxiii. 1-10.
Have we not here the relations of church and
world symbohzed ? God's idea, a world-church—
a world which should be also a church — is sym
bolized in this called nation : while man's sin,

378 THE GOOD LAND
man's inability to dweh with God, drives the
Shekinah outside the camp — the church sepa
rates itself from the world. Not forsaking it ;
watching it, blessing it, attracting it, consecrating
it ; but stih as a thing apart, and to remain apart,
too sadly, till the great consummation day. Here
we have, in the Jewish camp, in the nation
which was called to be a church, an outer circle
of observers, and an inner circle of communicants
with God ; a sorrowful picture of what our world
remains, after eighteen centuries of Diviner teach
ing than that which the Jews broke loose from, of
more sacred Divine Presence than that which the
Jews despised. The glory was gone forth from the
midst of them, it shone on them from afar. Ah
else remained in the camp as before ; the organi
zation, the supplies, the tables of the Law, the
miraculous guidance, were ah there stih, and all
unimpaired. New tables speedily replaced the
old — but they were hewn this time by the hand
of Moses ; here too the same idea reigns.
Everything which was essential to the life and
progress of the nation remained untouched, but a
glory had departed ; a glory was gone from
above them, and a joy from within them — for
when the people heard these evil tidings, they
mourned ; and the world mourns stih — which
would have made their dreariest stations in the

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 379
desert as Edens, and would have forecast in the
wilderness the beauty, brightness, and blessed
ness of their promised land. It is just this glory,
this visible Divine Presence, which has been
driven out of our world by sin.
And I am well assured that among our visions,
when for us the veil is lifted, wih be, what earth
had been, undeflowered by evil. The loving
study of the forms in which the idea of God
takes shape around us here, qualifies us to know
and to enjoy them everywhere. He who sees
most what earth is — as God makes nothing at
random, nor otherwise than according to Him
self — will see most of what heaven is, when,
passing through the veil, the new heaven and the
new earth are disclosed. The men who learn
most reverently the lore of the world around
them — and none but the reverent can learn it,
Nature unveils not before those who deny her
Lord — are the elect masters of the higher school.
The wise here are the wise for ever, for to be
wise is not simply to know ; wisdom takes cog
nizance of what is common to the two worlds.
Nothing which has been truly, reverently, learnt
will need to be unlearnt ; no new education will
be necessary for the infants of the new creation
who have learnt on earth their lessons well.
Angelo's hand wih not need to forget its cunning,

380 THE GOOD LAND
Newton's brain its vision of the universe, Dante's
conscience its ideal of a state — he has found his
"Monarchia" on high. The stars do not die when
we die, nor perhaps the flowers. Strains, not
unfamiliar to the ear that is versed in harmony,
have streamed down on the earthly auditors of
angelic choirs. The faithful students of God's
hand in the visible, are learning to know His
mind through the whole sphere of the invisible ;
they are famihar here with the things which the
angels desire to look into ; and pass at once from
the training-school of the Spirit into the inner
circle, the elect spirits which are next the throne.
" A goodly land beyond Jordan." A real, sub
stantial, homelike world.
II. The images which are employed by the
sacred writers as most expressive when they are
treating of heaven, are all borrowed from the
higher forms of the development of man's social
and national hfe.
This means, that the human interests and asso
ciations prolong themselves in their integrity
through death, and constitute the highest sphere
of interest and activity in the eternal world.
A home, a city, a country, a kingdom — these are
the images ; on the working out of these ideas
the writers of the Scripture spend all their force.
Men in societies most perfectly developed, the

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 381
fellow- subjects of a king who can rule them ;
this, to the seers, is the picture which fills the
field of eternity. " Let not your heart be
troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in Me.
In my Father's house are many mansions : if it
were not so, I would have told you. I go to
prepare a place for you. And if I go to pre
pare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there
ye may be also. And whither I go ye know,
and the way ye know." — John xiv. 1-4.
" For they that say such things declare plainly,
that they seek a country. And truly, if they had
been mindful of that country from whence they
came out, they might have had opportunity to
have returned. But now they desire a better
country, that is, an heavenly : wherefore God is
not ashamed to be called their God : for He hath
prepared for them a city." — Heb. xi. 14-16.
"For He looked for a city which hath foun
dations, whose builder and maker is God." —
Heb. xi. 10.
It is not too much to say, that God's great
universe has been built as a theatre for the deve
lopment of man's life. The creation teems with
life, beings rational and irrational, of infinite
ranks and orders ; but in the centre of them all,

382 THE GOOD LAND
the earth around which they arrange themselves
as moons, stands man, himself the moon of a
more central sun. We know httle of the angels ;
nothing but that they are, and that they are
ministers. We are intended to know but httle ;
yet this we know fuh surely, the human and not
the angehc is the dominant tone through ah the
spheres of the invisible world. That nature which
He bore as His own who is the Lord of Angels, is
the key to all the concords of the universe ; the
human through Christ underlies the universal
developments of hfe. The angehc is ministrant
to the human, attends it, and wih attend it,
through eternity. The man who has been trained
under the Word and by the Spirit in the wilder
ness of life, passes through the veil to play the
chief part on a wider stage, to hve a hfe which is
the next thing in the universe to God.
A rest from trouble is the heavenly dream of
some of us ; to he in the bosom of the celestial
sereneness, as on a downy sleeping bed, whose
softness may soothe the strain of an overworn
spirit, and luh, as an anodyne, the agony of a
sorely stricken heart. But for man to rest, is to
live. To rest in God, is to enter into life. Ah
images of heaven present life and its motions ;
life in its highest strain, under its heaviest obliga-

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 383
tions, in its most earnest activity, its most un
selfish and, therefore, most satisfying joys. It is
the organization of men which is the leading fea
ture of the life of the city or the kingdom ; the
discovery of the relations and duties which man
sustains and owes ; the stimulating his loftiest
powers by the magnet of association ; the con
cert of developed intellects, the emulation of
noble and fertile hearts. The hfe of men in their
societies is hke a hotbed to their natures ; the
virtues and the vices start under its heat. But
there, where vice, if rampant, is most corrupting,
where wrong, if unchecked, is most destructive,
where selfishness, if untamed, is most blighting,
where the devil, if unconquered, reigns most
deadly unto death, there, in the thick and throng
of hfe, is the field of man's noblest and purest
activities : in killing that vice, in righting that
wrong, in curbing that selfishness, in mastering
that devil there, he finds the field of his grandest
victories ; and there, where the throng is densest,
where the fight is hottest, he is most completely
in training for the ruling of his Father's kingdom
on high.
Hearts weary of the woe and wrong of the life
of great cities, and of the vice and selfishness
which breed fast in all throngs of men, look
longingly to heaven, with a sentiment not much

384 THE GOOD LAND
higher than that which moved a world-sick poet
to cry for a desert,
" Where he might all forget the human race ! "
"A lodge in some vast wilderness!" cried another
heart-weary one. Anywhere, away from man.
Heaven ! The world where earth, with all its
storm and strife may be forgotten ; alone with
the quiet angels, within the tranquil sphere of
the serene activity of God.
Nothing like this was Canaan ; nothing hke
this wih be heaven. It is the sphere in which
the elect spirits who have won the prizes in hfe's
battles, who have come forth from the chaos of
strife, trained, inured, yet pure, shah play out
their parts on a grander scale, in a wider theatre,
under the eye of a more absolute and exigent
King. All that society on earth aims at and
misses, the grand order of human relations, the
majestic procession of human activities, of which,
marred and crippled as they are on earth, the
wisest and noblest have not ceased to dream,
shall there be realized; with Christ the King
visibly in the centre of it, and the angels atten
dant to watch the actors and applaud the results.
I know not why we should hesitate to believe
that man, and the life of his world, lies on the
threshold of the higher developments of being ;

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 385
that God's universe has to be peopled with God
like beings through us. All that we know of the
universe shows man the chief actor in its higher
occupations. The angels come, manlike, to talk
with us about man's interests. Gabriel, Michael,
stand for the ward and government of provinces
of the human world. The veil has been lifted,
and out of the ineffable splendour, which no
unpurged human eye could look upon, this form
appeared as the fountain of all power, the seat of
all dominion, through all the spiritual spheres.
" And I turned to see the voice that spake with
me. And being turned, I saw seven golden can
dlesticks ; and in the midst of the seven candle
sticks one hke unto the Son of man, clothed with
a garment down to the foot, and girt about the
paps with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs
were white hke wool, as white as snow ; and His
eyes were as a flame of fire ; and His feet hke
unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace ;
and His voice as the sound of many waters." —
Rev. i. 12-15.
And lest it should be thought that the human
is here accidental, a dress assumed for a time and
for a purpose, to be laid aside as soon as the end
was gained, a fuller vision was disclosed.
¦" And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the
throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of
25

386 THE GOOD LAND
the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain,
having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the
seven Spirits of God sent forth into ah the earth.
And He came and took the book out of the right
hand of Him that sat upon the throne. And when
He had taken the book, the four beasts and four
and twenty elders feh down before the Lamb,
having every one of them harps, and golden vials
fuh of odours, which are the prayers of saints."
— Rev. v. 6-8. [Read to the end of the chapter.]
There the very form of the human sufferer was
shown in the very heart of the glory of the central
throne ; and the love which wrestled on Calvary
for a world's redemption, and triumphed through
death, becomes the chosen theme of celebration,
not to ransomed humanity, but to the myriad
angelic hosts " for ever and ever."
It is easy to talk idly on themes of such mag
nitude and distance ; but thus much, surely, the
Scriptures seek to express to us, that heaven and
earth are related much as the theatre of life, the
great world, is to the httle world of the school
boy, where he has to practise the part and train
himself for the station, which he is to fill in the
day of his developed hfe. The faculty educated,
the energy disciplined, the wisdom acquired, the
patience exercised, the charity touched to its
finest issues, in that hfe of man on earth

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 387
in which man is in closest contact with man,
under the heaviest obligations of duty, with the
largest vocation to ministry, and the keenest
stimulus to energy ; these are the qualities
which Heaven welcomes to its theatre — this is
the life which is the training-school for the
thrones of God's kingdom on high. Ah which
makes schism between your most active and
energetic life as men here, and your vision of
what awaits you there, dishonours earth and
heaven equally. The Lord, the King there, is
King of both worlds. He sets you your tasks
in this, your commonest as weh as your highest ;
not that He may disgust you with earth to make
heaven sweeter, but that he may so train your
faculty as to make heaven richer, its life more
fruitful, more noble, more glorious, through eter
nity. And I dare to say, of some of your dreariest
wanderings, the years which you have spent over
your commonest and weariest tasks, you wih
never understand them, you wih never see how
precious their ministry has been to you, till you
have grown famihar with the life and occupation
of God's eternal Kingdom of Heaven.
III. That good land beyond Jordan had some
heaven-hke feature herein ; it was to be the
theatre of the highest and holiest human asso
ciation, under conditions most favourable to the
25—2

388 THE GOOD LAND
most perfect development ; and in an atmosphere
of life which God's benediction should make an
atmosphere of bliss.
Canaan was nothing hke this, you will be
ready to answer. Alas ! no. For the most part
the very reverse of all this. And yet the picture
of what a life in Canaan might be, is not a man's
dream, but God's. His Spirit dictated these
words. "If ye walk in my statutes, and keep
my commandments, and do them ; then I will
give you rain in due season, and the land shall
yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall
yield their fruit. And your threshing shah reach
unto the vintage, and the vintage shah reach
unto the sowing time : and ye shah eat your
bread to the fuh, and dwell in your land safely.
And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall
lie down, and none shall make you afraid : and
I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall
the sword go through your land. And ye shah
chase your enemies, and they shah fah before
you by the sword. And five of you shall chase
an hundred, and an hundred of you shah put
ten thousand to flight : and your enemies shah
fah before you by the sword. For I wih have
respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and
multiply you, and establish my covenant with
you. And ye shall eat old store, and bring

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 389
forth the old because of the new. And I will
set my tabernacle among you : and my soul
shah not abhor you. And I will walk among
you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my
people. I am the Lord your God, which brought
you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should
not be their bondmen ; and I have broken the
bands of your yoke, and made you go upright." —
Levit. xxvi. 3-13.
A model human society we have here ; not
reduced to its simplest elements, as in Abraham's
patriarchal tent, but developed into its highest
form as a nation and a church, and dwelling in
a model earthly home. This was the vision
which was before the mind of the great leader,
the mind of the people in a measure, and the
mind of God ; who alone saw when and how it
should be real. In the rich variety of the
physical features of the land, they had all
which could educate the eye and charm the
imagination, all that could draw out the patriotic
passion, and add richness and compass to their
hymns ; all that could make life rich as life could
be in variety and interest was around them there
— how the eye of their seer flashed as he gazed
on it all from his mount of vision — faint image,
with ah its splendour, of the infinite variety and
richness of the homes that await us in heaven.

390 THE GOOD LAND
While within the bosom of the community was
ah out of which could spring a national life of
conspicuous glory and entrancing joy. This is
joy, this is glory, to dwell nobly, purely, faithfully
with men, under the smile of God. A called
nation, known to the great God by name, each
one of them, and marked by Him with a seal
which, while they overlaid it not, nature reve
renced and the anyels ; with homes guarded by
the most sacred sanctions, and enriched by the
most ample benedictions ; a government on the
one heavenly model, the rule of the wisest and
ablest, the secret of finding whom earth has not
discovered yet ; and worship which, while it
exercised, expanded quite infinitely the highest
powers of their being — here is the material and
home of a life which that people by faithlessness
brought down to shameful beggary and pitiful
straits, but which the children of the kingdom,
who have succeeded to their lost inheritance, are
trained here to live out under the shadow of the
sceptre of the Son of David, the Divine Man, in
heaven. Expansion, development, in purer and yet
purer forms, of the manifold sympathies, affec
tions, intelligences of man, the faculty of his
body, brain, and heart, is the key to the prepara
tions of this training school of the Spirit, who

THAT IS BEYOND JORDAN. 391
is the one Purifier and Educator of men. While
life, large, free, royal hfe — life that can manifest
what is most divine in God, after the image of
Him who is His image — hfe is the key to the
rest of heaven.

392 THE EVERLASTING JOY.

wntott xm.
The Everlasting Joy.
" Everlasting joy shall be unto them." — Isaiah lxi. 7.
In my last discourse I considered the nature and
conditions of the heavenly rest — the rest of the
human spirit in a world which is capable of being
the theatre of its developed life. A spirit rests
only in the full sweep of its orbit around the Being
who is its sun. In order to complete the subject
which I have treated in these pages, I must speak
now of the springs of its everlasting joy. The
advent of the Lord opened these springs of ever
lasting joy for man. To share His life is to share
His eternal joy. But here we taste that joy but
sparingly. The Christian hfe is less a being than
a becoming ; we are growing up into Christ ; we
are learning to hve in Him. The world and the
flesh have their springs of pleasure, and tempt us
to their Marahs. Who can say with the Psalmist,
" All my springs are in Thee ? " We find bitter
waters where we looked for joys unspeakable ;
warned, we seek the true fountain, and some

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 393
foretaste of the everlasting joy of the blessed
uplifts our hearts. But we pore with intense
earnestness over the words which picture the joys
of the future ; we pant with passionate longing
for the fruit of the tree and the draught of the
river which were shown to the seer of the Apoca
lypse — the vision of which, in all ages, has ht
with hope man's wilderness hfe. The joy is there.
" Everlasting joy unto them." Let us consider
what are its springs. I shah dwell on three — the
three chief satisfactions — the purest springs of
joy for the human spirit, intehect, and heart.
I. The inward harmony, the perfect order of
the being, the concert of every faculty and every
force in the fulfilment of the wih of God. That
is the peace of God — the perfect peace. More
exquisite is it to the imagination of the racked
and tormented spirit which is in arms "against
a "Sea of troubles," and a host of rebehious
powers, than is the haven to the mariner storm-
tossed on the dark rough ocean, or — ¦
" To those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef,"
the vision of peaceful and blessed home.
God, my Redeemer ! There is but one re
demption possible for man — restoration to the
rule of his rightful King. The redeemed man is
the governed man ; the man who has re-found the

394 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
King who can evoke his loyal passions, and control
and direct his manifold powers. This rule, the
rule of his true King, has been lost to him through
sin. This supreme, complete control of his being
heaven will restore. The inward strife is the real
agony of the spirit. Let a man be at peace
within, at one with himself and God, and worlds
have no power to harm or torment him. He
may slumber calmly — as the Lord on that pillow,
drenched with the spray of the storm — through
the fiercest shocks of the wildest tempests ; give
him inward unity, he is at rest; God's rest, God's
peace, reigns within. " Who is he that shall
harm you if ye be the fohowers of the good One ? "
But who is at one with himself? Who that is
in earnest about the Divine hfe does not utter
and re-echo that most profound and pregnant of
prayers, "Unite my heart to fear Thy name?"
Now it is all at war. There are hostile camps
within me, and deadly strifes. Flesh and spirit,
mind and conscience, heart and reason, ah
jangled and at discord ; each contending fiercely
for the supreme rule of my spirit, and rending my
very being in sunder by their mad war. They
have broken loose from their true monarch, and
have fallen under a tyrant, who exaggerates their
discords and inflames their hate.
The tyrant is simply the wrong king ; the king.

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 395
who commands no reverence, kindles no loyalty,
constrains no obedience, quickens no love ; the
king whom the revolted powers have accepted as
lord in the tumult of passion, but who wields no
authority, and makes no order in the distracted
state. The wildest and most desperate endea
vours have been made by the earnest in all ages
to reduce the confusion to order, the discord to
concord, or even the semblance of it. Simeon
Stylites was at work on the problem up there
upon his pihar ; St. Bernard there, fainting with
exhaustion and vigil in his ceh : they said, as
myriads of brave hearts have said, it is worth
while to endure all this, which would drive the
dullest and most patient of brutes to seek the
exodus of suicide, ay, and far more than this,
if by the maceration of the flesh the seeming even
of unity may be realized within : it is worth
while to torture the flesh as no demon of cruelty
ever ventured to torture a fehow, if it can be
tamed into submission ; if the spirit may be
restored to its rightful supremacy, even by the
murder; of that flesh which was given into its
bosom to live with it as its bride.
But no force of wih ever compacted this unity :
nor can the maiming or crippling of our being in
any province or organ, be the way into the peace
of God. To find the king of the whole being

396 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
is the one secret of unity; to find the centre of
its system, the lord of its life. An unsphered
planet could be won back to the harmony of its
sister planets, only by the attraction of their com
mon sun. The King has appeared and claims His
own. To feel that He has His own, that we are
His, His wholly, His for ever, will be the deepest
spring of the bliss of heaven. He has laid His
touch upon us, and the disorderly troop of rebel
and vagrant powers see the eye and feel the hand
of a .master, and tremble. There is a stir and
mutual motion, as in the vahey of dry bones in
the prophet's vision ; Chaos is growing into Cos
mos ; the inward world is settling into peace.
But just as the recovery of the body from a
torpor of faintness is an exquisite agony, so there
is fearful heartache over this reorganizing process
in the soul. Men who have been half kihed tell
us that the coming to life again is the keenest
suffering. It is this coming to life which is the
pain of the present ; the sensation of life will be
the bliss of the future. But for the present it is a
daily dying. " Always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus." And at times we
are tempted to cry, "My God, the pain is too
sharp, let us alone, let us back, let us die in
torpor, anything better than this agony of nascent
life." And it is life-long. It is the work of the

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 397
child of God in this life to recover the possession
of his faculty through the vital attraction of his
Saviour, and yield it to His service ; when the
recovery is complete, when the flood of life flows
freely through every pulse and channel, earth be
comes too dark a prison-house, it is time to arise
and to go home. Hence the experience which
the Apostle Paul unfolds so richly in the fourth
chapter of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
in which he sets forth his life as a daily death ;
that death being the birth-throe of an inner life
into the sphere for which it was born, and in
which it shall abide for ever.
Oh ! the anguish of the weary struggle against
the lusts which we have learnt to hate, the follies
which we have learnt to scorn, the habits which
we have disowned, the longings which we would
strangle to death. Oh ! the heart-ache of the
pining for the state, in which what the soul loves
and honours in its sanctuary shah win the love
and homage of the whole being, and lead captive
the troop of its appetites and lusts ; in which the
vision of life which we see from our Pisgahs, shall
be fouled no more by the stains of the flesh and
the dirt of the world when we descend to its
arena, but shall draw the whole being with its
sweet attractions, and harmonize every power
and passion in the work of making it real. Oh

398 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
God ! unite us ! unite our hearts in this blest!
concert of powers ! unite them indissolubly to J
all that is good, and fair, and of Thee !
The vision of the beauty of the Lord when we
pass through the veil, will be God's answer. We
shall see Jesus, and, as with Paul, the unity will
be completed, the arch will be keyed. We know
little of heaven's occupations, the aspect of its
homes, the modes of its speech, the forms of its
life. We know only that the God-man is there,
and reigns. That He whom we can love with
intensest passion, and serve with exulting joy,
will meet us on its threshold, will sweep the flood
of His attractions round every hmb and organ of
our being, and thrill us in one intense moment
with the sense that we are one, that we are
blessed. To see Him, as they see Him who
prevail to pass through death as conquerors, is
to put off the stains and weaknesses of flesh.
As Ehjah dropped in one blest moment the gar
ment of mortality, the vision of Jesus shall com
plete the enfranchisement of our souls in death.
A flood of divine strength shall pour through the
languid ducts and pulses of the being. Our
hearts shall be uplifted for ever by the sense
that there is the power in us now to realize our
aspirations, that we have mastered the art of
substantiating our dreams. That clinging sense

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 399
of infirmity, which never ceased to oppress us,
shall drop off hke the bands of slumber, at the
first flash of that heavenly sun. Power to become
sons, power to hve like sons — this is what we
have been pining, panting, praying for ; and
when we see Jesus, it shah flow into us, as day
light floods the darkness, exhilarating the spirit
with that most intense of all joys — the joy of
vivid, glowing, victorious life. " The goodly land
beyond Jordan " is good to us, because the Lord
is there ; the Lord, whose suffering presence here
reclaimed this earth as God's dominion ; whose
glorious appearing, in the day of the manifesta
tion of the sons of God, shall be the proclamation,
that the reconquest of man and of all things unto
Himself is complete. One vision of the glorified
Man, as we pass the Jordan, shall fill us with
that joy of hope which is unspeakable and fuh of
glory. What if we wait and watch awhile, that
those who follow may pass with us into the
perfect bhss; the hope which the Lord sustains
shall sustain our spirits, and fill them with a
rapture which the heaven of heavens alone can
complete. The very vision of His form shall be
the assurance and the prophecy that the largest
and deepest purposes of His love shall have com
plete accomplishment ; the full revelation must
await the day when the whole company of the

400 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
redeemed shall throng the plains of the restored
creation, and range themselves in their heavenly
ranks and orders, not around the symbol of a
Divine Presence, but around the glorious Person
of Christ, the King.
II. The full vision of the glory of God in the crea
tion, the beholding of all that God has meant, and
sin has marred, in the constitution of the worlds.
The spirit demands, as we have seen, the re
storation of its lost supremacy, to be blessed;
to rule, ruled by Christ, its subject powers. There
is that faculty in man which claims further, for
its satisfaction, to behold the glory of God's
universe unveiled, face to face, as a man looks
into the face of his beloved. Of ah the deadly
legacies which theological strife has handed down
to us, there is none deadher than that dread of
the study of the revelation of the mind of God
in the creation, which infects so strangely a large
and influential section of the Church. There is
an infidel dread of inquhy into the visible things,
"by which, from the creation of the world, the
invisible things of God are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His
eternal power and Godhead," which has tended
very largely to create a miserable, mutually detri
mental, schism, between the Christian behef and
activity and the intellectual hfe of our time. Tins

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 401

fear of the study of Nature, and the observation
of all that she can reveal to us about God, palsies
the manhood of the godly in the Church, and
widens continually the breach between it, and the
world it was set to enlighten and to guide to
salvation. And yet how much of the joy of life for all of
us springs unconsciously from this pure fountain,
the beauty, the tenderness, the glory, which spread
their revelations round us as we tread — how often
with careless eye and heart ! — the pathways of this
wonderful world. " Fearfully and wonderfully
made "is creation, as well as man. Who does
not pity from his very heart the plodder who has
never, when beholding the morning's pomp, or
the evening's glow, the gleaming of the dew in
the eye of the summer dawn, or the solemn host
of stars on a clear winter's night, poured forth a
rapturous gush of praise, that God had led him
forth into a world hke this ? We fume and fret
over our human cohisions and mischances. Thisv>
one refuses us a glance of love, that one bends on j
us a sneer or frown : but how calmly Orion looks
down upon it all, and rebukes our petulance ! how
tenderly the moonbeams kiss our flushed brows,
and tell us, as a dumb creature might tell its
thoughts, that the troubles of life are not infinite
nor eternal, that there are fountains of pure joy
26

402 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
for man which flow on, despite the " slings and
arrows " of his fellows, the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever.
But none can find a full response in nature.
Nature is most to him who sees the hmits of her
ministry. Indeed her truest lovers find a strange
sadness in her tones. There is a profound depth
of truth in the apostle's thought about the groan
ing of the whole creation, its travailing in pain
until the day of the manifestation of the sons
of God. The veil has been dropped over the
pristine splendour of creation, or at least over
our vision of it, by sin. The world around us
has been set in tune with our state of toil and
discipline by the Lord. There are flashings
through the veil, and a glow behind it, which
tints its pallor ; but it is there, most palpable
to the finer spirits who search out, through the
creation, the thoughts of the Creator, God. There
runs a deep, sad undertone of aspiration through
the universe. Each order of creatures has a pro
pulsive movement to a higher order — some rudi
ment of an organ or a use which can only be
justified and explained by that which is to come
next above it in the scale of life. The whole
looks on to man and sees itself completed in
him ; that is, in his completeness, which is not
realized yet. This explains the groaning of

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 403
creation. It is the groan of man prolonged
through the orders of which he is the head.
The cry of the creation is as it were the cry
of a soul in bonds. Is it Goethe or Bettina
who says, that "nature seems ever like a captive
sighing to be delivered?" It aims at an ideal
beauty and harmony which art interprets, which
is never realised here, which never will be realised
on this side of the flood of death. We see these
things but dimly — we, whose organization is less
fine and keen. But we are bound to take note of
them ; what touches consciously the finer spirits,
touches unconsciously, let us be sure, and in
fluences the destinies of the common millions of
our race. The sick, with their sharper senses,
are conscious of atmospheric influences which the
multitude take no note of, but which are raising
or depressing the vital spirits of the inhabitants
of a whole land. Again, the people use a speech
in their commonest talk, whose ample and elabo
rate forms have been wrought to that amplitude
and completeness, by the subtle discussions, and
consequent distinctions, of schoolmen, whose
theses the multitude would have laughed out of
the schools. And if the mass, occupied with the
weary task of life, with but rare and partial
vision of Nature, find her quite fair and good
enough for their satisfaction, let them not despise
26—2

404 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
the wisdom of the wise who see a veh upon her
glory — the Pauls, whose " whole creation groan
eth and travaileth in pain together until now."
But, veiled as she is, hke the elder dispensa
tion, like the elder dispensation she is glorious
still ; though that glory shall be done away, not
abolished, but absorbed, "by that glory which
excelleth," when the apocalypse of the new heaven
and the new earth shall be revealed. Behind the
veil are marvels of God's handiwork, and glories
of his art, which it were worth " the wanderings "
of a life to look upon. I sometimes think that
did we know, as we seem to draw near the dark
cold river, what splendours he beyond it, we should
rush to the margin, plunge headlong, breast it,
and be there.
To the pure-hearted alone is the vision open.
There is no veil which can be drawn over Nature
so thick, as the crust which the sensual gather
around the organs and the very senses of their
being. " The graves of lust " bury not the soul
only, but its world — nay, two worlds. To the
child and to the child-like, the wonder is ever
fresh, the glory is ever glowing; and to such a
vision is opened, which exalts their joy to rapture
when they look, according to His promise, for the
new heaven and the new earth ; that is, for the true
revelation of the world. Ezekiel saw the vision,

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 405
and John, and fell entranced as dead. To see
the face of that glorious world and live, is as hard
as to see the face of God. To them it had an
awful splendour and majesty, as the face of day to
him who has been long mewed in darkness, or
life to that risen man who had been bound by
the bands of death. What radiant colour, what
ravishing tones, what resplendent and exquisite
forms shall burst upon us when the veils are
parted, they who have passed through alone could
tell us ; though methinks those can guess some
what who have looked into the dying eyes of such
as are " departing to be with Christ, which is
far better." What boundless riches of Divine
wisdom the creation, which becomes visible to the
eye that is purged by death, can unfold ! What
books of Divine thoughts for the disciphned and
reverent intellect to explore ! To roam with the
eagle sight and the tireless strength of the immor
tal body through the fields of the redeemed
creation ; to range through the depths, in which
we grope, as through a glass darkly, by the minis
try of science, but where we shall then see all
that God can manifest of glory face to face, and
know even as also we are known ! We have but
here the grammar of the speech of celestial form,
the manual of its music. Pray God that we learn
it lovingly, and practise it tunefully, that we may

406 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
be fit to talk of God's handiwork with the angels,
and to bear the part that beseems us, in their
hymns of praise !
III. The heart claims its satisfaction, in the
communion of the blessed— the joy of fellowship
when the struggle and toil are ended for ever — the
companionship of the elect and beloved — inter
course with the elder spirits who are before the
throne. It is hard, in this world, not to dread meetings
because of partings, greetings because of farewells.
The purest joys are dashed by the foretaste of
sorrow, the closest and dearest bonds have no
assurance against the rude violence of death. And
it is well. We would not live always : we would
not take our fill of joy in such a world as this.
Our hope stretches into brighter and more blessed
regions, where those who meet have met for ever ;
where those who love need no dark warnings, lest
love should grow idolatrous and write its epitaph.
For those who meet, meet before the face of God,
and those who love, love in Him. Our highest
fellowships here are a portion of God's fellowship.
We must love that which is of Him in our dear
ones, if we would not love to our loss. There, our
whole society shall be but the organ of His com
munion. We can loose the bands, spread wide
the tendrils of our affection, they will but maintain

The everlasting joy. 407
the vivid circulation of His hfe. Which of us has
not wept bitterly over the desecrations of the holi
ness of love, the poisonings of the sweetness of
friendship, by sin ? Which of us has not longed,
in some hour of blest communion, to pass up ere
sin could stain it, and present it for consecration
before the face of Christ ?
But our friendships as well as ourselves must
' ' wander. ' ' By the way of the wilderness they, too,
are led to their glorious rest. Happy if they early
drop their plaints and lusts as they travel, and
stand pure and earnest, loyal and submissive,
before the river which guards the borders of the
celestial land. Oh ! the bliss of the long-tried
friendships and loves that shall reach it, the way
worn comrades who shall renew their pledges on
the farther side of the river of death. Not a pang,
not a parting, not a self-denial, not a self-sacrifice,
but shah then be fondly remembered ; acts and
sufferings which could not be spoken of here — too
sacred, too solemn — will reveal there their depths
of love. On earth love must go cross-bearing,
like Him from whose essential Being it springs..
Many an agony of suffering and sacrifice, known
only to Christ, it must endure. But it shall be
known then : the thorn scars shall glow with
lustre, and be the gems in the Crown of Life.
/ Bear bravely, silently, the strain of unselfish, self-

408 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
sacrificing, ministering tenderness; it is making,
love immortal ; it is making the bhss of Heaven!
intense and complete.
I think, too, of long-sundered ones, whose love
cannot forget : who have laid up its hope in
trust with Christ, and shall find it again on the
eternal shore. Mothers, who, in their death-
agony, have committed their orphans with subhme
confidence to the Father of the fatherless, and will
claim them at His hand in their glorious forms
on high. The lovers, too, who have loved with
an immortal passion ; the twin souls that but
exist asunder, that strain through the veh of
death, to be locked in the bands of an immortal
fellowship, and burn with a hfe intenser than the
seraphim, before the throne of Him who made
them one. There are long life-agonies, too,
which make no moan on earth ; hearts breaking
for years in unlovely or hateful bonds of fellow
ship, from which there is no extrication, whose
only utterance is through weary wasted features
and eyes dim with ceaseless tears, or it may be
in those nobler ministerings to misery which the
stricken only can yield. For such, heaven has
compensations which shall explain and justify
even sorrow like theirs. There are kindred spirits
in those heavenly mansions ready to receive them
to an immortal fellowship, and make them rich

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 409
in the bliss .of communion and love through
eternity. He, who for one dread moment was
alone on earth, as even the loneliest has never
been, is there the centre of ah observation, and
the object of all adoration and love. Perhaps,
the loneliest here are training to be the centres
of spheres of attraction, of homes of love, in the
many mansions of the Father's kingdom on high.
Nor is it forbidden to sit beneath the footstool
of the masters, and gather wisdom from the most
eloquent hps. The things once unspeakable have
now found their expression ; the unsearchable
mysteries have found their interpreters. It shall
be permitted to us to fathom the depth of the
wisdom and the love of God in Christ, with a
Paul for an expositor, or, mingling with the
wise and the great of old, lift ourselves to their
levels, while they press on to higher achievements,
and pass up to a nearer vision of God. No
dreary average of endowment, no weary same
nesses of glory, shall repeat the monotone of
Egypt above. " One star differeth from another
star in glory." " So also is it in the resurrection
of the dead." A grand and free variety, more
richly multiform, more profoundly one, than that
which accomplished the soul's education, shall
minister to its life in the realm of life, in
heaven.

410 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
Nor is the passage a long one ; nor is the home
far. The analogues of death are ah round us
in the creation, and nowhere are they terrible
but in the apprehension of the sinner — man.
There is no death which man knows which is not
the germ of a higher, finer, braver life. Nothing
dies but to minister to progress. No order of
creation perishes but a more perfect one appears.
Wherever we see decay and dissolution, be sure
that the stuff is wanted for a finer manufacture ;
God breaks up nothing but to improve. It is
true in nature ; it is true in history. The same
great thought runs through the whole scale of
being, and finds its highest expression in God's
ordinance of death and resurrection for man. Sin
made it a terror ; Christ makes it an angel. It
is to inherit the kingdom, that flesh and blood
must be put off. Man, too, is to be purged and
refined in common with the creation, to put off his
coarser and grosser habiliments, and be clothed in
flesh of finer texture, and fit for more subtle and
delicate use : of this, death is but the minister.
Our best angel, could we see it, is Christ's angel
of death. And the home to which he leads us, as
we have said, may not be so far away. We talk
and muse on it as distant, but were the veils lifted
we might see with wonder that it is here. There
are strange comminglings of the two worlds

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 411
even in our daily marches ; and sometimes
the thought haunts us that the dearest, who
have passed through the veil, are not far
away. The idea that the two worlds inter
penetrate and intermingle, is fast growing
familiar. We may shrink, even with loathing,
from the thought that the great dead are ready to
obey our idle biddings, and that they have no
better occupation than to make an evening's en
tertainment for a " circle " of empty hearts; and
yet we may believe that they may touch us in
our solemn moments, foil our tempters, hush our
passions, soothe our frets, and inspire our hopes.
Ah that makes the future home-like ; all that
casts out fear and opens vision to those who
believe ; all that makes the apparitor of death
angelic, and brings hfe and immortality into the
broad daylight of our common world, is God's
truth about heaven.
But why has God made death so dread, if He
would have us so famihar with it ? If death is
to be our benignant angel, why has He clothed
him with a presence so awful ; why has He taught
the flesh — yea, and something deeper than the
flesh — to shudder at his advancing tread ? Is
life so blessed, then, brethren, that we should be
content to await the summons, if ah the benignant
beauty of death were unveiled ? Should we not

412 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
rush up life's pathways to meet him, shout to him
as our deliverer, and pray him to bear us swiftly
home ? And is it not right that the doomsman
should still wear his terror, though Christ has
transmuted the doom to benediction — the dark
ness to glory ? Is it not well that sin should have
amongst us still a stern expositor; that we should,
while evil still tempts us, haunts us, and is inwoven
with the very texture of our being, tremble and
shudder at death ? Death remains awful ; for the
sin remains awful from which it sprang, and the
cost of that Redemption is awful by which it shah
be destroyed. I say that death is terrible still.
Nothing can fully cast out its terror. Conquer
every enemy, there is a last enemy who still
remains to be mastered ; before whose advent the
flesh will quiver, the heart wih flutter, the soul
will agonize still. And yet I think that the terror,
to those who pass through it, is less terrible than
appears. Who has not marked that beautiful
preparedness for death in those who are mani
festly appointed to die ? I suppose that, as they
draw near the veil, it becomes more fully trans
parent ; the soul gets absorbed in vision ; and the
agonized quiverings of the perishing flesh, which
is all that we can look upon, are to the dying not
worthy to be compared with the glory which is
being revealed. Who feels the pain of a wound

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 413
amid the high excitements of battle ? Fear not,
trembler ! to whom death is the great terror still,
fear not : there are visions to be seen in that dark
valley, and bliss to be tasted, which purge all the
pain of the dying away.
Oh ! could we but at this moment lift the veil,
and sweep one earnest glance over the heavenly
plains, our life would become a longing for the
moment of emancipation ; and of all God's angels,
the brightest and most welcome would be His
Angel of Death ! Who would not rather depart,
and be with Christ, which is far better, if he were
as sure as the Apostle was at length, that his life-
work was accomplished, his battle fought out, his
victory for ever won ? What here should keep us
from the white-robed throng, the palm, the crown,
the vision of the Saviour, the rest of the blessed
and glorified with Him ? "I would not live
alway," is the cry of all earnest and faithful
hearts ; " here I can but guess what life means."
" Oh, that I now might die ! " were we more often
on Pisgah, would be more often our prayer ; not
in desperate mood, as the bankrupts of life, but
in hopeful, and therefore patient mood, as the
heirs of eternity.
And how many of the heirs may read these
lines? Sons of God, still hanging round the
flesh-pots, stiU haunting, though weeping and

414 THE EVERLASTING JOY.
groaning, the Goshens of life ! Methinks, at this
moment, the summons of a Divine leader is again
ringing through the air. A Divine hand is again
leading you out one step towards the free broad
desert, from the prison-house of sin. Again
there is stormy strife within the innermost recesses
of your being. " Go forward," saith the Divine
guide; "Come back," cries the clinging world,
and wantons round you lest you should burst her
spells. The Divine call and the earthly passions
are warring; and devils, and angels, and some
dearer than dear life, are watching — how eagerly !
— the path which you elect to take. What dear
associations for some of you, for all of you, if
you knew where your true kindred dwell, surround
the path of Divine duty. How sacred the tracks
of the desert grow by the footsteps that have
trodden them ! The great cloud of witnesses is
above and around you, but they have left their
foot-tracks in the desert ; and there are the stains
of the tears and the blood of those, who were not
afraid of the fellowship of the sufferings of the
Saviour, and who passed up to glory, by being
conformed even unto His death. How many of
them are there on the far side of Jordan, straining
back their gaze to watch your steps ! They rest
not yet in glory, they wait that you may pass with
them ; they watch while you are struggling, sus-

THE EVERLASTING JOY. 415
tained by the hope that you wih rest with them at
last. Come, then, and join the beloved company ;
the way wih be bright in their companionship, the
rest wih be blessed in their arms. Listen to the
voice of the Divine Captain : " Mine angel shall
go before thee, and shall bring thee into the
place which I have prepared." See here before
you, at this moment, His bright, flaming pillar,
casting forth its lustre over the desert, and mark
ing through its desolate wilds, your heavenward
way : and see there, in the far distance, the bright
ening splendour, the full unfolding of celestial
glories, in the midst of which the angels, in
blest anticipation, are hymning your triumphs
and weaving your crowns.
" Except Thy presence go with me, caret
me not up hence."
"And God said, My presence shall go
with thee, I will give thee best."

THE END.

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