» 8. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Screice, 16. ' H. Thorue.
* J. J. Mackay.
NUMBERS XXI. 8, 9 405
IV.
The Good Effect.
The effect is — (i.) life : " when he looked unto the serpent of brass, he lived " ; (ii.) eternal life : " that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life."
I. Life.
It does not seem possible that so great a thing as life should depend upon so small a thing as a look. But life often depends on a look. A traveller was once walking over a mountain-road ; it grew quite dark, and he lost his way. Then a thunderstorm came on, and he made all the haste he could to try to find some shelter. A flash of lightning showed just for a moment where he was going. He was on the very edge of a precipice. The one look that the lightning enabled him to take saved his life. A few weeks ago I was in a train after it was dark. The signal was put "all right," and the train started. We had gone a few hundred yards, when I heard the whistle sound very sharply, and soon the train stopped. Some one had shown the engine-driver a red light, and warned him of danger. It turned out that one of the chains by which the carriages were coupled together had broken. If the man who saw the broken chain had not looked^ and if the engine-driver had not looked and so seen the red light, most likely many lives would have been lost. Here, again, life depended upon a look.
IT The wounded Israelite was in one sense dead already, his life was forfeit as soon as he was bitten ; it follows that the new life infused by a look at the brazen serpent was miraculous in its character. What have we here but a striking figure of death and resurrection ? Not by any natural process of improve- ment or gradual restoration was the death-stricken Israelite rescued from his fate, but by the direct and supernatural inter- vention of Him who was even then, as He is still, the resurrection and the life, in whom whosoever believes lives though he were dead.^
ii. Eternal Life.
1. Our Lord said, " Ye must be born again," and Nicodemus answered, "How can a man be bom again when he is old?" ' W. H. M. H. Aitk»tt.
4o6 LOOK AND LIVE
Our Lord replied by telling him something more. A man necJf to be born not only outwardly of water, but inwardly of the Spirit, and when he is so born he will be as free as the wind — from legal bondage — from the tyranny of sin. And to this Nicodemus replied by asking yet more impatiently, " How can these things be ? " The answer that he receives is given through the speaking figure of death and resurrection, and if we desire a striking com- mentary on the figure, and a definite statement of the truth, we have only to turn to St. Paul's Epistles. " You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." " But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together. " " And you, being dead in your sins and the imcircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses." " Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in his cross." Surely nothing can be more striking than the parallelism between the words of this passage and the symbolism of the scene that we are contemplating.
^ Eternal life is the blessing of the Kingdom of God viewed as a personal possession. The description is peculiar to John's Gospel, but it agrees with the " life " which is spoken of with such emphasis in the other Gospels. According to them, to enter into the Kingdom is to enter into " life " (Matt, xviii. 3, 8, 9). It is not so much duration that is expressed by the word " eternal " as the peculiar quality of the life that arises out of the new relations with God which are brought about by Jesus Christ. It is death- less life, although the believer has still to die, " and go unterrified into the gulf of Death." It may be described as a life which seeks to obey an eternal rule, the will of God ; which is inspired by an eternal motive, the love of God ; which lives for and is lightened by an eternal glory, the glory of God; and abides in an eternal blessedness, communion with God. It is both present and future. Here and now for the believer there are a new heaven and a new earth, and the glory of God doth lighten them, and the Lamb is the light thereof. No change which time or death can bring has power to affect the essential character of his life, though its glory as terrestrial is one, and its glory as celestial is another. Wherever after death the man may be who has believed in Jesus, the life that he lives will be the same in its inner spirit and relation. " To him all one, if on the earth or