Hebrews 8:5 Who serve to the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for… As the old Tabernacle, before it was built, existed in the mind of God, so all the unborn things of life, the things which are to make the future, are already living in their perfect ideas in Him, and when the future comes, its task will be to match those Divine ideas with their material realities, to translate into the visible and tangible shapes of terrestrial life the facts which already have existence in the perfect mind. Surely in the very statement of such a thought of life there is something which ennobles and dignifies our living. A child is born into the world thus morning. Its lessons are unlearned, its tasks untried, its discoveries unmade, its loves unloved, its growth entirely ungrown, as the little newborn problem lies unsolved on this the first day of its life. Is that all? Is there nowhere in the universe any picture of what that child's life ought to be, and may he? Surely there is. If God is that child's Father, then in the Father's mind, in God's mind, there must surely be a picture of what that child with his peculiar faculties and nature may become in the completeness of his life. Years hence, when that baby of today has grown to be the man of forty, the real question of his life will be, what? Not the questions which his fellow-citizens of that remote day will be asking, What reputation has he won? What money has he earned? Not even, What learning has he gained? But, How far has he been able to translate into the visible and tangible realities of a life that idea which was in God's mind on that day in the old year when he was born? How does the tabernacle which he has built correspond with the pattern which is in the mount? All this is true not merely of a whole life as a whole, but of each single act or enterprise of life. We have not thought richly or deeply enough about any undertaking unless we have thought of it as an attempt to put into the form of action that which already has existence in the idea of God. You start upon your profession, and your professional career in its perfect conception shines already in God's sight. You set yourself down to some hard struggle with temptation, and already in the fields of God's knowledge you are walking as possible victor, clothed in white, and with the crown of victory upon your head. You build your house, and found your home. It is an attempt to realise the picture of purity, domestic peace, mutual inspiration and mutual comfort, which God sees already. The distinction between ideas and forms is one which all men need to know, which many men so often seem to miss. The idea takes shape in the form, the form expresses the idea. The form, without the idea behind it, is thin and hard. The form, continually conscious of its idea, becomes rich deep, and elastic. If all that I have said be true, then it would seem as if there ought to be in the world three kinds of men — the men of forms; the men of limited ideals, or of ideals which are not the highest; and the men of unlimited ideals, or the highest ideas, which, are the ideals of God. And three such kinds, f men there are, very distinct and easy of discovery. First, there are the men of forms, the men whom all their self-questionings about what they ought to do, and in all their judgments about what they have done, never get beyond the purely formal standards which proceed either from the necessity of their conditions or from the accepted precedents of other people. They never get into the regions of ideas at all. How many such men there are! To them the question of their business life never comes up so high as to mean, "What is the best and loftiest way in which it is possible for this business of mine to be done?" It never gets higher than to mean, "How can I best support myself by my business?" or else, "What are the ways and rules of business which are most accepted in the business world?" To such men the question of religion never becomes: "What are the intrinsic and eternal relations between the Father God and man the child?" but only, "By what religious observances can a man get into heaven?" or else, "What is the most current religion of my fellow-men?" It would be sad, indeed, to think that there is any man here to-day who has not at least sometimes in his life got a glimpse into a richer and fuller and more interesting sort of life than this. There is a second sort of man who does distinctly ask himself whether his deed is what it ought to be. He is not satisfied with asking whether it works its visible result or not, whether other men praise it or not. There is another question still, Does it conform to what he knew before he undertook it that it ought to be? If it does not, however it may seem successful, however men may praise it, the doer of the deed turns off from it in discontent. If it does, no matter how it seems to fail, no matter how men blame it, he thanks God for it and is glad. Here is a true idealism; here is a man with an unseen pattern and standard for his work. He lives a loftier, and likewise a more unquiet life. He goes his way with his vision before his eyes. "I know something of what this piece of work ought to have been," he says, "therefore I cannot be satisfied with it as it is." What is the detect of such an idealism as that? It is, that as yet the idea comes only from the man's own self. Therefore, although it lies farther back, than the mere form, it does not lie entirely at the back of everything. It is not final; it shares the incompleteness of the man from whom it springs. Therefore it is that something more is needed, and that only the third man's life is wholly satisfactory. Literally and truly he believes that the life he is to live, the act he is to do, lies now, a true reality, already existent and present, in the mind of God; and his object, his privilege, is not simply to see how he can live his life in the way which will look best or produce the most brilliant visible result, not simply to see how he can best carry out his own personal idea of what is highest and best, but how he can most truly reproduce on earth that image of this special life or action which is in the perfect mind. This is the way in which he is to make all things according to the pattern which is in the mount. What quiet independence, what healthy humility, what confident hope there must be in this man who thus goes up to God to get the pattern of his living. To-morrow morning to that man there comes a great overwhelming sorrow. What shall he do, what shall he be in this new terrible life, terrible not least because of its awful newness, which has burst upon him? Where shall he find the pal tern for his new necessity? Of course he may look about and copy the forms with which the world at large greets and denotes its sorrow, the decent dreadful conventionalities of grief. That does not satisfy him. The world acknowledges that he has borne his grief most properly, but he is not satisfied. Then behind all that, he may reason it over with himself, think out what death moans, make his philosophy, decide how a man ought to behave in the terrible shipwreck of his hopes. That is a better thing by air means than the other. But this man does something more. The pattern of his new life is not in the world. It is not in himself. It is in God. To get up, then, into God, and find that image of his grieved and sorrowing life, and then come back and shape his life after it patiently and cheerfully, that is the struggle of the Christian idealist in his sorrow, of the man who tries to make all things according to the pattern which is in the mount. Can we not see what quiet independence, what healthy humility, what confident hope there must be in that man's struggle to live out through his sorrow the new life which his sorrow has made possible? But now it is quite time for us to ask another question. Suppose that all which we have said is true; suppose that there is such a pattern of the truest life, and of each truest act of every man lying in God's mind, how shall the man know what that pattern is? Is not Christ the mountain up into which the believer goes, and in which he finds the Divine ideal of himself? As a mountain seems to be the meeting-place of earth and heaven, the place where the bending skies meet the aspiring planet, the place where the sunshine and the cloud keep closest company with the granite and the grass: so Christ is the melting-place of divinity and humanity; He is at once the condescension of divinity and the exaltation it humanity; and man wanting to know God's idea of man, any man wanting to know God's idea of him, must go up into Christ, and he will find it there. All kinds of men have found their ideals in Jesus. Entering into Him, the timid soul has seen a vision of itself all clothed in bravery, and known in an instant that to be brave and not to be cowardly was its proper life. The missionary toiling in the savage island, and thinking his whole life a failure, has gone apart some night into his hut and climbed up into Christ, and seen with perfect sureness, though with most complete amazement, that God counted his life a great success, and so has gone out once more singing to his glorious work. Martyrs on the night before their agony; reformers hesitating at their tasks; scholars wondering whether the long self-denial would be worth their while; fathers and mothers, teachers and preachers whose work had grown monotonous and wearisome, all of these going to Christ have found themselves in Him, have seen the nobleness and privilege of their hard tires, and have come out from their communion with Him to live their lives as they had seen those lives in Him, glorious with the perpetual sense of the privilege of duty, and worthy of the best and most faithful work which they could give. This, then, is the great truth of Christ. The treasury of life your life and mine, the life of every man and every woman, however different they are from one another, they are all in Him. In Him there is the perfectness of every occupation: the perfect trading, the perfect housekeeping, the perfect handicraft, the perfect school teaching, they are all in Him. To go to Him and get the perfect idea of his, and of every action of (Bp. Phillips Brooks.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. |
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