HEBREWS XI. 27 451
3. It was this truth that received such signal illustration in the career of him to whom the Lord spake face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend ; and as each of the three stages of his life called for a different manifestation of the endurance which characterized it all through, we may take these in order to show that the vision of God is the secret of endurance (1) amid the temptations of society ; (2) amid the temptations of soHtude ; and (3) amid the temptations of active work.
(1) The vision of God is the secret of endurance amid the temiotations of society. — Moses made the great renunciation of his life. For better, for worse, he chose to identify himself with the fallen fortunes of his people, and to work for their release. A mighty purpose, therefore, now fired his soul, and, amid such temptations as Egypt still presented, he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. And it is the vision of God that is the secret of endurance amid similar temptations in every age. Their form may change, but neither their number nor their power. At a thousand points, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, casually or permanently, for good or for evil, we are touched by the influences of our environment. If these are openly and aggressively hostile to good, or, as is more likely to be the case, subtly and secretly suggestive of evil, it is vain to hope that common sense, superior education, aesthetic taste, regard for the opinions of others, strength of will, or even moral grit, will under all circumstances suffice to counteract them. These may all be more or less helpful; but for the complete conquest of such temptations as society growingly presents to individual weakness and folly and the inherent love of sin, for the successful sub- jugation of the world, the flesh and the devil, there is needed the strength which is generated by the clear and constant vision of God. The youth who leaves the country to face the complex life of the city without the help of parental example and restraint, the public official or mercantile pioneer who goes to lands beyond the sea where the prevailing social standard is lower and looser than at home, every man conscious of tendencies within him which a daily crucifixion of self alone can subdue — all need the vision of God if they are to maintain their endurance and their manhood amid the manifold perplexities in which they may find themselves. For this alone has power enough to dispel all moral darkness, and
452 SEEING THE INVISIBLE
make clear the path which must be trod, if life is to be crowned with victory alike for self and for God.
^ The world is in many ways, and in mysterious ways, a strong world — a world that demands a store of gracious strength to bear up against it, or to match it. Under so fell a pressure of outward atmosphere, there is call for fulness of inward atmosphere, if yielding or collapse is to make no part of our experience. It were wise to warn ourselves that the heart of all unbelief around us is a heart of opposition to the root and branch of our Christian vitality. We shall often let this vitality suffer unless we our- selves are ready to suffer, to deny ourselves, to hold our own at the cost of pain — the best of our own, which is God's and Christ's. And we must hold up and hold on, too, amid the bristling enmities and thick-coming cajoleries with as much of superiority to weak impatience and unholy wrath, to world-like temper and smallness of spirit, as God's grace can empower us to display. Christ would have us to be magnanimous in the world's hands as Faithful in Vanity Fair was ; and for that we need, most of all, just the faith which was his. There is nothing which more impresses the unbelieving with the sublime sacredness of that which they are withstanding in us, than the firm yet patient and large-hearted endurance of all which they are pleased to lay upon us as those who claim a citizenship in heaven — an endurance which faith at once supports and sweetens. At every turn, it is still this which is " the victory " that gives us the conquest of " the world." ^
(2) The vision of God is the secret of endurance amid the temptations of solitude. — " As seeing him who is invisible," Moses fled into Midian. There for the next forty years he exchanged the temptations of wealth and high position for those of com- parative poverty and all but unbroken solitude. As he made effort to penetrate the secret of the inscrutable experience through which he had passed, there would be comfort in the reflection that, whatever else might be lacking in Midian, the artificiality of Egyptian society at least was left far behind. He was free from the incubus of false philosophy and false religion and from other abominations which his soul abhorred. But the ultimate experience of not a few has been that solitude too often belies its promise and develops temptations peculiar to itself; and there are many sad chapters in the history of uionasticism that might be cited in proof. There is a world ^ J. A. Kerr-Bain, The People of the Pilgrimage, i. 186.