NUMBERS XXI. 8, 9 407
in the sun," God's will must be his law, God's glory his light, God's presence his blessedness, God's love his inspiration and joy.^
IF I distinguish between Life, which is our Being in God, and Eternal Life, which is the Light of the Life, that is, fellowship with the Author, Substance, and Former of our Being, the Alpha and Omega. It is the heart that needs re-creation; it is the heart that is desperately wicked, not the Being of man. I think a distinction is carefully maintained in Holy Scripture between the life in the heart and the Life of the Being : " Lighten thou my eyes that I sleep not in death." It is the Light of Life we want, to purify or re-create or regenerate our hearts so that we may be the Children of Light.*
2. In the Eevised Version there is a little change made here, partly by the exclusion of a clause and partly by changing the order of the words. The alteration is not only nearer the original text, but brings out a striking thought. It reads that " whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life." " May in him have eternal life " — union with Christ by faith, that profound incorporation into Him, which the New Testament sets forth in all sorts of aspects as the very foundation of the blessings of Christianity ; that union is the condition of eternal life.
% A soldier lay dying on the battlefield ; the chaplain speaking to him read St. John iii. When he came to verses 14, 15, he was asked to read them again ; when they were read, the soldier, having repeated them, added, " That is enough for me ; that is all I want." *
^ There is a most impressive little story which tells how Sternberg, the great German artist, was led to paint his "Messiah," which is his masterpiece. One day the artist met a little gypsy girl on the street, and was so struck by her peculiar beauty that he requested her to accompany him to his studio in order that he might paint her. This she consented to do, and while sitting for the great artist she noticed a half-finished painting of Christ on the cross. The gypsy girl, who was ignorant and uneducated, asked Sternberg what it was, and wondered if Christ must not have been an awfully bad man to be nailed to a cross. Sternberg replied that Christ was the best man that ever lived, and that He died on the cross that others might live. " Did He die for you ? " asked the gypsy. This question so preyed
* John Reid.
' R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 68.
• L. N. Caley.
4o8 LOOK AND LIVE
upon the mind of Sternberg, who was not a Christian, that he was greatly disturbed by it. The more he pondered it, the more impressed he became that, though Christ had died for him, he had not accepted the sacrifice. It was this that led him at last to paint the "Messiah," which became famous throughout the world. It is said that John Wesley got one of his greatest inspirations from this picture.
The Death to Die.
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Literature.
Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, iii. 218.
Barry (A.), The Parables of the Old Testament, 226.
Bellew (J, C. M.), Sermons, iii. 311.
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 408.
Butler (G.), Sermons in Cheltenham College Chapel, 35.
Butler (J.), Sermons, ed. Bernard, 92.
Clapperton (J. A.), in The Divine Artist, 137.
Colenso (J. W.), Natal Sermons, 2nd Ser., 171.
Eyton (R.), The True Life, 334.
Gibbon (J. M.), in Men of the Old Testament (Cain-David), 1 73.
Gk)odwin (H.), Pa/rish Sermons, 2nd Ser., 17.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, 371,
Mortimer (A. G.), Lenten Preaching, 159.
„ Studies in Holy Scripture, 71.
Hunger (T. T.), The Appeal to Life, 109. Reicbel (C. P.), Sermons, 27. Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, 4th Ser., 42. Skrine (J. H.), Sermons to Pastors and Masters, 23. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiii. No. 746. Church of England Pulpit, xxxix. 241 (Rawstorne). Church Pulpit Year Book, i. (1904) 85 (Mortimer). Churchman's Pulpit, Third Sunday after Easter, viii. 99 (Dix), 101
(Vaughan). Clergyman's Magazine, viii. 218 (Leathes) ; xii. 221 (Lillingston) ; 3rd
Ser., viii. 222 (Proctor). Homiletic Review, xix. 568 ; ixxii. 44 (Merrill). Plain Sermons by Contributors to the '^Tracts for the Times," iv. 63
[No. 100].
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The Death to Die.
Let me die the death of the rigfhteous, and let my last end be like his !— Num. xxiii. lo.
1. The Israelites were now, after long wandering in the wilder- ness, on the point of taking possession of the Promised Land. Arrived on its verge, their numbers and their discipline, strengthened and consolidated by nearly forty years of hardship in the desert, struck terror into the heart of Balak, king of Moab. So he sent off messengers, chosen from among his princes, to Balaam ; the distance at which Balaam lived, at Pethor on the Euphrates, serving to indicate the wide reputation he enjoyed aa a powerful magician or sorcerer. These envoys were to persuade him to come and curse Israel, in the expectation that his male- diction would destroy them. Balaam was nothing loth, yet before he went he would see what God might say to him. God appeared to him at night in vision, and told him that he must not go with the messengers, that he must not curse the people, for that they were blessed. Balaam obeyed ; but instead of communicating to the messengers God's reply in full, he abridged it by merely telling them that God refused to give him leave to go with them. He did not tell them that God had emphatically declared that he should not curse the people, for that they were blessed. The Moabite princes, having received God's message from Balaam in this garbled form, garbled it themselves still further in repeating it to Balak. Instead of saying to him that God refused Balaam leave to come, they merely said, "Balaam refuseth to come." Probably they thought that the God who refused him leave was only his own avarice and greed of gain. So, at least, Balak seems to have thought, for, instead of being discouraged, he only sent a second embassy of higher rank, with richer gifts, who should say, " Let nothing, I pray thee, hinder thee from coming unto me : for I will promote thee unto very great honour, and wiU do whatso-