loo THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES
centred kind; his genius had showed itself in his incredible laboriousness, and in a vitality of immense elasticity and tough- ness. But not by these things is the world changed ! And now he was to be given a new heart. He was to see and to feel ; he was to be mocked and derided ; he was to wrestle with hateful thoughts ; he was to torment himself over the evils of society _: he was to build up an elaborate scheme for its amelioration. His scheme was to fail, and not even to fail nobly ; it was to be viewed not only with indifference, but with open ridicule and contempt. Yet he was to become, without knowing it, in his humiliation and pain, more august, more pathetic, more noble, more Divine, till he was to appear in the minds of all who cared for purity and good- ness and beauty, like a seamed and scarred mountain peak, above the peaceful valleys, cold and lonely and isolated, and yet looking out across the fields of life to some awful sunrise of truth, climb- ing and glimmering over shining tracts and unknown seas.^
Although you seem to till a thankless soil,
Your prayers are never vain, nor vain your toil;
Some fruit you yet may have to cheer your heart,
In some new epoch you may bear a part ;
But ev'n if now, through your short span of years
Your work be weary, and no fruit appears, —
Though, in humility, you look within,
Deeming your failure the result of sin, —
It is not so; for still our Father knows
What each requires — on each He still bestows
The discipline most needed; still He weighs
Our work with heavenly scales; our purblind gaze
Finds failure often where He knows success.^
3. One thought remains. The desires of Moses, unfulfilled here, were fulfilled in a higher sense elsewhere. The history before us may be silent, but we cannot be silent. By looking at the death of Moses in the light of the revelation brought by Christ we can speak with confidence. Christ redeemed all life — He glorified it all — therefore we may believe that no earnest efforts of this life are ever, for the man himself, really unfulfilled. And if that does not seem to prove their actual fulfilment, we may get some light on the subject by referring to a great law that pervades all the government of God. God leaves none of
^ A. C. Benson, Ruikvn : A Stvdy in Perionality, 88. -Mackenzie Bell.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 loi
His works unfinished. In the world of nature no atom is lost, although we may not see the fulfilment of every existence because of our blindness. In the world of souls we perceive glimpses of the same law. Every act of the Spirit has an end which it completes, for every act has had its share in making us what we are. We are linked to our past. We find it out unmis- takably now and then. If that be true, do you think that the holy purposes God has inspired us with have no fulfilment somewhere and somehow within our own experience ? Can you believe that they are doomed -to perish except in the possible effect they may have on other men? Does God inspire men to work through the turmoil and the doubt — through the mystery and sorrow of life — and leave those high desires to fade, having no consummation in the blessed life of Heaven ? No ! we must believe that, though in a different way, they are fulfilled there. We must believe that the spirit is everlasting, although the out- ward actions may die. We must believe that Moses, though he might not himself accomplish the purpose of his life and lead the people into rest, yet found that the great hope which had burned through storm and darkness upon earth, was consummated in nobler service and in a grander scene when he joined the companies who sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.
^ When men die in the fulness of their powers, as Moses died, we think that there is a waste of power. So there might be, if the power of those who die were really extinguished. But that is not our belief. Our belief is that it is expanded, ennobled, set at once to work, that it can do its work better, that its energies are more developed, that the range and objects of its work are tenfold greater and more numerous than they are on earth. Waste ! when God and His work are everywhere. Waste ! when the whole universe of humanity in the other world is open to him whom we have lost on earth. Waste of power ! It is a thought impossible to the Christian man as he looks upon his dead.^
(1) The Israelites themselves would discern, if dimly, this truth. The great truths of hfe and immortality must surely have begun to stir in the hearts of thoughtful men when they knew that " the Lord buried him." Shall God, then, pay such regard to the perishable frame, and neglect the nobler part which * Stopford A. Brooke.
I02 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES