HEBREWS XI. 27 453
within as well as a world without a man, and no withdrawal from the latter will secure against encroachments on the former. "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies : these are the things which defile a man." So said He who was holy, harmless, and undefiled ; and it remains eternally true that the real seat of the evil which proves man's undoing is not in his circumstances but in himself. And that Moses did not succumb to the temptations of his Midian isolation was due to the fact that, during his long sojourn, he never wholly lost the vision of God.
^ I have learnt by experience that it is not good to be much alone, but I have not learnt not to enjoy solitude. It is a sweet cup enough, but a subtle poison lurks in its pale beaded amber transparency. It is mischievous, because in solitude the mind runs its own busy race unchecked. To have to mix with other people, to find things that interest them, to humour them, to watch their glances and gestures, is to a person like myself, who is constrained, less even by sympathy than by courtesy, to try to be agreeable, a real and wholesome discipline. I do not want to make myself out as unselfish or genial ; but it is a pain to me if any one in whose company I am is discontented or displeased, and I am consequently obliged, for my own comfort ultimately, to keep other people in a good humour. But whether it is altruism or courtesy or mere self-interest matters little. Left to itself, my mind develops a sort of mechanical current, plods along a beaten track, sets itself one way like a flag in a steady wind, and the result is a sort of stupor which is enervating and morbid. It becomes stagnant, and just as stagnant water gives a chance for all sorts of slimy, coiling, flaccid things, half-animal, half-plant, to breed and huddle in the dim warm liquid, so it is with the mind ; while the touch of life freshens and enlivens it, like a pool through which a stream flows and ripples.^
(3) The vision of God is the secret of endurance amid the temptations of active work. — The extreme diffidence with which Moses entered upon his mighty task is in singular contrast with the self-confidence which characterized him forty years before. Then he had thought that his human equipment was enough ; now he doubts his sufiiciency even with the help of the Divine. Ah, when God has a specially difficult and delicate work for any man to do. He makes him serve a long apprenticeship ; but when it is ^ A. C. Benson, Thy Rod and Thy Staff, 200.
454 SEEING THE INVISIBLE
done, it is work against which even the gates of hell cannot prevail. His pride humbled by past failure, and himself made somewhat timid by long isolation from his fellows, it was only a man who saw God, and whose magnificent faith enabled others to see Him, that could do what Moses did. What but this vision could have nerved him to withstand Pharaoh and all the might of Egypt as he did, and at last to lead the people forth into the freedom for which they had prayed and hoped so long? And what but this vision could have enabled him to bear as he did with the frequent backslidings and murmurings and petulances of the demoralized and fickle horde during their long experiences of the wilderness — experiences which were as necessary in their case as they had been in his own if they were to unlearn the evil of Egypt and become a holy nation, a peculiar people to Jehovah ? ^ In these fiercely competitive days, work and temptation are all but convertible terms. As one of our wisest teachers has said : " It is a strange thing how business dulls the sharpness of the spiritual affections. It is strange how the harass of perpetual occupation shuts out God. It is strange how much mingling with the world, politics, and those things which belong to advancing civilization — things which are very often in the way of our duty — deaden the delicate sense of right and wrong." And in this connexion it is somewhat startling to reflect that the same rule holds good in regard to work for God. Not because we are engaged in work for Him are we beyond the reach of temptation. In earnest, active service, it is true, we are as far removed from the grosser forms of it as it is possible to be in this world ; but there are temptations which assail the higher nature as well as the lower, and from these not even the most devoted Christian worker is wholly free. At Meribah Moses gave not God the glory, but spake unadvisedly with his lips ; and the temptation which over- bore his endurance there is our temptation too.^
One lesson. Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity —
Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity; Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. ^ W. H. Macfarlane, Redeiwptvae Service, 51.