^ The fire that did not burn out is the emblem of the Divine nature which does not tend to death because it lives, nor to exhaustion because it energizes, nor to emptiness because it bestows, but after all times is the same ; lives by its own energy and is independent. " I am that I have become " — that is what men have to say. " I am that I once was not, and again once shall not be " is what men have to say. " I am that I am " is God's name. And this eternal, ever-living, self-sufficing, absolute, independent, unwearied, inexhaustible God is the God whose
DEUTERONOMY xxxiii. 16 43
favour is as inexhaustible as Himself, and eternal as His own being, " Therefore the children of men " shall " put their trust under the shadow of thy wings," and if they have " the good will of him that dwelt in the bush," they will be able to say, " Because thou livest we shall live also."
2. He was the Covenant God. — He said, " I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." In His reasoning with the Sadducees of His day, the Saviour drew from these words an argument for the resurrection of the body ; for as God is the God not of the dead, but of the living, it must follow that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still in existence when God so described Himself, and as such would yet have their humanity perfected and glorified. The Sadducees grounded their objection to the resurrection of the body on their rejection of the immortality of the soul, and the Lord answers in this way the imderlying heresy of His antagonists, leaving it to His own resurrection to prove the falsity of that which they had built thereon.
3. He was the Delivering God. — He said, " I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians." Pharaoh had long oppressed them, making their lives bitter with hard bondage, and there seemed to be no Divine protest against his procedure. It looked almost as if God had forgotten the Hebrews, and for generations they were cruelly maltreated. But He was not unmindful of them, and in the fulness of time He sent Moses to be their emancipator.
4. He was the Long-suffering God. — How tenderly He treated Moses on that occasion ! From the extreme of rashness the son of Amram had recoiled to that of timidity; and he who, forty years before, attempted to run without being sent, now sought to decline his commission altogether. He was profuse in excuses, such as that he was unworthy of the honour which was offered him ; that he was unable to answer the Israelites if they should ask him, " Who sent you ? " that, even if he went, the people would not believe him ; and that he was not eloquent, but slow of speech and of a slow tongue. These were the pretexts which he put
44 THE GOOD WILL OF A LIFETIME
forward in order, if possible, to evade the duty that was laid upon him, but out of them all God nourished him into such strength that he went at length, and became the leader of the Exodus.
5. He was the God of Promise. — When Moses said, " Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh ? " the voice out of the bush answered, " Certainly I will be with thee." So, after Jesus had said to His followers, " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all things whatso- ever I have commanded you"; and when, perhaps, He saw on their countenances an expression of consternation at the magni- tude of the charge which He had given them, He added, " And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" — a large promise which only Deity would dare to make, and which, in its likeness to the words addressed to Moses — "Certainly I will be with thee " — indicates that it came from the same Divine source.
Not with unjoyful care
Nor with unpraiseful prayer We live below;
Assailed by pain and sin,
We yet are born to win
The holy heaven wherein No evils grow.
God of the peaceful height, Tliy word of promise bright
Spans the rough sea ; A rainbow fair to view, As broad as bright of hue, And all souls may come through
Travelling to Thee.i
ii. What the Good-will of God does for us.
Eeligion delights both in reminiscence and in anticipation. Being full of the sense of God, it finds a unity in life which no atheistic thought can discover. The identity of God's eternal being stretches under, and gives consistence to, our fragmentary lives. God's eternity makes our time coherent. And so it was * Thomas Toke Lynch,
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