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THE FAITH
OF MOSES.
"By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three
months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were
not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was grown up,
refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to be evil
entreated with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not
fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.
By faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the
destroyer of the first-born should not touch them."-- Hebrews 11:23-28 (R.V.).
One difference between the Old Testament and the New is
the comparative silence of the former respecting Moses and the frequent mention
of him in the latter. When he has brought the children of Israel through
the wilderness to the borders of the promised land,
their great leader is seldom mentioned by historian, psalmist, or prophet. We
might be tempted to imagine that the national life of Israel had
outgrown his influence. It would without question be in a measure true. We may
state the same thing on its religious side by saying that God hid the memory as
well as the body of his servant, in the spirit of John Wesley's words, happily
chosen for his and his brother's epitaph in Westminster Abbey, "God buries
His workmen and carries on His work." But in the New Testament it is quite
otherwise. No man is so frequently mentioned. Sometimes when he is not named it
is easy to see that the sacred writers have him in their minds.
One reason for this remarkable difference between the two
Testaments in reference to Moses is to be sought in the contrast between the
earlier and later Judaism. During the ages of the old covenant Judaism was a
living moral force. It gave birth to a peculiar type of heroes and saints.
Speaking of Judaism in the widest possible meaning, David and Isaiah, as well
as Samuel and Elijah, are its children. These men were such heroes of religion
that the saints of the Christian Church have not dwarfed their greatness. But
it is one of the traits of a living religion to forget the past, or rather to
use it only as a stepping-stone to better things. It forgets the past in the
sense in which St. Paul
urges the Philippians to count what things were gain a
loss, and to press on, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching
forward to the things which are before. Religion lives in its conscious,
exultant power to create spiritual heroes, not in looking back to admire its
own handiwork. The only religion among men that lives in its founder is
Christianity. Forget Christ, and Christianity ceases to be. But the life of
Mosaism was not bound up with the memory of Moses. Otherwise we may well
suppose that idolatry would have crept in, even before Hezekiah found it
necessary to destroy the brazen serpent.
When we come down to the times of John the Baptist and our
Lord, Mosaism is to all practical ends a dead religion. The great movers of
men's souls came down upon the age, and were not developed out of it. The
product of Judaism at this time was Pharisaism, which had quite as little true
faith as Sadduceeism. But when a religion has lost its power to create saints,
men turn their faces to the great ones of olden times. They raise the fallen
tombstones of the prophets, and religion is identical with hero-worship. An
instance of this very thing may be seen in England today, where Atheists have
discovered how to be devout, and Agnostics go on a pilgrimage! "We are the
disciples of Moses," cried the Pharisees. Can any one conceive of David or
Samuel calling himself a disciple of Moses? The notion of discipleship to Moses
does not occur in the Old Testament. Men never thought of such a relation. But
it is the dominant idea of Judaism in the time of Christ. Hence it was brought
about that he who was the servant and friend appears in the New Testament as
the antagonist. "For the Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ."[281] This is opposition and
rivalry. Yet "this is that Moses which said unto
the children of Israel,
A Prophet shall God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me."[282]
The notable difference between the Moses of New Testament
times and the Moses delineated in the ancient narrative renders it especially
interesting to study a passage in which the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews takes us back to the living man, and describes the attitude of Moses
himself towards Jesus Christ. Stephen told his persecutors that the founder of
the Aaronic priesthood had spoken of a great Prophet to come, and Christ said
that Moses wrote of Him.[283] But it is with joyous
surprise we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the legislator was a
believer in the same sense in which Abraham was a believer. The
founder of the old covenant himself walked by faith in the new covenant.
The references to Moses made by our Lord and by Stephen
sufficiently describe his mission. The special work of Moses in the history of
religion was to prepare the way of the Lord Jesus Christ and make His paths
straight. He was commissioned to familiarise men with the wondrous, stupendous
idea of the appearing of God in human nature,--a conception almost too vast to
grasp, too difficult to believe. To render it not impossible for men to accept
the truth, he was instructed to create a historical type of the Incarnation. He
called into being a spiritual people. He realised the magnificent idea of a
Divine nation. If we may use the term, he showed to the world God appearing in
the life of a nation, in order to teach them the higher truth that the Word
would at the remote end of the ages appear in the flesh. The nation was the
Church; the Church was the State. The King would be God. The court of the King
would be the temple. The ministers of the court would be the priests. The law
of the State would have equal authority with the moral requirements of God's
nature. For Moses apparently knew nothing of the distinction made by
theologians between the civil, the ceremonial, and the moral law.
But in the passage before us we have something quite
different from this. The Apostle says nothing about the creation of the covenant
people out of the abject slaves of the brick-kilns. He is silent concerning the
giving of the Law amid the fire and tempest of Sinai. It is plain that he
wishes to tell us about the man's inner life. He represents Moses as a man of
faith.
Even of his faith the apparently greatest achievements are
passed over. Nothing is said of his appearances before Pharaoh; nothing of the
wonderful faith that enabled him to pray with uplifted hands on the brow of the
hill whilst the people were fighting God's battle in the valley; nothing of the
faith with which, on the top of Pisgah, Moses died without receiving the
promise. Evidently it is not the Apostle's purpose to write the panegyric of a
hero.
Closer examination of the verses brings out the thought
that the Apostle is tracing the growth and formation of the man's spiritual
character. He means to show that faith has in it the making of a man of God.
Moses became the leader of the Lord's redeemed people, the founder of the
national covenant, the legislator and prophet, because he believed in God, in
the future of Israel, and in the coming of the Christ. The subject of the
passage is faith as the power that creates a great spiritual leader. But what
is true of leaders is true also of every strong spiritual nature. No lesson can
be more timely in our days. Not learning, not culture,
not even genius, makes a strong doer, but faith.
The contents of the verses may be classified under four
remarks:--
1. Faith gropes at first in the dark for the work of
life.
2. Faith chooses the work of life.
3. Faith is a discipline of the man for the work of
life.
4. Faith renders the man's life and work sacramental.
1. The initial stage in forming the servant of God is
always the same,--a vague, restless, eager groping in the dark, a putting forth
feelers for the light of revelation. This is often a time of childish mistakes
and follies, of which he is afterwards keenly ashamed, and at which he can
sometimes afford to smile. It often happens, if the man of God is to spring
from a religious family, that his parents undergo, in
a measure, this first discipline for him. So it was in the case of Moses. The
child was hid three months of his parents. Why did they hide him? Was it
because they feared the king? It was because they did not fear the king. They
hid their child by faith. But what had faith to do with the hiding of him? Had
they received an announcement from an inspired seer that their child would
deliver Israel,
or that he would stand with God on the top of Sinai and receive the Law for the
people, or that he would lead the redeemed of the Lord to the borders of a rich
land and large? None of these sufficient grounds for defying the king's
authority are mentioned. The reason given in the narrative and as well by Stephen[284] and the writer of this Epistle sounds quaint,
if not childish. They hid him because he was comely. Yet they hid him by faith.
The beauty of a sleeping babe was to them a revelation, as truly a revelation
as if they had heard the voice of the angel that spoke to Manoah or to
Zacharias. The Scripture narrative contains no hint that the child's beauty was
miraculous, and, what is more to the purpose, we are not told that God had
given it as the token of His covenant. It is an instance of faith making a
sacrament of its own, and seeking in what is natural its warrant for believing
in the supernatural. Nothing is easier, and perhaps nothing would be more
rational, than to dismiss the entire story with a contemptuous smile.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews must admit that
Jochebed's faith was unauthorised. But does not faith always begin in folly? Is
it not at first a blind instinct, fastening on what is nearest to hand? Has not
our belief in God sprung out of trust in human goodness or in nature's
loveliness? To many a father has not the birth of his first-born been a
revelation of Heaven? Is not such faith as Jochebed's the true explanation of the
instinctive rise and wonderful vitality of infant baptism in the Christian
Church? If Abraham's faith dared to look for the city which hath the
foundations when God had promised only the wealth of a tented nomad, was not
the mother of Moses justified, since God had given her faith, in letting the
heaven-born instinct entwine with her earth-born love of her offspring? It grew
with its growth, and rejoiced with its joy; but it also endured and triumphed
in its sore distress, and justified its presence by saving the child. Faith is
God's gift, no less than the testimony which faith accepts. Sometimes the faith
is implanted when no fitting revelation is vouchsafed. But faith will live on
in the darkness, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in the heart.
A wise teacher has warned us against phantom notions and
bidden us interpret rather than anticipate nature. But another great thinker
demonstrated that the clearest vision begins in mere groping. Anticipations of
God precede the interpretation of His message. The immense space between
instinct and genius is in religion traversed by faith, which starts with mera
palpatio, but at last attains to the beatific vision of God.
2. Faith chooses the work of life. The Apostle has spoken
of the faith that induced the parents of Moses to hide their child three
months. Some theologians have set much value on what they term "an
implicit faith." The faith of Moses himself would be said by them to be
"enwrapped" in that of his parents. Whatever we may think of this
doctrine, there can be no question that the New Testament recognises the idea
of representation. The Church has always upheld the unity, the solidarity, of
the family. It sprang itself out of the family. Perhaps its consummation on
earth will be a return into the family relation. It retains the likeness
throughout its long history. It acknowledges that a believing husband
sanctifies the unbelieving wife, and a believing wife sanctifies the
unbelieving husband. In like manner, a believing parent sanctifies the children,
and no one but themselves can deprive them of their privileges. But they can do
it. The time comes when they must choose for themselves. Hitherto led gently on
by loving hands, they must now think and act for themselves, or be content to
lose the power of independent action, and remain always children. The risk is
sometimes great. But it cannot be evaded. It oftentimes happens that the
irrevocable step is taken unobserved by others, almost unconsciously to the man
himself. The decision has been taken in silence; the even tenor of life is not
disturbed. The world little weens that a soul has determined its own eternity
in one strong resolve.
But in the case of a man destined to be
a leader of his fellows, whether in thought or in action, a crisis occurs.
We use the word in its correct meaning of judgment. It is more than a
transition, more than a conversion. He judges, and is conscious that as he
judges he will be judged. If God has any great work for the man to do, the
command comes sooner or later, as if it descended audibly from heaven, that he
stand alone and, in that first terrible solitariness, choose and reject. In an
educational age we may often be tempted to sneer at the doctrine of immediate
conversion. It is true, nevertheless. A man has come to the parting of the two
ways, and choice must be made, because they are two ways. To no living man is
it given to walk the broad and the narrow ways. Entrance is by different gates.
The history of some of the most saintly men presents an entire change of
motive, of character even, and of general life, as produced through one strong
act of faith.
When the Apostle wrote to the Hebrew Christians, the time
was critical. The question of Christian or not Christian brooked no delay. The
Son of man was nigh, at the doors. Even after swift vengeance had overtaken the
doomed city of Jerusalem,
the urgent cry was still the same. In the so-called "Epistle of
Barnabas," in the "Pastor of Hermas," and in the priceless
treasure recently brought to light, "The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles," the two ways are described: the way of
life and the way of death. Those who professed and called themselves Christians
were warned to make the right choice. It was no time for facing both ways, and
halting between two opinions.
Moses too refused and chose. This is the second scene in
the history of the man. Standing as he did at the fountain-head of nationalism,
the prominence assigned to his act of individual choice and rejection is very
significant. Before his days the heirs of the promise were in the bond of God's
covenant in virtue of their birth. They were members of the elect family. After
the days of Moses every Israelite enjoyed the privileges of the covenant by
right of national descent. They were the elect nation. Moses stands at the
turning point. The nation now absorbs the family, which becomes henceforth part
of the larger conception. In the critical moment between the two, a great
personality emerges above the confusion. The patriarchal Church of the family
comes to a dispensational end in giving birth to a great man. That man's
personal act of refusing the broad and choosing the narrow way marks the birth
of the theocratic Church of nationalism. Before and after, personality is of
secondary importance. In Moses for a moment it is everything.
Do we seek the motives that determined his choice? The
Apostle mentions two, and they are really two sides of
the same conception.
First, he chose to be evil-entreated with the people of
God. The work of his life was to create a spiritual nation. This idea had
already been presented to his mind before he refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter. "He was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians;
and he was mighty in his words and works."[285] But an idea had taken possession
of him. That idea had already invested the miserable and despised bondsmen with
glory. Truly no man will achieve great things who does
not pay homage to an idea, and is not ready to sacrifice wealth and position
for the sake of what is as yet only a thought. He who sells the world for an
idea is not far from the kingdom of heaven. He will be prepared to forfeit all
that the world can give him for the sake of Him in Whom
truth eternally dwells in fulness and perfection. Such a man was Moses. Had not
his parents often told him, when his mother was nourishing the child for
Pharaoh's daughter, of the wonderful story of their hiding him by faith and
afterwards putting him in an ark of bulrushes by the river's brim? Did not his
mother bring him up to be at once the son of Pharaoh's daughter and the
deliverer of Israel?
Was the boy not living a double life? He was gradually coming to understand
that he was to be the heir of the throne, and that he would or might be the
destroyer of that throne. May we not, with profoundest reverence, liken it to
the twofold inner life of the Child Jesus when at Nazareth He came to know that
He, the Child of Mary, was the Son of the Highest?
Stephen continues the story: "When he was well-nigh
forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel."
"He went out unto his brethren," we are told in the narrative,
"and looked on their burdens."[286] But the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews perceives in the act of Moses more than love of kindred. The slaves
of Pharaoh were, in the eyes of Moses, the people of God. The national
consecration had already taken place; he himself was already swayed by the
glorious hope of delivering his brethren, the covenant people of God, from the
hands of their oppressors. This is the explanation which Stephen gives of his
conduct in slaying the Egyptian. When he saw one of the children of Israel suffer
wrong, he defended him and smote the Egyptian, supposing that his brethren
understood how that God by his hand was giving them deliverance. The deed was,
in fact, intended to be a call to united effort. He was throwing the gauntlet.
He was deliberately making it impossible for him to return to the former life
of pomp and courtly worship. He wished the Hebrews to understand his decision,
and accept at once his leadership. "But they understood not."
Our author pierces still deeper into the motives that
swayed his spirit. It was not a selfish ambition, nor merely a patriotic desire
to put himself at the head of a host of slaves bent on asserting their rights.
Simultaneous with the social movement there was a spiritual work accomplished
in the personal, inner life of Moses himself. All true, heaven-inspired
revolutions in society are accompanied by a personal discipline and trial of
the leaders. This is the infallible test of the movement itself. If the men who
control it do not become themselves more profound, more pure, more spiritual,
they are counterfeit leaders, and the movement they advocate is not of God. The
writer of the Epistle argues from the decision of Moses to deliver his brethren
that his own spiritual life was become deeper and holier. When he refused to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he also rejected the pleasures of sin. He
took his stand resolutely on the side of goodness. The example of Joseph was
before him, of whom the same words are said: "he refused" to sin
against God.
As the crisis in his own spiritual life fitted him to be
the leader of a great national movement, so also his conception of that
movement became a help to him to overcome the sinful temptations of Egypt. He saw
that the pleasures of sin were but for a season. It is easy to supply the other
side of this thought. The joy of delivering his brethren would never pass away.
He welcomed the undying joy of self-sacrifice, and repudiated the momentary
pleasures of self-gratification.
Second, he accounted the reproach of Christ greater riches
than the treasures of Egypt.
Not only the people of God, but also the Christ of God, determined his choice.
An idea is not enough. It must rest on a person, and that person must be
greater than the idea. He may be himself but an idea. But, even when it is so,
he is the glorious thought in which all the other hopes and imaginations of
faith centre and merge. If he is more than an idea, if it is a living person
that controls the man's thoughts and becomes the motive of his life, a new
quality will then enter into that life. Conscience will awake. The question of
doing what is right will control ambition, if it will not quite absorb it.
Treachery to the idea of life will now be felt to be a sin, if conscience has
pronounced that the idea itself is not immoral, but good and noble. For, when
conscience permits, faith will not lag behind, and will proclaim that the moral
is also spiritual, that the spiritual is an ever-abiding possession.
Many expositors strive hard to make the words mean
something else than the reproach which Christ Himself suffered. It is
marvellous that the great doctrine of Christ's personal activity in the Church
before His incarnation should have so entirely escaped the notice of the older school of English theology. On this passage, for
instance, such commentators as Macknight, Whitby,
Scott, explain the words to mean that Moses esteemed the scoffs cast on the
Israelites for expecting the Christ to arise from among them greater riches
than the treasures of Egypt.
The more profound exegesis of Germany
has made the truth of Christ's pre-existence essential to the theology of the
New Testament. Far from being an innovation, it has brought us back to the view
of the greater theologians in every age of the Church.
We cannot enter into the general question. Confining ourselves to the subject in hand, the faith of Moses, why
may we not suppose that he had heard of the patriarch Jacob's blessing on Judah?
It had been uttered in the land
of Egypt, where Moses was
brought up. It spoke of a Lawgiver. Did not the consciousness of his own
mission lead Moses to apply the reference to the long succession of leaders,
whether judges or kings or prophets, who would follow in his wake? If so, could
he have altogether misunderstood the promise of the Shiloh?
Jacob had spoken of a personal King, Whom the people would obey. But nowhere in
the Old Testament, not once in the history of Moses, is the coming of Messiah
represented as the goal of the national development. Christ is not the
flowering of Judaism. On the contrary, the Angel of the covenant established
through Moses is not a ministering servant, sent forth to minister on the
chosen people. He is the Lord Jehovah Himself. Christ was with Israel, and
Moses knew it. We may admit the vagueness of his conception, but we cannot deny
the conception. To Moses, as to the Psalmist, the reproaches of them that
reproached Israel
fell on the Christ. Community in suffering was enough to ensure community in
the glory to be revealed. Suffering with Christ, they would also be glorified
with Christ. This was the recompense of reward to which Moses looked.
The lesson taught to the Hebrew Christians by the decision
of Moses is loyalty to truth and loyalty to Jesus Christ.
3. Faith is a discipline for the work of life. Moses has
made his final choice. Conscience is thoroughly awake, and eager aspirations
fill his soul. But he is not yet strong. Men of large ideas are often found to
be lacking in courage. A cloistered is often a fugitive virtue. But, apart from
want of practical resolution to face the difficulties of the situation, special
training is needed for special work. Israel
had come into Egypt
to endure chastening and be made fit for national independence. But in Egypt
Moses was a courtier, perhaps heir to the throne. That he may be chastened and
fitted for his share of the work which God was about to accomplish towards His
people, he must be driven out of Egypt into the wilderness. Every
servant of God is sent into the wilderness. St. Paul
was three years in Arabia between his
conversion and his entrance on the work of the ministry. Jesus Himself was led
up of the Spirit into the wilderness. He learned endurance in forty days, Moses
in forty years.
It will be seen that we accept the explanation of the
twenty-seventh verse given by all expositors down to the time of De Lyra and
Calvin. But in modern times it has been customary to say that the Apostle
refers to the final departure of the children of Israel
out of Egypt
with a strong hand and outstretched arm. Our reasons for preferring the other
view are these. The departure of the Israelites through the Red Sea is
mentioned subsequently; an event that occurred before the people left Egypt is
mentioned in the next verse, and it is very improbable that the writer would
refer to their departure first, then to the events that preceded,
then once more speak of their departure. Further, the word well rendered by the
Old and the Revised Versions "forsook" expresses precisely the notion
of going out alone, in despondency, as if Moses had abandoned the hope of being
the deliverer of Israel.
If we have correctly understood the Apostle's purpose in the entire passage,
this is the very notion which we should expect him to introduce. Moses forsakes
Egypt,
deserts his brethren, abandons his work. He flees from
the vengeance of Pharaoh. Yet all this fear, hopelessness, and unbelief is only the partial aspect of what, taken as a whole, is the
action of faith. He still believes in his glorious idea, and is still willing
to bear the reproach of Christ. He will not return to the court and make his
submission to the king. But the time is not come, he thinks, or he is not the
man to deliver Israel.
Forty years afterwards he is still loath to be sent. He forsook Egypt because
the people did not believe him; after forty years he asks the Lord to send
another for the very same reason; "Behold, they will not believe me, nor
hearken unto my voice." But we should be obtuse indeed if we failed to
recognise the faith that underlies his despondency. Doubt is oftentimes partial
faith.
Let us place ourselves in his position. He refuses the
selfish luxury and worldly glory of Pharaoh's court, that
he may rush to deliver his brethren. He brings with him the consciousness of
superiority, and at once assumes the duty of composing their quarrels.
Evidently he is a believer in God, but a believer also in himself. Such men are
not God's instruments. He will have a man be the one thing or the other. If the
man is self-confident, conscious of his own prowess, oblivious of God or a
denier of Him, the Most High can use him to do His work, to his own
destruction. If the man has no confidence in the flesh, knows his utter
weakness and very nothingness, and yields himself to God's hand entirely, with
no by-ends to seek, him too God uses to do His work, to the man's own
salvation. But Moses strove to combine faith in God and in himself.
He was at once thwarted. His brethren taunted him, when he expected to be
trusted and honoured. Despondency takes possession of his spirit. But his
trepidation is on the surface. Beneath it is a great deep of faith. What he now
needs is discipline. God leads him to the back of the wilderness. The courtier
serves as a herdsman. Far removed from the monumental literature of Egypt, he
communes with himself, and with nature's mighty visions. He gazes upon the
dread and silent mountain, hallowed of old as the
habitation of God. He had already, in Egypt, learned the faith of Joseph
and of Jacob. Now, in Midian, he will imbibe the faith of Isaac and of Abraham.
Far from the busy haunts of men, the din of cities, the stir of the
market-place, he will learn how to pray, how to divest himself of all
confidence in the flesh, and how to worship the Invisible alone. For "he endured
as seeing Him Who is invisible." Do not paraphrase it "the invisible
King." That is too narrow. It was not Pharaoh only that had vanished out
of his sight and out of his thoughts. Moses himself had disappeared. He had
broken down when he trusted himself. He now endures, because he sees nought but
God. Surely he was in the same blessed state of mind in which St. Paul was when he said, "I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me." When Moses and when Paul ceased to be
anything, and God was to them everything, they were strong to endure.[287]
4. Faith renders the work of life sacramental. The long
period of discipline has drawn to a close. The self-confidence of Moses has
been fully subdued. "He supposed that his brethren understood how that God
by his hand was giving them deliverance." These, says Stephen, were his
thoughts before he fled from Egypt.
Very different is his language after the probation of the wilderness: "Who
am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should
bring forth the children of Israel
out of Egypt?"
Four times he pleads and deprecates. Not until the anger of the Lord is kindled
against him does he take heart to attempt the formidable task.
The Hebrews had been more than two hundred years in the
house of bondage. So far as we know, the Lord had not once appeared or spoken
to men for six generations. No revelation was given between Jacob's vision at Beersheba[288] and the vision of the burning bush. We may well
believe that there were in those days mockers, saying, The
age of miracles is past; the supernatural is played out. But Moses henceforth
lives in a veritable world of miracles. The supernatural came with a rush, like
the waking of a sleeping volcano. Signs and wonders encompass him on every
side. The bush burns unconsumed; the rod in his hand is cast on the ground, and
becomes a serpent; he takes the serpent in his hand again, and it becomes a
rod; he puts his hand into his bosom, and it is leprous; he puts the leprous
hand into his bosom, and it is as his other flesh. When he returns into Egypt, signs
vie with signs, God with demons. Plague follows plague. Moses lifts up his rod
over the sea, and the children of Israel go on dry ground through the
midst of the sea. At last he stands once more on Horeb. But in the short
interval between the day when one poor thorn-bush of the desert glowed with
flame and the day on which Sinai was altogether on a smoke and the whole
mountain quaked, a religious revolution had occurred second only to one in the
history of the race. At the touch of their leader's wand a nation was born in a
day. The immense transition from the Church in a family to a holy nation was
brought about suddenly, but effectively, when the people were hopeless outcasts
and Moses himself had lost heart.
Such a revolution must be inaugurated with sacrifice and
with sacrament. The sins of the past must be expiated and forgiven, and the
people, cleansed from the guilt of their too frequent apostasy from the God of
their fathers, must be dedicated anew to the service of Jehovah. The
patriarchal dispensation expired in the birth of a holy nation. The Passover
was both a sacrifice and a sacrament, an expiation and
a consecration. It retained its sacrificial character till Christ, the true
Paschal Lamb, was slain. As a sacrifice it then ceased. But sacrament
continues, and will continue as long as the Church exists on earth.
Moses had seen the invisible God. The burning bush had
symbolized the sacramental nature of the work which he had been called to do.
God would be in Israel as He
was in the bush, and Israel
would not be consumed. He Who is to His foes a
consuming fire dwells among His people, as the vital heat and glow of their
national life. The eye that can see Him is faith. This is the power that can
transform the whole life of man, and make it sacramental. Too long has man's
earthly existence been divided into two separate spheres.
On the one side and for a stated time he lives to God; on the other side he
relinquishes himself for a period to the pursuits of the world. We seem to
think that the secular cannot be religious, and, consequently, that the
religiousness of one day or of one place will make amends for the irreligion of
the rest of life. The Passover consecrated a nation. Baptism and the Lord's
Supper have, times without number, consecrated the individual. The true
Christian life draws its vital sap from God. It is not cleverness and worldly
success, but unselfish loyalty to the supernatural,
and incessant prayer, that marks the man who lives by faith.
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