dwelt in it ? The outward shape and fashioning of clay, made of the dust and returning to it, was this then Moses, and not rather the living soul, breathed into it by God, as Moses himself records ? And can the Maker put so disproportionate an estimate upon His own handiwork, as carefully to store up the casket and throw away the precious jewel which it held? Could we cherish the portrait of one beloved and leave himself to perish, when we might save him by stretching out the hand? Can this be the kindness of God to His friends? — for either He must wish to preserve the souls of His servants and want the power, or He must possess the power but want the wish; and where, in the one case, would be a God worthy of reverence, or where, in the other, a God who could attract our love?
^ When men become assured of His power, that He is the Father of spirits, and when He proves His regard for the frail and fading form, the burial of Moses might become God's way of leading reflective men out to hopeful thoughts of the spirit that had given such brightness to the now darkened face. When such questionings arose, " Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead ? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?" (Ps. Ixxxviii. 10); then a record like this might lead to the conviction, " Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints " (Ps. cxvi. 15). " Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth ; my flesh also shall rest in hope. Thou wilt shew me the path of life " (Ps. xvi. 9, 11).^
(2) Moses' sin was blotted out, and he knew it, although the earthly effect of it remained. But if compensation is to be complete it must include the removal of the earthly penalty. The perfect idea of God's forgiveness is that He should take away not merely the inward pain of sin but the outward stigma of it, and that He should make all life what it would have been without that sin, or still richer and higher for the very fall and rising. The spiritual Physician should not only heal the wound but obliterate the scar, and give " beauty instead of burning." In the case of Moses this does not at first appear. " The Lord buried him," but not in Canaan ; and He showed him the land, but did not permit him to tread it. To an ancient Jew this must for a while have seemed strange almost to harshness, — to think that the meanest in all their tribes should enter and look on it, and eat of its plenty
1 Jolm Ker.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 103
and drink of its sweet, and that he who had toiled and agonized for this lifelong end, so faithful to God and so self-sacrificing, should be excluded ! No Israelite could look round on that noble home and the rejoicing family which dwelt in it without thinking of the great leader who stumbled at the door and lay buried by the threshold. Is Canaan then all, and is the whole life of Moses shut up in wanderings through a wilderness ? Slowly but irresistibly the thought of another land must have risen, must have dawned upon the mind's eye — a land of which this earthly one was only the symbol, and which must have given Moses perfect compensation for all he lost in death. It could not be otherwise. They were attracted and compelled to it by all they knew of God and of His servant. It was God's very purpose in these events to educate them to a belief in another world, and to give them some faint conception of it — a world where the things and ties of earth are carried up to a heavenly temper and per- fection. When a prophet came in after ages with the promise, " Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty : they shall behold the land that is very far off" (Isa. xxxiii. 17), it must have been felt by many to be suitable to this death of Moses, and may have had its origin in his last look, which took in " the precious things of heaven," as well as " the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof."
(3) And to Moses himself this vision would not be wholly denied. We may well imagine as the evening deepened on the mountain-top, and the land below grew dim in mist, and Moses felt God draw nearer in the twilight, that the same thoughts entered into the soul of Moses, and his regret for not entering the land passed finally away. Nothing was left but death and God. Why should he ever have regretted that ? There, only wars, fresh cares, new pain, day after day, of weary battle would await him. Here, in death, there was another Canaan, the substance of the shadow he had pursued so long. In it there were green pastures and still waters, and the Shepherd of the soul.
^ To dying men still comes the vision of the goodly land beyond the Jordan. It is not far away — only just across the river. On fair days of vision, when some strong wind parts the veils of mist and smoke that too often dominate our spiritual