The Gospel of the Pentateuch Part 14

'And it shall come to pa.s.s, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your G.o.d, 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 will send gra.s.s in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve other G.o.ds, and worship them; and then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you.'

Now the Bible story is, that this warning came true. More than once we read of drought--long, and severe, and ruinous. In one famous case, there was no rain for three years; and Ahab has to go out to search through the land for a sc.r.a.p of pasture. 'Peradventure we shall find gra.s.s enough to save the horses and mules alive.'

And most distinctly does the Bible say that these droughts came at times when the Jews had fallen into idolatry, and profligacy therewith. That is the Scripture account. And if you believe in the living G.o.d, whose providence ordereth all things in heaven and earth, that account will seem reasonable and credible to you.

What special means G.o.d used to bring about these great droughts we cannot know, any more than we can know why a storm or a shower should come one week and not another. And we need not know. G.o.d made the world, and G.o.d governs the world, and that is enough for us.

Be that as it may, Moses goes down to the very root and ground and true cause of the riches of the land, and of the rainfall, and of the prosperity of the Jews, and of the prosperity of any living nation on earth, when he says, 'Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.'

'Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart and your soul, and teach them your children when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.' That is, thou shalt believe continually in a living G.o.d--a G.o.d who is working everywhere at every moment, about thy path and about thy bed, and spying out all thy ways; and not only about thee, but about all that thou seest. From him comes alike rain and sunshine; from him comes the life of man; from him comes all which makes it possible for man to live upon the earth.

And it is a plain fact that the Jews for a long time did believe this--at least the prophets, psalmists and good men among them--to the most intense degree; to a degree in which perhaps no nation has believed it since. With them G.o.d is everything, and man nothing.

Man finds out nothing: G.o.d reveals it to him. Man's intellect does nothing: the Spirit of G.o.d gives him understanding to do it--even, says Isaiah, understanding to plough, and to sow, and to reap his crops in due season. It is the Spirit of G.o.d, according to the prophets and psalmists, which makes the difference between a man and a beast. But upon the beasts too, and the green things of the earth, and on all nature, the Spirit of G.o.d works. He is the Lord and giver of life. Take only those four Psalms, the 8th, 18th, 29th, 104th, and learn from them what the old Jews thought of this wonderful world in which we live.

'These all wait upon thee'--all living things by land and sea--'that thou mayest give them meat in due season. When thou givest it them they gather it. When thou openest thy hand they are filled with good. When thou hidest thy face they are troubled. When thou takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their dust. When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.'

So again, in the world of man, G.o.d is the living Judge, the living overlooker, rewarder, punisher of every man, not only in the life to come, but in this life. His providence is a special providence.

But not such a poor special providence as men are too apt to dream of now-a-days, which interferes only now and then on some great occasion, or on behalf of some very favoured persons, but a special providence looking after every special act of man, and of the whole universe, from the fall of a sparrow to the fall of an empire.

And it is this intense faith in the living G.o.d, which can only come by the inspiration of the Spirit of G.o.d, which proves the old Testament to be truly inspired. This it is which makes it different from all books in the world. This it is, I hold, which marks the canon of Scripture. For in the Apocrypha--true, n.o.ble, and good as most of it is--you do not find the same intense faith in the living G.o.d, or anything to be compared therewith; and that for the simple reason that the Jews, at the time the Apocrypha was written, were losing that faith very fast. They felt themselves that there was an immense difference between anything that they could write and what the old psalmists and prophets had written. They felt that they could not write Scripture. All they could do was to write commentaries about it, and to carry out in their own fashion Moses'

command, 'Thou shalt bind my words for a sign upon your hands, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house.' They were right in that; but as they lost faith in the living G.o.d, they began to observe the command in the letter, and neglect it in the spirit.

You know--some of you, at least--how these words were misused afterwards; how the scribes and the Pharisees, in their zeal to carry out the letter of the law, went about with texts of Scripture on their foreheads, and wrists, and the hems of their robes, enlarging their phylacteries, as our Lord said of them. But all the time they did not understand the texts, or love them, or get any good from them; but only made them excuses for hating and scoffing at the rest of the world. They had them written only on their foreheads, not on their hearts--an outside and not an inside religion. They had lost all faith in the living G.o.d. G.o.d had spoken, of course, to their forefathers; but they could not believe that he was speaking to them--not even when he spoke by his only begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person. G.o.d, so they held, had finished his teaching when Malachi uttered his last prophecy. And now it was for them to teach, and expound the law at secondhand. There could be no more prophets, no more revelation; and when one came and spoke with authority, at first hand, out of the depth of his own heart, he was to be persecuted, stoned, crucified. No. They had the key of knowledge; and no man could enter in, unless they chose to open the door. Nothing new could be true. John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He hath a devil.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they said, 'Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.' And meanwhile the poor, the ignorant, those whose hearts were really in earnest, were looking out for a prophet and a deliverer--often going after false prophets, with Theudas and Barcochab, into the wilderness; but going, too, to be baptized with the baptism of John, and crowding in thousands to hear our Lord preach to them of the living G.o.d of whom Moses had preached of old; while the scribes and Pharisees sat at home, wrapped up in their narrow, shallow book- divinity, and said, 'This people, who knoweth not the law, is accursed.' Nothing new could be true. It must be put down, persecuted down, lest the Romans should come and take away their place and nation.

But they did not succeed. Our Lord and his truth, whom they crucified and buried, rose again the third day and conquered; and the Romans came after all, and took away their place and nation.

And so they failed, as all will fail, who will not believe in the living G.o.d.

My friends, all these things were written for our example. As it was then, so may it be again.

There may come a time in this land when people shall profess to worship the word of G.o.d; and yet, like those old scribes, make it of none effect by their own commandments and traditions. When they shall command men, like the scribes, to honour every word and letter of the Bible, and yet forbid them to take the Bible simply and literally as it stands, but only their interpretation of the Bible; when they shall say, with the scribes, 'Nothing new can be true.

G.o.d taught the Apostles, and therefore he is not teaching us. G.o.d worked miracles of old; but whosoever thinks that G.o.d is working miracles now is a Pantheist and a blasphemer. G.o.d taught men of old the thing which they knew not; but whosoever dares to say that he does so now is bringing heresy and false doctrine, and undermining the Christian faith by science falsely so called.'

And all because they have lost all faith in the living G.o.d--the ever-working, ever-teaching, ever-inspiring, ever-governing G.o.d whom our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to men; in whom the Apostles, and the Fathers, and the great middle-age Schoolmen, and the Reformers believed, and therefore learned more and more, and taught men more and more concerning G.o.d and the dealings of G.o.d, as time went on.

And then, when they see ignorant people running after quacks and impostors, spirit-rappers and table-turners, St. Simonians and Mormons, and false prophets of every kind, they will have nothing to say but 'This people which knoweth not the law is accursed.' While when they see anything like new truth, or new teaching from G.o.d appear, instead of welcoming the light, and going to meet the light, and accepting the light, they will say, 'What shall we do? For all men will believe on him, and then the powers of this world will come and take away our station and our order?' As if Christ could not take better care of his Church for which he died than they can in his stead! And so they will persecute G.o.d's servants, in the name of G.o.d, and call upon the law to put down by force the men whom they cannot put down by reason.

From ever falling into that state of stupid lip-belief, and outward religion, and loss of faith in the living G.o.d: Good Lord, deliver us.

From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness: Good Lord, deliver us.

From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart and contempt of thy word and commandment: Good Lord, deliver us.

For if people ever fall into that frame of mind (as did the scribes and Pharisees), and the good Lord do not deliver them from it, it will surely happen to them as it is written in the Bible.

The powers of this world will come and take away their place, and their power, and their station: but meanwhile the truth which they think that they have stifled will rise again, for Christ, who is the truth, will raise it again; and it shall conquer and leaven the hearts of men till all be leavened; and while the scribes and Pharisees shall be cast into the outer darkness of discontented and hopeless bigotry, the kingdoms of the world, which they fancied were the devil's dominion, shall become the kingdoms of G.o.d and of his Christ, and be adopted into that holy and ever-growing Church, of which it is written, that the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it, for in it is the Spirit of G.o.d to lead it into all truth.

To which blessed end may G.o.d bring us, and our children after us.

Amen.

SERMON XVIII. THE DEATH OF MOSES

(First Sunday after Trinity.)

DEUT. x.x.xiv. 5, 6. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

Some might regret that the last three chapters of Deuteronomy are not read among our Sunday lessons. There was not, however, room for them; and I do not doubt that those who chose our lessons knew better than I what chapters they ought to choose. We may, however, read them for ourselves, not only in the daily lessons, but as often as we choose. And well worth reading they are.

For I know of no stronger proof of the truth of the book of Deuteronomy, and of the whole Pentateuch, than its ending so differently from what we should have expected, or indeed wished. If things went in this world, as they do in novels and fables, according to man's notion of what is right and good, then Moses and his history would have had a very different ending.

And if the story of Moses had been of man's invention, we should have heard--I think, from what we know of the fables, 'myths' as they call them now, which nations have invented about themselves, and their own early history, we may guess fairly what we should have heard--how Moses brought the Jews into the land of Canaan, and established his laws, and reigned over them, and died in honour and great glory--if he died at all, and was not taken up into the skies, and changed into a star, or into a G.o.d; and how he was buried with great pomp; and how his sepulchre did remain among the Jews until that day; and probably how men worshipped at it, and miracles were worked at it, and so forth.

Also, we should have heard how, as soon as the Israelites came into the land of Canaan, they began forthwith to serve the Lord with all their heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and to keep Moses' law, while it was yet fresh in their minds, more exactly than ever they did afterwards; and in short, we should have had one of those stories of a 'golden age,' a 'good old time,' a pattern-time of early purity and devotion, of which nations and Churches, of all tongues and all creeds, have been so ready to dream in their own case; and which they have used, not altogether ill, to rebuke vice in their own day, by saying, 'Look how perfect your forefathers were. Look how you, their unworthy children, have fallen from their faith and their virtue.'

This, I think, is what we should have been told if the Pentateuch had been the invention of man. This is exactly what we are NOT told; but, on the contrary, the very opposite.

What we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy, full of dark fears and warnings about what the Jews will be and what they will have to endure. But it is far more true to human nature, and to the facts which we see in the world about us, than any story of a good old time would have been.

They are still wandering in the land of Moab, when the time draws near when Moses must die. He is a hundred and twenty years old, but hale and vigorous still. His eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated. But the Lord has told him that his death is near. He gives the command of the army of Israel to Joshua the son of Nun, and then he speaks his last words.

Songs they are, dark and rugged, like all the higher Hebrew poetry; but, like it, full of the very Spirit of G.o.d--the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of faith and of the fear of the Lord.

There are three of these songs which seem to belong to those last days of his.

The Prayer of Moses the man of G.o.d--which is our 90th Psalm, our burial Psalm. We all know the sadness of that Psalm; its weariness, as of one who had laboured long, and would fain be at rest; its confession of man's frailty--fading away suddenly like the gra.s.s; its confession of G.o.d's strength, G.o.d from everlasting, before the mountains were brought forth; its eternal gospel of hope and comfort, that the strength of G.o.d takes pity on the weakness of man, 'Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.'

Then comes the Song of the Rock--the song of which (it seems) the Lord said to him, 'Write this song, and teach it the children of Israel, that it may be a witness for me against them.'

And so Moses writes; and seemingly before all the congregation of Israel, according to the custom of those times, he chants his death- song, the Song of the Rock. It is such a song as we should expect from him. G.o.d is the Rock. He was thinking, it may be, of the everlasting rocks of Sinai, where G.o.d had appeared to him of old.

But G.o.d is the true, everlasting Rock, on which all things rest; the Eternal, the Self-existent, the I Am, whom he was sent to preach to men. But he is a good and righteous G.o.d likewise. His work is perfect. 'A G.o.d of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he.'

In him Moses can trust, but not in the children of Israel; they are a perverse and crooked generation, who have waxen fat and kicked.

G.o.d has done all for them, but they will not obey him. Even in the wilderness they have worshipped strange G.o.ds, and sacrificed to devils, not to G.o.d; and so they will do after Moses is gone; and then on them will come all the curses of which he has so often warned them. 'The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand; and two put ten thousand to flight?' What a people they might be, and what a future there is before them, if they would but be true to G.o.d! But they will not. And so Moses' death-song, like his life's wish, ends in disappointment and sadness, and dread of the evils which are coming upon his beloved countrymen.

Lastly, he blesses them, tribe by tribe, in strange and grand words, such as dying men utter, who, looking earnestly across the dark river of death, see further than they ever saw amid the cares and temptations of life. And he blesses them. He will say nothing of them but good. He will speak not of what they will be, but of what they ought to be and can be. But not in their own strength--only in the strength of G.o.d. Man is to be nothing to the last; and G.o.d is all in all.

'There is none like unto the G.o.d of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal G.o.d is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

'Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.'

Those are the last words of Moses. Then he goes up into the mountain top, never to return; and the children of Israel are left alone with G.o.d and their own souls, to obey and prosper, or disobey and die.

The time of their schooling is past, and their schoolmaster is gone for ever. They are no more to be under a human tutor. They are come to man's estate and man's responsibility, and they are to work out their own fortunes by their own deeds, like every other soul of man.

For Moses himself must not enter into the promised land. In spite of all his faith, his courage, his endurance, his patriotism, he has sinned against G.o.d, and he must be punished; and punished, too, in kind--in the very thing which he will feel most deeply, in being shut out from the very happiness on which he has set his heart all along.