sar
and of the Red Indian; nor is the chain composed of accidents: it is
forged by the hand of the God of providence. Thus, in the
conjunction which binds these Old Testament narratives together, is
found the germ of that instinctive and elevating phrase, the
Philosophy of History. But there is nowhere in Scripture the notion
which too often degrades and stiffens that Philosophy--the notion
that history is urged forward by blind forces, amid which the
individual man is too puny to assert himself. Without a Moses the
Exodus is inconceivable, and God always achieves His purpose through
the providential man.
* * * * *
The Books of the Pentateuch are held together in a
yet stronger unity than the rest, being sections of one and the same
narrative, and having been accredited with a common authorship from
the earliest mention of them. Accordingly, the Book of Exodus not
only begins with this conjunction (which assumes the previous
narrative), but also rehearses the descent into Egypt. "And these
are the names of the sons of Israel which came into Egypt,"--names
blotted with many a crime, rarely suggesting any lovable or great
association, yet the names of men with a marvellous heritage, as
being "the sons of Israel," the Prince who prevailed with God.
Moreover they are consecrated: their father's dying words had
conveyed to every one of them some expectation, some mysterious
import which the future should disclose. In the issue would be
revealed the awful influence of the past upon the future, of the
fathers upon the children even beyond the third and fourth
generation--an influence which is nearer to destiny, in its stern,
subtle and far-reaching strength, than any other recognised by
religion. Destiny, however, it is not, or how should the name of Dan
have faded out from the final list of "every tribe of the children
of Israel" in the Apocalypse (Rev 7:5-8), where Manasseh is reckoned
separately from Joseph to complete the twelve?
We read that with the twelve came their posterity,
seventy souls in direct descent from Jacob; but in this number he is
himself included, according to that well-known Orientalism which
Milton strove to force upon our language in the phrase--
"The fairest of her daughters Eve."
Joseph is also reckoned, although he "was in Egypt
already." Now, it must be observed that of these seventy,
sixty-eight were males, and therefore the people of the Exodus must
not be reckoned to have sprung in the interval from seventy, but
(remembering polygamy) from more than twice that number, even if we
refuse to make any account of the household which is mentioned as
coming with every man. These households were probably smaller in
each case than that of Abraham, and the famine in its early stages
may have reduced the number of retainers; yet they account for much
of what is pronounced incredible in the rapid expansion of the clan
into a nation.[1] But when all allowance has been made, the increase
continues to be, such as the narrator clearly regards it, abnormal,
well-nigh preternatural, a fitting type of the expansion, amid
fiercer persecutions, of the later Church of God, the true
circumcision, who also sprang from the spiritual parentage of
another Seventy and another Twelve.
"And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that
generation." Thus the connection with Canaan became a mere
tradition, and the powerful courtier who had nursed their interests
disappeared. When they remembered him, in the bitter time which lay
before them, it was only to reflect that all mortal help must
perish. It is thus in the spiritual world also. Paul reminds the
Philippians that they can obey in his absence and not in his
presence only, working out their own salvation, as no apostle can
work it out on their behalf. And the reason is that the one real
support is ever present. Work out your own salvation, for it is God
(not any teacher) Who worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to learn
its need of Him, and in Him to recover its freedom. Moreover, the
influences which mould all men's characters, their surroundings and
mental atmosphere, were completely changed. These wanderers for
pasture were now in the presence of a compact and impressive social
system, vast cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual. They were
infected as well as educated there, and we find the men of the
Exodus not only murmuring for Egyptian comforts, but demanding
visible gods to go before them.
Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a
necessary part of their development. They should return from Egypt
relying upon no courtly patron, no mortal might or wisdom, aware of
a name of God more profound than was spoken in the covenant of their
fathers, with their narrow family interests and rivalries and their
family traditions expanded into national hopes, national
aspirations, a national religion.
Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has
reminded us of the vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race
that multiplied exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the
truth, so miserably perverted that it is discredited by multitudes,
but amply vindicated by modern science, that good breeding, in the
strictest sense of the word, is a powerful factor in the lives of
men and nations. To be well born does not of necessity require
aristocratic parentage, nor does such parentage involve it: but it
implies a virtuous, temperate and pious stock. In extreme cases the
doctrine of race is palpable; for who can doubt that the sins of
dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and short-lived
children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not only honour
and a welcome in the world, "an open door," but also immunity from
many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving? If the Hebrew
race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an unrivalled
vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has been
twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than
"natural selection" the dross was throughly purged out, and (as
Isaiah loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt,
in the vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of
that amazing vitality which makes it, even in its overthrow, so
powerful an element in the best modern thought and action.
It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality
for which God chose Israel was probably toughness. Perhaps the
saying would better be inverted: it was among the most remarkable
endowments, unto which Israel was called, and called by virtue of
qualities in which Goethe himself was remarkably deficient.
Now, this principle is in full operation still, and
ought to be solemnly pondered by the young. Self-indulgence, the
sowing of wild oats, the seeing of life while one is young, the
taking one's fling before one settles down, the having one's day
(like "every dog," for it is to be observed that no person says,
"every Christian"), these things seem natural enough. And their
unsuspected issues in the next generation, dire and subtle and
far-reaching, these also are more natural still, being the operation
of the laws of God.
On the other hand, there is no youth living in
obedience alike to the higher and humbler laws of our complex
nature, in purity and gentleness and healthful occupation, who may
not contribute to the stock of happiness in other lives beyond his
own, to the future well-being of his native land, and to the day
when the sadly polluted stream of human existence shall again flow
clear and glad, a pure river of water of life.
GOD IN HISTORY.
Exo 1:7.
With the seventh verse, the new narrative, the
course of events treated in the main body of this book, begins.
And we are at once conscious of this vital
difference between Exodus and Genesis,--that we have passed from the
story of men and families to the history of a nation. In the first
book the Canaanites and Egyptians concern us only as they affect
Abraham or Joseph. In the second book, even Moses himself concerns
us only for the sake of Israel. He is in some respects a more
imposing and august character than any who preceded him; but what we
are told is no longer the story of a soul, nor are we pointed so
much to the development of his spiritual life as to the work he did,
the tyrant overthrown, the nation moulded, the law and the ritual
imposed on it.
For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in Bethel
as well as in his father's house. But now the Hebrew nation was to
learn that He could plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold,
that His way was in the sea, that Horeb in Arabia was the Mount of
God, that He could lead them like a horse through the wilderness.
When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and prevails,
he wins for himself a new name, expressive of the higher moral
elevation which he has attained. But when Moses meets God in the
bush, it is to receive a commission for the public benefit; and
there is no new name for Moses, but a fresh revelation of God for
the nation to learn. And in all their later history we feel that the
national life which it unfolds was nourished and sustained by these
glorious early experiences, the most unique as well as the most
inspiriting on record.
Here, then, a question of great moment is suggested.
Beyond the fact that Abraham was the father of the Jewish race, can
we discover any closer connection between the lives of the
patriarchs and the history of Israel? Is there a truly spiritual
coherence between them, or merely a genealogical sequence? For if
the Bible can make good its claim to be vitalised throughout by the
eternal Spirit of God, and leading forward steadily to His final
revelation in Christ, then its parts will be symmetrical,
proportionate and well designed. If it be a universal book, there
must be a better reason for the space devoted to preliminary and
half secular stories, which is a greater bulk than the whole of the
New Testament, than that these histories chance to belong to the
nation whence Christ came. If no such reason can be found, the
failure may not perhaps outweigh the great evidences of the faith,
but it will score for something on the side of infidelity. But if
upon examination it becomes plain that all has its part in one great
movement, and that none can be omitted without marring the design,
and if moreover this design has become visible only since the
fulness of the time is come, the discovery will go far to establish
the claim of Scripture to reveal throughout a purpose truly divine,
dealing with man for ages, and consummated in the gift of Christ.
Now, it is to St. Paul that we turn for light upon
the connection between the Old Testament and the New. And he
distinctly lays down two great principles. The first is that the Old
Testament is meant to educate men for the New; and especially that
the sense of failure, impressed upon men's consciences by the stern
demands of the Law, was necessary to make them accept the Gospel.
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ:
it entered that sin might abound. And it is worth notice that this
effect was actually wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor by
the menace of its broken precepts, but even more perhaps upon the
high-minded and pure, by the creation in their breasts of an ideal,
inaccessible in its loftiness. He who says, All these things have I
kept from my youth up, is the same who feels the torturing
misgiving, What good thing must I do to attain life?... What lack I
yet? He who was blameless as touching the righteousness of the law,
feels that such superficial innocence is worthless, that the law is
spiritual and he is carnal, sold under sin.
Now, this principle need by no means be restricted
to the Mosaic institutions. If this were the object of the law, it
would probably explain much more. And when we return to the Old
Testament with this clue, we find every condition in life examined,
every social and political experiment exhausted, a series of
demonstrations made with scientific precision, to refute the
arch-heresy which underlies all others--that in favourable
circumstances man might save himself, that for the evil of our lives
our evil surroundings are more to be blamed than we.
Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by
evil habit, untainted by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by
harsh surroundings, simple innocence had its day in Paradise, a
brief day with a shameful close. God made man upright, but he sought
out many inventions, until the flood swept away the descendants of
him who was made after the image of God.
Next we have a chosen family, called out from all
the perilous associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a
new career in a new land, in special covenant with the Most High,
and with every endowment for the present and every hope for the
future which could help to retain its loyalty. Yet the third
generation reveals the thirst of Esau for his brother's blood, the
treachery of Jacob, and the distraction and guilt of his fierce and
sensual family. It is when individual and family life have thus
proved ineffectual amid the happiest circumstances, that the tribe
and the nation essay the task. Led up from the furnace of
affliction, hardened and tempered in the stern free life of the
desert, impressed by every variety of fortune, by slavery and
escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe and by a rescue
visibly divine, awed finally by the sublime revelations of Sinai,
the nation is ready for the covenant (which is also a
challenge)--The man that doeth these things shall live by them: if
thou diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God ... He
shall set thee on high above all nations.
Such is the connection between this narrative and
what went before. And the continuation of the same experiment, and
the same failure, can be traced through all the subsequent history.
Whether in so loose an organisation that every man does what is
right in his own eyes, or under the sceptre of a hero or a
sage,--whether so hard pressed that self-preservation ought to have
driven them to their God, or so marvellously delivered that
gratitude should have brought them to their knees,--whether engulfed
a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or restored and ruled by
a hierarchy whose authority is entirely spiritual,--in every variety
of circumstances the same melancholy process repeats itself; and
lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and self-righteousness combine to stop
every mouth, to make every man guilty before God, to prove that a
greater salvation is still needed, and thus to pave the way for the
Messiah.
The second great principle of St. Paul is that faith
in a divine help, in pardon, blessing and support, was the true
spirit of the Old Testament as well as of the New. The challenge of
the law was meant to produce self-despair, only that men might trust
in God. Appeal was made especially to the cases of Abraham and
David, the founder of the race and of the dynasty, clearly because
the justification without works of the patriarch and of the king
were precedents to decide the general question (Rom 4:1-8). Now,
this is pre-eminently the distinction between Jewish history and all
others, that in it God is everything and man is nothing. Every
sceptical treatment of the story makes Moses to be the deliverer
from Egypt, and shows us the Jewish nation gradually finding out
God. But the nation itself believed nothing of the kind. It
confessed itself to have been from the beginning vagrant and
rebellious and unthankful: God had always found out Israel, never
Israel God. The history is an expansion of the parable of the good
shepherd. And this perfect harmony of a long record with itself and
with abstract principles is both instructive and reassuring.
As the history of Israel opens before us, a third
principle claims attention--one which the apostle quietly assumes,
but which is forced on our consideration by the unhappy state of
religious thought in these degenerate days.
"They are not to be heard," says the Seventh Article
rightly, "which feign that the old fathers did look only for
transitory promises." But certainly they also would be unworthy of a
hearing who would feign that the early Scriptures do not give a
vast, a preponderating weight, to the concerns of our life on earth.
Only very slowly, and as the result of long training, does the
future begin to reveal its supremacy over the present. It would
startle many a devout reader out of his propriety to discover the
small proportion of Old Testament scriptures in which eternity and
its prospects are discussed, to reckon the passages, habitually
applied to spiritual thraldom and emancipation, which were spoken at
first of earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance, and to observe,
even in the pious aspirations of the Psalms, how much of the
gratitude and joy of the righteous comes from the sense that he is
made wiser than the ancient, and need not fear though a host rose up
against him, and can break a bow of steel, and has a table prepared
for him, and an overflowing cup. Especially is this true of the
historical books. God is here seen ruling states, judging in the
earth, remembering Israel in bondage, and setting him free,
providing supernatural food and water, guiding him by the fiery
cloud. There is not a word about regeneration, conversion, hell, or
heaven. And yet there is a profound sense of God. He is real,
active, the most potent factor in the daily lives of men. Now, this
may teach us a lesson, highly important to us all, and especially to
those who must teach others. The difference between spirituality and
secularity is not the difference between the future life and the
present, but between a life that is aware of God and a godless one.
Perhaps, when we find our gospel a matter of indifference and
weariness to men who are absorbed in the bitter monotonous and
dreary struggle for existence, we ourselves are most to blame.
Perhaps, if Moses had approached the Hebrew drudges as we approach
men equally weary and oppressed, they would not have bowed their
heads and worshipped. And perhaps we should have better success, if
we took care to speak of God in this world, making life a noble
struggle, charging with new significance the dull and seemingly
degraded lot of all who remember Him, such a God as Jesus revealed
when He cleansed the leper, and gave sight to the blind, using one
and the same word for the "healing" of diseases and the "saving" of
souls, and connecting faith equally with both. Exodus will have
little to teach us, unless we believe in that God who knoweth that
we have need of food and clothing. And the higher spiritual truths
which it expresses will only be found there in dubious and
questionable allegory, unless we firmly grasp the great truth, that
God is not the Saviour of souls, or of bodies, but of living men in
their entirety, and treats their higher and lower wants upon much
the same principle, because He is the same God, dealing with the
same men, through both.
Moreover, He treats us as the men of other ages.
Instead of dealing with Moses upon exceptional and strange lines, He
made known His ways unto Moses, His characteristic and habitual
ways. And it is on this account that whatsoever things were written
aforetime are true admonition for us also, being not violent
interruptions but impressive revelations of the steady silent
methods of the judgment and the grace of God.
THE OPPRESSION.
Exo 1:7-22.
At the beginning of the history of Israel we find a
prosperous race. It was indeed their growing importance, and chiefly
their vast numerical increase, which excited the jealousy of their
rulers, at the very time when a change of dynasty removed the sense
of obligation. It is a sound lesson in political as well as personal
godliness that prosperity itself is dangerous, and needs special
protection from on high.
Is it merely by chance again that we find in this
first of histories examples of the folly of relying upon political
connections? As the chief butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he
succeed in escaping from prison by securing influence at court, so
is the influence of Joseph himself now become vain, although he was
the father of Pharaoh and lord of all his house. His romantic
history, his fidelity in temptation, and the services by which he
had at once cemented the royal power and saved the people, could not
keep his memory alive. The hollow wraith of dying fame died wholly.
There arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.
Such is the value of the highest and purest earthly
fame, and such the gratitude of the world to its benefactors. The
nation which Joseph rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh's
hands, and persecutes Israel at his bidding.
And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank and
influence were only entanglements through which he had to break.
Meanwhile, except among a few women, obedient to the
woman's heart, we find no trace of independent action, no revolt of
conscience against the absolute behest of the sovereign, until
selfishness replaces virtue, and despair wrings the cry from his
servants, Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families, blessed
in their father Abraham, or cursed for the offence of Ham. For a
family is a real entity, and its members, like those of one body,
rejoice and suffer together. But the same is true of nations, and
here we have reached the national stage in the education of the
world. Here is exhibited to us, therefore, a nation suffering with
its monarch to the uttermost, until the cry of the maidservant
behind the mill is as wild and bitter as the cry of Pharaoh upon his
throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of despotism that unlimited
calamity may be drawn down upon millions by the caprice of one most
unhappy man, himself blinded and half maddened by adulation, by the
absence of restraint, by unlimited sensual indulgence if his
tendencies be low and animal, and by the pride of power if he be
high-spirited and aspiring.
If we assume, what seems pretty well established,
that the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled was Rameses the Great, his
spirit was of the nobler kind, and he exhibits a terrible example of
the unfitness even of conquering genius for unbridled and
irresponsible power. That lesson has had to be repeated, even down
to the days of the Great Napoleon.
Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the
offence of its head be questioned, let us ask first whether the
nation accepts his despotism, honours him, and is content to regard
him as its chief and captain. According to the principles of the
Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a tyrant enviable, has already
himself tyrannised with him in his heart. Do we ourselves, then,
never sympathise with political audacity, bold and unscrupulous
"resource," success that is bought at the price of strange
compliances, and compromises, and wrongs to other men?
The great national lesson is now to be taught to
Israel that the most splendid imperial force will be brought to an
account for its treatment of the humblest--that there is a God Who
judges in the earth. And they were bidden to apply in their own land
this experience of their own, dealing kindly with the stranger in
the midst of them, "for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt."
That lesson we have partly learned, who have broken the chain of our
slaves. But how much have we left undone! The subject races were
never given into our hands to supplant them, as we have supplanted
the Red Indian and the New Zealander, nor to debauch, as men say we
are corrupting the African and the Hindoo, but to raise, instruct
and Christianise. And if the subjects of a despotism are accountable
for the actions of rulers whom they tolerate, how much more are we?
What ought we to infer, from this old-world history, of the profound
responsibilities of all free citizens?
We attain a principle which reaches far into the
spiritual world, when we reflect that if evil deeds of a ruler can
justly draw down vengeance upon his people, the converse also must
hold good. Reverse the case before us. Let the kingdom be that of
the noblest and purest virtue. Let no subject ever be coerced to
enter it, nor to remain one hour longer than while his adoring
loyalty consents. And shall not these subjects be the better for the
virtues of the Monarch whom they love? Is it mere caprice to say
that in choosing such a King they do, in a very real sense,
appropriate the goodness they crown? If it be natural that Egypt be
scourged for the sins of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that
Christ is made of God unto His people wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption? The doctrine of imputation can easily
be so stated as to become absurd. But the imputation of which St.
Paul speaks much can only be denied when we are prepared to assail
the principle on which all bodies of men are treated, families and
nations as well as the Church of God.
It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which drew
down upon his country the very perils he laboured to turn away.
There was no ground for his fear of any league with foreigners
against him. Prosperous and unambitious, the people would have
remained well content beside the flesh-pots of Egypt, for which they
sighed even when emancipated from heavy bondage and eating the bread
of heaven. Or else, if they had gone forth in peace, from a land
whose hospitality had not failed, to their inheritance in Canaan,
they would have become an allied nation upon the side where the
heaviest blows were afterwards struck by the Asiatic powers. Cruelty
and cunning could not retain them, but it could decimate a
population and lose an army in the attempt. And this law prevails in
the modern world, England paid twenty millions to set her bondmen
free. Because America would not follow her example, she ultimately
paid the more terrible ransom of civil war. For the same God was in
Jamaica and in Florida as in the field of Zoan. Nor was there ever
yet a crooked policy which did not recoil either upon its author, or
upon his successors when he had passed away. In this case it
fulfilled the plans and the prophecies of God, and the wrath of man
was made to praise Him.
There is independent reason for believing that at
this period one-third at least of the population of Egypt was of
alien blood (Brugsch, History, ii. 100). A politician might
fairly be alarmed, especially if this were the time when the
Hittites were threatening the eastern frontier, and had reduced
Egypt to stand on the defensive, and erect barrier fortresses. And
the circumstances of the country made it very easy to enslave the
Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indifference to the rights of the
masses had mingled with the God-given insight of Joseph, when he
made his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the Egyptian people
were fully avenged upon him now. For this arrangement laid his
pastoral race helpless at their oppressor's feet. Forced labour
quickly degenerates into slavery, and men who find the story of
their misery hard to credit should consider the state of France
before the Revolution, and of the Russian serfs before their
emancipation. Their wretchedness was probably as bitter as that of
the Hebrews at any period but the last climax of their oppression.
And they owed it to the same cause--the absolute ownership of the
land by others, too remote from them to be sympathetic, to take due
account of their feelings, to remember that they were their
fellow-men. This was enough to slay compassion, even without the
aggravation of dealing with an alien and suspected race.
Now, it is instructive to observe these
reappearances of wholesale crime. They warn us that the utmost
achievements of human wickedness are human still; not wild and
grotesque importations by a fiend, originated in the abyss, foreign
to the world we live in. Satan finds the material for his
master-strokes in the estrangement of class from class, in the
drying up of the fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the
failure of real, fresh, natural affection in our bosom for those who
differ widely from us in rank or circumstances. All cruelties are
possible when a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his woes
really woeful. For when the man has sunk into an animal it is only a
step to his vivisection.
Nor does anything tend to deepen such perilous
estrangement, more than the very education, culture and refinement,
in which men seek a substitute for religion and the sense of
brotherhood in Christ. It is quite conceivable that the tyrant who
drowned the Hebrew infants was an affectionate father, and pitied
his nobles when their children died. But his sympathies could not
reach beyond the barriers of a caste. Do our sympathies
really overleap such barriers? Would God that even His Church
believed aright in the reality of a human nature like our own,
soiled, sorrowful, shamed, despairing, drugged into that apathetical
insensibility which lies even below despair, yet aching still, in
ten thousand bosoms, in every great city of Christendom, every day
and every night! Would to God that she understood what Jesus meant,
when He called one lost creature by the tender name which she had
not yet forfeited, saying, "Woman, where are thine accusers?" and
when He asked Simon, who scorned such another, "Seest thou this
woman!" Would God that when she prays for the Holy Spirit of Jesus
she would really seek a mind like His, not only in piety and
prayerfulness, but also in tender and heartfelt brotherhood with
all, even the vilest of the weary and heavy-laden!
Many great works of ancient architecture, the
pyramids among the rest, were due to the desire of crushing, by
abject toil, the spirit of a subject people. We cannot ascribe to
Hebrew labour any of the more splendid piles of Egyptian masonry,
but the store cities or arsenals which they built can be identified.
They are composed of such crude brick as the narrative describes;
and the absence of straw in the later portion of them can still be
verified. Rameses was evidently named after their oppressor, and
this strengthens the conviction that we are reading of events in the
nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had recently been driven
out, leaving the eastern frontier so weak as to demand additional
fortresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour to the
exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, "the people are more and mightier
than we." It is by such exaggerations and alarms that all the worst
crimes of statesmen have been justified to consenting peoples. And
we, when we carry what seems to us a rightful object, by inflaming
the prejudice and misleading the judgment of other men, are moving
on the same treacherous and slippery inclines. Probably no evil is
committed without some amount of justification, which the passions
exaggerate, while they ignore the prohibitions of the law.
How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew blood,
which was yet to boil in the veins of the Maccabees, and to give
battle, not unworthily, to the Roman conquerors of the world, failed
to resent the cruelties of Pharaoh?
Partly, of course, because the Jewish people was
only now becoming aware of its national existence; but also because
it had forsaken God. Its religion, if not supplanted, was at least
adulterated by the influence of the mystic pantheism and the stately
ritual which surrounded them.
Joshua bade his victorious followers to "put away
the gods whom your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and
serve ye the Lord" (Jos 24:14). And in Ezekiel the Lord Himself
complains, "They rebelled against Me and would not hearken unto Me;
they did not cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did
they forsake the idols of Egypt" (Eze 20:8).
Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the spirit and
breaks the courage like religious dependence. A strong priesthood
always means a feeble people, most of all when they are of different
blood. And Israel was now dependent on Egypt alike for the highest
and lowest needs--grass for the cattle and religion for the soul.
And when they had sunk so low, it is evident that their emancipation
had to be wrought for them entirely without their help. From first
to last they were passive, not only for want of spirit to help
themselves, but because the glory of any exploit of theirs might
have illuminated some false deity whom they adored.
Standing still, they saw the salvation of God, and
it was not possible to give His glory to another.
For this cause also, judgment had, first of all, to
be wrought upon the gods of Egypt.
In the meantime, without spirit enough to resist,
they saw complete destruction drawing nearer to them by successive
strides. At first Pharaoh "dealt wisely with them," and they found
themselves entrapped into a hard bondage almost unawares. But a
strange power upheld them, and the more they were afflicted the more
they multiplied and spread abroad. In this they ought to have
discerned a divine support, and remembered the promise to Abraham
that God would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven. It may have
helped them presently to "cry unto the Lord." And the Egyptians were
not merely "grieved" because of them: they felt as the Israelites
afterwards felt towards that monotonous diet of which they used the
same word, and said, "our soul loatheth this light bread." Here it
expresses that fierce and contemptuous attitude which the
Californian and Australian are now assuming toward the swarms of
Chinamen whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion of whose
blood into the population is so hateful. Then the Egyptians make
their service rigorous, and their lives bitter.
And at last that happens which is a part of every
downward course: the veil is dropped; what men have done by stealth,
and as if they would deceive themselves, they soon do consciously,
avowing to their conscience what at first they could not face. Thus
Pharaoh began by striving to check a dangerous population; and ended
by committing wholesale murder. Thus men become drunkards through
conviviality, thieves through borrowing what they mean to restore,
and hypocrites through slightly overstating what they really feel.
And, since there are nice gradations in evil, down to the very last,
Pharaoh will not yet avow publicly the atrocity which he commands a
few humble women to perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often,
the last substitute for a conscience.
Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all
full-grown wrongs, the chief is the revolt of human nature, since,
fallen though we know ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet
effaced in us. The better instincts of humanity are
irrepressible--most so perhaps among the poor. It is by refusing to
trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the very last that
refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon upon its
agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves. Above
all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and as
Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the
sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the
disobedience of the midwives, themselves Hebrews, upon whom he
reckoned.
Let us not fear to avow that these women, whom God
rewarded, lied to the king when he reproached them, since their
answer, even if it were not unfounded, was palpably a
misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was not for their
falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the notion of
martyrdom for an avowal so easy to evade was utterly unknown.
Abraham lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David equivocated with
Saul. We have learned better things from the King of truth, Who was
born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We know
that the martyr's bold protest against unrighteousness is the
highest vocation of the Church, and is rewarded in the better
country. But they knew nothing of this, and their service was
acceptable according as they had, not according as they had not. As
well might we blame the patriarchs for having been slave-owners, and
David for having invoked mischief upon his enemies, as these women
for having fallen short of the Christian ideal of veracity. Let us
beware lest we come short of it ourselves. And let us remember that
the way of the Church through time is the path of the just, beset
with mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more and more unto the
perfect day.
In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy
Scripture celebrates, the service of these obscure and lowly
heroines. Nothing done for Him goes unrewarded. To slaves it was
written that "From the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the
inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ" (Col 3:24). And what these
women saved for others was what was recompensed to themselves,
domestic happiness, family life and its joys. God made them houses.
The king is now driven to avow himself in a public
command to drown all the male infants of the Hebrews; and the people
become his accomplices by obeying him. For this they were yet to
experience a terrible retribution, when there was not a house in
Egypt that had not one dead.
The features of the king to whom these atrocities
are pretty certainly brought home are still to be seen in the museum
at Boulak. Seti I. is the most beautiful of all the Egyptian
monarchs whose faces lie bare to the eyes of modern sightseers; and
his refined features, intelligent, high-bred and cheerful, resemble
wonderfully, yet surpass, those of Rameses II., his successor, from
whom Moses fled. This is the builder of the vast and exquisite
temple of Amon at Thebes, the grandeur of which is amazing even in
its ruins; and his culture and artistic gifts are visible, after all
these centuries, upon his face. It is a strange comment upon the
modern doctrine that culture is to become a sufficient substitute
for religion. And his own record of his exploits is enough to show
that the sense of beauty is not that of pity: he is the jackal
leaping through the land of his enemies, the grim lion, the powerful
bull with sharpened horns, who has annihilated the peoples.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that
artistic refinement can either inspire morality or replace it. Have
we quite forgotten Nero, and Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de
Medici?
Many civilisations have thought little of infant
life. Ancient Rome would have regarded this atrocity as lightly as
modern China, as we may see by the absolute silence of its
literature concerning the murder of the innocents--an event
strangely parallel with this in its nature and political motives,
and in the escape of one mighty Infant.
Is it conceivable that the same indifference should
return, if the sanctions of religion lose their power? Every one
remembers the callousness of Rousseau. Strange things are being
written by pessimistic unbelief about the bringing of more sufferers
into the world. And a living writer in France has advocated the
legalising of infanticide, and denounced St. Vincent de Paul
because, "thanks to his odious precautions, this man deferred for
years the death of creatures without intelligence," etc.[2]
It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing by
the light of eternity the value of every soul, but also replenishing
the fountains of human tenderness that had well-nigh become
exhausted, that we owe our modern love of children. In the very
helplessness which the ancient masters of the world exposed to
destruction without a pang, we see the type of what we must
ourselves become, if we would enter heaven. But we cannot afford to
forget either the source or the sanctions of the lesson.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Professor Curtiss quotes a volume of family
memoirs which shows that 5,564 persons are known to be descended
from Lieutenant John Hollister, who emigrated to America in the year
1642 (Expositor, Nov. 1887, p. 329). This is probably equal
in ratio to the increase of Israel in Egypt.
[2] J. K. Huysmans--quoted in Nineteenth Century,
May 1888, p. 673.