1 J. H. Jowett.
HEBREWS XI. 24-26 433
^ There was a man called Benjamin Wangh who was enjoy- ing the delights of some secluded ministry, all the enjoyment that comes to the studious life. He heard the wail of a little child, and he left his study and his books, went out into the night, and encountered the tempest, antagonisms on every side. He only wanted to protect the ill-used child against the heavy, brutal hand of oppression, but he was opposed and antagonized, con- fronted on every hand by opposition. The police, especially the chief constables of the country, ranged themselves in opposition to him. He had to light and fight and fight ; and now to-day we have a great and popular society for the protection of ill-used little children, which must be traced to the majestic outgoing of a man who said : " I will despise ease, leisure, pleasure, treasure : I choose to be one with the ill-used children rather than to enjoy the pleasures of luxurious seclusion, even for a season." ^
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched
crust. Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be
just;_ Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands
aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls that
stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious
stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam
incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine. By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme
design.2
11.
The Power.
" By faith." — While the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says but little of the faith displayed by Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, he has much more to say concerning the faith of Moses. And this was natural. No patriotic Hebrew who looked back with
* J. H. Jowett. ^ James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis,
I THESS.-HEE. — 28
434 THE CHOICE OF MOSES
love and pride on the early history of his race could fail to accord a pre-eminent place to Moses. To him, across the intervening centuries, a grateful nation looked back as the founder of its political existence and the revealer of its law. But the author includes Moses in his list, not merely because he was too great a man to be omitted, but because his career was so singularly marked by the quality of religious insight and lofty self -renounc- ing heroism.
1. God had chosen Moses, but now the time Jiad come when Moses must choose God. We are not told how the crisis came about ; we know only the outcome, and that the power that enabled him to act was faith. Faith in his mother's God, for Jochebed must have taught her boy of Him in whom she trusted. A faith that came from calm and quiet consideration, for we are told he "looked unto the recompense of the reward"; literally " he looked beyond," or " away from that which was before his eyes." He was brought to consider his position in the light of eternity, and to make a choice as to whether he would live for the present or for future gain.
2. " Now faith is the giving substance to things hoped for, the test of things not seen " (Heb. xi. 1, E.V., margin). Faith puts to the proof the statements of God by acting upon them, and in the acting finds their substance and reality. Faith tests the unseen things, and translates them into real experience. This was strik- ingly true in the case of Moses. By faith he looked beyond the things before his eyes, he deliberately chose to refuse all the " pleasures " and " treasures " of the present, and faith tested, proved, or gave substance to his hopes. He was led step by step away from things seen, into a fellowship and communion with the unseen God, of which he had no conception when he made his choice in Egypt.
3. The faith that is the " proving of things not seen " demands direct communication with God. Souls have often been ship- wrecked here. They have rested their faith upon the written word spoken by others, rather than upon God Himself in His Word, The " faitli " that can act as Moses did must have the
HEBREWS XL 24-26 435
word of the Living God as its basis — the word of the Living God in His written Word, but by the Holy Spirit applied as His direct word to the soul. When God speaks, His commands are His enablings. By the faith wrought in us by God, and the assurance of the reward of knowing Him " face to face," we too can refuse to be of the world, and declare plainly that we seek a better country, that is, a heavenly; we too can refuse the pleasures of sin and self-pleasing, and choose the way of the cross : we too can hold lightly the " treasures " that others clasp to their breasts, and account reproach with Christ as greater riches than them all.
4. " Faith " is the key to all the treasuries of God. The gospel is practically God's statement of what is in the spiritual world. Faith is simply believing God's word, however contrary it may appear to the things of sense and sight. Faith in God's statement to us is proved by action. We act according to what is told us by God, which we believe, and must of necessity obey. Living faith involves action ; without action it may be said to be dead, for a mental assent to the truths of God will never give them substance in our lives. If we do believe God's word, we shall act according to that word.