Whither away, O brawling Stream,
Whither away so fast? Fleeing for life and death you seem.
Speak, as you hasten past.
Answered the Brook, with a pompous roar,
Tossing its creamy foam, "I go, my flood in the Main to pour —
Listen, 0 Sea, I come ! "
Whither away, 0 Eiver deep,
Gliding so slow and calm? Your gentle current seems half asleep.
And chanting a drowsy psalm.
Answered the River, with whisper low,
Swaying her lilies fair; "Down to the measureless Sea I go —
The Sea will not know I am there."*
(3) But the tenderest and strongest element in the new thought of God given to Moses is that God is the Redeemer, and is coming down to the lowest levels of the suffering life of Israel to save the people from all their troubles and raise them up to share His own life in its peace and joy for evermore. That is the sum of all God's speech to us. Out of the burning bush comes the revelation of the Cross. God is Himself at the centre of the fires that burn humanity ; He is afiOicted in all our afflictions ; He shares our lot so that He may redeem us from all our iniquities.*
^ A living God means an active Bedeemer. This is the inter- pretation of God which Moses is to set before the people. God chooses Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh on Israel's behalf. He will be a Pillar of Fire, giving light by which an untrained, un-
^ Augasto Mo«re, in Scribner's Monthly, xiii. 30. ' John Clifford.
288 THE ETERNAL NAME
armed nation of hereditary bondsmen will see the way out of Egypt. He will, in the meek and slow-tongued Moses, confound the arrogance and assumption of the magicians of a mighty Empire. "Tell them that 'I AM' hath sent thee. Let them know that I have heard their cry. Say to the elders that ' I have visited you.' Tell them that certainly I will be with thee, and ye shall serve God in this mountain." ^
3. The credentials which God gave to Moses are the same as Christ gave to His Church. But how often we are loth to go without better credentials than these ! And yet what better cotUd we have ? " As my Father sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent t?iem into the world." As we look upon the seething chaos of social hopelessness, we feel it to be well-nigh impossible to do anything gi-eat — we are so feeble, and in nature so in- sufficient. We feel much as Elijah did when he bent in abject despair at the brook : " I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away." Considered numerically, what prospect is there that the few millions of aggressive Christians will ever win over the hundreds of millions who are at present almost altogether out of sympathy with the objects of the Christian religion ? Surely all our ferment and prayer and testimony, our martyrdom and love and self-sacrificing thought are thrown away ! We are only men as they are, and must be borne down at last by numbers !
^ A tiny volume of gas is not distinguishable from the gases we call air about it. But give to that gas in its tiny volume heat, and it becomes incandescent ; and so long as gas remains with air about it, that flame gives light, in darkness ever so dense. One tiny volume enlightens many thousands of times its own space of air, because that very burning has taken place in connexion with it. So, though dark the social night in which we shine, our Gospel will be approved. We are Messengers of the King of Light, in whom is no darkness at all, and our presence is omni- potent for good, 80 long as He goes with ua.^
* J. G. Gibson.
Forward !
GEN.-NUM. — 19
Literature.
Banks (L. A.), Sermons which have won Souls, 175. Brown (J. B.), The Sunday Afternoon, 428, 436. Campbell (Mrs.), Music from the Harps of God, 61. Creighton (M.), University and other Sermons, 160. Gray (W. H.), The Children's Friend, 330.
Huntington (F. D.), Christ in the Christian Year (Trinity to Advent), 98. Lamb (R.), School Sermons, ii. 138. Mackray (A. N.), Edges and Wedges, 49. ilatheson (G.), Times of Retirement, 119. Singer (S.), Sermons to Children, 132. Spurgeon (C. H.), An All-Round Ministry, 40. •\Vauglian (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), x. No. 821.
Cliristian World Pulpit, vi. 72 (Ann) ; xxiv. 204 (Legge) ; xxxviii. 138 (NichoUs) ; lix. 1 (Farrar) ; Ixi. 253 (Davenport) ; Ixvi. 168 (Taylor) ; Ixviii. 395 (Snell). Churchman's Pulpit (Easter Day and Season), vii. 246 (Frothingham). Preacher's Magazine, xi. (1900) 54, 112 (Pearse). Sermons to Brito-ns Abroad, 274.
Forward I
And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward. — Exod. xiv. 15.
These words, which were spoken at the crisis of Israel's history — at the very moment when, so to speak, Israel came into existence as a nation — were the motto stamped upon the whole subsequent history of the race.
Think when they were spoken. The children of Israel — a race of slaves who had lost all the manliness that ever they possessed, in the long period of servitude they had spent in Egypt — were called by God to go forth and realize His plans ; and as this cowering band stood hearing the chariot wheels of the Egyptians behind them — at that time it was, when their hearts were sunk within them, that they turned to their leaders for guidance. Then the message came clearly forth, " Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward."