» W, W. Tullooh. " Picture Point aufl Parable," in Sunday School., iii. 807.
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been caught by him during the " forty days and forty nights " in the lonely mountain where the Lord spoke to him " face to face as a man speaketh to his friend." The secret of all Christian shining is the same. Communion with God — that is the source it must spring from, lending sanctity to the character, and beauty to the very face. To see God's face is to shine ; to keep seeing it is to keep shining. It is thus that the marvel of the story is repeated, and God's praying saints come forth from this privacy with their faces aglow; and the dying grow luminous on their beds, till the watchers wonder. And where is there brightness like the brightness of heaven? They are all lustrous there. "Then shall the righteous," it is said, "shine forth in their heavenly Father's kingdom."
How lovely seems the sun to us, — at night. When his soft light dawns on us from the moon ! 'Tis the sun's light and not the moon's, although She is so near, and he has dropped from sight. Hast thou done some good deed, and therefore now A human face smiles on thee through its tears, — Then see there, too, the Godhead's mediate face. Soft-beaming as the solar-lunar light.^
(3) It is an tmconsciotis beauty. — Moses "wist not that his face shone." That is the supreme height of spiritual loveliness : to be lovely, and not to know it. Surely this is a lesson we all need to learn. Virtue is so apt to become self-conscious, and thus to lose its glow. Take the grace of humility. Humility is very beautiful when we see it unimpaired. It is exquisite with the loveliness of Christ. But there is a self-conscious humility which is only a very subtle species of pride. It is possible to boast of our humility. There are men and women whose only source of pride appears to be their modesty. How often we meet with men who, when requested to do some service, immediately hoist the flag of their humility, and declare that they are of the humble sort, and prefer to keep in the shade ! Humility takes the lowest place, and does not know that her face shines. Pride can take the lowest place, and find her delight in the thought of her presumably shining face. Self -consciousness always tends to
^ A Layman's Breriary.
328 UNCONSCIOUS GLORY
BOUT humility, and pervert it into pride. " Moses wist not that his face shone."
^ In all regions of life, the consummate apex and crowning charm of excellence is unconsciousness of excellence. Whenever a man begins to suspect that he is good he begins to be bad ; and every virtue and beauty of character is robbed of some portion of its attractive fairness when the man who bears it knows, or fancies that he knows, it. The charm of childhood is its perfect unconsciousness, and the man has to win back the child's heritage, and become as a little child, if he would enter into and dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven. And so in the loftiest region of all, that of the religious life, you may be sure that the more a man is like Christ, the less he knows it ; and the better he is, the less he suspects it. The reasons why that is so point, at the same time, to the ways by which we may attain to this blessed self- oblivion. Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power.*
^ We are told in the Life of Peter Thompson of the East London Mission that a lady who had worked most successfully for many years with him was going to the Foreign Field, and it was on the paucity of results in her work amongst East London girls that she turned her eyes. She was depressed, and as a send-ofif the superintendent suggested a supper for a very large number of girls of the class amongst whom she had moved — a supper such as the one with which she had inaugurated her work. He was prepared to spend a goodly sum to make the evening a success. In a week or so she returned in perplexity. The number he had mentioned of such girls was not forthcoming. He said not a word until the worker realized the position. She, in company with others, had been instrumental in altering the character of that particular neighbourhood, and slowly but with insistence, the truth took hold of her that her work had not been in vain.'
The Man that went the cloud within
Is gone and vanished quite; He Cometh not, the people cries,
Nor bringeth God to sight: Lo these thy gods, that safety give,
Adore and keep the feast! Deluding and deluded cries
The Prophet's brother-Priest: And Israel all bows down to fall
Before the gilded beast.
•A. Maclaren. ' R. B. Thompson, Peter Thompson, 135.
EXODUS XXXIV. 29 329
Devout, indeed ! that priestly creed,
0 Man, reject as sin ; The clouded hill attend thou still,
And him that went within. He yet shall bring some worthy thing