Deuteronomy 4

This book is a book of speeches. The man who delivered the speeches—three in number—said he could not speak. Aaron was chosen because he could deliver public messages and take charge of the appeals and commandments of God to mighty men. But, as in life, the first is last and the last is first. Who can quote anything that Aaron ever said? Who does not know that the whole of the Pentateuch is alive with the eloquence of Moses from the very time of his coming into it? Yet Moses said he could not speak: he was "of a slow tongue," and his lips did not move easily to music or eloquence. How God turns the counsels of men upside down! How the slow mouth might become most eloquent, could the man but accept the will of God!—making his very weakness a reason for accepting, that God might be the more magnified and honoured and glorified. When did God choose a man for his ministry without intending to qualify him for it? He does not accept the mighty man who says he is all but omnipotent. He accepts the trembling man, brokenhearted, his eyes full of tears, his tongue stammering because it cannot carry the burden of his thought and his emotion. Whom God has called to his ministry—be he a dumb man—he will qualify and he will crown. A book of speeches should have extraordinary fascination for us. There is a literature of speech as well as a literature of mechanical and exact composition. The difference is easily discernible and is often quickly felt. The world will surely never wholly dismiss its speaker. The speaker is so much nearer to us than the writer can ever be. He brings so much to his work which cannot be reported or reproduced—all the sympathy of presence, voice, tears, encouragement. The very utterance is itself an annotation; the speech is made alive by the man. Let us encourage one another in this ministry of speech—often broken, sometimes all but incoherent, yet singular in fascination because singular in sympathy and reality, not a lesson recited, but an appeal delivered; and not an effort accomplished with great outlay of strength and patience, but a new breathing of a wind from heaven. Moses appears, therefore, as a speaker in this book of Deuteronomy. His speech is solid with instruction, tremulous with appeal, grand with character. Yet Aaron was to have been the speaker. Aaron is dead,—Moses is quoted by Christ and is sung in heaven. Moses called upon Israel to "hearken" (Deuteronomy 4:1). Who can hear? Who has ever met a man, in any congregation, that could listen? What is wanted today may be described as good hearers. It is not given to man to rush away from his business, place himself down suddenly in the sanctuary, and call for revelations that he can appreciate. Men must be prepared to hear as well as prepared to preach. To "hearken" is not a mechanical exercise. The word "hearken"is charged with profound meaning; it represents the act of acute, vital, profound, fervent attention. He who "hearkens" is in an attitude of eagerness—as if he would complete the speech, anticipate it, or elicit from the speaker a broader eloquence by the gratitude and expectancy of his own attention. Would that they who say much about speaking would learn the elements of good listening!—so learned, they would be dispossessed of themselves, their ears would be purged of all noises and tumults and rival competitions, and importunity being dismissed, anxiety being suspended, and the soul set in a posture of expectation, would receive even from slow-speaking Moses statutes and precepts solemn as eternity, and rich as the thought of God. "He that hath ears to hear,"—not for noises to please,—"let him hear." Such hearing is almost equal to praying; such listening never was disappointed. Moses had such grasp of his ministry and understanding of his holy function that he was strong even within supposed limitations. It is when men have no boundaries that they are vague in intellectual conception and indefinite in religious speech. Moses should be the teacher of teachers. Moses was under the impression, which is fast being got rid of, that God has begun the ministry, has actually pointed out the starting-place, has gone further, and prepared the speech, so that man now has only to deliver it, incarnate it, represent it. It is not the word of man, but the word of God. About what other word could Moses have said—"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you"? (Deuteronomy 4:2). Certainly, this puts human genius upon a severe trial. Men, having "sought out many inventions," would like to invent a Bible. What a Bible man could invent! There should be in it no dust of the ground answering to the breath of God, no trial-tree, no tempting serpent, no tragedy; but a kind of minor heaven, a dull blue and pale light, and mechanical virtue, and regulation enjoyments,—no devil, no hell. Men are not compelled to accept the Bible ministry, but if they do accept it, they are bound by the record. Men may invent bibles, but they ought also to invent churches to preach them in, and invent the sacrifice which could bear the disappointment which always follows the criticism of disapproving Heaven. We are not forced into the pulpit, but being in the pulpit by the highest force—namely, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost—the one thing we have not to do is to invent either law or gospel. That is what is meant by limitation. The centre is given and the circumference is described, and within the circumference we have large liberty. We have no right of trespass or violation. Who can describe the moral contemptibleness of the man who invents bibles and gospels whilst he is standing on professedly Christian ground and surrounded by Christian sanctions and is enjoying the comfort of Christian recognition? What is wanted is more Bible; a fuller reading of the Bible, following a profounder understanding of the Bible. Who has exhausted all the truth of God's Word? Who can get to the end of these five loaves and a few small fishes? The feast grows with the appetite that enjoys it: the light increases upon the vision that can receive it; until, at last, the Christian student says, lifting up his eyes: I see heaven opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Add nothing, take away nothing, but give the Word opportunity of natural and proper development. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard-seed, the least of all seeds; but when it is sown and grown, how ample its branches! how hospitable its shelter! So the Book is more than a letter; it is a letter to begin with, but it must be sown, planted, watered from the clouds of heaven, shone upon by the light of the God who wrote it; and then it is not a Bible projected by the invention of man, but a revelation fully expanded, blooming with immortal summer, grand an rich with the joy of God.

But does not this require great faith? Most certainly it does; but that faith itself is sustained by vision. The law of God is confirmed by experience. It is not all faith, a merely intellectual or spiritual effort. It is marvellous how this inner action is sustained by outward facts; how God re-writes the Bible in human history and annotates it with a thousand facts day by day. So Moses said, "Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day" (Deuteronomy 4:3-4). Marvellous is this interplay of faith and fact, consciousness and experience, prayer and realisation. The world is an outside representation of many a sanctuary mystery. The book of Proverbs is not a book of apophthegms, of guesses at possibilities: every proverb is a history expressed in a proposition. The way, therefore, to read the proverbs is to select one, and say, What does human history reply to that proposition?—and a fair analysis of human nature and a fair induction of human facts will end in the confession that the proverb has anticipated in a marvellous manner, and generalised with massive eloquence, all that has been proved by human history. When the Sanhedrim laughed at Peter and John and said bitter things about them, they were merry up to the point of victory, but, "beholding the man," a sudden cloud fell upon their joy, and troubled them exceedingly; there is the man who was lame standing up, looking in the face the accusers of the Christian healers. A written miracle they could have smiled down—they had a gracious smile;—but—"beholding the man!" That is the proof to which Moses refers; that is the proof to which Christian teachers may always refer. "Beholding" the temper, the charity, the nobleness, the purity; "beholding" the miracle of the Holy Ghost, eloquence is dumb, and criticism commits suicide. But, if we have nothing to show, we may at once surrender. We must be able to refer to experience, and fact, and reality, and call up the witnesses a thousand at a time to bear testimony. All men cannot bear that testimony in logical terms or in high theological expressions: it is not given to every man to confuse the Word of God by terms which no other man can understand; but who cannot take part in the testimony which is indicated by the words, "Once I was blind, now I see"? In the last grand "Hallelujah!" there is emotion as well as argument. The great thinkers and the great teachers say, "Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth: the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ." That is argument; that is history; that is eloquence. Now some can only take part in the emotion, and they say, "Hallelujah! hallelujah!" Do they contribute to the testimony? Certainly. The testimony of God is a testimony that must have fire, emotion, soul. Great leaders, mighty sons of the morning, may speak about the kingdoms of this world having become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ—may speak statesmen's language and utter imperial sentences; but the mothers, and the broken hearts, and they who have had small chance in literary life can take part in the final testimony, saying, "Hallelujah! hallelujah! hallelujah!"—a mere declamation to those who have never been touched by the emotion, but an argument in fire to those who know the mystery of the peace and joy of God in the soul.

This grand argument of experience is sustained by the grand argument of public criticism and public recognition. Thus, we read in the sixth and seventh verses,—"Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for"? It would seem as if Moses represented the heathen nations as forming their estimate of what we now call Christian people and kingdoms. The picture is a vivid one, full of graphic suggestion. The heathen are looking on, observing the temper of so-called Christian communities and nationalities; they see there what they can see nowhere else, and, gathering up all the evidence, they say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people". We always have that great possibility in front of us. There may be those who could sneer at a nation praying in the face of imminent war. There is no need to sneer at such an act. Sneering men never did anything for the world; it is not in the power of a sneering man to help any noble cause. Impressions are made upon observing peoples by religious acts, by religious consecration, by Christian charity; and it may be—who can tell?—that even heathen nations may fear to approach in deadly hostility a nation that can truly pray. There is a wondrous power in innocence. Men have gone up to it at midnight to challenge and arrest it, and they have been struck to the ground by an arm unseen.

The appeal of Moses is the eternal appeal of the Bible:—"And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?" (Deuteronomy 4:8). That is the appeal to common sense and to common honesty. The commandments are not described as eloquent, marvellous intellectual conceptions, great advances in ethical thinking. Moses asks,—What other nation can produce a Bible so righteous? Any Bible must go down that is not righteous above all other things, how high soever the varied attributes by which any book may be characterised. What is the moral tone of the Bible? Pure, righteous, true, holy. What are the great commandments of the Book? "Love," "love,"—twice love. The first object?—"God;" the second, "Thy neighbour." This is the strength of the Bible; and we can all begin at this point to inquire into the remainder of the Book. The difficulty with many students is that they begin at the wrong point. The great duty of every reader of the Bible is to begin at any point he can. He may say, I understand the beautiful word, "Honour thy father and thy mother." Keep there: watch at that gate, for many an angel comes through it from heaven. Another reader says, Whatever there may be in the Bible which I cannot understand, I feel my whole heart going out towards the man who said, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want"—and all the music of the twenty-third Psalm. That is your Bible: stand there; blessed is that servant who is found standing by that door, for out of it the Lord comes. Men may ask bewildering questions about the archaeology and the so-called science of the Bible, and may even puzzle the uncultured reader with many a question relating to spiritual mysteries; but taken from end to end the Bible is charged with righteousness: it will have the neighbour loved as the man himself; it will have the harvest like the seed-time; it will insist upon right balances and full weights; it will have no concealed iniquities: it carries its candle of flame with fire never kindled upon earth into the secrets of the mind and the chambers of the soul and the hidden places of motive and purpose and ultimate, but unexpressed, intent The Word of God is sharp, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. It is a righteous Word. The Bible has a thousand weapons in its armoury: not the lightest, not the weakest is its magnificent morality, its heavenly righteousness, its incorruptible integrity. It shakes off the wicked man; it will have no communion with darkness; it strikes the liar on the mouth; it avoids the unholy follower. This is—let us repeat—the argument of Moses, and it is the eternal argument of Christianity.

Selected Note

The Lawgiver here stands amidst Israel, warning and consoling, commanding and exhorting, surveying and proclaiming the future with marvellous discernment. The speeches begin with the enumeration of the wonderful dealings of God with the chosen people in the early period of their existence. Moses clearly proves to them the punishment of unbelief, the obduracy of Israel, and the faithfulness of Jehovah with regard to his promises, which were now on the point of being accomplished. Fully aware of the tendencies of the people, and foreseeing their alienations, Moses conjures them most impressively to hold fast the commands of the Lord, and not to forget his revelations, lest curses should befall them instead of blessings. The Lawgiver then expatiates on the spirit of the law and its reception into the hearts of men, both in a positive and negative way. Fear, he says, is the primary effect of the law, as also its aim. As Israel had once listened to the announcement of the fundamental laws of the theocracy with a sacred fear, in like manner should man also receive, through the whole system of the law, a lively and awful impression of the holiness and majesty of God. But as the essence and sum of the law is love to Jehovah, the only and true God, man shall by the law be reminded of the divine mercy, so variously manifested in deeds; and this reflection is calculated to rouse in man's heart love for God. This love is the only and true source from which proper respect and obedience to the law can proceed.

Memory and Duty

Deuteronomy 4

In the ninth verse we have a very solemn possibility indicated. The words of Moses are:—"Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons." The solemn possibility is the possibility of forgetting God and God's providence in human life. We fail not always through sin or vulgar crime, as if with both hands we would smite the sceptre of God and the throne of righteousness: we may be far enough from any such exhibition of a rebellious kind; but what is of equal fatality as to spiritual loss and consequent exposedness to every temptation of the enemy is the possibility of forgetting all that is worth remembering. We may not have endeavoured to expunge, as by an express and malicious effort; but memory is treacherous: the faculty of recollection is otherwise than religiously employed, and before we are quite aware of what has been done, a complete wreck has been wrought in the memory of the soul. The accusation will not found itself upon the thought that we have learned a lesson and have allowed the lines to slip, but our attention will be called to the fact that we who were eye-witnesses can no longer bear testimony because of the vacuity of our minds. There will settle upon the intellectual faculties themselves, and upon the senses of the body, a stupidity amounting to sinfulness. We may have no memory for words: had we committed the lesson to an intellectual recollection we might have been excused for forgetting somewhat of its continuity and exactness; the point is that we are called to remember things which our eyes have seen. The eye is meant to be the ally of the memory. Many men can only remember through the vision; they have no memory for things abstract, but once let them see clearly an object or a writing, and they say they can hold the vision evermore. God's providence appeals to the eye; God's witnesses are eyewitnesses—not inventors, but men who can speak to transactions which have come under their immediate and personal observation: they have seen and tasted and handled of the Word of life. What a loss it is to forget the noble past! How treacherous is the memory of Ingratitude! All favours have gone for nothing; all kind words, all stimulating exhortations, all great and ennobling prayers,—forgotten in one criminal act. To empty the memory is to silence the tongue of praise; not to cherish the recollection is to lose the keenest stimulus which can be applied to the excitement and progress of the soul. On the other hand, he whose memory is rich has a song for every day; he who recollects the past in all its deliverances, in all its sudden brightnesses, in all its revelations and appearances, cannot be terrified or chased by the spirit of fear: he lives a quiet life, deep as the peace of God. Can Moses suggest any way of keeping the memory of God's providences quick and fresh? He lays down the true way of accomplishing this purpose:—"Teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons"—in other words, speak about them, dwell upon them, magnify them, be grateful for them; put down the day, the date, the punctual time, when the great deliverances occurred, and when the splendid revelations were granted; and go over the history line by line and page by page, and thus keep the recollection verdant, quick as life, bright as light. What a reproach to those Christians who are dumb! How much they lose who never speak about God! "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written... And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels." To speak of the mercies of God is to increase the power of witness at another point. We first see, then we teach. The teaching of others is not to come until there has been clear perception on our own part. The eye-witness is doubly strong in whatever testimony he may make: not only can he tell a clear story from end to end, he can sign it with both hands, he can attest it with the certainty and precision of a man who has seen the things to which he sets his signature. Our Christianity amounts to nothing if it is not a personal experience. We cannot preach Christ until we have seen Christ. To preach salvation should mean that we ourselves have been saved.

Were all days alike, then, to the ancient Israelites—a great monotony of light: for even the summer may become a burden, and men may long for cloud and pouring rain? The days were not all alike: the monotony was broken in upon. So we read in the tenth verse: "Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children." There are "special" days even in the highest experiences; there are great high-tides in the soul's emotion; there are times of transfiguration, seasons when we see things as we never saw them before, glimpses of day, shootings, first, scarcely discernible, of bright lights across the whole firmament, which may be received by the soul as pledges of a whole heaven full of glory. Such moments may be few in number, but such is their quality that they require whole pages of our life-book for their clear and explicit writing. In all life there are "special" days:—the birthday, the wedding day, the funeral day, the day when the letter came that brought a gospel of release from manifold and intolerable anxiety, the day when the epistle came from a hand which we thought would never write again. What is the day which Moses specialises? It is the day that ought to be the most memorable in every man's experience: the day when the divine Word was heard—revelation day, conversion day, salvation day,—say broadly—resurrection day. The day when the soul first became conscious of its true relation to God, and answered the appeal of heaven, ought to be the all-absorbing day; it should be as the day when the ear heard music for the first time. Can the man cured of almost total blindness forget the moment when he first saw the blue sky and the beflowered earth under his feet? No more can the soul forget the time when it first saw through the letter the meaning of the Spirit—when it first caught the music of heaven, when it first realised the meaning of life and duty and sacrifice. Whilst Moses would have nothing forgotten he would have a special remembrance made of the day when the word of the Lord was heard in the mount that "burned with fire."

A singular expression directly follows in the eleventh verse. Moses says:—"And ye came near and stood under the mountain." This is a new view of humanity. Probably the people themselves to whom Moses immediately spoke this word did not come near the mountain: most of them may have been born after the promulgation of the law from Sinai;—because, indeed, of their not having heard that law in its original promulgation these great Deuteronomic speeches were spoken by Moses: it was a repetition of the law to men who had not themselves actually heard it in the first instance; yet the people are spoken to as if they themselves in their own personality had been present, had come "near and stood under the mountain," and had felt the scorching of the fire which made that mountain unapproachable. This is the right view of human history. Human nature is one; humanity is a solid. We were at Horeb, and we heard the law. There is no recognition of such time as separates ages and races and revelations in the matter of devolving the responsibility of witness wholly upon dead men. We who now live crucified the Son of God. When the world believes that, it will rise to a new conception of its relations to the whole race and to all the ages of time. We were not born and shall not die, in any sense that shall insulate us from all the currents and significations of human history. We are the poorest of the city: we are the richest of the land; we who now live are great as kings, and are unknown as suppliants who hide themselves in darkness and speak their muffled prayers from obscurity. God "hath made of one blood all nations of men." We belong to one another. The child born yesterday was at Horeb, and will be present at the last great scene. Realise this thought, and instantaneously the true democracy is appreciated and valued—in no pedantic or narrow sense, but in the holy sense that all nations are one, that whether we be conventionally and socially high or low, rich or poor, is a matter of mere detail: we are alive with the same blood, and are hastening to the same arbitrament. There are narrow and partial and transitory senses in which men differ from one another, and are separated and classified; but sinking down to proper depths we come upon a vital line which unites and consolidates the human family.

An extraordinary caution was addressed to the Israelites by Moses in the fifteenth verse:—"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire." The people were not to make any image of God—"the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth" (Deuteronomy 4:16-18). We must not touch God in the matter of making similitudes of him at any point. It is quite true that God fills his creation, and that any pebble taken up from the sea-shore might be made a symbol of his presence; but, seeing that no object can represent him in his totality, there must be no attempt to engrave the image of the Eternal. He is without shape, without gender; he is in the beast of the earth; he is in the winged fowl that flieth in the air; he is not ashamed of any worm he ever made to wriggle in the meanest soil; he is not ashamed to hear the young lions when they cry, or to entertain the insects at his bountiful table;—they are his: every pulse is his, every drop of blood is his; but he will not be figured, represented, or monumentalised in fragments and in detail. "God is a Spirit,"—a marvellous revelation of that which cannot be revealed! We seem to have heard something, but we have heard nothing; the soul is enchanted by the music of a new expression, but not helped by the carving of a new symbol. The soul delights in the meaning, seizes the purpose of the revelation, and in repeating the holy words brings itself into a sweet rhythm and harmony with all the movement of creation, saying, again and again, as if uttering the refrain of an eternal song,—"God is a Spirit."

Why forbid the creation of a similitude? The answer is given in the sixteenth verse:—"Lest ye corrupt yourselves." The answer is also given in the nineteenth verse:—"And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven" and begin to worship sun and moon and stars, and all the hosts of light. There is a reason for the invisibleness of God. There is a reason for all the denials which God has addressed to human curiosity. Who would not know more of the future—not the mere future of time, but the great future which we have learned to know by the name "eternity"? The answer is, "lest"—and there the curtain falls. Who would not know more of the dead—the holy, sainted crowned dead? Why this eternal silence? Why not an occasional glimpse of the outline of the soul's figure? Why not an occasional note of the individual voice to assure those who are upon the earth that the loved one is uniting in the songs of light? The answer is, "lest"—meaning that it is for our good, that this denial is part of our education, that by the trial of our patience we might rise to some higher perfectness of faith. Who would not wish to have one moment's glimpse of heaven—one opening of the cloud? If we could see the green land of paradise—unblighted, unsullied, bearing upon it the light of an infinite blessing, responding to the smile of its Creator—we never could be unhappy any more. So we think; it may be but mere supposition on our part. No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly; if anything, therefore, is withheld, it is because the granting of it would interfere with the divine cultivation and perfecting of the soul. We are thus called to the rest of faith. We are educated by silence, as well as by speech. To have our liberty bounded may be to have our liberty perfected. There is an intension of spiritual life as well as an extension; in the one case, the spiritual life is deepened, enriched in every quality, ennobled in all thought; in the other case, information is widened, multiplied, and so rapidly and unexpectedly that the soul is almost affrighted out of the most solid and enduring peace. The growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ is not always ostentatious—that is to say, an appeal to vision, to sense of any kind; much may be proceeding which no observer can discern and of which the subject himself may be to some extent uncertain. We are too much inclined to go by what we can measure and totalise in augmenting figures, saying, with the tone of a statistical inquirer,—We have grown thus and so much, within a given period of time. How long shall we take that childish way of measuring our soul's progress? Let us remember for our comfort that there is a deepening process going on in silence, that providences may be so interpreted as to enter the soul with new vitalising forces, which are not yet ripe for expression; and when we open our whole being to the highest influences of heaven, and keep earnestly holding ourselves in readiness for light upon light and truth upon truth, instead of being able to measure the increments, we shall know that they have taken place in the soul, by some day, suddenly to ourselves, breaking forth into new songs, surprising the soul by a music within itself which it had not hitherto realised. Our duty is plain; our duty is simple; our duty is to keep our minds and hearts open to the inspiration of God, to read the law of the Lord, and meditate therein day and night, to gather richly of the word divine, letting it dwell in the soul like roots planted in good ground by the Husbandman of the Church. The great thing is to keep a clean heart towards God, never to invite the Most High into a complete and furnished heart, the very elegance of which involves a subtle compliment to the heart itself and a subtle patronage to the God who is invited, but to ask God to come into a broken heart, a contrite, helpless heart, a sighing, self-complaining, sin-confessing, sin-detesting heart,—then the meeting will be a glad one, because it will be founded upon right relations; there will be no mockery on the part of the man, and there will be no interception of the whole almightiness of the living and redeeming God. Let us beware of materialising the spiritual. We must have the material, because we ourselves are not wholly spiritual. The senses need to be assisted that the forces which they represent may be sanctified; but it is one thing to have the house, and another to mistake the house for the tenant: it is one thing to keep the dead body in the house for a day or two before interment, another to keep it there as if the laws of nature could be set aside and a new economy established by the utter weakness of man. We must fall under the grand ideals which are everywhere brought to our attention in the Holy Book. The ladder we see is a ladder into heaven; the opened heaven is an opportunity of seeing the Son of man; and the written Book itself is God's nearest way of bringing his hand close to our life. We do not worship the built house, or the piled altar, or the living teacher, or the sculptured monument; in so far as we have these, we use them as lenses through which to see the furthest stars, the more distant lights, the very Shekinah of heaven.

In the twenty-fifth verse we find not only the possibility, but the disastrous influence of corruption in religious thinking. "When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, to provoke him to anger: I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed." Out of what origin or fountain does this cataract of denunciation proceed? Moses sets before the children of Israel the possibility of their religion becoming irreligious, than which no greater curse can befall the human mind, or pervert the way of human progress. Wrong in your religion, you are wrong everywhere. Man is profoundly religious in senses that have not been altogether fully realised and applied. He not only worships instinctively—that is to say, turns up his eyes to the heavens to find an object greater than himself, or falls down before an object which he supposes to be greater than himself; but he is so religious that when he becomes wrong or mistaken—wilfully or unwilfully—in his religious conception, the influence is felt in every point of the circumference of his conduct. Men soon turn away from the right religious thought. It is a painful thought in some aspects; it must be so, because it imposes discipline; it educates a man by humbling him; it will accept nothing of his patronage; it will insist continually upon the doctrine that without Christ he can do nothing; that all he is and has and does that is good is really a manifestation of the Son of God within him. Other religions might give him importance, might assign him a kind of superiority, might even deign to consult him, or to accept some addition from his hands; but the religion of the Bible is as unapproachable as the sun, and yet as friendly as the light. There is always a point gleaming in the infinite heights which can never be touched: a mystery in the clouds and above the clouds; and yet there is always a beautiful blessing round about the poorest life—an hospitable, reinvigorating and hopeful light beating upon the poorest man's one-paned window, calling him to hope and energy and renewed prayer, and promising him still broader glory. It might suit our vanity to lay our hand upon the sun himself, but that is not permitted unto man; it is enough that he see the light, receive the light, walk in the light, toil in the light. His concern is not with the mysterious body out of which the light descends, but with the light itself. Jesus Christ teaches this doctrine in words characteristically his own; he says,—"If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"—in other terms,—If the religion that is in thee be wrong, if thy piety be impious, if thy prayers be profane, how profound the iniquity! how unutterable the blasphemy! How false is the supposition that religion will take care of itself in the human mind, that it will accept any course of conduct and be equally at home with the drunkard and with the pious man, with the thief and with the honest citizen; that it resides almost exclusively in the intellect, and in the imagination, and never descends into all the practical walks and relations of life! Say religion is a sensitive angel, shocked by evil conduct, affrighted by temper not sweet or gracious, turned away in great pale fear from all things unholy, unclean, undivine,—that would be a right representation. We cannot keep our prayer and our profanity in the same heart. The final choice must be made. Allow the mind a false conception of God, and what follows? Necessarily a false conception of all life, all duty, all sacrifice. Given a profound and true conception of God, and what follows? Elevation of the whole character, an ennobling of the whole circuit and range of the mind, out of which will come the testimony of good temper, beautiful feeling, responsive sympathy, eternal charity. So, rightly understood, in no narrow or pedantic sense, everything really turns upon a true theology, by which is not meant a formal science, a shaped and articulated doctrine, but a right conception of the spirituality of God, the fatherhood of God, the invisibleness and mysteriousness of God—ideas so received into the mind as to create reverence, and never to debase intellectual action into mere superstition. What becomes of those who corrupt religion and turn away from the light? Is God indifferent? Never do we find human conduct treated with divine unconcern. Our conduct seems to make a kind of other heaven for God when it is right. He loves to be with the soul when it prays, when it looks up with expectancy, when it claims, how mutely soever, its kinship with the Infinite and its association with the Eternal. "To this man will I look, to the man that is of a humble and contrite heart, and who trembleth at my word." In the heart of such a man God finds an under-heaven, a sanctuary he delights to dwell in,—a place sacred to his presence. By so much as this is true on the one side there is a completing truth on the other. Let a graven image be set up instead of the spiritual Deity, and God will wither the life of the worshipper:—"ye shall soon utterly perish." As the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, so a man cannot bear fruit except he abide in the true God, and he can only abide in the true God by a true spirit—a spirit of simplicity, trustfulness, burning sincerity, saying, in every look of his eye and every action of his hand: I would be like my Father in heaven. Let us never suppose that we can safely trifle with religious conceptions, thoughts, and disciplines; we are only safe as we are in the sanctuary; the outside seems inviting, the paths are full of flowers, the air trembles with the music of birds, and a thousand seductions endeavour to draw us forth into the open spaces and the boundless liberties, but we are soon taught that law alone is liberty, and that the sanctuary of right thinking and right conduct is alone exempt from the lightning and the tempest of judgment. No religion that is not true has ever come to anything in the world, viewed in the largest relations and in the amplest and clearest light of things. Great nations have had false religions, but what have the nations been great in?—great in number, great in contemplation, great in poetry that never embodies itself in energetic and beneficent action. Only they—account for it as you will—who love the Lord God of heaven and earth, as revealed in the Bible, are found east, west, north, south, preaching gospels, seeking to reclaim human nature, to evangelise the world, and are prepared to suffer and to die for their faith. We are not unaware of the existence of stupendous idolatries and of great nationalities associated with false altars; but judging religion by the spirit of sacrifice, by the desire to do good, by the inspiration of beneficence, by practical conduct of every kind, no religion can stand beside the religion of the Bible. God will soon cause those to pass away who displease him by graven images. Moses said in effect: You shall have enough of them, you shall be humbled amongst the heathen; you, who have begun with speciality of name and function and destiny, shall dwindle away among the heathen whither the Lord shall lead you—"And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell"—if you will have idolatry, you shall have it in fulness, yea, to repletion; yea, until the soul mocks the divinity it began to adore. The way of wrong-doing is always downwards. Wrong has no radiant stairway up into heaven, its ways downward are more than a thousand in number, and easy is the descent of the way to the pit. It is easy to go downhill. There is something in wrong-doing that suits the complex nature of man: he goes to it so easily, as if he loved it; when the iniquity is cleansed out of his hands and his countenance is purified from its more obvious stains, so cunning is he that he rolls iniquity under his tongue as a sweet morsel: but he lives a life of decay; the sentence of death is upon him; though he spread himself like a green bay tree he will pass away so that he cannot be found—yea, when men seek for him they shall obtain no intelligence of his destiny. Whom God wipes out who can find? Hence the point of the exhortation and the value of the warning. We should take heed unto ourselves and unto the written Book which we hold, so that we depart not from the simplicity of spiritual worship. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"—often in silence—golden, precious, expressive silence; the speechlessness which means that the thing cannot be spoken because of its majesty and sacredness and heavenliness. Do not trifle with religious convictions; do not play with religious institutions. Everything that is solid and useful and beneficent in life springs out of a right sound, true conception of the nature of God and the purpose of his kingdom.

In the twenty-ninth verse we have what may be described as the eternal Gospel. Hear the sweet words; say if in sweetness they do not make you forget the honey and the honeycomb:—"But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto His voice..... He will not forsake thee." We may go back to God. He will not look at our blushing shame. He will interpret the set of our countenance, saying,—Behold, they who went away have returned: their hunger shall plead with me: their necessity shall be their vindication; having come back they shall come home. What a proposal is this! Verily, human life needs it, and is the better for it. To hear that we may go home again and tell the tale of our sins, and have it interrupted by the very tears of God—whoever dreamed that dream knew as no other man ever did know the deepest necessities of the human heart. The Old Testament is full of the word "return," "come," and other terms of welcome, and hailings, as of friendly expectation and assurance of hospitality. The Old Testament would almost seem to outrun the New in its broad welcomes and assurances of divine love. Nothing can stand against the Old Testament but Christ's own words. When the Apostles come to speak of these things, they seem to speak in a sterner language than did the ancient Hebrew prophets, psalmists, and leaders, as if the Greek tongue were edged, and sharp, and poignant, and the old Hebrew music were round and redundant in the amplitude of its love, having upon it no keenness, no hidden judgment concealed in all the harmonious roll of its musical thunder. Let us enter by some door. The Old Testament speeches may touch some hearts, the New Testament invitations may touch others,—both mean the same thing; all came from the same Fountain. Jesus Christ's words are very simple—"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus Christ knew all about this departure from the Father's house, and he represented the exodus by the parable of the prodigal son, who said,—"I will arise and go to my father, and tell him I have sinned;" and he who painted the prodigal in colours so true represented God in love infinite and ineffable, interrupting the penitential speech, and thrusting heaven upon the man whilst the prayer was yet trembling on his lips. Let us return unto the Lord. "Rend your hearts, and not your garments." We have to rid ourselves of many a corrupt thought, of many a debased course of conduct, and to return to simplicity, to the child's conceptions of God and to the child's sweet way of praying. Say, is there any picture known to the human imagination so expressive and tender as a little child upon its knees, with clasped hands, and eyes searching heaven with all the expectation of unsophisticated love? Except we be converted and become as that little child we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven We must not have a theology which the people cannot understand; religion must not be one of the fine arts or the most recondite of the sciences. It must be a gospel, a piece of music, a heart-welcome, a cry outrunning the sinner, and sounding upon his ears in the wilderness, telling him of home and sacrifice, of the Cross and of forgiveness. These are words which never can be displaced by the enticing words of man's wisdom.

A wonderful pathos is given to the whole speech of Moses by the words of the thirty-first verse:—"For the Lord thy God is a merciful God." Who speaks this? A man who is about to die. This is a dying testimony. The man is old; no man of his time ever had such variety and range of experience; he is the principal man of his age;—in many respects he is the principal man who has yet risen in all the ages up to the date of his birth;—now his course is closing; he is to see the promised land from afar, but is not to cross the river; he is making a valedictory address, and this line comes into it—"The Lord thy God is a merciful God." How nobly the old man said it! How his grand voice trembled under the emotion! Moses was not a sentimentalist: Moses was a legislator, a leader, the very captain of the Lord's hosts; a man that could break the tables of stone, grind the golden calf into powder and scatter it upon the water and make offending Israel drink the water so empoisoned; and he—prince, king, mightiest man of his day—closes his course by saying, "The Lord thy God is a merciful God"—I know him; I have lived with him; I have been closeted with him in the secrecy of the mountain girded by light and by tempest; I know him; he has denied my desire to go and see the land flowing with milk and honey; all this is before me, and yet my dying testimony is—"The Lord thy God is a merciful God;" he gave the commandments, and I brought them to you; but, though Legislator, I have seen his tears; though he speaks commandments, I have been close to his heart; though one hand is judgment, yet in another is mercy; the Lord thy God is no mechanical deity, no infinite Jove, seated upon a throne of ivory, without sentient response to all the tragedy of life,—lifted high upon the circle of eternity, he "is a merciful God." Give me a man's dying testimony. We shall know the man's religion by what he says in the last extremity. When speculation can do nothing for him, when genius has blown out its flickering lamp, when the earth recedes, when time closes its dull days, when the cold river plashes suddenly against the approaching feet—tell me what the man said then, and I may touch the reality of his conviction and his hope. Blessed are they, with heaven upon heaven, who are enabled to say, when life is closing and heaven is nearing,—"The Lord our God is a merciful God."

Prayer

Almighty God, thy mercy endureth for ever. We have read of it: our fathers have told us concerning it; but, blessed be thy name, we ourselves have tasted and felt and handled the word of life. We know somewhat of its power in the soul; we know what the Holy Spirit hath done for us. Once we were blind: now we see; once this world was enough: now it is too small. We look up: we look beyond; we search the distant lines of the sky to see if any opening reveal itself to tell of further spaces. Once we knew not God, and our life was dark and very cold, without sympathy, without hope,—a great riddle without an answer; but now, having seen the Saviour with the eyes of our love, having been accepted in the Beloved, behold, all things are new, all nature is larger, written all over with messages full of holy suggestion; creation itself is an infinite altar at which we bow in holy, tender prayer. Behold, thou hast made all things new to us. If any man be in Christ Jesus, all things are new: old things have passed away; new heavens and a new earth, and a new future—these are the gifts of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; then the promise of heaven—heavenly study, heavenly service, heavenly progress. Our mind cannot follow the line of fatherly promise: we know not what it is in all its meaning; eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared, laid up in store for them that love him Truly, by the Spirit, we now see in part: we see through a glass darkly; but still thou dost hold before us the solemn truth that we have not yet begun to see or hear or comprehend as compared with our enjoyments of thy presence and thy light in the world to come. Help us to read thy Book with an understanding mind, with an acute and reverent attention; and may we hear all the tones of thy voice, and see in thy word some outline of thy shape, thine image, thy glory. Let thy mercy be extended unto us according to our need. We are the children of necessity: our life is one continual want; our eyes are unto the hills whence cometh our help. We bless thee for answered prayer and for prayer denied. We pray, and leave our prayers at the throne, sprinkled with atoning blood, made eloquent by the intercession of the Son of God; and thine answer, whatsoever it be, shall make us glad or content, or quiet us with the assurance that a denial is the most beneficent of answers. In this faith we stand; in this confidence we live—It gives us strength and light and hope evermore. Amen.