(1) First of all, with regard to the very people to whom he was to become deliverer, his reward consisted in being permitted, though not to enter Canaan itself, to stand on the summit of the mountain and see the land they would so soon enter. The
»J. H. Jowett.
438 THE CHOICE OF MOSES
recompense of his toil, the reward of all his suffering, was to he permitted to know that they were not in vain, but that the people for whom he in his best hours was prepared to die were finally delivered from bondage and placed in possession of the Promised Land.
(2) But that is only a type of the deeper and more spiritual joy which fell to the lot of Moses, namely, the recompense of the reward in finding that every self-denial could be made sweet, and every cross could be converted into a crown. The greatest recompense we can have for any self-denying service is to lose the sense of the self-denial in the ecstasy of the joy and privilege of it ; to feel that though we may have to suffer, the suffering itself becomes a channel of joy to us in that we are permitted to suffer for the Master's sake. The recompense of the reward is to be so transformed and transfigured by the service we render to Christ and for humanity that we shall become like our Lord, and find our greatest joy in being permitted to bless those who need our help.
^ In Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau Browning gives a striking picture of the inadequacy of the judgments that are passed from an imperfect seizure of the facts of the case. It will serve to illustrate the inadequacy of the world's judgments of things that are outside of its province.
An artist in Eome covered all the accessories in the Laocobn group, leaving exposed only the central figure of the father, " with neither sons nor serpents to denote the purpose of his gesture." Then he stood by to hear the people's comments. What would they make of the tremendous energy of those legs and arms, and of the eyeballs starting from their sockets ? With one exception the uninitiated multitude decided that it was " a yawn of sheer fatigue subsiding to repose," and the subject of the statue must surely be "Somnolency"! Only one spectator seized upon the truth —
I think the gesture strives
Against some obstacle we cannot see !
When Moses gave up his bright prospects at the Egyptian court and set out for the wilderness, there were many that thought him mad. But they did not see all the elements of the group ; they did not see what Moses saw. They failed to take into account his devotion to his God and to his people, and his grounds for
HEBREWS XI. 24-26 430
faith in the promises that were his people's heritage. And did he not choose wisely ? As one of a line of Pharaohs he could not have failed of having his name and his fame written down on some of the clay tablets of his period, and we might have been digging them up to-day. But as the Leader of Israel and as the Schoolmaster of Christendom, his name and his fame are written in golden letters in the language of almost every people and nation and tribe under heaven.^
Beloved, yield thy time to God, for He
Will make eternity thy recompense ; Give all thy substance for His love, and be
Beatified past earth's experience. Serve Him in bonds, until He set thee free ;
Serve Him in dust, until He lift thee thence; Till death be swallowed up in victory
"When the great trumpet sounds to bid thee hence. Shall setting day win day that will not set ?
Poor price wert thou to spend thyself for Christ,
Had not His wealth thy poverty sufficed :
Yet since He makes His garden of thy clod, Water thy lily, rose, or violet,
And offer up thy sweetness unto God.^
^ J. B. Maclean, The Secret of the St/rea/m, 162. ' Christina G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 19?,
Seeing the Invisible.
Literature.
Drysdale (A. H.), Christ Invisible Our Gain, 303. Gunsaulus (F. W.), Paths to Power, 35. Henson (H. H.), Godly Union and Concord, 113. Koven (J. de), Sermons, 155, Macfarlane (W. H.), Redemptive Service, 37. Mackenzie (R.), Tlie Loom of Providence, 88. Williams (H. C), Christ the Centre, 87. Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 30.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixvii. 294 (H. H. Henson) ; Ixxi. 185 (N. H. Marshall).
44«
Seeing the Invisible.
He endured, as seeing him who is invisible.— Heb. xi. 27.
1. The reference of these striking words is to the lawgiver Moses, who has his place in the great procession of spiritual heroes by title of the faith which he exhibited when, as a young man, he chose rather to be evil entreated with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. According to the popular belief, Moses had an assured position in the court of Egypt, where he was the adopted son of the princess and the favourite of the Pharaoh. This assured position, however, depended upon his acceptance of one condition, which might have seemed easy enough to most men, but which threw into revolt the best elements of this young man's character. Would he repudiate his ancestral race and disclaim for himself any interest in its mysterious hopes? Would he consent to be an Egyptian, in order to enjoy the future which the romantic circumstances of his childhood had brought within his reach ? There was much to induce him to take this course. Scripture represents him as owing much, even his preservation from death, to the kindly interest of the Egyptian princess ; he had grown to manhood in the society of Egypt; his link with his own people was the slightest conceivable, although upon it everything depended. Moses, however, had not been so distant from his nation as not to have learned the sacred secret of its religious hope ; he had received from his mother when, as nurse, she had reared him for Pharaoh's daughter, such a training as made it impossible for him to mistake the religious meaning of the decision which in due course he had to take. That decision is expressed in the words of the text, " By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible."