THE CONCLUSION.
Exodus 35 - Exodus 40.
The remainder of the narrative sets forth in terms almost
identical with the directions already given, the manner in which the
Divine injunctions were obeyed. The people, purified in heart by
danger, chastisement and shame, brought much more than was required.
A quarter of a million would poorly represent the value of the
shrine in which, at the last, Moses and Aaron approached their God,
while the cloud covered the tent and the glory filled the
tabernacle, and Moses failed to overcome his awe and enter.
Thenceforth the cloud was the guide of their halting and their
march. Many a time they grieved their God in the wilderness, yet the
cloud was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by
night, throughout all their journeyings.
That cloud is seen no longer; but One has said, "Lo, I am with
you all the days." If the presence is less material, it is because
we ought to be more spiritual.
* * * * *
Looking back upon the story, we can discern more clearly what was
asserted when we began--the forming and training of a nation.
They are called from shameful servitude by the devotion of a
patriot and a hero, who has learned in failure and exile the
difference between self-confidence and faith. The new name of God,
and His remembrance of their fathers, inspire them at the same time
with awe and hope and nationality. They see the hollowness of
earthly force, and of superstitious worships, in the abasement and
ruin of Egypt. They are taught by the Paschal sacrifice to confess
that the Divine favour is a gift and not a right, that their lives
also are justly forfeited. The overthrow of Pharaoh's army and the
passage of the Sea brings them into a new and utterly strange life,
in an atmosphere and amid scenes well calculated to expand and
deepen their emotions, to develop their sense of freedom and
self-respect, and yet to oblige them to depend wholly on their God.
Privation at Marah chastens them. The attack of Amalek introduces
them to war, and forbids their dependence to sink into abject
softness. The awful scene of Horeb burns and brands his littleness
into man. The covenant shows them that, however little in
themselves, they may enter into communion with the Eternal. It also
crushes out what is selfish and individualising, by making them feel
the superiority of what they all share over anything that is
peculiar to one of them. The Decalogue reveals a holiness at once
simple and profound, and forms a type of character such as will make
any nation great. The sacrificial system tells them at once of the
pardon and the heinousness of sin. Religion is both exalted above
the world and infused into it, so that all is consecrated. The
priesthood and the shrine tell them of sin and pardon, exclusion and
hope; but that hope is a common heritage, which none may appropriate
without his brother.
The especial sanctity of a sacred calling is balanced by an
immediate assertion of the sacredness of toil, and the Divine Spirit
is recognised even in the gift of handicraft.
A tragic and shameful failure teaches them, more painfully than
any symbolic system of curtains and secret chambers, how little
fitted they are for the immediate intercourse of heaven. And yet the
ever-present cloud, and the shrine in the heart of their encampment,
assure them that God is with them of a truth.
Could any better system be imagined by which to convert a slavish
and superstitious multitude into a nation at once humble and pure
and gallant--a nation of brothers and of worshippers, chastened by a
genuine sense of ill desert and of responsibility, and yet braced
and fired by the conviction of an exalted destiny?
To do this, and also to lead mankind to liberty, to rescue them
from sensuous worship, and prepare them for a system yet more
spiritual, to teach the human race that life is not repose but
warfare, pilgrimage and aspiration, and to sow the seeds of beliefs
and expectations which only an atoning Mediator and an Incarnate God
could satisfy, this was the meaning of the Exodus.