I feel a need divine That meeteth need of mine; No rigid fate I meet, no law austere.
I see my God, who turns And o'er His creature yearns: Upon the cross God gives and claims the tear.'
III.
The Acceptance of the Offer of Escape.
The offer of escape is accepted — (i.) by looking to the brazen
serpent ; (ii.) by believing in the Sin-bearer.
' John Eeble. * John Beid.
' Dora Greenwell, Carmina Crueis.
NUMBERS XXI. 8. 9 401
i. Looking to the Serpent.
1. We are not told that trust in God was an essential part of the look, but that is taken for granted. Why else should a half -dead man lift his eyelids to look? Such a one knew that God had commanded the image to be made, and had promised healing for a look. His gaze was fixed on it, in obedience to the command involved in the promise, and was, in some measure, a manifestation of faith. No doubt the faith was very imperfect, and the desire was only for physical healing ; but none the less it had in it the essence of faith. It would have been too hard a requirement for men through whose veins the swift poison was burning its way, and who, at the best, were so little capable of rising above sense, to have asked from them, as the condition of their cure, a trust which had no external symbol to help it. The singularity of the method adopted witnesses to the graciousness of God, who gave their feebleness a thing to look at, in order to aid them in grasping the unseen power which really effected the cure. "He that hath turned himself to it," says the Book of Wisdom, " was not saved by the thing which he saw, but by thee, that art the Saviour of all."
^ They would try all their own remedies before they turned to the Lord. I can think that none would be so busy as the charmers. Amongst them would be some who knew the secrets of the Egyptian snake-charmers. In the "mixed multitude" may have been the professional charmer, boasting a descenit which could not fail in its authority. And they come bringing assured remedies. There is the music that can charm the serpent, and destroy the poison. There is the mystic sign set around the place that made it sacred. There are mysterious magic amulets to be worn for safety ; this on the neck, and this about the wrist. There is a ceremony that shall hold the serpent spellbound and powerless. But come hither. Lift up this curtain. See here one lies on the ground. "He sleeps." Nay, indeed, he will never wake again. Why, it is the charmer. Here are the spells and the charms and the mystic signs all around him. And lo ! there glides the serpent ; the charmer himself is dead.^
2. We can imagine that when that brazen serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, there were some bitten by those fiery
^ M. G. Pearse. GSN.-NUM. — 26
402 LOOK AND LIVE
serpents who refused to look at this exalted sign of salvation, and so perished after all.
We may imagine, for instance, a wounded Israelite saying, " I do not believe this hurt of mine to be deadly. If some have died of the same, yet this is no reason why all should die. Surely there are natural remedies, herbs, or salves which the desert itself will supply, by whose aid I can restore health to myself."
We can imagine another Israelite running into an opposite extreme, not slighting his hurt, but saying on the contrary, " My wound is too deadly for any remedy to avail for its cure. Thousands who have been bitten have already died, their carcases strew the wilderness. I too must die. Some, indeed, may have been healed by looking at that serpent lifted up, but none who were so deeply hurt as I am, none into whose frame that poison had penetrated so far, had circulated so long ; " and so he may have turned away his face, and despaired, and died ; and as the other perished by thinking lightly of the hurt, this will have perished by thinking lightly of the remedy, as fatal, if not as frequent, an error.
Can we not imagine one of the Israelites demanding, in a moodier and more sullen discontent, " Why were these serpents sent at all? Why was I exposed to injury by them? Now, indeed, after I am hurt, a remedy is proposed ; why was not the hurt itself hindered ? " Translate these murmurings into the language of the modern world, and you will recognize in others, perhaps at times in yourself, the same displeasure against God's plan of salvation. "Why should this redemption have been needful at all ? Why waa I framed so obvious to temptation, so liable to sin ? I will not fall in with His plan for counterworking the evil which He has wrought. Let Him, who is its true author, answer for it." We all know more or less of this temptation, this anger, not against ourselves, but against God, that we should be the sinners which we are, this discontent with the scheme of restoration which He has provided. But what is this after all but an angry putting of that question, older than this world of ours, "Why is there any evil, and whence?" — a mystery none have searched out or can search out here. This only is sure, that " God is light, and in him is no darkness at all " ; and of the evil in the world, that it is against His will ; of the evil in us, that