What did he refuse ? Away out from the king's palace on the
plain there was a poor, downtrodden, oppressed, ill-used race, and
this man, who was akin to them and belonged to them, was afraid
lest, getting into the softness of retirement, the surroundings of
* J. Herkless, The Early Christian Martyrs, 46.
HEBREWS XL 24-26 429
leisure, the woolly softness might stop his ears, the very king's palace become as it were a palace of wool, shutting out the wail of the oppressed, causing him to be indifferent to the cry of the downtrodden. He was afraid lest, if he got into the king's palace, sab down at the feast of plenty, and had all the allurements of the king's house, in leisure, ease, retirement, he should lose touch with his fellow-men, be benumbed and paralysed by the ease which lay within his choice. He refused leisure, and he refused pleasure.
What answers to this refusal for us ? Our own conscience alone can make reply; but it may be one of many things. Perhaps there is a friendship on which we have set our heart, a friendship at war with loyalty to Christ. We must change its inner tone, or say farewell to it, if we are to choose the better part. Or it is possibly a means of gain as to which we have had gathering doubts, until now we know that unless it is renounced it will bar us out from the Kingdom of God. Or it may be some secret evil habit, sweet for the passing moment, but shameful in memory ; if we do not cut the strands, and cast it off, something tells us that it will one day drag us down headlong into the pit. And yet do not let us ward off the thrust which, it may be, tliis passage is making at our heart by pleading that " the pleasures of sin " can refer only to gross self-indulgence and taking comfort in the thought that nothing of that kind is chargeable on us. What these pleasures meant for Moses was no base sensuality — he lived above all that — but a stage for his ambition, the intoxicatin ■ draught of personal influence and power. And many a man wh ■ would scorn to stoop to coarse wrongdoing finds, often to his own intense surprise, that the pursuit of the common ideals of succes.s can rob him of eternal life quite as effectively.
This moment's thine, thou never more may'st hear The clarion-summons-call thus loud and clear; What now thou buyest cheap may yet prove dear.
Part with thine all, spare not the needed cost; That which thou partest with were better lost, Thy selfish worldly schemes more wisely crossed.
Thy loss infinitesimal, thy gain Endless, immense ; thy momentary pain The single step the boundless to attain.
430 THE CHOICE OF MOSES
These idol loves that gender loveless lust —
Weighed in the balances, whose scales are just,
With the bright hopes thou spurn 'st — are breath-borne dust!
Eye hath not seen, man's ear hath never heard, Nor heart conceived — save some faint image blurred — The bliss of those who keep the Christly word —
Let go ; my soul, let go ! ^
3. In another respect the faith of Moses is shown to be eminent in that he realized that the pleasures of sin could not last. If he enjoyed them, it could be but for a season. Now this brings before us the magic of sin. It is not easy for a man before he commits a sin to look at it from the point of view which he will adopt towards it after he has committed it. The illusion of sin is what gives it its fatal power. It casts a glamour over the eyes of the tempted, so that they cannot penetrate through the radiant appearance to the hideous and loathsome reality. It captures and inflames the imagination, muiiles the conscience, and paralyses the will ; it makes itself seem the most desirable of all things, the one beatitude needed to crown and complete the life. It is the man of faith whose vision strikes through all disguises to the truth. He is too sane to deny that the pleasures of sin are real ; but he knows, nevertheless, that they bring no permanent satisfaction — indeed, he knows quite well that sweet gratification turns quickly to bitter remorse. And Moses had just that faculty steadily to look at the sin beforehand from the standpoint of the experienced gratification, and understand that the pleasure could not last. He knew quite well that, while he could reach the goal on which his ambition was set, and the advantages and enjoyments it would procure for him would be real and substantial, his pleasure in them would always be poisoned by the thought that a higher call had come to him, and he had made the great and irretrievable refusal.
^ It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves ; and this sort of happiness often