The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus Part 34

"Dear lord and leader, at whose hand The first days and the last days stand,"

and again as he who

"Said, when all Time's sea was foam, 'Let there be Rome,' and there was Rome."

And Victor Hugo did not shrink from describing, and that with a strange and scandalous ignorance of the original incidents, the crucifixion by Louis Napoleon of the Christ of nations.

Now, Scripture is literature, besides being a great deal more; and, as such, it is absurd to object to all allusions to it in other literature. Yet the tendency of which these extracts are examples is not merely toward allusion, but desecration of solemn and sacred thoughts: it is the conversion of incense into perfumery.

There is another development of the same tendency, by no means modern, noted by the prophet when he complains that the message of G.o.d has become as the "very lovely song of one who hath a pleasant voice and playeth well on an instrument." Wherever divine service is only appreciated in so far as it is "well rendered," as rich music or stately enunciation charm the ear, and the surroundings are aesthetic,-wherever the gospel is heard with enjoyment only of the eloquence or controversial skill of its rendering, wherever religion is reduced by the cultivated to a thrill or to a solace, or by the Salvationist to a riot or a romp, wherever Isaiah and the Psalms are only admired as poetry, and heaven is only thought of as a languid and sentimental solace amid wearying cares,-there again is a making of the sacred balms to smell thereto.

And as often as a minister of G.o.d finds in his holy office a mere outlet for his natural gifts of rhetoric or of administration, he also is tempted to commit this crime.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] For it is incredible that, in a catalogue of furniture which included Aaron's rod and the pot of manna, this altar should be omitted, and "a golden censer," elsewhere unheard of, subst.i.tuted. The gloss is too evidently an endeavour to get rid of a difficulty. But in idea and suggestion this altar belonged to the Most Holy. That shrine "had" it, though it actually stood outside.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

_BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB._

x.x.xi. 118.

Next after this marking off so sharply of the holy from the profane, this consecration of men to special service, this protection of sacred unguents and sacred gums from secular use, we come upon a pa.s.sage curiously contrasted, yet not really antagonistic to the last, of marvellous practical wisdom, and well calculated to make a nation wise and great.

The Lord announces that He has called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and has filled him with the Spirit of G.o.d. To what sacred office, then, is he called? Simply to be a supreme craftsman, the rarest of artisans.

This also is a divine gift. "I have filled him with the Spirit of G.o.d in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of workmans.h.i.+p, to devise cunning works, to work in gold and in silver and in bra.s.s and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmans.h.i.+p,"-that is to say, of manual dexterity. With him G.o.d had appointed Aholiab; "and in the hearts of all the wise-hearted I have put wisdom." Thus should be fitly made the tabernacle and its furniture, and the finely wrought garments, and the anointing oil and the incense.

So then it appears that the Holy Spirit of G.o.d is to be recognised in the work of the carpenter and the jeweller, the apothecary and the tailor. Probably we object to such a statement, so baldly put. But inspiration does not object. Moses told the children of Israel that Jehovah had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of G.o.d, and also Aholiab, for the work "of the engraver ... and of the embroiderer ... and of the weaver" (x.x.xv. 31, 35).

It is quite clear that we must cease to think of the Divine Spirit as inspiring only prayers and hymns and sermons. All that is good and beautiful and wise in human art is the gift of G.o.d. We feel that the supreme Artist is audible in the wind among the pines; but is man left to himself when he marshals into more sublime significance the voices of the wind among the organ tubes? At sunrise and sunset we feel that

"On the beautiful mountains the pictures of G.o.d are hung";

but is there no revelation of glory and of freshness in other pictures?

Once the a.s.sertion that a great masterpiece was "inspired" was a clear recognition of the central fire at which all genius lights its lamp: now, alas! it has become little more than a sceptical a.s.sumption that Isaiah and Milton are much upon a level. But the doctrine of this pa.s.sage is the divinity of all endowment; it is quite another thing to claim Divine authority for a given product sprung from the free human being who is so richly crowned and gifted.

Thus far we have smoothed our way by speaking only of poetry, painting, music-things which really compete with nature in their spiritual suggestiveness. But Moses spoke of the robe-maker, the embroiderer, the weaver, and the perfumer.

Nevertheless, the one is carried with the other. Where shall we draw the line, for example, in architecture or in ironwork? And there is another consideration which must not be overlooked. G.o.d is a.s.suredly in the growth of humanity, in the progress of true civilisation-in all, the recognition of which makes history philosophical. It is not only the saints who feel themselves to be the instruments of a Greater than they.

Cromwell and Bismarck, Columbus, Raleigh and Drake, William the Silent and William the Third, felt it. Mr. Stanley has told us how the consciousness that he was being used grew up in him, not through fanaticism but by slow experience, groping his way through the gloom of Central Africa.

But none will deny that one of the greatest factors in modern history is its industrial development. Is there, then, no sacredness here?

The doctrine of Scripture is not that man is a tool, but that he is responsible for vast gifts, which come directly from heaven-that every good gift is from above, that it was G.o.d Himself Who planted in Paradise the tree of knowledge.

Nor would anything do more to restrain the pa.s.sions, to calm the impulses and to elevate the self-respect of modern life, to call back its energies from the base compet.i.tion for gold, and make our industries what dreamers persuade themselves that the mediaeval industries were, than a quick and general perception of what is meant when faculty goes by such names as talent, endowment, gift-of the glory of its use, the tragedy of its defilement. Many persons, indeed, reject this doctrine because they cannot believe that man has power to abase so high a thing so sadly. But what, then, do they think of the human body?

What connection is there between all this and the reiteration of the law of the Sabbath? Not merely that the moral law is now made a civic statute as well, for this had been done already (xxiii. 12). But, as our Lord has taught us that a Jew on the Sabbath was free to perform works of mercy, it might easily be supposed lawful, and even meritorious, to hasten forward the construction of the place where G.o.d would meet His people. But He who said "I will have mercy and not sacrifice" said also that to obey was better than sacrifice. Accordingly this caution closes the long story of plans and preparations. And when Moses called the people to the work, his first words were to repeat it (x.x.xv. 2).

Finally, there was given to Moses the deposit for which so n.o.ble a shrine was planned-the two tables of the law, miraculously produced.

If any one, without supposing that they were literally written with a literal finger, conceives that this was the meaning conveyed to a Hebrew by the expression "written with the finger of G.o.d," he entirely misses the Hebrew mode of thought, which habitually connects the Lord with an arm, with a chariot, with a bow made naked, with a tent and curtains, without the slightest taint of materialism in its conception. Did not the magicians, failing to imitate the third plague, say "This is the finger of a G.o.d"? Did not Jesus Himself "cast out devils by the finger of G.o.d"? (Ex. viii. 19; Luke xi. 20).

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

_THE GOLDEN CALF._

x.x.xii.

While G.o.d was thus providing for Israel, what had Israel done with G.o.d?

They had grown weary of waiting: had despaired of and slighted their heroic leader, ("this Moses, the man that brought us up,") had demanded G.o.ds, or a G.o.d, at the hand of Aaron, and had so far carried him with them or coerced him that he thought it a stroke of policy to save them from breaking the first commandment by joining them in a breach of the second, and by infecting "a feast to Jehovah" with the licentious "play"

of paganism. At the beginning, the only fitness attributed to Aaron was that "he can speak well." But the plastic and impressible temperament of a gifted speaker does not favour tenacity of will in danger. Demosthenes and Cicero, and Savonarola, the most eloquent of the reformers, ill.u.s.trate the tendency of such genius to be daunted by visible perils.

G.o.d now rejects them because the covenant is violated. As Jesus spoke no longer of "My Father's house," but "your house, left unto you desolate,"

so the Lord said to Moses, "thy people which thou broughtest up."

But what are we to think of the proposal to destroy them, and to make of Moses a great nation?

We are to learn from it the solemn reality of intercession, the power of man with G.o.d, Who says not that He will destroy them, but that He will destroy them if left alone. Who can tell, at any moment, what calamities the intercession of the Church is averting from the world or from the nation?

The first prayer of Moses is brief and intense; there is pa.s.sionate appeal, care for the Divine honour, remembrance of the saintly dead for whose sake the living might yet be spared, and absolute forgetfulness of self. Already the family of Aaron had been preferred to his, but the prospect of monopolising the Divine predestination has no charm for this faithful and patriotic heart. No sooner has the immediate destruction been arrested than he hastens to check the apostates, makes them exhibit the madness of their idolatry by drinking the water in which the dust of their pulverised G.o.d was strewn; receives the abject apology of Aaron, thoroughly spirit-broken and demoralised; and finding the sons of Levi faithful, sends them to the slaughter of three thousand men. Yet this is he who said "O Lord, why is Thy wrath hot against Thy people?" He himself felt it needful to cut deep, in mercy, and doubtless in wrath as well, for true affection is not limp and nerveless: it is like the ocean in its depth, and also in its tempests. And the stern action of the Levites appeared to him almost an omen; it was their "consecration," the beginning of their priestly service.

Again he returns to intercede; and if his prayer must fail, then his own part in life is over: let him too perish among the rest. For this is evidently what he means and says: he has not quite antic.i.p.ated the spirit of Christ in Paul willing to be anathema for his brethren (Rom.

ix. 3), nor has the idea of a vicarious human sacrifice been suggested to him by the inst.i.tutions of the sanctuary. Yet how gladly would he have died for his people, who made request that he might die among them!

How n.o.bly he foreshadows, not indeed the Christian doctrine, but the love of Christ Who died for man, Who from the Mount of Transfiguration, as Moses from Sinai, came down (while Peter would have lingered) to bear the sins of His brethren! How superior He is to the Christian hymn which p.r.o.nounces nothing worth a thought, except how to make my own election sure.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

_PREVAILING INTERCESSION._

x.x.xiii.

At this stage the first concession is announced: Moses shall lead the people to their rest, and G.o.d will send an angel with him.