reference to the intellectual powers which are not dependent for their
origin, though they may be for the health and vigour of their work,
upon any religious sentiment, but in regard to all true power. He that
would govern others must first be lord of himself, and he only is lord
of himself who is consciously and habitually the servant of God. So
that whatever natural endowment we start with, it must be heightened,
purified, deepened, enlarged, by the presence in our lives of a deep
and vital religious conviction. That is true about all men, leaders and
led, large and small. That is the bottom-heat in the greenhouse, as it
were, that will make riper and sweeter all the fruits which are the
natural result of natural capacities. That is the amulet and the charm
which will keep a man from the temptations incident to his position and
the weaknesses incident to his character. The fear of God underlies the
noblest lives. That is not to-day's theory. We are familiar with the
fact, and familiar with the doctrine formulated out of it, that there
may be men of strong and noble lives and great leaders in many a
department of human activity without any reference to the Unseen. Yes,
there may be, but they are all fragments, and the complete man comes
only when the fear of the Lord is guide, leader, impulse, polestar,
regulator, corrector, and inspirer of all that he is and all that he
does.

'Men of truth'--that, of course, glances at the crooked ways which
belong not only to Eastern statesmanship, but it does more than that.
He that is to lead men must himself be led by an eager haste to follow
after, and to apprehend, the very truth of things. And there must be in
him clear transparent willingness to render his utmost allegiance, at
any sacrifice, to the dawning convictions that may grow upon him. It is
only fools that do not change. Freshness of enthusiasm, and fidelity to
new convictions opening upon a man, to the end of his life, are not the
least important of the requirements in him who would persuade and guide
individuals or a nation.

'Hating covetousness'; or, as it might be rendered, 'unjust gain.' That
reference to the 'oiling of the palms' of Eastern judges may be taken
in a loftier signification. If a man is to stand forth as the leader of
a people, he must be clear, as old Samuel said that he was, from all
suspicion of having been following out his career for any form of
personal advantage. 'Clean hands,' and that not only from the vulgar
filth of wealth, but from the more subtle advantages which may accrue
from a lofty position, are demanded of the leader of men.

Such is the ideal. The requirements are stern and high, and they
exclude the vermin that infest 'politics,' as they are called, and
cause them to stink in many nostrils. The self-seeking schemer, the
one-eyed partisan, the cynic who disbelieves in ideals of any sort, the
charlatan who assumes virtues that he does not possess, and mouths
noble sentiments that go no deeper than his teeth, are all shut out by
them. The doctrine that a man may do in his public capacity things
which would be disgraceful in private life, and yet retain his personal
honour untarnished, is blown to atoms by this ideal. It is much to be
regretted, and in some senses to be censured, that so many of our
wisest, best, and most influential men stand apart from public life.
Much of that is due to personal bias, much more of it is due to the
pressure of more congenial duties, and not a little of it is due to the
disregard of Jethro's ideal, and to the degradation of public life
which has ensued thereby. But there have been great men in our history
whose lives have helped to lift up the ideal of a statesman, who have
made such a sketch as Jethro outlined, though they may not have used
his words, their polestar; and amongst the highest of these has been
the man whose loss we to-day lament.

Let me try to vindicate that expression of opinion in a word or two. I
cannot hope to vie in literary grace, or in completeness, with the
eulogies that have been abundantly poured out; and I should not have
thought it right to divert this hour of worship from its ordinary
themes, if I had had no more to say than has been far better said a
thousand times in these last days. But I cannot help noticing that,
though there has been a consensus of admiration of, and a practically
unanimous pointing to, character as after all the secret of the spell
which Mr. Gladstone has exercised for two generations, there has not
been, as it seems to me, equal and due prominence given to what was,
and what he himself would have said was, the real root of his character
and the productive cause of his achievements.

And so I venture now to say a word or two about the religion of the man
that to his own consciousness underlay all the rest of him. It is not
for me to speak, and there is no need to speak, about the marvellous
natural endowments and the equally marvellous, many-sided equipment of
attainment which enriched the rich, natural soil. Intermeddling as he
did with all knowledge, he must necessarily have been but an amateur in
many of the subjects into which he rushed with such generous eagerness.
But none the less is the example of all but omnivorous acquisitiveness
of everything that was to be known, a protest, very needful in these
days, against the possible evils of an excessive specialising which the
very progress of knowledge in all departments seems to make inevitable.
I do not need to speak, either, of the flow, and sometimes the torrent,
of eloquence ever at his command, nor of the lithe and sinewy force of
his extraordinarily nimble, as well as massive, mind; nor need I say
more than one word about the remarkable combination of qualities so
generally held and seen to be incompatible, which put into one
personality a genius for dry arithmetical figures and a genius for
enthusiasm and sympathy with all the oppressed. All these things have
been said far better than I can say them, and I do not repeat them.

But I desire to hammer this one conviction into your hearts and my own,
that the inmost secret of that noble life, of all that wealth of
capacity, all that load of learning, which he bore lightly like a
flower, was the fact that the man was, to the very depths of his
nature, a devout Christian. He would have been as capable, as eloquent,
and all the rest of it, if he had been an unbeliever. But he would
never have been nor done what he was and did, and he would never have
left the dint of an impressive and lofty personality upon a whole
nation and a world, if beneath the intellect there had not been
character, and beneath character Christianity.

He was far removed, in ecclesiastical connections, from us
Nonconformists, and he held opinions in regard to some very important
ecclesiastical questions which cut straight across some of our deepest
convictions. We never had to look for much favour from his hands,
because his intellectual atmosphere removed him far from sympathy with
many of the truths which are dearest to the members of the Free
Evangelical Churches. But none the less we recognise in him a brother
in Jesus Christ, and rejoice that there, on the high places of a
careless and sceptical generation, there stood a Christian man.

In this connection I cannot but, though I have no right to do so,
express how profoundly thankful I, for one, was to the present Prime
Minister of England that in his brief eulogium on, I was going to say,
his great rival, he ended all by the emphatic declaration that Mr.
Gladstone was, first and foremost, a great Christian man. Yes; and
there was the secret, as I have already said, not of his merely
political eminence, but of the universal reverence which a nation
expresses to-day. All detraction is silenced, and all calumnies have
dropped away, as filth from the white wings of a swan as it soars, and
with one voice the Empire and the world confess that he was a great and
a good man.

I need not dwell in detail on the thoughts of how, by reason of this
deep underlying fear of God, the other qualifications which are
sketched in our ideal found their realisation in him; how those who,
all through his career, smiled most at the successive enthusiasms which
monopolised his mind, and sometimes at the contrasts between these, are
now ready to admit that, whether the enthusiasms were right or wrong,
there is something noble in the spectacle of a man ever keeping his
mind, even when its windows were beginning to be dimmed by the frosts
of age, open to the beams of new truth. And the greatest, as some
people think, of his political blunders, as we are beginning, all of
us, to recognise, now that party strife is hushed, was the direct
consequence of that ever fresh and youthful enthusiasm for new thoughts
and new lines of action. Innovators aged eighty are not too numerous.

Nor need I say more than one word about the other part of the ideal,
'hating covetousness.' The giver of peerages by the bushel died a
commoner. The man that had everything at his command made no money, nor
anything else, out of his long years of office, except the satisfaction
of having been permitted to render what he believed to be the highest
of service to the nation that he loved so well. Like our whilom
neighbour, the other great commoner, John Bright, he lived among his
own people; and like Samuel, of whom I have already spoken, he could
stretch out his old hands and say, 'They are clean.' One scarcely feels
as if, to such a life, a State funeral in Westminster Abbey was
congruous. One had rather have seen him laid among the humble villagers
who were his friends and companions, and in the quiet churchyard which
his steps had so often traversed. But at all events the ideal was
realised, and we all know what it was.

Might I say one word more? As this great figure passes out of men's
sight to nobler work, be sure, on widened horizons corresponding to his
tutored and exercised powers, does he leave no lessons behind for us?
He leaves one very plain, homely one, and that is, 'Work while it is
called to-day.' No opulence of endowment tempted this man to indolence,
and no poverty of endowment will excuse us for sloth. Work is the law
of our lives; and the more highly we are gifted, the more are we bound
to serve.

He leaves us another lesson. Follow convictions as they open before
you, and never think that you have done growing, or have reached your
final stage.

He leaves another lesson. Do not suppose that the Gospel of Jesus
Christ cannot satisfy the keenest intellect, nor dominate the strongest
will. It has come to be a mark of narrowness and fossilhood to be a
devout believer in Christ and His Cross. Some of you young men make an
easy reputation for cleverness and advanced thought by the short and
simple process of disbelieving what your mother taught you. Here is a
man, probably as great as you are, with as keen an intellect, and he
clung to the Cross of Christ, and had for his favourite hymn--

  'Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
   Let me hide myself in Thee.'

He leaves another lesson. If you desire to make your characters all
that it is in them to be made, you must, like him, go to Jesus Christ,
and get your teaching and your inspiration from that great Lord. We
cannot all be great men. Never mind. It is character that tells; we can
all be good men, and we can all be Christian men. And whether we build
cottages or palaces, if we build on one foundation, and only if we do,
they will stand.

Moses leaves another lesson, as he glides into the past. 'This man,
having served his generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was
gathered to his fathers, and saw corruption'; but He 'whom God hath
raised up saw no corruption.' The lamps are quenched, the sun shines.
Moses dies, 'The prophets, do they live for ever?' but when Moses and
Elias faded from the Mount of Transfiguration 'the apostles saw no man
any more, save Jesus only,' and the voice said, 'This is My beloved
Son; hear ye Him.'

THE DECALOGUE: I--MAN AND GOD

    'And God spake all these words, saying, 2. I am the Lord
    thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of
    Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3. Thou shalt have
    no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto
    thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing
    that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth
    beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5.
    Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
    for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
    iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
    and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6. And
    shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and
    keep my commandments. 7. Thou shalt not take the name of
    the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him
    guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 8. Remember the
    sabbath-day, to keep it holy. 9. Six days shalt thou
    labour, and do all thy work: 10. But the seventh day is
    the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do
    any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
    man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor
    thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11. For in six
    days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
    that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore
    the Lord blessed the sabbath-day, and hallowed it.'
    --EXODUS xx. 1-11.

An obscure tribe of Egyptian slaves plunges into the desert to hide
from pursuit, and emerges, after forty years, with a code gathered into
'ten words,' so brief, so complete, so intertwining morality and
religion, so free from local or national peculiarities, so close
fitting to fundamental duties, that it is to-day, after more than three
thousand years, authoritative in the most enlightened peoples. The
voice that spoke from Sinai reverberates in all lands. The Old World
had other lawgivers who professed to formulate their precepts by divine
inspiration: they are all fallen silent. But this voice, like the
trumpet on that day, waxes louder and louder as the years roll. Whose
voice was it? The only answer explaining the supreme purity of the
commandments, and their immortal freshness, is found in the first
sentence of this paragraph, 'God spake all these words.'

I. We have first the revelation, which precedes and lays the foundation
for the commandments; 'I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee
out of the land of Egypt.' God speaks to the nation as a whole,
establishing a special relation between Himself and them, which is
founded on His redeeming act, and is reciprocal, requiring that they
should be His people, as He is their God. The manifestation in act of
His power and of His love precedes the claim for reverence and
obedience. This is a universal truth. God gives before He asks us to
give. He is not a hard taskmaster, 'gathering where He has not strawn.'
Even in that system which is eminently 'the law,' the foundation is a
divine act of deliverance, and only when He has won the people for
Himself by redeeming them from bondage does He call on them for
obedience. His rule is built on benefits. He urges no mere right of the
mightier, nor cares for service which is not the glad answer of
gratitude. The flashing flames which ran as swift heralds before His
descending chariot wheels, the quaking mountain, the long-drawn blasts
of the trumpet, awed the gathered crowd. But the first articulate words
made a tenderer appeal, and sought to found His right to command on His
love, and their duty to obey on their gratitude. The great gospel
principle, that the Redeemer is the lawgiver, and the redeemed are
joyful subjects because their hearts are touched with love, underlies
the apparently sterner system of the Old Testament. God opens His heart
first, and then asks for men's.

This prelude certainly confines the Decalogue to the people of Israel.
Their deliverance is the ground on which the law is rested, therefore,
plainly, the obligation can be no wider than the benefit. But though we
are not bound to obey any of the Ten Commandments, because they were
given to Israel, they are all, with one exception, demonstrably, a
transcript of laws written on the heart of mankind; and this fact
carries with it a strong presumption that the law of the Sabbath, which
is the exception referred to, should be regarded as not an exception,
but as a statute of the primeval law, witnessed to by conscience,
republished in wondrous precision and completeness in these venerable
precepts. The Ten Commandments are binding on us; but they are not
binding as part, though the fundamental part, of the Jewish law.

Two general observations may be made. One is on the negative character
of the commandments as a whole. Law prohibits because men are sinful.
But prohibitions pre-suppose as their foundation positive commands. We
are forbidden to do something because we are inclined to do it, and
because we ought to do the opposite. Every 'thou shalt not' implies a
deeper 'thou shalt.' The cold negation really rests on the converse
affirmative command.

The second remark on the law as a whole is as to the relation which it
establishes between religion and morality, making the latter a part of
the former, but regarding it as secured only by the prior discharge of
the obligations of the former. Morality is the garb of religion;
religion is the animating principle of morality. The attempts to build
up a theory of ethics without reference to our relations to God, or to
secure the practice of righteousness without such reference, or to
substitute, with a late champion of unbelief, 'the service of man' for
the worship of God, are all condemned by the deeper and simpler wisdom
of this law. Christians should learn the lesson, which the most Jewish
of the New Testament writers had drawn from it, that, 'pure and
undefiled service' of God is the service of man, and should beware of
putting asunder what God has joined so closely.

II. The first commandment bears in its negative form marks of the
condition of the world when it was spoken, and of the strong temptation
to polytheism which the Israelites were to resist. Everywhere but in
that corner among the wild rocks of Sinai, men believed in 'gods many.'
Egypt swarmed with them; and, no doubt, the purity of Abraham's faith
had been sadly tarnished in his sons. We cannot understand the strange
fascination of polytheism. It is a disease of humanity in an earlier
stage than ours. But how strong it was and is, all history shows. All
these many gods were on amicable terms with one another, and ready to
welcome newcomers. But the monotheism, which was here laid at the very
foundation of Israel's national life, parted it by a deep gulf from all
the world, and determined its history.

The prohibition has little force for us; but the positive command which
underlies it is of eternal force. We should rather think of it as a
revelation and an invitation than as a mere command. For what is it but
the declaration that at the centre of things is throned, not a rabble
of godlings, nor a stony impersonal somewhat, nor a hypothetical
unknowable entity, nor a shadowy abstraction, but a living Person, who
can say 'Me,' and whom we can call on as 'Thou,' and be sure that He
hears? No accumulation of finite excellences, however fair, can satisfy
the imagination, which feels after one Being, the personal ideal of all
perfectness. The understanding needs one ultimate Cause on which it can
rest amid the dance of fleeting phenomena; the heart cannot pour out
its love to be shared among many. No string of goodly pearls will ever
give the merchantman assurance that his quest is complete. Only when
human nature finds all in One, and that One a living Person, the Lover
and Friend of all souls, does it fold its wings and rest as a bird
after long flight.

The first commandment enjoins, or rather blesses us by showing us that
we may cherish, supreme affection, worship, trust, self-surrender,
aspiration, towards one God. After all, our God is that which we think
most precious, for which we are ready to make the greatest sacrifices,
which draws our warmest love; which, lost, would leave us desolate;
which, possessed, makes us blessed. If we search our hearts with this
'candle of the Lord,' we shall find many an idol set up in their dark
corners, and be startled to discover how much we need to bring
ourselves to be judged and condemned by this commandment It is the
foundation of all human duty. Obedience to it is the condition of peace
and blessedness, light and leading for mind, heart, will, affections,
desires, hopes, fears, and all the world within, that longs for one
living Person even when it least knows the meaning of its longings and
the reason of its unrest.

III. The second commandment forbids all representations, whether of the
one God or of false deities. The golden calf, which was a symbol of
Jehovah, is condemned equally with the fair forms that haunted the
Greek Olympus, or the half-bestial shapes of Egyptian mythology. The
reasons for the prohibition may be considered as two,--the
impossibility of setting forth the glory of the Infinite Spirit in any
form, and the certainty that the attempt will sink the worshipper
deeper in the mire of sense. An image degrades God and damages men. By
it religion reverses its nature, and becomes another clog to keep the
soul among the things seen, and an ally of all fleshly inclinations. We
know how idolatry seemed to cast a spell over the Israelites from Egypt
to Babylon, and how their first relapse into it took place almost
before the voice which 'spake all these words' had ceased.

In its grosser form, we have no temptation to it. But there are other
ways of breaking the commandment than setting up an image. All sensuous
worship in which the treacherous aid of art is called in to elevate the
soul, comes perilously near to contradicting its spirit, if not its
letter. The attempt to make of the senses a ladder for the soul to
climb to God by, is a great deal more likely to end in the soul's going
down the ladder than up it. The history of public worship in the
Christian Church teaches that the less it has to do with such slippery
help the better. There is a strong current running in England, at all
events, in the direction of bringing in a more artistic, or, as it is
called, a 'less bare,' form of service. We need to remember that the
God who is a Spirit is worshipped 'in spirit,' and that outward forms
may easily choke, and outward aids hinder, that worship.

The especial difficulty of obedience to this commandment is marked by
the reason or sanction annexed. That opens a wide field, on which it
would be folly to venture here. There is a glimpse of God's character,
and a statement of a law of His working. He is a 'jealous' God, We need
not be afraid of the word. It means nothing but what is congruous with
the loftiest conception of a loving God. It means that He allows of no
rival in our hearts' affection, or in our submission for love's sake to
Him. A half trust in God is no trust. How can worship be shared, or
love be parted out, among a pantheon? Our poor hearts ask of one
another and get from one another, wherever a man and a woman truly
love, just what God asks,--'All in all, or not at all.' His jealousy is
but infinite love seeking to be known as such, and asking for a whole
heart.

The law of His providence sounds hard, but it is nothing more than
stating in plain words the course of the world's history, which cannot
be otherwise if there is to be any bond of human society at all. We
hear a great deal in modern language about solidarity (and sometimes it
is spelled with a final 'e,' to look more philosophical) and heredity.
The teaching of this commandment is simply a statement of the same
facts, with the addition that the Lawgiver is visible behind the law.
The consequences of conduct do not die with the doers. 'The evil that
men do, lives after them.' The generations are so knit together, and
the full results of deeds are often so slow-growing, that one
generation sows and another reaps. Who sowed the seed that fruited in
misery, and was gathered in a bitter harvest of horrors and crimes in
the French Revolution? Who planted the tree under which the citizens of
the United States sit? Did not the seedling go over in the _Mayflower_?
As long as the generations of men are more closely connected than those
of sheep or birds, this solemn word must be true. Let us see that we
sow no tares to poison our children when we are in our graves. The
saying had immediate application to the consequences of idolatry in the
history of Israel, and was a forecast of their future. But it is true
evermore and everywhere.

IV. The third commandment must be so understood as to bring it into
line with the two preceding, as of equal breadth and equally
fundamental. It cannot, therefore, be confined to the use of the name
of God in oaths, whether false or trivial. No doubt, perjury and
profane swearing are included in the sweep of the prohibition; but it
reaches far beyond them. The name of God is the declaration of His
being and character. We take His name 'in vain' when we speak of Him
unworthily. Many a glib and formal prayer, many a mechanical or
self-glorifying sermon, many an erudite controversy, comes under the
lash of this prohibition. Professions of devotion far more fervid than
real, confessions in which the conscience is not stricken, orthodox
teachings with no throb of life in them, unconscious hypocrisies of
worship, and much besides, are gibbeted here. The most vain of all
words are those which have become traditional stock in trade for
religious people, which once expressed deep convictions, and are now a
world too wide for the shrunk faith which wears them.

The positive side underlying the negative is the requirement that our
speech of God shall fit our thought of God, and our thought of Him
shall fit His Name; that our words shall mirror our affections, and our
affection be a true reflection of His beauty and sweetness; that
cleansed lips shall reverently utter the Name above every name, which,
after all speech, must remain unspoken; and that we shall feel it to be
not the least wonderful or merciful of His condescensions that He 'is
extolled with our tongues.'

V. The series of commandments referring to Israel's relations with God
is distinctly progressive from the first to the fourth, which deals
with the Sabbath. The fact that it appears here, side by side with
these absolutely universal and first principles of religion and
worship, clearly shows that the giver of the code regarded it as of
equal comprehensiveness. If we believe that the giver of the code was
God, we seem shut up to the conclusion that, though the Sabbath is a
positive institution, and in so far unlike the preceding commandments,
it is to be taken as not merely a temporary or Jewish ordinance. The
ground on which it is rested here points to the same conclusion. The
version of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy bases it on the Egyptian
deliverance, but this, on the divine rest after creation. As we have
already said, we do not regard the Decalogue as binding on us because
given to Israel; but we do regard it as containing laws universally
binding, which are written by God's finger, not on tables of stone, but
on 'the fleshly tables of the heart.' All the others are admittedly of
this nature. Is not the Sabbath law likewise? It is not, indeed,
inscribed on the conscience, but is the need for it not stamped on the
physical nature? The human organism requires the seventh-day rest,
whether men toil with hand or brain. Historically, it is not true that
the Sabbath was founded by this legislation. The traces of its
observance in Genesis are few and doubtful; but we know from the
inscriptions that the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and
twenty-eighth days of the moon were set apart by the Assyrians, and
scholars can supply other instances. The 'Remember' of this commandment
can scarcely be urged as establishing this, for it may quite as
naturally be explained to mean 'Remember, as each successive seventh
day comes round, to consecrate it.' But apart from that, the law
written on body, mind, and soul says plainly to all men, 'Rest on the
seventh day.' Body and mind need repose; the soul needs quiet communion
with God. No vigorous physical, intellectual, or religious life will
long be kept up, if that need be disregarded. The week was meant to be
given to work, which is blessed and right if done after the pattern of
God's. The Sabbath was meant to lift to a share in His rest, to bring
eternity into time, to renew wasted strength 'by a wise passiveness,'
and to draw hearts dissipated by contact with fleeting tasks back into
the stillness where they can find themselves in fellowship with God.

We have not the Jewish Sabbath, nor is it binding on us. But as men we
ought to rest, and resting, to worship, on one day in the week. The
unwritten law of Christianity, moulding all outward forms by its own
free spirit, gradually, and without premeditation, slid from the
seventh to the first day, as it had clear right to do. It was the day
of Christ's resurrection, probably of His ascension, and of Pentecost.
It is 'the Lord's Day.' In observing it, we unite both the reasons for
the Sabbath given in Exodus and Deuteronomy,--the completion of a
higher creation in the resurrection rest of the Son of God, and the
deliverance from a sorer bondage by a better Moses. The Christian
Sunday and its religious observance are indispensable to the religious
life of individuals and nations. The day of rest is indispensable to
their well-being. Our hard-working millions will bitterly rue their
folly, if they are tempted to cast it away on the plea of obtaining
opportunities for intellectual culture and enjoyment. It is

  'The couch of time, care's balm and bay,'

and we shall be wise if we hold fast by it; not because the Jews were
bid to hallow the seventh day, but because we need it for repose, and
we need it for religion.

THE DECALOGUE: II.--MAN AND MAN

    'Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be
    long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
    13. Thou shalt not kill. 14. Thou shalt not commit
    adultery. 15. Thou shalt not steal. 16. Thou shalt not
    bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17. Thou
    shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not
    covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor
    his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing
    that is thy neighbour's. 18. And all the people saw the
    thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the
    trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and, when the people
    saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19. And they
    said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear:
    but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20. And Moses
    said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove
    you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye
    sin not. 21. And the people stood afar off: and Moses
    drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.'
    --EXODUS xx. 12-21.

I. The broad distinction between the two halves of the Decalogue is
that the former deals with man's relations to God, and the latter with
His relations to men. This double division is recognised in the New
Testament summary of 'all the law,' as found in two commandments, and
is probably implied in the two tables on which it was inscribed.
Commentators have been much exercised, however, about how to divide the
commandments between these two parts. The fifth, which is the first in
this division, belongs in substance to the second half, but its form
connects it with the first table. It is like the preceding ones in
having a reason appended, and in naming 'the Lord thy God'; while the
following are all bare, curt prohibitions. The fact seems to be that it
is a transition commandment, and meant to cast special sacredness round
the parental relationship, by paralleling it, in some sense, with that
to God, of which it is a reflection. Other duties to other men stand on
a different level from duties to parents. 'Honour,' which is to be
theirs, is not remote from the reverence due to God. They are, as it
were, His shadows to the child. The fatherhood of God is dimly revealed
in that parting off the commandment from the second table, and
assimilating it in form to the laws of the first.

II. The connection of the two halves of the Decalogue teaches some
important truth. Josephus said a wise thing when he remarked that,
'whereas other legislators had made religion a department of virtue,
Moses made virtue a department of religion.' No theory of morals is
built upon the deepest foundation which does not recognise the final
ground of the obligation of duty in the voice of God. Duty is
_debitum_-debt. Who is the creditor? Myself? An impersonal law?
Society? No, God. The practice of morality depends, like its theory, on
religion. In the long-run, and on the wide scale, nations and periods
which have lost the latter will not long keep the former in any vigour
or purity. He who begins by erasing the first commandment will sooner
or later make a clean sweep of all the ten. And, on the other hand,
wherever there is true worship of the one God, there all fair charities
between man and man will flourish and fruit. The two tables are one
law. Duties to God come first, and those to man, who is made in the
image of God, flow from these.

III. The order of these human duties is significant. We have, next
after the law of parental reverence, three commandments, which, in a
descending series of importance, forbid crimes against life, marriage,
and property. Then the law passes from deeds to the more subtle, and,
as men think, less grave, offences of the tongue. Next it crosses the
boundary which divides human from divine law, and crimes from sins, to
take cognisance of unspoken and unacted desires. So the order of
progress in the first table is exactly the reverse of that in the
second. There we begin with inward devotion, and travel outwards by
deed and word to the sabbatical institution; here we begin with overt
acts, and travel inwards, through words, to the hidden desire. The end
touches the beginning. For that which we 'covet' is our God; and the
first commandment is only obeyed when our hearts hunger after Him, and
not after earth. The sequence here corresponds to the order of progress
in our knowledge and practice of our human duties. The first thing that
the rudest state of society has to do is to establish some kind of
security for life and property and woman's honour. The worst men know
that much as their duty, however foul may be their lips, and hot their
passions. Then the recognition of the sanctity of the great gift of
speech, and the supreme obligations of veracity, grow upon men as they
get above the earlier stage. Most children pass through a phase when
they tell lies as pastime, and most rude societies and half-moralised
men have a similar epoch. Last of all, when actions have been bridled
and the tongue taught the law of truth, comes the full recognition that
the work is not done till the silent longing of a hungry heart is
stilled, and that unselfish love of our neighbour is only perfect when
we can rejoice in his good and wish none of it for ourselves. The
second table is a chart of moral progress.

IV. The scope of these laws has often been violently stretched so as to
include all human duty; but without tugging at them so as to make them
cover everything, we may note briefly how far they extend. We are
scarcely warranted in taking any of them but the last, as going deeper
than overt acts, for, though our Lord has taught in the Sermon on the
Mount that hatred is murder, and impure desire adultery, that is His
deepening of the commandment. But it is quite fair to bring out the
positive precept which, in each case, underlies the stern, short
prohibition.

The fifth commandment shares with the fourth the distinction of being a
positive command. It enjoins 'honour,' not 'love,' partly because, in
olden times, the father was a prince in his house in a sense that has
long since ceased to be true, partly because there was less need to
enjoin the affection which is in some degree instinctive, than the
submission and respect which the children are tempted to withhold,
partly in order to suggest the analogy with reverence to God. A strange
change has passed over the relations of parents and children, even
within a generation. There is more, perhaps, of frank familiar
intercourse, which, no doubt, is an improvement on the old style. But
there is a great deal less of what the commandment enjoins. City life,
education, the general impairing of the idea of authority, which we see
everywhere, have told upon many families; and many a father who, by
indulgence or by too much engrossment in business, lets the children
twitch the reins out of his hands, might lament, as his grown-up
children spurn control, 'If then I be a father, where is mine honour?'
There is no one of the commandments which it is more needful to preach
in England than this.

The promise attached to it has another side of threatening. It is a
plain fact that when the paternal relation is corrupted, a powerful
solvent has been introduced which rapidly tends to disintegrate
society. The most ancient empire in the world today, China, has, amid
many vices and follies, been preserved mainly by the profound reverence
to ancestors which is largely its real working religion. The most
vigorous power in the old world, Rome, owed its iron might not only to
its early simplicity of life and its iron tenacity, but to the strength
of paternal authority and the willingness of filial obedience. No more
serious damage can be inflicted on society or on individuals than the
weakening of the honour paid to fathers and mothers.

'Thou shalt not kill' forbids not only the act of murder, but all that
endangers life. It enjoins all care, diligence, and effort to preserve
it. A man who looks on while another drowns, or who sends a ship out
half manned and overloaded, breaks it as really as a red-handed
murderer. But the commandment was not intended to touch the questions
of capital punishment or of war. These were allowed under the Jewish
code, and cannot therefore be supposed to be prohibited here. How far
either is consistent with the deepest meaning of the law, as expanded
and reconsecrated in Christianity, is another question. Their defenders
have to execute some startling feats of gymnastics to harmonise either
with the New Testament.

  'Curus kind o' Christian dooty,
   This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats.'

The ground of the commandment is not given, seeing that conscience is
expected to admit its force as soon as stated. But its place at the
head of the second table brings it into connection with the first
commandment, and suggests that man's life is sacred because he is the
image of God. As Christians, we are bound to interpret it on the lines
which Christ has laid down; according to which, hatred is murder, and
love is the fulfilling of this as of all other laws. So Luther's
comprehensive summing up of the duties enjoined may be accepted:
'Patience, gentleness, kindliness, peaceableness, pity, and, of all
things, a sweet, friendly heart, without any hate, anger, bitterness,
toward any, even enemies.'

In like manner, the seventh commandment sanctifies wedded life, and is
the first step in that true reverence of woman which marked the Jewish
people through all their history, and was in such contrast to her
position in all other ancient societies. Purity in all the relations of
the sexes, the control of passion, the reverence for marriage, are
subjects difficult to speak of in public. But modern society sorely
needs some plain speaking on these subjects--abundance of bread and
idleness, facilities for divorce, the filth which newspapers lay down
on every breakfast-table, the insidious sensuality of much fiction and
art, the licence of the stage. The opportunities for secret profligacy
in great cities conspire to loosen the bonds of morality. I would
venture to ask public teachers seriously to consider their duty in this
matter, and to seek for opportunities wisely to warn budding youth of
the pitfalls in its path.

What is 'stealing'? As Luther says, 'It is the smallest part of the
thieves that are hung. If we are to hang them all, where shall we get
rope enough? We must make all our belts and straps into halters.'

Theft is the taking or keeping what is not 'mine.' But what do we mean
by 'mine'? Communists tell us that 'property is theft.' But that is the
exaggeration of the scriptural teaching that all property is trust
property, that possessions are 'mine' on conditions and for purposes,
that I cannot 'do what I will with mine own,' but am a steward, set to
dispense it to those who want. The Christian doctrine of stewardship
extends this commandment over much ground which we seldom think of as
affected by it. All sharp practice in business, the shopkeeper's false
weights and the merchant's equivalents of these, adulterations,
pirating trademarks, imitating a rival's goods, infringing patents, and
the like, however disguised by fine names, are neither more nor less
than stealing. Many a prosperous gentleman says solemnly every Sunday
of his life, 'Incline our hearts to keep this law,' who would have to
live in a much more modest fashion if his prayer were, by any
unfortunate accident, answered.

False witness is not only given in court. The sins of the tongue
against the law of love are more subtle and common than those of act.
'Come, let us enjoy ourselves, and abuse our neighbours,' is the real
meaning of many an invitation to social intercourse. If some fairy
could treat our newspapers as the Russian censors do, and erase all the
lies about the opposite side, which they report and coin, how many
blank columns there would be! If all the words of ill-natured calumny,
of uncharitable construction of their friends which people speak, could
be made inaudible, what stretches of silence would open out in much
animated talk! 'A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour
is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.'

But deed and word will not be right unless the heart be right; and the
heart will be wrong unless it be purged of the bitter black drop of
covetousness. The desire to make my neighbour's goods mine is the
parent of all breaches of neighbourly duty, even as its converse 'love'
is the fulfilling of it all; for such desire implies that I am ruled by
selfishness, and that I would willingly deprive another of goods, for
my own gratification. Such a temper, like a wild boar among vineyards,
will trample down all the rich clusters in order to slake its own
thirst. Find a man who yields to his desires after his neighbour's
goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet
in a spider's web. Be he a Napoleon, and glorified as a conqueror and
hero, or be he some poor thief in a jail, he has let his covetousness
get the upper hand, and so all wrong-doing is possible. Nor is it only
the second table which covetousness dashes to fragments. It serves the
first in the same fashion; for, as St. Paul puts it, the covetous man
'is an idolater,' and is as incapable of loving God as of loving his
neighbour. This final commandment, overleaping the boundary between
conduct and character, and carrying the light of duty into the dark
places of the heart, where deeds are fashioned, sets the whole flock of
bats and twilight-loving creatures in agitation. It does what is the
main work of the law, in compelling us to search our hearts, and in
convincing of sin. It is the converse of the thought that all the law
is contained in love; for it closes the list of sins with one which
begets them all, and points us away from actions and words which are
its children to selfish desire as in itself the transgression of all
the law, whether it be that which prescribes our relations to God or
that which enjoins our duties to man,

THE FEAST OF INGATHERING IN THE END OF THE YEAR

    'And the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy
    labours, which them hast sown In thy field: and the
    feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year,
    when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.'
    --EXODUS xxiii. 16.

The Israelites seem to have had a double beginning of the year--one in
spring, one at the close of harvest; or it may only be that here the
year is regarded from the natural point of view--a farmer's year. This
feast was at the gathering in of the fruits, which was the natural
close of the agricultural year.

This festival of ingathering was the Feast of Tabernacles. It is
remarkable that the three great sacred festivals, the Passover,
Pentecost, Tabernacles, had all a reference to agriculture, though two
of them also received a reference to national deliverances. This fact
may show that they were in existence before Moses, and that he simply
imposed a new meaning on them.

Be that as it may, I take these words now simply as a starting-point
for some thoughts naturally suggested by the period at which we stand.
We have come to the end of another year--looked for so long, passed so
swiftly, and now seeming to have so utterly departed!

I desire to recall to you and to myself the solemn real sense in which
for us too the end of the year is a 'time of ingathering' and
'harvest.' We too begin the new year with the accumulated consequences
of these past days in our 'barns and garners.'

Now, in dealing with this thought, let me put it in two or three forms.

I. Think of the past as still living in and shaping the present.

It is a mere illusion of sense that the past is gone utterly. 'Thou
carriest them away, as with a flood.' We speak of it as irrevocable,
unalterable, that dreadful past. It is solemnly true that 'ye shall no
more return that way.'

But there is a deeper truth in the converse thought that the apparently
transient is permanent, that nothing human ever dies, that the past is
present. 'The grass withereth, the flower fadeth,'--yes, but only its
petals drop, and as they fall, the fruit which they sheltered swells
and matures.

The thought of the present as the harvest from the past brings out in
vivid and picturesque form two solemn truths.

The first is the passing away of all the external, but of it only. It
has all gone where the winter's cold, the spring rains, the summer's
heats have gone. But just as these live in the fruitful results that
have accrued from them, just as the glowing sunshine of the departed
ardent summer is in the yellow, bending wheat-ear or glows in the
cluster, so, in a very solemn sense, 'that which hath been is now' in
regard to every life. The great law of continuity makes the present the
inheritor of the past. That law operates in national life, in which
national characteristics are largely precipitates, so to speak, from
national history. But it works even more energetically, and with yet
graver consequences, in our individual lives. 'The child is father of
the man.' What we are depends largely on what we have been, and what we
have been powerfully acts in determining what we shall be. Life is a
mystic chain, not a heap of unconnected links.

And there is another very solemn way in which the past lives on in each
of us. For not only is our present self the direct descendant of our
past selves, but that past still subsists in that we are responsible
for it, and shall one day have to answer for it. The writer of
Ecclesiastes followed the statement just now quoted as to the survival
of the past, with another, which is impressive in its very vagueness:
'God seeketh again that which is passed away.'

So the undying past lives in its results in ourselves, and in our being
answerable for it to God.

This metaphor is insufficient in one respect. There is not one epoch
for sowing and another for reaping, but the two processes are
simultaneous, and every moment is at once a harvest and a seed-time.

This fact masks the reality of the reaping here, but it points on to
the great harvest when God shall say, 'Gather the wheat into My barns!'

II. Notice some specific forms of this reaping and ingathering.

(1) Memory.

It is quite possible that in the future it may embrace all the life.

'Chambers of imagery.'

(2) Habits and character. Like the deposit of a flood. 'Habitus' means
clothing, and cloth is woven from single threads.

(3) Outward consequences, position, reputation, etc.

III. Make a personal reference to ourselves.

What sort of harvest are we carrying over from this year? Lay this to
heart as certain, that we enter on no new year--or new
day--empty-handed, but always 'bearing our sheaves with us.' 'Be not
deceived! God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap.'

But remember, that while this law remains, there is also the law of
forgiveness, 'Go in peace!' and there may be a new beginning, 'Sin no
more!'

'THE LOVE OF THINE ESPOUSALS'

    'And He said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou,
    and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders
    of Israel; and worship ye afar off. 2. And Moses alone
    shall come near the Lord; but they shall not come nigh,
    neither shall the people go up with him. 3. And Moses
    came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and
    all the judgments: and all the people answered with one
    voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said
    will we do. 4. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord,
    and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar
    under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the
    twelve tribes of Israel. 5. And he sent young men of the
    children of Israel, which offered burnt-offerings, and
    sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the Lord. 6. And
    Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and
    half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7. And he
    took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience
    of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said
    will we do, and be obedient. 8. And Moses took the blood,
    and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the
    blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you
    concerning all these words. 9. Then went up Moses and
    Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
    Israel; 10. And they saw the God of Israel: and there
    was under His feet as it were a pared work of a sapphire-stone,
    and as it were the body of heaven in His clearness.
    11. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid
    not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.
    12. And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to Me into the
    mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of
    stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written;
    that thou mayest teach them,'--EXODUS xxiv. 1-12.

An effort is needed to feel what a tremendous and unique fact is
narrated in these words. Next to the incarnation, it is the most
wonderful and far-reaching moment in history. It is the birthday of a
nation, which is God's son. It is the foundation stone of all
subsequent revelation. Its issues oppress that ancient people to-day,
and its promises are not yet exhausted. It is history, not legend, nor
the product of later national vanity. Whatever may come of analysing
'sources' and of discovering 'redactors,' Israel held a relation to God
all its own; and that relation was constituted thus.

I. Note the preliminaries of the covenant. The chapter begins with the
command to Moses to come up to the mount, with Aaron and other
representatives of the people. But he was already there when the
command was given, and a difficulty has been found (or, shall we say,
made) out of this. The explanation seems reasonable and plain enough,
that the long section extending from Exodus xx. 22, and containing the
fundamental laws as spoken by God, is closed by our verses 1 and 2,
which imply, in the very order to Moses to come up with his companions,
that he must first go down to bring them. God dismisses him as a king
might end an audience with his minister, by bidding him return with
attendants. The singular use of the third person in reference to Moses
in the third verse is not explained by supposing another writer; for,
whoever wrote it, it would be equally anomalous.

So he comes down from the stern cloud-encircled peak to that great
plain where the encampment lay, and all eyes watch his descent. The
people gather round him, eager and curious. He recounts 'all the
judgments,' the series of laws, which had been lodged in his mind by
God, and is answered by the many-voiced shout of too swiftly promised
obedience. Glance over the preceding chapters, and you will see how
much was covered by 'all that the Lord hath spoken.' Remember that
every lip which united in that lightly made vow drew its last breath in
the wilderness, because of disobedience, and the burst of homage
becomes a sad witness to human weakness and changefulness. The glory of
God flashed above them on the barren granite, the awful voice had
scarcely died into desert silence, nerves still tingled with
excitement, and wills were bowed before Jehovah, manifestly so near.
For a moment, the people were ennobled, and obedience seemed easy. They
little knew what they were saying in that brief spasm of devotion. It
was high-water then, but the tide soon turned, and all the ooze and
ugliness, covered now, lay bare and rotting. 'Better is it that thou
shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.' We may
take the lesson to ourselves, and see to it that emotion consolidates
into strenuous persistency, and does not die in the very excitement of
the vow.

The pledge of obedience was needed before the Covenant could be made,
and, as we shall find, was reiterated in the very centre of the
ceremonial ratification. For the present, it warranted Moses in
preparing for the morrow's ritual. His first step was to prepare a
written copy of the laws to which the people had sworn. Here we come
across an old, silenced battery from which a heavy fire used to be
directed against the historical accuracy of the Pentateuch. Alphabetic
writing was of a later date. There could not have been a written code.
The statement was a mere attempt of a later age to claim antiquity for
comparatively modern legislation. It was no more historical than
similar traditions in other countries, Sibylline books, etc. All that
is out of court now. Perhaps some other guns will be spiked in due
time, that make a great noise just at present. Then comes the erection
of a rude altar, surrounded by twelve standing stones, just as on the
east of Jordan we may yet see dolmens and menhirs. The altar represents
the divine presence; and the encircling stones, Israel gathered around
its God. The group is a memorial and a witness to the people,--and a
witness against them, if disobedient. Thus two permanent records were
prepared, the book and the monument. The one which seemed the more
lasting has perished; the more fragile has endured, and will last to
the world's end.

II. Note the rite of ratification of the covenant. The ceremonial is
complex and significant. We need not stay on the mere picture,
impressive and, to our eyes, strange as it is, but rather seek to bring
out the meaning of these smoking offerings, and that blood flung on the
altar and on the crowd. First came two sorts of sacrifices, offered not
by priests, but by selected young men, probably one for each tribe,
whose employment in sacrificial functions shows the priestly character
of the whole nation, according to the great words of Exodus xix. 6.
Burnt-offerings and peace-offerings differed mainly in the use made of
the sacrifice, which was wholly consumed by fire in the former, while
it was in part eaten by the offerer in the latter. The one symbolised
entire consecration; the other, communion with God on the basis of
sacrifice. The sin-offering does not appear here, as being of later
origin, and the product of the law, which deepened the consciousness of
transgression. But these sacrifices, at the threshold of the covenant,
receive an expiatory character by the use made of the blood, and
witness to the separation between God and man, which renders amity and
covenant friendship impossible, without a sacrifice.

They must have yielded much blood. It is divided into two parts,
corresponding to the two parties to the covenant, like the cloven
animals in Abraham's covenant. One half is 'sprinkled' on the altar,
or, as the word means, 'swung,'--which suggests a larger quantity and a
more vehement action than 'sprinkling' does. That drenching of the
altar with gore is either a piece of barbarism or a solemn symbol of
the central fact of Christianity no less than of Judaism, and a token
that the only footing on which man can be received into fellowship with
God is through the offering of a pure life, instead of the sinner,
which, accepted by God, covers or expiates sin. There can be no
question that the idea of expiation is at the very foundation of the
Old Testament ritual. It is fashionable to regard the expiatory element
of Christianity as 'Hebrew old clothes,' but the fact is the other way
about. It is not that Christianity has not been able to rid itself of a
rude and false conception, but that 'Judaism' had its sacrifices
appointed by God, in order to prepare the way for the true offering,
which takes away sin.

The expiation by blood having been thus made, the hindrances to the
nation's entering into covenant are removed. Therefore follows in
logical order the next step, their formal (alas! how purely formal it
proved to be) taking on themselves its obligations. The freshly written
'book' is produced, and read there, to the silent people, before the
bloody altar, beneath the peak of Sinai. Again the chorus of assent
from a thousand throats echoes among the rocks. They accept the
conditions. They had done so last night; but this is the actual
contract on their part, and its place in the whole order of the
ceremony is significant. It follows expiation, without which man cannot
enter into friendship with God, without the acceptance of which man
will not yield himself in obedience. The vows which God approves are
those of men whose sins are covered.

The final step was the sprinkling of the people with the blood. The
division of the blood into two portions signifies that it had an office
in regard to each party to the covenant. If it had been possible to
pour it all on the altar, and then all on the people, that would have
been done. The separation into two portions was inevitable; but in
reality it is the same blood which, sprinkled on the altar, expiates,
and on the worshipper, consecrates, cleanses, unites to God, and brings
into covenant with Him. Hence Moses accompanies the sprinkling of the
people with the explanation, 'This is the blood of the covenant, which
the Lord hath made with you, upon all these conditions' (Rev. Ver.
margin). It ratifies the compact on both sides. God 'hath made' it, in
accepting the sprinkled blood; they have made it, in being sprinkled
therewith. But while the rite sets forth the great gospel truth of
expiation, the Covenant moves within the region of law. It is made 'on
the basis of all these words,' and is voidable by disobedience. It is
the _Magna Charta_ of the nation, and its summing up is 'this do, and
thou shalt live.' Its promises are mainly of outward guardianship and
national blessings. And these are suspended by it, as they were in fact
contingent, on the national observance of the national vow. The general
idea of a covenant is that of a compact between two parties, each of
whom comes under obligations contingent on the other's discharge of
his. Theologians have raised the question whether God's covenant is of
this kind. Surely it is. His promises to Israel had an 'if,' and the
fulfilment of the conditions necessarily secured the accomplishment of
the promises. The ritual of the first covenant transcends the strictly
retributive compact which it ratified, and shadows a gospel beyond law,
even the new covenant which brings better gifts, and does not turn on
'do,' but simply on the sprinkling with the blood of Jesus. The words
of Moses were widened to carry a blessing beyond his thoughts, which
was disclosed when, in an upper chamber, a dying man said to the twelve
representatives of the true Israel, 'This is the new covenant in My
blood, drink ye all of it.' The blood which Moses sprinkled gave ritual
cleansing, but it remained outside the man. The blood of Jesus gives
true purification, and passes into our veins to become our life. The
covenant by Moses was 'do and live'; that in Christ is 'believe and
live.' Moses brought commandments, and on them his covenant was built;
Christ brings gifts, and His covenant is all promises, which are ours
on the simple condition of taking them.

III. Note the vision and feast on the basis of the covenant. The little
company that climbed the mountain, venturing within the fence,
represented the whole people. Aaron and his sons were the destined
priests. The elders were probably seventy, because that number is the
product of the two perfect numbers, and perhaps with allusion to the
seventy souls who went down into Egypt with Jacob. It is emphatically
said that they saw 'the God of Israel,' for that day's covenant had
made him so in a new closeness of relationship. In token of that new
access to and possession in Him, which was henceforth to be the
prerogative of the obedient people, some manifestation of His immediate
presence was poured on their astonished eyes. It is needless to inquire
its nature, or to ask how such a statement is consistent with the
spirituality of the divine nature, or with what this same book of
Exodus says, 'There shall no man see Me, and live.' The plain intention
is to assert that there was a visible manifestation of the divine
presence, but no attempt is made to describe it. Our eyes are stayed at
the pavement beneath His feet, which was blue as sapphire, and bright
as the cloudless sky gleaming above Sinai. It is enough to learn that
'the secret of the Lord is with them' to whom He shows 'His covenant';
that, by the power of sacrifice, a true vision of God may be ours,
which is 'in a mirror, darkly,' indeed, but yet is real and all
sufficing. Before the covenant was made, Israel had been warned to keep
afar lest He should break through on them, but now 'He laid not His
hand' upon them; for only blessing can stream from His presence now,
and His hand does not crush, but uphold.

Nor is this all which we learn of the intercourse with God which is
possible on the ground of His covenant. They 'did eat and drink.' That
may suggest that the common enjoyments of the natural life are in no
way inconsistent with the vision of God; but more probably it is meant
to teach a deeper lesson. We have remarked that the ritual of the
peace-offering included a feast on the sacrifice 'before the Lord,' by
which was signified communion with Him, as at His table, and this meal
has the same meaning. They who stand in covenant relations with God,
feed and feast on a sacrifice, and thereby hold fellowship with Him,
since He too has accepted the sacrifice which nourishes them. So that
strange banquet on Sinai taught a fact which is ever true, prophesied
the deepest joys of Christian experience, which are realised in the
soul that eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Christ, the Mediator
of the new covenant, and dimly shadowed the yet future festival, when,
cleansed and consecrated by His blood, they who have made a covenant
with Him by His sacrifice, shall be gathered unto Him in the heavenly
mount, where He makes a 'feast of fat things and wines on the lees well
refined,' and there shall sit, for ever beholding His glory, and
satisfied with the provisions of His house.

THE BREAD OF THE PRESENCE

    'Thou shalt set upon the table shew-bread before Me
    alway.'--EXODUS xxv. 30.

I suspect that to many readers the term 'shew-bread' conveys little
more meaning than if the Hebrew words had been lifted over into our
version. The original expression, literally rendered, is 'bread of the
face'; or, as the Revised Version has it in the margin, 'presence
bread,' and the meaning of that singular designation is paraphrased and
explained in my text: 'Thou shalt set upon the table, bread of the
presence before Me always.' It was bread, then, which was laid in the
presence of God. The directions with regard to it may be very briefly
stated. Every Sabbath the priests laid upon the table which stood on
one side of the Altar of Incense, in the Inner Court, two piles of
loaves, on each of which piles was placed a pan of incense. They lay
there for a week, being replaced by fresh ones on the coming Sabbath.

The Altar of Incense in the middle symbolised the thought that the
priestly life, which was the life of the nation, and is the life of the
Christian both individually and collectively, is to be centrally and
essentially a life of prayer. On one side of it stood the great golden
lamp which, in like manner, declared that the activities of the
priestly life, which was the life of Israel, and is the life of the
Christian individually and collectively, is to be, in its manward
aspect, a light for the world. On the other side of the Altar of
Incense stood this table with its loaves. What does it say about the
life of the priest, the Church, and the individual Christian? That is
the question that I wish to try to answer here; and in doing so let me
first ask you to look at the thing itself, and then to consider its
connection with the other two articles in connection with which it made
a threefold oneness.

I. Let me deal with this singular provision of the ancient ritual by
itself alone.

Bread is a product at once of God's gift and of man's work. In the
former aspect, He 'leaves not Himself without witness, in that,' in the
yearly miracle of the harvest, 'He gives us bread from Heaven, and
fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness'; in the
latter, considered as a product of man's activity, agriculture is, if
not the first, at all events in settled communities the prime, form of
human industry. The farmer and the baker begin the series of man's
industries. So that these loaves were fitly taken as representatives of
all kinds of human industry and their products, and as such were
consecrated to God. That is the broad significance of this institution,
which, as we shall have to see, links itself with the other two
conceptions of the priestly life in its Godward and in its manward
aspect. Now the first thing that is suggested, therefore, is the plain
obligation, which is also a blessed privilege, for all men who are
priests of God by faith in, and union with, the great High Priest, that
they lay all their activities as an offering before God. The loaves in
their very place on that table, right in front of the veil that parted
the Inner Court from the inmost of all, where the Shekinah shone, and
the Cherubim bowed in worship, tell us that in some sense they, too,
were an offering, and that the table was an altar. Their sacrificial
character is emphasised by the fact that upon the top of each of the
piles there was laid a pan of incense.

So, then, the whole was an offering of Israel's activities and its
results to God. And we, Christian men and women, have to make an
offering of all our active life, and all its products. That thought
opens up many considerations, one or two of which I ask leave to touch
briefly. First, then, if my active life is to be an offering to God,
that means that I am to surrender myself. And that surrender means
three things: first that in all my daily work I am to set Him before me
as my end; second, that in all my daily work I am to set Him before me
as my law; third, that in all my daily work I am to set Him before me
as my power. As for the first, whatever a man does for any motive
other, and with any end less, than God and His Glory, that act,
beautiful as it may be in other respects, loses its supreme beauty, and
falls short of perfect nobleness, just in the measure in which other
motives, or other ends, than this supreme one, are permitted to
dominate it. I do not contend for such an impossible suppression of
myself as that my own blessedness and the like shall be in no manner my
end, but I do maintain this, that in good old language, 'Man's chief
end is to glorify God,' and that anything which I do, unless it is
motived by this regard to Him as its 'chief end,' loses its noblest
consecration, and is degraded from its loftiest beauty. The Altar
sanctifies, and not only sanctifies but ennobles, the gift. That which
has in it the taint of self-regard so pronouncedly and dominantly as
that God is shut out, is like some vegetation down in low levels at the
bottom of a vale, which never has the sun to shine upon it. But let it
rise as some tree above the brushwood until its topmost branches are in
the light, and then it is glorified. To live to self is ignoble and
mean; to live for others is higher and nobler. But highest and noblest
of all is to offer the loaves to God, and to make Him the end of all
our activities.

Again, there is another consideration, bearing on another region in
which the assertive self is only too apt to spoil all work. And that
is, that if our activities are offerings to God, this means that His
supreme Will is to be our law, and that we obey His commands and accept
His appointments in quiet submission. The tranquillity of heart, the
accumulation of power, which come to men when they, from the depths,
say, 'Not my will but Thine be done'; 'Speak, Lord! for Thy servant
heareth,' cannot be too highly stated. There is no such charm to make
life quiet and strong as the submission of the will to God's
providences, and the swift obedience of the will to God's commandments.
And whilst to make self my end mars what else is beautiful, making self
my law mars it even more.

Further, we offer our activities to God when we fall back upon Him as
our one power, and say, 'Perfect Thy strength in my weakness.' He that
goes out into the world to do his daily work, of whatsoever sort it
is--you in your little sphere, or I in mine--in dependence upon
himself, is sure to be defeated. He that says 'we have no strength
against this great multitude that cometh against us, but our eyes are
unto Thee,' will, sooner or later, be able to go back with joy, and
say, 'the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.' The
man that goes into the fight like that foolish prime minister of France
under the Empire, 'with a light heart.' will very soon find his Sedan,
and have shamefully to surrender. Brethren, these three things, making
God the end of my work; making God's will the law of my work; making
God's strength the power of my work; these are the ways by which we,
too, can bring our little pile of barley bread, and lay it upon that
table.

Again, this consecration of life's activities is to be carried out by
treating their products, as well as themselves, as offerings to God.
The loaves were the results of human activity. They were also the
products of divine gifts elaborated by human effort. And both things
are true about all the bread that you and I have been able to make for
the satisfaction of our desires, or the sustenance of our strength--it
comes ultimately from the gift of God. In regard to this consecration
of the product of our activities, as well as of our activities
themselves, I have but two words to offer, and the one is, let us see
to it that we consecrate our enjoyment of God's gifts by bringing that
enjoyment, as well as the activities which He has blessed to produce
it, into His presence. That table bore the symbols of the grateful
recognition of God's mercies by the people. And when our hearts are
glad, and our 'bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne,' we have
special need to take care that our joy be not godless, nor our
enjoyment of His gifts be without reference to Himself. 'Ah,' you say,
'that is a threadbare commonplace.' Yes, it is, dear friends; it is a
commonplace just because it is needful at every turn, if we are to make
our lives what they ought to be.

May I say another thing? and that is, that the loaves that were laid
within the Sanctuary were not intended to be separated from the others
that were eaten in the tents, nor were they meant to be a kind of
purchasing of an indulgence, or of a right, by surrendering a little,
to the godless and selfish enjoyment of the rest of the batch, or of
the rest of the harvest. Let us apply that to our money, which is one
of the products of our activities; and not fancy, as a great many
people do, that what we give as a subscription to some benevolent or
religious institution buys for us the right to spend all the rest
selfishly. That is another commonplace, very threadbare and very
feeble, when we speak it, but with claws and teeth in it that will lay
hold of us, when we try to put it in practice. The enjoyments and the
products of our daily activities are to be offered to God.

Still further, this table with its burden has suggestions that as
Christians we are bound to bring all our work to Him for His judgment
upon it. The loaves were laid right in front of the veil, behind which
blazed the light of His presence. And that meant that they were laid
before 'those pure eyes and perfect judgment of all-judging' God.
Whether we bring our activities there or no, of course in a very real
and solemn sense they are there. But what I desire to insist upon now
is how important, for the nobleness and purity of our daily lives, it
is that we should be in the continual habit of realising to ourselves
the thought that whatever we do, we do before His Face. The Roman
Catholics talk about 'the practice of the presence of God.' One does
not like the phrase, but all true religion will practise what is meant
by it. And for us it should be as joyous to think, 'Thou God seest me,'
as it is for a child to play or work with a quiet heart, because it
knows that its mother is sitting somewhere not very far off and
watching that no harm comes to it. That thought of being in His
presence would be for us a tonic, and a test. How it would pull us up
in many a meanness, and keep our feet from wandering into many
forbidden ways, if there came like a blaze of light into our hearts the
thought: 'Thou God seest me!' There are many of our activities, I am
afraid, which we should not like to put down on that table. Can _you_
think of any in _your_ lives that you would be rather ashamed to lay
there, and say to Him, 'Judge Thou this'? Then do not do it. That is a
brief, but a very stringent, easily applied, and satisfactory test of a
great many doubtful things. If you cannot take them into the Inner
Court, and lay them down there, and say, 'Look, Lord! this is my
baking,' be sure that they are made, not of wholesome flour, but of
poisoned grain, and that there is death in them.

Further, this table, with its homely burden of twelve poor loaves, may
suggest to us how the simplest, smallest, most secular of our
activities is a fit offering to Him. The loaves were not out of place
amidst the sanctities of the spot, nor did they seem to be incongruous
with the golden altar and the golden lamp-stand, and yet they were but
twelve loaves. The poorest of our works is fit to be carried within the
shrine, and laid upon His altar. We may be sure that He delights even
in the meanest and humblest of them, if only we take them to Him and
say: 'All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.'
Ah! there are a great many strange things in Christ's treasury. Mothers
will hoard up trifles that belonged to their children, which everybody
else thinks worthless. Jesus Christ has in His storehouse a 'cup of
cold water,' the widows' mites, and many another thing that the world
counts of no value, and He recognises as precious. There is an old
story about some great emperor making a progress through his dominions,
where he had been receiving precious gifts from cities and nobles, and
as the gay cortège was passing a poor cottage, the peasant-owner came
out with a coarse earthenware cup filled with spring water in his hand,
and offered it to his overlord as the only gift that he could give. The
king accepted it, and ennobled him on the spot. Take your barley loaves
to Christ, and He will lay them up in His storehouse.

II. Now I need only say a word or two about the other aspect of this
table of shew-bread, taken with the other two articles in conjunction
with which it formed a unity.

The lamp and the table go together. They are both offshoots from the
altar in the middle. That is to say, your lives will not shine before
men unless your activities are offered to God. The smallest taint of
making self your end, your law, or your strength, mingling with your
lives, and manifest in their actions, will dim the light which shines
from them, and men will be very quick to find out and say, 'He calls
himself a Christian; but he lives for himself.' Neither the light,
which is the radiance of a Christian life manwards, can be sustained
without the offering of the life in its depths to God, nor can the
activities of the life be acceptably offered to Him, unless the man
that offers them 'lets his light shine before men.' The lamp and the
table must go together.

The lamp and the table must together be offshoots from the altar. If
there be not in the centre of the life aspiration after Him in the
depths of the heart, communion with Him in the silent places of the
soul, then there will be little brightness in the life to ray out
amongst men, and there will be little consecration of the activities to
be laid before God. The reason why the manifold bustle and busy-ness of
the Christian Church today sows so much and reaps so little, lies
mainly here, that they have forgotten to a large extent how the altar
in the centre must give the oil for the lamp to shine, and the grain to
be made into the loaves. And, on the other hand, the altar in the
middle needs both its flanking accompaniments. For the Christian life
is to be no life of cloistered devotion and heavenward aspiration only
or mainly, but is to manifest its still devotion and its heavenward
aspiration by the consecration of its activities to God, and the raying
of them out into a darkened world. The service of man is the service of
God, for lamp and table are offshoots of the altar. But the service of
God is the basis of the best service of man, for the altar stands
between the lamp and the table.

So, brethren, let us blend these three aspects into a unity, the Altar,
the Lamp, the Table, and so shall we minister aright, and men will call
us the 'priests of the Most High God,' till we pass within the veil
where, better than the best of us here can do, we shall be able to
unite still communion and active service, and shine as the sun in the
Kingdom of our Father. 'His servants shall serve Him' with priestly
ministrations, 'and shall see His face, and His name shall be in their
foreheads.'

THE GOLDEN LAMPSTAND

    'Thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold....'
    --EXODUS xxv. 31.

If we could have followed the Jewish priest as he passed in his daily
ministrations into the Inner Court, we should have seen that he first
piled the incense on the altar which stood in its centre, and then
turned to trim the lamps of the golden candlestick which flanked it on
one side. Of course it was not a candlestick, as our versions
misleadingly render the word. That was an article of furniture unknown
in those days. It was a lampstand; from a central upright stem branched
off on either side three arms decorated with what the Book calls
'beaten work,' and what we in modern jewellers' technicality call
_répoussé_ work, each of which bore on its top, like a flower on its
stalk, a shallow cup filled with oil, in which a wick floated. There
were thus seven lamps in all, including that on the central stem. The
material was costly, the work adorning it was artistic, the oil with
which it was fed was carefully prepared, the number of its lamps
expressed perfection, it was daily trimmed by the priest, and there,
all through the night, it burned, the one spot of light in a dark
desert.

Now, this Inner Court of the Tabernacle or Temple was intended, with
its furniture, to be symbolical of the life of Israel, the priestly
nation. The Altar of Incense, which was the main article of
ecclesiastical equipment there, and stood in the central place,
represented the life of Israel in its Godward aspect, as being a life
of continual devotion. The Candlestick on the one hand, and the Table
of Shew-bread on the other, were likewise symbolical of other aspects
of that same life. I have to deal now with the meaning and lessons of
this golden lampstand, and it teaches us--

I. The office manwards of the Church and of the individual Christian.

Let me just for a moment recall the various instances in which this
symbol reappears in Scripture. We have, in the vision of the prophet
who sustained and animated the spirits of Israel in their Restoration,
the repetition of the emblem, in the great golden candlestick which
Zechariah saw, fed by two 'olive trees,' one on either side of it; and
in the last book of Scripture we have that most significant and lovely
variation of it, the reappearance, not of the _one_ golden candlestick
or lampstand, but of _seven_. The formal unity is at an end, but the
seven constitute a better, more vital unity, because Christ is in the
midst. We may learn the lesson that the Christian conception of the
oneness of the Church towers above the Jewish conception of the oneness
of Israel by all the difference that there is between a mere
mechanical, external unity, and a vital oneness--because all are
partakers of the one Christ. I may recall, also, how our Lord, in that
great programme of the Kingdom which Matthew has gathered together in
what we call 'the Sermon on the Mount,' immediately after the
Beatitudes, goes on to speak of the office of His people under the two
metaphors of 'the salt of the earth' and 'the light of the world,' and
immediately connects with the latter of the two a reference to a lamp
lit and set upon its stand; and clinches the whole by the exhortation,
'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.'

A remarkable and beautiful variation of that exhortation is found in
one of the Apostolic writings when Paul, instead of saying, 'Ye are the
light of the world,' says, 'Shine as lights in the world,' and so gives
us the individual, as well as the collective and ecclesiastical, aspect
of these great functions. That is a hint that is very much needed.
Christian people are quite willing to admit that the Church, the
abstraction, the generalisation, is 'the light of the world.' But they
are wofully apt to slip their own necks out from under the yoke of the
obligation, and to forget that the collective light is only the product
of the millions of individual lights rushing together--just as in some
gas-lights you have a whole series of minute punctures, each of which
gives out its own little jet of radiance, and all run together into one
brilliant circle. So do not let us escape the personal pressure of this
office, or lay it all on the broad shoulders of that generalised
abstraction 'the Church.' But, since the collective light is but the
product of the individual small shinings, let us take the two lessons:
first, contribute our part to the general lustre; second, be content
with having our part lost in the general light.

But now let me turn for a little while to the more specific meaning of
this symbol. The life which, by the central position of the Altar of
Incense, was symbolised as being centrally, essentially in its depths
and primarily, a life of habitual devotion and communion with God, in
its manward aspect is a life that shines 'to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' That is the
solemn obligation, the ideal function, of the Christian Church and of
each individual who professes to belong to it. Now, if you recur to our
Lord's own application of this metaphor, to which I have already
referred, you will see that the first and foremost way by which
Christian communities and individuals discharge this function is by
conduct. 'Let your light so shine before men'--that they may hear your
eloquent proclamation of the Gospel? No! 'Let your light so shine
before men'--that you may convince the gainsayers by argument, or move
the hard-hearted by appeals and exhortations; that you may preach and
talk? No! 'That _they may see your good works_, and glorify your Father
which is in Heaven.' We may say of the Christian community, and of the
Christian individual, with all reverence, what the Scripture in an
infinitely deeper and more sacred sense says of Jesus Christ Himself,
'the life was the light.' It is conduct, whereby most effectually, most
universally, and with the least risk of rousing antagonism and hostile
feelings, Christian people may 'shine as lights in the world.' For we
all know how the inconsistencies of a Christian man block the path of
the Gospel far more than a hundred sermons or talks further it. We all
know how there are people, plenty of them, who, however illogically yet
most naturally, compare our lives in their daily action with oar
professed beliefs, and, saying to themselves, 'I do not see that there
is much difference between them and me,' draw the conclusion that it
matters very little whether a man is a Christian or not, seeing that
the conduct of the men who profess to be so is little more radiant,
bright with purity and knowledge and joy, than is the conduct of
others. Dear brethren, you can do far more to help or hinder the spread
of Christ's Kingdom by the way in which you do common things, side by
side with men who are not partakers of the 'like precious faith' with
yourselves, than I or my fellow-preachers can do by all our words. It
is all very well to lecture about the efficiency of a machine; let us
see it at work, and that will convince people. We preach; but you
preach far more eloquently, and far more effectively, by your lives.
'In all labour,' says the Book of Proverbs, 'there is profit'--which we
may divert from its original meaning to signify that in all Christian
living there is force to attract--'but the talk of the lips tendeth
only to poverty.' Oh! if the Christian men and women of England would
live their Christianity, they would do more to convert the unconverted,
and to draw in the outcasts, than all of us preachers can do. 'From
you,' said the Apostle once to a church very young, and just rescued
from the evils of heathenism--'from you sounded out,' as if blown from
a trumpet, 'the Word of the Lord, so that we need not to speak
anything.' Live the life, and thereby you diffuse the light.

Nor need we forget that this most potent of all weapons is one that can
be wielded by all Christian people. Our gifts differ. Some of us cannot
speak for Jesus; some of us who think we can had often better hold our
tongues. But we can all live like and for Him. And this most potent and
universally diffused possibility is also the weapon that can be wielded
with least risk of failure. There is a certain assumption, which it is
often difficult to swallow, in a Christian man's addressing another on
the understanding that he, the speaker, possesses something which the
other lacks. By words we may often repel, and often find that the ears
that we seek to enter with our message close themselves against us and
are unwilling to hear. But there is no chance of offending anybody, or
of repelling anybody, by living Christlike. We can all do that, and it
is the largest contribution that any of us can make to the collective
light which shines out from the Christian Church.

But, brethren, we have to remember that there are dangers attending the
life that reveals its hidden principles as being faith in Christ and
obedience to Him. Did you ever notice how, in the Sermon on the Mount,
there are two sets of precepts which seem diametrically opposite to one
another? There is a whole series of illustrations of the one
commandment, 'Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men,
to be seen of them,' and then there Is the precept, 'Let your light so
shine before men that they may see your good works.' So that whilst, on
the one hand, there is to be the manifestation in daily conduct of the
inner principles that animate us, on the other hand, if there comes in
the least taint or trace of ostentation, everything is spoiled, and the
light is darkness. The light of the sun makes all things visible and
hides itself. We do not see the sunbeams, but we see what the sunbeams
illuminate. It is the coarser kinds of light which are themselves
separately visible, and they are so only because they have not power
enough to make everything around them as brilliant as they themselves
are. So our light is to be silent, our light is--if I might use such a
phrase--to hide itself in 'a glorious privacy,' whilst it enables men
to see, even through our imperfect ministration, the face of our Father
in Heaven.

But let me remind you that the same variation by Paul of our Lord's
words to which I have already referred as bringing out the difference
between the collective and the individual function, also brings out
another difference; for Paul says, 'Ye shine as lights in the world,
holding forth the word of life.' He slightly varies the metaphor. We
are no longer regarded as being ourselves illuminants, but simply as
being the stands on which the light is placed. And that means that
whilst the witness by life is the mightiest, the most universally
possible, and the least likely to offend, there must also be, as
occasion shall serve, without cowardice, without shamefaced reticence,
the proclamation of the great Gospel which has made us 'lights in the
world.' And that is a function which every Christian man can discharge
too, though I have just been saying that they cannot all preach and
speak; for every Christian soul has some other soul to whom its word
comes with a force that none other can have.

So the one office that is set forth here is the old familiar one, the
obligation of which is fully recognised by us all, and pitifully
ill-discharged by any of us, to shine by our daily life, and to shine
by the actual communication by speech of 'the Name that is above every
name.' That is the ideal; alas for the reality! 'Ye are the light of
the world.' What kind of light do we--the Church of Christ that gathers
here--ray out into the darkness of Manchester? Socially,
intellectually, morally, in the civic life, in the national life, are
Christian people in the van? They ought to be. There is a church clock
in our city which has a glass dial that professes to be illuminated at
night, so that the passer-by may tell the hour; but it is generally
burning so dimly that nobody can see on its grimy face what o'clock it
is. That is like a great many of our churches, and I ask you to ask
yourselves whether it is like you or not--a dark lantern, a most
imperfectly illuminated dial, which gives no guidance and no
information to anybody.

This golden lampstand teaches us--

II. How this office is to be discharged.

Remember simply these two points. It stood, as I have already said, on
one side of the Altar of Incense which was central to everything. It
was daily tended by the priests, and fed with fresh oil. Hence we may
derive some important practical lessons.

To begin with, we note that our light is a derived light, and therefore
can only be kept bright when we keep close to the source from whence it
is derived.

'That was the true Light, which coming into the world lighteth every
man'--there is the source of all illumination, in Jesus Christ Himself.
He alone is _the_ Light, and as for all others we must say of them what
was said of His great forerunner, 'Not that light, but sent to bear
witness of that light'; and again, 'he was a light kindled,' and
therefore 'shining,' and so his shining was but 'for a season.' But
Jesus is for ever the light of the world, and all our illumination
comes from Him. As Paul says, 'Now are ye light in the Lord,' therefore
only in the measure in which we are 'in the Lord,' shall we be light.
Keep near to Him and you will shine; break the connection with Him, and
you are darkness, darkness for yourselves, and darkness for the world.
Switch off, and the light is darkness.

Change the metaphor, and instead of saying 'derived light' say
'reflected light.' _There_ is a pane of glass in a cottage, miles away
across the moor. It was invisible a moment ago, and suddenly it gleams
like a diamond. Why? The sun has struck it; and in a moment after it
will be invisible again. As long as Jesus Christ is shining on my
heart, so long, and not a moment longer, shall I give forth the light
that will illumine the world. Astronomers have a contrivance by which
they can keep a photographic film on which they are seeking to get the
image of a star, moving along with the movement of the heavens, so that
on the same spot the star shall always shine. We have to keep ourselves
steady beneath the white beam from Jesus, and then we, too, shall be
'light in the Lord.'

Our light is fed light. Daily came the priest, daily the oil that had
been exhausted by shining was replenished. We all know what that oil
means and is; the Divine Spirit which comes into every heart which is
open by faith in Christ, and which abides in every heart where there
are desire, obedience, and the following of Him; which can be quenched
by my sin, by my negligence, by my ceasing to wish it, by my not using
its gifts when I have them; which can be grieved by my inconsistencies,
and by the spots of darkness that so often take up more of the sphere
of my life than the spots of illumination. But we can have as much of
that oil of the Divine Spirit, the 'unction from the Holy One,' as we
desire, and expect, and use. And unless we have, dear brethren, there
is no shining for us. This generation in its abundant activities tends
to a Christianity which has more spindles than power, which is more
surface than depth, which is so anxious to do service that it forgets
the preliminary of all right service, patient, solitary, silent
communion with God. Suffer the word of exhortation--let shining be
second, let replenishing with the oil be first. First the Altar of
Incense, then the Candlestick.

III. This golden lampstand tells us of the fatal effect of neglecting
the Church's and the individual's duty.

Where is the seven-branched candlestick of the second Temple? No one
knows. Possibly, according to one statement, it lies at the bottom of
the Mediterranean. Certainly we know that it is pictured on that sad
panel in the conqueror's arch at Rome, and that it became a trophy of
the insolent victor. It disappeared, and the Israel whom it vainly
endeavoured through the centuries to stir to a consciousness of its
vocation, has never since had a gleam of light to ray out into the
world. Where are the seven candlesticks, which made a blessed unity
because Christ walked in their midst? Where are the churches of
Ephesus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Thyatira, and the rest? Where they stood
the mosque is reared, and from its minaret day by day rings out--not
the proclamation of the Name, but--'There is no God but God, and
Mahomet is His Prophet.' The Pharos that ought to have shone out over
stormy seas has been seized by wreckers, and its light is blinded, and
false lights lure the mariner to the shoals and to shipwreck.

'Take heed lest He also spare not thee.' O brethren! is it not a bitter
irony to call _us_ 'lights of the world'? Let us penitently recognise
the inconsistencies of our lives, and the reticence of our speech. Let
us not lose sight of the high ideal, that we may the more penitently
recognise the miserable falling short of our reality. And let us be
thankful that _the_ Priest is tending the lamps. 'He will not quench
the smoking wick,' but will replenish it with oil, and fan the dying
flame. Only let us not resist His ministrations, which are always
gentle, even when He removes the charred blacknesses that hinder our
being what we should be, and may be, if we will--lights of the world.
'Arise! shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is
risen upon thee.'

THE NAMES ON AARON'S BREASTPLATE

    Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord, upon his
    two shoulders, for a memorial.... And Aaron shall bear
    the names of the Children of Israel in the breastplate
    of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the
    Holy Place.'--EXODUS xxviii. 12,29.

Every part of the elaborately prescribed dress of the high priest was
significant. But the significance of the whole was concentrated in the
inscription upon his mitre, 'Holiness to the Lord,' and in those others
upon his breastplate and his shoulder.

The breastplate was composed of folded cloth, in which were lodged
twelve precious stones, in four rows of three, each stone containing
the name of one of the tribes. It was held in position by the ephod,
which consisted of another piece of cloth, with a back and front part,
which were united into one on the shoulders. On each shoulder it was
clasped by an onyx stone bearing the names of six of the tribes. Thus
twice, on the shoulders, the seat of power, and on the heart, the organ
of thought and of love, Aaron, entering into the presence of the Most
High, bore 'the names of the tribes for a memorial continually.'

Now, I think we shall not be indulging in the very dangerous amusement
of unduly spiritualising the externalities of that old law if we see
here, in these two things, some very important lessons.

I. The first one that I would suggest to you is--here we have the
expression of the great truth of representation of the people by the
priest.

The names of the tribes laid upon Aaron's heart and on his shoulders
indicated the significance of his office--that he represented Israel
before God, as truly as he represented God to Israel. For the moment
the personality of the official was altogether melted away and absorbed
in the sanctity of his function, and he stood before God as the
individualised nation. Aaron was Israel, and Israel was Aaron, for the
purposes of worship. And that was indicated by the fact that here, on
the shoulders from which, according to an obvious symbol, all acts of
power emanate, and on the heart from which, according to most natural
metaphor, all the outgoings of the personal life proceed, were written
the names of the tribes. That meant, 'This man standing here is the
Israel of God, the concentrated nation.'

The same thought works the other way. The nation is the diffused
priest, and all its individual components are consecrated to God. All
this was external ceremonial, with no real spiritual fact at the back
of it. But it pointed onwards to something that is not ceremonial. It
pointed to this, that the true priest must, in like manner, gather up
into himself, and in a very profound sense be, the people for whom he
is the priest; and that they, in their turn, by the action of their own
minds and hearts and wills, must consent to and recognise that
representative relation, which comes to the solemn height of
identification in Christ's relation to His people. 'I am the Vine, ye
are the branches,' says He, and also, 'That they all may be one in us
as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.' So Paul says, 'I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me.' 'The life which I live in the flesh, I
live by the faith of the Son of God,'

So Christ gathers us all, if we will let Him, into Himself; and our
lives may be hid with Him--in a fashion that is more than mere external
and formal representation, or as people have a member of Parliament to
represent them in the councils of the nation--even in a true union with
Him in whom is the life of all of us, if we live in any real sense.
Aaron bore the names of the tribes on shoulder and heart, and Israel
was Aaron, and Aaron was Israel.

II. Further, we see here, in these eloquent symbols, the true
significance of intercession.

Now, that is a word and a thought which has been wofully limited and
made shallow and superficial by the unfortunate confining of the
expression, in our ordinary language, to a mere action by speech.
Intercession is supposed to be verbal asking for some good to be
bestowed on, or some evil to be averted from, some one in whom we are
interested. But the Old Testament notion of the priest's intercession,
and the New Testament use of the word which we so render, go far beyond
any verbal utterances, and reach to the very heart of things.
Intercession, in the true sense of the word, means the doing of any act
whatsoever before God for His people by Jesus Christ. Whensoever, as in
the presence of God, He brings to God anything which is His, that is
intercession. He undertakes for them, not by words only, though His
mighty word is, 'I will that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me
where I am,' but by acts which are more than even the words of the
Incarnate Word.

If we take these two inscriptions upon which I am now commenting, we
shall get, I think, what covers the whole ground of the intercession on
which Christians are to repose their souls. For, with regard to the one
of them, we read that the high priest's breastplate was named 'the
breastplate of judgment'; and what that means is explained by the last
words of the verse following that from which my text is taken: 'Aaron
shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before
the Lord.' Judgment means a judicial sentence; in this case a judicial
sentence of acquittal. And that Aaron stood before God in the Holy
Place, ministering with this breastplate upon his heart, is explained
by the writer of these regulations to mean that he carried there the
visible manifestation of Israel's acquittal, based upon his own
sacrificial function. Now, put that into plain English, and it is just
this--Jesus Christ's sacrifice ensures, for all those whose names are
written on these gems on His heart, their acquittal in the judgment of
Heaven. Or, in other words, the first step in the intercession of our
great High Priest is the presenting before God for ever and ever that
great fact that He, the Sinless, has died for the love of sinful men,
and thereby has secured that the judgment of Heaven on them shall now
be 'no condemnation.' Brethren, there is the root of all our hope in
Christ, and of all that Christ is to individuals and to society--the
assurance that the breastplate of judgment is on His heart, as a sign
that all who trust Him are acquitted by the tribunal of Heaven.

The other side of this great continual act of intercession is set forth
by the other symbol--the names written on the shoulders, the seat of
power. There is a beautiful parallel, which yet at first sight does not
seem to be one, to the thought that lies here, in the Book of the
Prophet Isaiah, where, addressing the restored and perfected Israel, he
says, speaking in the person of Jehovah: 'I have graven thee upon the
palms of My hands.' That has precisely the same meaning that I take to
be conveyed by this symbol in the text. The names of the tribes are
written on His shoulders; and not until that arm is wearied or palsied,
not till that strong hand forgets its cunning, will our defence fail.
If our names are thus written on the seat of power, that means that all
the divine authority and omnipotence which Jesus Christ, the Eternal
Son of the Father, wields in His state of royal glory, are exercised on
behalf of, or at all events on the side of, those whose names He thus
bears upon His shoulders. That is the guarantee for each of us that our
hands shall be made strong, according to the ancient prophetic
blessing, 'by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob.' Just as a father
or a mother will take their child's little tremulous hand in theirs and
hold it, that it may be strengthened for some small task beyond its
unbacked, uninvigorated power; so Jesus Christ will give us strength
within, and also will order the march of His Providence and send the
gift of His Spirit, for the succour and the strengthening of all whose
names are written on His ephod. He has gone within the veil. He has
left us heavy tasks, but our names are on His shoulders, and we 'can do
all things in Christ who strengthened us.'

III. Still further, this symbol suggests to us the depth and reality of
Christ's sympathy.

The heart is, in our language, the seat of love. It is not so in the
Old Testament. Affection is generally allocated to another part of the
frame; but here the heart stands for the organ of care, of thought, of
interest. For, according to the Old Testament view of the relation
between man's body and man's soul, the very seat and centre of the
individual life is in the heart. I suppose that was because it was
known that, somehow or other, the blood came thence. Be that as it may,
the thought is clear throughout all the Old Testament that the heart is
the man, and the man is the heart. And so, if Jesus bears our names
upon His heart, that does not express merely representation nor merely
intercession, but it expresses also personal regard, individualising
knowledge. For Aaron wore not one great jewel with 'Israel' written on
it, but twelve little ones, with 'Dan,' 'Benjamin,' and 'Ephraim,' and
all the rest of them, each on his own gem.

So we can say, 'Such a High Priest became us, who could have compassion
upon the ignorant, and upon them that are out of the way'; and we can
fall back on that old-fashioned but inexhaustible source of consolation
and strength: 'In all their affliction He was afflicted'; and though
the noise of the tempests which toss us can scarcely be supposed to
penetrate into the veiled place where He dwells on high, yet we may be
sure--and take all the peace and consolation and encouragement out of
it that it is meant to give us--that 'we have not a High Priest that
cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities,' but that Himself,
having known miseries, 'is able to succour them that are tempted.' Our
names are on Christ's heart.

IV. Then, lastly, we have here a suggestion of how precious to Aaron
Israel is.

Jewels were chosen to symbolise the tribes. Bits of tin, potsherds, or
anything else that one could have scratched letters upon, would have
done quite as well. But 'the precious things of the everlasting
mountains' were chosen to bear the dear names. 'The Lord's portion is
His people'; and precious in the eyes of Christ are the souls for whom
He has given so much. They are not only precious, but lustrous,
flashing back the light in various colours indeed, according to their
various laws of crystallisation, but all receptive of it and all
reflective of it. I said that the names on the breastplate of judgment
expressed the acquittal and acceptance of Israel. But does Christ's
work for us stop with simple acquittal? Oh no! 'Whom He justified them
He also glorified,' And if our souls are 'bound in the bundle of life,'
and our names are written on the heart of the Christ, be sure that mere
forgiveness and acquittal is the least of the blessings which He
intends to give, and that He will not be satisfied until in all our
nature we receive and flash back the light of His own glory.

It is very significant in this aspect that the names of the twelve
tribes are described as being written on the precious stones which make
the walls of the New Jerusalem. Thus borne on Christ's heart whilst He
is within the veil and we are in the outer courts, we may hope to be
carried by His sustaining and perfecting hand into the glories, and be
made participant of the glories. Let us see to it that we write His
name on our hearts, on their cares, their thought, their love, and on
our hands, on their toiling and their possessing; and then, God helping
us, and Christ dwelling in us, we shall come to the blessed state of
those who serve Him, and bear His name flaming conspicuous for ever on
their foreheads.

THREE INSCRIPTIONS WITH ONE MEANING

    'Thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon
    it ... HOLINESS TO THE LORD.'--EXODUS xxviii. 36.

    'In that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses,
    HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD.'--ZECH. xiv. 20.

    'His name shall be in their foreheads.'--REV. xxii. 4.

You will have perceived my purpose in putting these three widely
separated texts together. They all speak of inscriptions, and they are
all obviously connected with each other. The first of them comes from
the ancient times of the institution of the ceremonial ritual, and
describes a part of the high priest's official dress. In his mitre was
a thin plate of gold on which was written, 'Holiness to the Lord.' The
second of them comes from almost the last portion recorded of the
history of Israel in the Old Testament, and is from the words of the
great Prophet of the Restoration--his ideal presentation of the
Messianic period, in which he recognises as one feature, that the
inscription on the mitre of the high priest shall be written on 'the
bells of the horses.' And the last of them is from the closing vision
of the celestial kingdom, the heavenly and perfected form of the
Christian Church. John, probably remembering the high priest and his
mitre, with its inscription upon the forehead, says: 'His servants
shall do Him priestly service'--for that is the meaning of the word
inadequately translated 'serve Him'--'and see His face, and His name
shall be in their foreheads.'

These three things, then--the high priest's mitre, the horses' bells,
the foreheads of the perfected saints--present three aspects of the
Christian thought of holiness. Take them one by one.

I. The high priest's mitre.

The high priest was the official representative of the nation. He stood
before God as the embodied and personified Israel. For the purposes of
worship Israel was the high priest, and the high priest was Israel. And
so, on his forehead, not to distinguish him from the rest of the
people, but to include all the people in his consecration, shone a
golden plate with the motto, 'Holiness to the Lord.' So, at the very
beginning of Jewish ritual there stands a protest against all notions
that make 'saint' the designation of any abnormal or exceptional
sanctity, and confine the name to the members of any selected
aristocracy of devoutness and goodness. All Christian men, _ex
officio_, by the very fact of their Christianity, are saints, in the
true sense of the word. And the representative of the whole of Israel
stood there before God, with this inscription blazing on his forehead,
as a witness that, whatsoever holiness may be, it belongs to every
member of the true Israel.

And what is it? It is a very unfortunate thing--indicating
superficiality of thought--that the modern popular notion of 'holiness'
identifies it with purity, righteousness, moral perfection. Now that
idea _is_ in it, but is not the whole of it. For, not to spend time
upon mere remarks on words, the meaning of the word thus rendered is in
Hebrew, as well as in Greek and in our own English, one and the same.
The root-meaning is 'separated,' 'set apart,' and the word expresses
primarily, not moral character, but relation to God. That makes all the
difference; and it incalculably deepens the conception, as well as puts
us on the right track for understanding the only possible means by
which there can ever be realised that moral perfection and excellence
which has unfortunately monopolised the meaning of the word in most
people's minds. The first thought is 'set apart to God.' That is
holiness, in its root and germ.

And how can we be set apart for God? You may devote a dead thing for
certain uses easily enough. How can a man be separated and laid aside?

Well, there is only one way, brethren, and that is by self-surrender.
'Yield yourselves to God' is but the other side, or, rather, the
practical shape, of the Old and the New Testament doctrine of holiness.
A man becomes God's when he says, 'Lord, take me and mould me, and fill
me and cleanse me, and do with me what Thou wilt.' In that
self-surrender, which is the tap-root of all holiness, the first and
foremost thing to be offered is that most obstinate of all, the will
that is in us. And when we yield our wills in submission both to
commandments and providences, both to gifts and to withdrawals, both to
gains and to losses, both to joys and to sorrows, then we begin to
write upon our foreheads 'Holiness to the Lord.' And when we go on to
yield our hearts to Him, by enshrining Him sole and sovereign in their
innermost chamber, and turning to Him the whole current of our lives
and desires, and hopes and confidences, which we are so apt to allow to
run to waste and be sucked up in the desert sands of the world, then we
write more of that inscription. And when we fill our minds with joyful
submission to His truth, and occupy our thoughts with His mighty Name
and His great revelation, and carry Him with us in the hidden corners
of our consciousness, even whilst we are busy about daily work, then we
add further letters to it. And when the submissive will, and the
devoted heart, and the occupied thoughts are fully expressed in daily
life and its various external duties, then the writing is complete.
'Holiness to the Lord' is self-surrender of will and heart and mind and
everything. And that surrender is of the very essence of Christianity.

What is a saint? Some man or woman that has practised unheard-of
austerities? Somebody that has lived an isolated and self-regarding
life in convent or monastery or desert? No! a man or woman in the world
who, moved by the mercies of God, yields self to God as 'a living
sacrifice.'

So the New Testament writers never hesitate to speak even of such very
imperfect Christians as were found in abundance in churches like
Corinth and Galatia as being all 'saints,' every man of them. That is
not because the writers were minimising their defects, or idealising
their persons, but because, if they are Christians at all, they are
saints; seeing that no man is a Christian who has not been drawn by
Christ's great sacrifice for him to yield himself a sacrifice for
Christ.

Of course that intrusive idea which has, in popular apprehension, so
swallowed up the notion of holiness--viz. that of perfection of moral
character or conduct--is included in this other, or rather is developed
from it. For the true way to conquer self is to surrender self; and the
more entire our giving up of ourselves, the more certainly shall we
receive ourselves back again from His hands. 'By the mercies of God, I
beseech you, yield yourselves living sacrifices.'

II. I come to my next text--the horses' bells.

Zechariah has a vision of the ideal Messianic times, and, of course, as
must necessarily be the case, his picture is painted with colours laid
upon his palette by his experience, and he depicts that distant future
in the guise suggested to him by what he saw around him. So we have to
disentangle from his words the sentiment which he expresses, and to
recognise the symbolic way in which he puts it. His thought is
this,--the inscription on the high priest's mitre will be written on
the bells which ornament the harness of the horses, which in Israel
were never used as with us, but only either for war or for pomp and
display, and the use of which was always regarded with a certain kind
of doubt and suspicion. Even these shall be consecrated in that far-off
day.

And then he goes on with variations on the same air, 'In that day there
shall be upon the bells of the horses, "Holiness unto the Lord,"' and
adds that 'the pots in the Lord's house'--the humble vessels that were
used for the most ordinary parts of the Temple services--'shall be like
the bowls before the altar,' into which the sacred blood of the
offerings was poured. The most external and secular thing bearing upon
religion shall be as sacred as the sacredest. But that is not all.
'Yea! every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the
Lord of hosts, and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of
them,' and put their offerings therein. That is to say, the coarse
pottery vessels that were in every poverty-stricken house in the city
shall be elevated to the rank of the sacred vessels of the Temple.
Domestic life with all its secularities shall be hallowed. The kitchens
of Jerusalem shall be as truly places of worship as is the inner shrine
of the Most High.

On the whole, the prophet's teaching is that, in the ideal state of man
upon earth, there will be an entire abolition of the distinction
between 'sacred' and 'secular'; a distinction that has wrought infinite
mischief in the world, and in the lives of Christian people.

Let me translate these words of our prophet into English equivalents.
Every cup and tumbler in a poor man's kitchen may be as sacred as the
communion chalice that passes from lip to lip with the 'blood of Jesus
Christ' in it. Every common piece of service that we do, down among the
vulgarities and the secularities and the meannesses of daily life, may
be lifted up to stand upon precisely the same level as the sacredest
office that we undertake. The bells of the horses may jingle to the
same tune as the trumpets of the priests sounded within the shrine, and
on all, great and small, may be written, 'Holiness to the Lord.'

But let us remember that that universally diffused sanctity will need
to have a centre of diffusion, else there will be no diffusion, and
that all life will become sacred when the man that lives it has
'Holiness to the Lord' written on his forehead, and not else. If that
be the inscription on the driver's heart, the horses that he drives
will have it written on their bells, but they will not have it unless
it be. Holy men make all things holy. 'To the pure all things are
pure,' but unto them that are unclean and disobedient there is nothing
pure. Hallow thyself, and all things are clean unto thee.

III. And so I come to my third text--the perfected saints' foreheads.

The connection between the first and the last of these texts is as
plain and close as between the first and the second. For John in his
closing vision gives emphasis to the priestly idea as designating in
its deepest relations the redeemed and perfected Christian Church.
Therefore he says, as I have already explained, 'His servants shall do
Him _priestly_ service, and His name shall be in their foreheads.' The
old official dress of the high priest comes into his mind, and he
paints the future, just as Zechariah did, under the forms of the past,
and sees before the throne the perfected saints, each man of them with
that inscription clear and conspicuous.

But there is an advance in his words which I think it is not fanciful
to note. It is only the _name_ that is written in the perfected saint's
forehead. Not the 'Holiness unto the Lord,' but just the bare name.
What does that mean? Well, it means the same as your writing your name
in one of your books does, or as when a man puts his initials on the
back of his oxen, or as the old practice of branding the master's mark
upon the slave did. It means absolute ownership.

But it means something more. The name is the manifested personality,
the revealed God, or, as we say in an abstract way, the character of
God. That Name is to be in the foreheads of His perfected people. How
does it come to be there? Read also the clause before the text--'His
servants shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads.'
That is to say, the perfected condition is not reached by surrender
only, but by assimilation; and that assimilation comes by
contemplation. The faces that are turned to Him, and behold Him, are
smitten with the light and shine, and those that look upon them see 'as
it had been the face of an angel,' as the Sanhedrim saw that of
Stephen, when he beheld
 the Son of Man 'standing at the right hand of God.'

My last text is but a picturesque way of saying what the writer of it
says in plain words when he declares, 'We shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him as He is.' The name is to be 'in their foreheads,' where
every eye can see it. Alas! alas! it is so hard for us to live out our
best selves, and to show to the world what is in us. Cowardice,
sheepishness, and a hundred other reasons prevent it. In this poor
imperfect state no emotion ever takes shape and visibility without
losing more or less of its beauty. But yonder the obstructions to
self-manifestation will be done away; and 'when He shall be manifested,
we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.'

'Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in My heavenly
Father's Kingdom.' But the beginning of it all is 'Holiness to the
Lord' written on our hearts; and the end of that is the vision which is
impossible without holiness, and which leads on to the beholder's
perfect likeness to his Lord.

THE ALTAR OF INCENSE

    'Thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon.'
    --EXODUS xxx. 1.

Ceremonies are embodied thoughts. Religious ceremonies are moulded by,
and seek to express, the worshipper's conception of his God, and his
own relation to Him; his aspirations and his need. Of late years
scholars have been busy studying the religions of the more backward
races, and explaining rude and repulsive rites by pointing to the often
profound and sometimes beautiful ideas underlying them. When that
process is applied to Australian and Fijian savages, it is honoured as
a new and important study; when we apply it to the Mosaic Ritual it is
pooh-poohed as 'foolish spiritualising.' Now, no doubt, there has been
a great deal of nonsense talked in regard to this matter, and a great
deal of ingenuity wasted in giving a Christian meaning--or, may I say,
a Christian twist?--to every pin of the Tabernacle, and every detail of
the ritual. Of course, to exaggerate a truth is the surest way to
discredit a truth, but the truth remains true all the same, and
underneath that elaborate legislation, which makes such wearisome and
profitless reading for the most of us, in the Pentateuch, there lie, if
we can only grasp them, great thoughts and lessons that we shall all be
the better for pondering.

To one item of these, this altar of incense, I call attention now,
because it is rich in suggestions, and leads us into very sacred
regions of the Christian life which are by no means so familiar to many
of us as they ought to be. Let me just for one moment state the facts
with which I wish to deal. The Jewish Tabernacle, and subsequently the
Temple, were arranged in three compartments: the outermost court, which
was accessible to all the people; the second, which was trodden by the
priests alone; and the third, where the Shechinah dwelt in solitude,
broken only once a year by the foot of the High Priest. That second
court we are concerned with now. There are three pieces of
ecclesiastical furniture in it: an altar in the centre, flanked on
either side by a great lampstand, and a table on which were piled
loaves. It is to that central piece of furniture that I ask your
attention now, and to the thoughts that underlie it, and the lessons
that it teaches.

I. This altar shows us what prayer is.

Suppose we had been in that court when in the morning or in the evening
the priest came with the glowing pan of coals from another altar in the
outer court, and laid it on this altar, and heaped upon it the sticks
of incense, we should have seen the curling, fragrant wreaths ascending
till 'the House was filled with smoke,' as a prophet once saw it. We
should not have wanted any interpreter to tell us what that meant. What
could that rising cloud of sweet odours signify but the ascent of the
soul towards God? Put that into more abstract words, and it is just the
old, hackneyed commonplace which I seek to try to freshen a little now,
that incense is the symbol of prayer. That that is so is plain enough,
not only from the natural propriety of the case, but because you find
the identification distinctly stated in several places in Scripture, of
which I quote but two instances. In one psalm we read, 'Let my prayer
come before Thee as incense.' In the Book of the Apocalypse we read of
'golden bowls full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.' And
that the symbolism was understood by, and modified the practice of, the
nation, we are taught when we read that whilst Zechariah the priest was
within the court offering incense, as it was his lot to do, 'the whole
multitude of the people were without praying,' doing that which the
priest within the court symbolised by his offering. So then we come to
this, dear friends, that we fearfully misunderstand and limit the
nobleness and the essential character of prayer when, as we are always
tempted to do by our inherent self-regard, we make petition its main
feature and form. Of course, so long as we are what we shall always be
in this world, needy and sinful creatures; and so long as we are what
we shall ever be in all worlds, creatures absolutely dependent for life
and everything on the will and energy of God, petition must necessarily
be a very large part of prayer. But the more we grow into His likeness,
and the more we understand the large privileges and the glorious
possibilities which lie in prayer, the more will the relative
proportions of its component parts be changed, and petition will become
less, and aspiration will become more. The essence of prayer, the
noblest form of it, is thus typified by the cloud of sweet odours that
went up before God.

In all true prayer there must be the lowest prostration in reverence
before the Infinite Majesty. But the noblest prayer is that which lifts
'them that are bowed down' rather than that which prostrates men before
an inaccessible Deity. And so, whilst we lie low at His feet, that may
be the prayer of a mere theist, but when our hearts go out towards Him,
and we are drawn to Himself, that is the prayer that befits Christian
aspiration; the ascent of the soul toward God is the true essence of
prayer. As one of the non-Christian philosophers--seekers after God, if
ever there were such, and who, I doubt not, found Him whom they
sought--has put it, 'the flight of the lonely soul to the only God';
that is prayer. Is that my prayer? We come to Him many a time burdened
with some very real sorrow, or weighted with some pressing
responsibility, and we should not be true to ourselves, or to Him, if
our prayer did not take the shape of petition. But, as we pray, the
blessing of the transformation of its character should be realised by
us, and that which began with the cry for help and deliverance should
always be, and it always will be, if the cry for help and deliverance
has been of the right sort, sublimed into 'Thy face, Lord, will I
seek.' The Book of Ecclesiastes describes death as the 'return of the
spirit to God who gave it.' That is the true description of prayer, a
going back to the fountain's source. Flames aspire; to the place
'whence the rivers came thither they return again.' The homing pigeon