SECTION I — Abraham’s Tent, or the Pilgrims Life

The first symbol we find in the patriarch’s life is his moving tent. He has left the wealth and earthly prospects of his native home and committed himself to the vicissitudes of a pilgrim life. While an heir of the world, he is himself to have no certain dwelling place, but wander as a stranger on earth “looking for a better country, and a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

The first lesson of Abraham’s tent is that of Christian pilgrimage. Like him, the children of faith must also be separated from the world and live as strangers and pilgrims upon earth, confessing that, here, we have no continuing city, but seek one to come. How little this is realized in the selfishness of modern Christianity and the worldliness of the professed followers of Christ is very sad to contemplate. It is not necessary in order to have a spiritual state that we get out of the world or be isolated from its practical affairs. The real essence of worldliness is in the spirit rather than in the circumstances; in the love rather than the possession of earthly things. One may possess millions with a truly consecrated spirit and be a real miser over a few worthless treasures. The spirit of consecration requires that the heart shall be detached from worldly aims and motives, and that we should hold the world as not possessing, and use it as not abusing it. “For the fashion of the world passeth away.” We should never have our hearts or our interests so invested in the things of life as not to be able, like Abraham, to emigrate at Gods call to some altered circumstances, or even to fold our tent altogether and enter upon our eternal existence. Let us pause and ask ourselves, where is my life invested? Where is my heart directed? Am I living in a tent, or building for myself a palace of earthly ambition or indulgence which
the hand of death will soon crumble into a narrow tomb.

But again, Abraham’s tent not only tells us of the pilgrim life, but also of the true hopes and eternal promises for which faith must wait, and possess now only as he possessed the land, as a homeless wanderer. It was all his own, and yet shall be his literal inheritance; but during his earthly life he found in it no permanent resting place. So faith must still accept its heritage and learn, not only to hope, but also quietly wait for the salvation of God.

SECTION II — Abraham’s Altar, or the Consecrated Life.

Wherever the patriarch rested his tent, there he also erected an altar to his God. This was the expression, in the first place, of his steadfast faith in the plan of mercy which God had revealed at the gate of Eden, and through the sacrifices of His own appointment. This altar represented to his piety all that for us is involved in the Cross of Calvary and the blood of Jesus. This was ever the spring of his consecration and the support of his future hopes. He saw afar off the coming Redeemer, and trusted in His grace even in the dim light of the Gospel as it was revealed to him in these simple emblems. More clearly afterwards this mystery of the Savior’s death and resurrection was unfolded in the offering of his own Isaac on the mount, and the substitution of the victim provided by Jehovah in his place. For us also, the cross of Jesus and the simple faith which rests in His atoning blood must ever be the source and support of every grace. But Abraham’s altar was not only expressive of the Savior’s blood, but his own consecration. The burnt offering which he was accustomed to lay upon that altar was the especial expression of the entire devotion of his whole being to God, of which his obedient life was the constant pledge and evidence, and the sacrifice even of his dearest affections and divinest promises and hopes was the last and crowning proof. Not only did he leave his sins at the foot of that altar and lay himself upon it a living sacrifice, but even the very son that God had given, and the promises which were linked inseparably with him were also laid there in unreserved surrender and committal. This is the last and sublimest height of Christian life, not only to give to God the thing which we have called our own, but to give back and hold as his the things that he has given, and the most precious and sacred hopes and trusts of our life. It was this which God so prized in the spirit of his servant and for which He so blessed and honored him. Such trust and such consecration need never fear that they can lose aught by this absolute surrender. Indeed, our blessings are never fully blest until like Isaac they are given back as from the dead, and henceforth held not as our own, but as God’s deposit in our keeping. Have we come to Abraham’s altar? Have we left our sins beneath its flowing blood, and accepted the atonement of its great sacrifice, and then have we laid ourselves upon it in identification with that divine sacrifice, a whole burnt offering unto God? Yes, have we even placed there our Isaacs of affection — nay, even of divine promise and spiritual hope and expectation, and are we holding all, even our most sacred hopes and interests, as divine trusts committed to us for His service and glory? Thus alone shall we know the secret of Abraham’s faith, as we enter into the fullness of his consecration. In speaking of the intimacy with which he treats him, God gives this significant record, “for I know him.” While Abraham fully trusted God, God also felt that he could fully trust Abraham.

Dear friend, can God depend on you and your absolute singleness and fidelity to Him? Blessed be the glorious grace, we may take Him for this perfect heart.

SECTION III — Abraham’s Seed, or the Faith Life.

It was in regard to the promise of his seed that the patriarch’s faith was chiefly exercised and tested. As first received and understood by him, the promise referred to his literal offspring, but as the covenant became more explicit and the light more clear, it extended into vaster meaning, and the promised seed became to him the symbol of his coming Savior. That this was so is plain from the Apostle’s language in Gal. 3: 16, “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.” That Abraham so understood it, is implied in the words of Christ to the Pharisees, “your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” John 8: 56. So that Abraham’s faith and promises were all summed up and centered in the personal Christ. So let our faith find its center, and our promises always reach their true focus in Him who is the first and the last, and the All in All of Christian faith and hope. Let even our dearest earthly affections and expectations, like Abraham’s beloved son, be linked with and lost in the person of Jesus himself. Then, indeed, will all our life be heavenly, and all our heart strings bind us to His heart of love.

But there is another most important thought suggested by Abraham’s seed, namely: that his faith and hope were lifted beyond himself and the narrow limits of his own short life, to find their fruition in the lives of others and reach their fullness not so much in the blessing which he was to receive, as to the blessing he was to become. The linking of all his promises with his seed was a constant challenge to the spirit of disinterestedness and teaches us that we, too, are to lose our lives in the lives of others, and find our blessing in being a blessing. Natural science teaches that the great design of every plant in nature is expressed in the seed, and realized in the principle of reproduction. While we may value the fruit tree chiefly for its rich and luscious fruit, nature recognizes the little seed imbedded in the juicy pulp as the true value and essential fruit of the plant; and so God estimates us, not so much for what we are, as for what we may become in the issues of our lives. The tree is therefore known by its fruit, and the test and standard of the fruit laid down by Christ is, “Some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold.”

The promise was given to him in the form of two most striking symbols; the first of these was the sand upon the seashore which his offspring was to outnumber. This, no doubt, had special reference to his earthly posterity, the literal seed of Abraham which will doubtless completely realize in the coming ages of Israel’s restoration, even the expressive fullness of this promise. The second was the stars of heaven, whose number and splendor modern science has expanded far beyond Abraham’s highest conception; but even this shall be more than fulfilled in the spiritual seed of the Father of the faithful. A great multitude that no man can number, as various in their spiritual character, and infinitely more glorious than the stars of heaven shall yet gather at his feet, and prove to him and the universe the faithfulness of God, and the blessedness of trusting Him. The same splendid figure is used in describing the rewards and prospects of Christian service, “They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.” We also may therefore claim the same glorious promises and possibilities. This is the true aim and the most satisfying recompense of human life. When the applause or criticisms of man shall be forgotten, when the transient discomforts or enjoyments of life shall be past, when the fire shall have tried every man’s work, and the wood and stubble shall have drifted away in the ashes of the last conflagration; oh, then it will be blessed indeed to gather out of the wreck of life the treasures of precious souls we have been permitted to save, and place them in His crown and our own. God grant that we may have such constellations in yonder firmament.

“There needs not for such the love-written story,
The name and the monument graven in stone;
The things we have lived for, let these be our glory,
And we be remembered by what we have done.”

SECTION IV — Abraham’s Seal, or the Resurrection Life.

God’s covenant with Abraham was ratified by a special sign which is called the seal — that is, a divine token intended to mark the importance and certainty of the transaction, and the stability of the promises involved. This seal was the rite of circumcision which from this time became the distinctive mark of the Old Testament covenant, and the initiatory rite of Judaism. It was not a mere arbitrary sign, but was fitted to express in its own nature the most important truths. It was especially significant of that great principle which underlies the whole economy of grace, namely: the death of the old and the resurrection of the new life. Circumcision was the death of the flesh and was designed to express the great fact that our carnal nature and our very life itself, in its inmost center and springs, must be crucified and then divinely renewed and purified. This is the same truth taught us in the New Testament ordinance of Christian Baptism, only the latter gives more emphasis to the life as the former does to the death side of the figure, as might naturally be expected from the place of these ordinances in the two dispensations. Thus early and thus vividly did God begin to teach His people that the new life must be a creation and must spring out of the grave; and that man’s fallen nature cannot be improved by culture or gradually raised to purity and heaven, but that the sentence pronounced at the deluge must be literally fulfilled: “The end of all flesh has come before me.”

Hence this figure of circumcision runs through the entire old Testament as the picture of sanctification. “Circumcise your hearts,” “uncircumcised in heart,” etc. Have we learned this searching and humbling, yet blessed truth? And blessed it is that we may die to this sad and sinful self, and live with Him who died for us and rose again. Have we entered into the power of His resurrection and been made conformable unto His death, and are we reckoning ourselves to be dead, indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ? Failure here has been the secret of almost all our failures. Thoroughness and faithfulness here will save us a thousand deaths in the Christian life and make our life a joy and power.

The day prescribed for the rite of circumcision was as expressive as the rite itself. The eighth day is the beginning of a new week, and thus expresses most fully the idea of the new creation and the resurrection-life. God grant that we may all know the full meaning of this ancient seal and pass out of the seven days of nature’s life into the eighth day of life’s new and eternal week of resurrection power and blessing.

If Christ would live and reign in me,
I must die, I must die.
Like Him I crucified must be;
I must die, I must die.
Lord, drive the nails, nor heed the groans,
My flesh may writhe and make its moans,
But in this way, and this alone,
I must die, I must die.

When I am dead, then, Lord, to thee
I shall live, I shall live;
My time, my strength, my all to thee,
Will I give, will I give.
Oh, may the Son now make me free!
Here, Lord, I give my all to thee,
For time and for eternity,
I will live, I will live.

SECTION V — Abraham’s Name; or, the Confession of Faith.

The covenant must not only be sealed, but claimed. Abraham’s faith must not only be confirmed by God’s seal, but also must “set to His seal that God is true.” When God commits Himself to His promise, He expects us to do the same as unreservedly, and so Abraham was soon required to prove his trust by open and unequivocal confession. The opportunity was afforded in a very striking and significant manner. God required him to assume a new name, slightly modified in form from his old name, but signally different in moaning. The name Abram meant the mighty father, but God gave him the name Abraham which signifies the father of a multitude. The first he could claim without involving any question of propriety, but the assuming of the other involved the confession of his future hopes and expectations. And when we remember that this was done at a time in his life when his age precluded the natural probability or even possibility of the thing he claimed, we begin to see how very real the test must have been. He was an old man, and his body was now dead. The hope of natural issue was contrary to common sense, and yet the adoption of the new name would necessarily be known to all his acquaintances, and would require an explanation and proclamation of his unreasonable hopes. For one possessing his dignity and influence with his family and followers, this must have been naturally very trying, and the trial was rendered still harder when it was protracted through a long season of apparently fruitless waiting. But the faith of Abraham shrank not from the full ordeal. Not only did he profess his confidence in his Father’s fulfillment of the promise, but he proceeded to act upon it as if it were already past, and thus became the witness of that highest of all degrees of faith — that principle which is, perhaps, essential to all true faith, of which the apostle says that it “calleth those things that are not as though they were.” This, indeed, is the faith attributed to God Himself by the apostle in Romans 4: 17; and on this principle He is constantly acting in treating future events as if already real. Thus his own clear Son was regarded as slain from the foundation of the world. Thus we are recognized even in our earthly life as seated with Christ in heavenly places and invested already with the dignities and glories of our future inheritance. This is the faith which God requires from his people and which he is willing to give them; and indeed nothing but the Spirit of Christ Himself within us can enable us thus to believe and testify. Again let us ask ourselves, what are we witnessing to in our lives? How far have we really risked our all upon God’s promises? How much have we ventured upon His simple word and counted the things that are not as living realities, not only in our hearts, but by the entire witness of our lives? Have we thus accepted His pardon and confessed it? Have we thus received his sanctifying grace and claimed our inheritance in Christ’s fullness? Have we thus taken Him for our physical and temporal needs and ventured forth, without waiting for evidence, upon His simple and naked word? It is the record of God’s ancient saints that they were witnesses of faith. In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews they shine like stars — like constellations in the firmament — of the Old Testament. Shall our names thus shine in the annals of this dispensation? We are writing the record every day; God help to inscribe them as with the point of a diamond in the Rock forever; and let the record ever be “I believe God,” and “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

SECTION VI — Abraham’s Vision, or the Trial of Faith.

Sooner or later the test of suffering must follow every promise and confession. To Abraham it comes in a significant symbol recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the vision of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between the portions of his sacrifice, in the darkness of the evening, and the deeper gloom that had gathered about his spirit. So for us the promises of God may be followed by the going down of earth’s sun in deep trials and even the horror of great darkness which sometime comes upon the inner sky; and then amid the darkness comes the fiery furnace of heart searching anguish and suffering. The children of faith must be tested in the very fire, and the more victorious the faith, and the more glorious the witness, the hotter must ever be the flame, until it seems as though both life and faith must be consumed. But gold is indestructible, and faith survives and brightens with its trial. There is another figure in the vision, and that is the burning lamp that shines amid the darkness and above the smoke of the furnace. This is the heavenly presence which never forsakes us in the darkest hour. Majestic symbol of that yet grander figure which in later days came to Israel as they came forth from Egypt’s iron furnace, the pillar of cloud and fire — the type of the light and protection which the Holy Spirit brings to the tried and trusting heart as it passes through the wilderness. It was in this hour of darkness and vision of fire that God gave to Abraham the most definite promise of his future inheritance, writing in the vivid light of the furnace flames the very names of the nations that he should dispossess through his seed, and speaking of it all in the perfect tense as already accomplished. Is it not even so with us that it is in the hour of keen suffering that God has ever spoken to us His greatest words, and burned into our vision with a definiteness and vividness which faith can never forget, the promises that He is now fulfilling in our grateful lives. Let us not fear the darkness and the fire, but trust the more through that which comes chiefly to try our trust. Suffering is not always meant to burn out the dross, but often to burn in the promise. Let us not think it strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try us; it is more precious, even to Him who sends it, than gold which perisheth, and will “be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

SECTION VII — Melchizedek; or, the True Object of our Faith.

A mysterious human figure crosses the path of Abraham for one brief hour, and leaves an impression so vivid that it has remained as a prophetic vision of the coming Messiah, both in the Psalms and in the new Testament. This figure is regarded by many authorities as really superhuman, and indeed no less than the actual and personal Christ Himself living on the earth before His advent in human form, in order for a little to represent to Abraham what his earthly life afterwards represented to the world, His mediatorial character and work. We cannot accept this view without stronger evidence than the Scriptures offer. It would seem uncalled for that Christ should twice appear on earth in actual personality. We believe that he did appear to Abraham in human form just prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but this was doubtless an assumed appearance. Melchizedek is represented as an actual human personage. He was the King of Salem, the ancient Jerusalem; he was also a true worshiper and official priest of the most high God; probably like Job, one that had preserved the primitive faith handed down from Noah without corruption, and that God used him as a special type of the official character and mediatorial work of the coming Messiah. The Apostle declares that he was without father, without mother, without descent. He must mean by this that his record is thus mysterious and unknown; that he stands across the course of time without introduction, a vivid and transient figure expressing in one brief glance the aspects which God would reveal to us concerning His Son. These are expressed by the name, position and office of Melchizedek. His name in Hebrew signifies King of Righteousness; his political position was that of King of Salem, which signified peace, and his official character was that of a priest. He thus combined in his own person the two offices of priest and king, and the two qualities of righteousness and peace. These are the four thoughts which constituted Christ’s mediatorial office and work. He is our priest and king, and he brings us His righteousness and peace. As our priest He settles for us the question of sin, and secures our spiritual standing and privileges with God; as our king he protects us, subdues us, governs us and guides us, and conquers our enemies and His. As our true Melchizedek he combines these two offices in one person so that the king, whose majesty we might dread, is the priest whose suffering and intercession have saved us from our sins and reconciled us to His favor. He brings to us his justifying and sanctifying righteousness, and becomes to us the Lord, our righteousness. And he will bless his people with peace. His sprinkled blood pacifies the guilty conscience. His pardoning love brings us into peace with God. His gentle Spirit breathes upon our hearts his rest. His bosom offers us repose for every care and fear, and in the inner chamber of his presence we find the peace that passeth all understanding. All this he represented to Abraham. All this Christ is to us. Have we met and accepted Him like the ancient patriarch? Have we yielded to Him our worship and submission? Has he become our great High Priest, our supreme and glorious King? Has he covered us with his righteousness, and become to us our sanctification? And have we at the footstool of His throne received Him as the Prince of Peace, and found it true in our happy experience “of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end”?

Such are some of the symbols of Abraham’s life. As we leave them, shall they leave us also on our pilgrimage for the better country which he has reached, and on the altar of sacrifice where he found all by giving all? Shall they have brought us the vision of our seed, and sealed us with the secret of our true life, the death of self, and the resurrection life of Christ? And shall we go forth from them confessors, like him, of our covenant promises, even if it be in the fiery furnace and the midnight gloom of life’s deepest trials? And, above all other lessons, greater than Abraham or Abraham’s faith, have they brought us to the feet of the Prince of Peace and the King of Righteousness, as the Author and Finisher of our faith, and the Alpha and Omega of all our hopes and blessings?

In the fourth chapter of Galatians, the apostle gives us a key to some of the most important events in the life of Isaac, and along with these a principle which may be applied to other portions of the historical Scriptures, as a key to their interpretation. He tells us that the birth both of Ishmael and Isaac was typical of the divine dispensations; the former representing the Law and the Flesh; the latter, the Gospel and the Spiritual Seed; and that the expulsion of Ishmael and the solo inheritance of Isaac completed the type as respects the passing away of the law and the permanence of the gospel. He also applies the teaching of these symbols to the spiritual life of the individual Christian. Authorized by this divine pattern, we shall endeavor reverently to gather the spiritual lessons, not only of these facts, but others in the life of this remarkable character. More reserved and passive than the other patriarchs, Isaac is, perhaps, more obscure and less understood by most Christians than any of the characters of the book of Genesis; but there is none that, when properly realized, impresses itself so vividly upon the heart, and teaches such profound and searching lessons for all Christian lives. A life very largely made up of commonplace events, it is just the life that meets the needs, the failures and the testings of most of us; and we trust we shall find many points of contact with that which is most real and essential in our religious experience.

SECTION I — The Birth of Isaac.

The apostle that we have already referred to, declares that he was born after the Spirit and according to promise. His birth was not natural and ordinary, but extraordinary and supernatural. Not until nature had failed, and the hope of issue from the bodies of Abraham and Sarah was humanly improbable, did God even promise the covenant seed; and, even after this, an interval of testing had to come before the promise was fulfilled. His birth, therefore, was the direct result of omnipotent power, and so it stands as the type of that greater birth, which, in later ages, came through Mary of Bethlehem, even the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. This greater mystery and mightier miracle was distinctly foreshadowed in the babe of promise that came to Hebron’s tent.

There is another miracle and mystery of grace, which was also foreshadowed by the birth of Isaac — that is, the new birth of all the spiritual seed of Abraham. Just as truly as Isaac was born of the Spirit, and Jesus became incarnate through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, so “except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” This is not a natural reformation, not the result of human energy or will, but the work of the Almighty Spirit; beyond the power of nature and after it has failed. “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God: which were born not of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Have we experienced this mighty new creation? Blessed be God, it is for us as well as Abraham.

It is not only by the Spirit, but also through the promise. It is not an arbitrary favoritism of heaven, but “as many as received Him,” to them it is given. Would you have this new life which brings you into all the blessings and hopes of the covenant? Come to Christ, and receive the immortal life which He waits to breathe into every living heart.

SECTION II — The Birth of Ishmael.

Ishmael stands for the flesh and natural life, and the bondage of the law under which it lies. When we speak of the flesh, we do not mean merely that which is gross, sensual and basest in human nature, but all that is born of Adam and part of the natural life. Ishmael and Esau had many lofty human qualities, and Ishmael’s race today are more noble in many things than their fellows; and so the natural man is often a generous man, a cultivated man, even a moral man. The unregenerate woman may be a beautiful girl, a faithful wife, an affectionate mother, even a social benefactor; but this may be all mere instinct and humanity. This is not to be despised; this is not depreciated even in the Scriptures, but it cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The word “natural” in the Epistles is literally “psychical,” the man of soul rather than the spiritual man. This is the nature which all the sons of Adam inherit, and which sin has tainted and overshadowed with the curse.

Like Ishmael it is the firstborn and has already claimed its sovereign rights in every human heart, before grace appears upon the scene. It is into this home, where Ishmael has grown up with all his established rights, that Isaac comes; and so it is in the heart that has walked after the flesh that the grace of God implants the new life of regeneration. Dear friends, where do we stand in this matter? Let us not deceive ourselves because our flesh is not the debased, gross and vicious nature which we see in some. Let us remember the solemn picture of the life which cannot enter heaven. “Wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” May God fulfill the other picture to all who may read these lines: “But you hath He quickened which were dead in trespasses and sins.”

SECTION III — The expulsion of Ishmael.

The position of the infant Isaac in Abraham’s tent, by the side of Ishmael, was very similar to the position of the new born but yet unsanctified soul in the conflict with its old carnal nature. We can readily imagine the innumerable petty tyrannies and persecutions to which the little rival of Hagar’s child was constantly exposed. It is the type of the battle which goes on so long in many a Christian’s soul; in which he strives in his own new strength, but often in vain, against the stronger impulses and tendencies of an evil heart. The picture is drawn in the seventh chapter of Romans with painful vividness and ends at last in the bitter cry of the baffled soul, “O! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The strife was ended in Abraham’s tent by Sarah, who, realizing at once the impossibility of such a life, and the peril of her most precious hopes and promises, demands the prompt expulsion of Isaac’s rival. “Cast out the bondwoman and her son!” is the hard demand, from which Abraham’s sympathy recoils, but which God’s wisdom approves and confirms, and which Abraham sees at least to be unavoidable; and so Ishmael goes forth to his own place, and Isaac remains the undisputed heir of the covenant promises and the peaceful master of the patriarchal nursery.

We need not say that this stands for the decisive moment when the regenerated soul rises to its freedom. Definitely and wholly surrendering the old heart to death and exclusion, it receives the Holy Spirit and the personal Christ to fight the battle henceforth in the victory of faith, and possess the entire spirit in rest, purity and complete consecration. It is not necessary that Ishmael should cease to exist, nor can we claim that sin is dead, but Ishmael is henceforth outside the tent of Isaac, and so, self and sin should be likewise outside the citadel of the will, and the sanctuary of the heart. Sin and Satan are not dead, but we are henceforth dead unto sin and alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let us stop and ask ourselves, which of these pictures is the true representation of our inner life? Is the feeble principle of divine grace, struggling for its very life in the midst of all the contending passions and impulses of our carnal heart, and persecuted by the flesh from day to day, like Isaac at the hands of Ishmael; or have we, notwithstanding all the pleadings of nature and sympathy “crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” and entered into the rest and victory of a single heart and a sanctified spirit, in fellowship with Christ, who henceforth fights our battles and garrisons our soul.

There is a great difference how we spell a single sentence in the Epistle to the Galatians “The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” is the sad picture of the ceaseless warfare between our spirit and our flesh. But “The SPIRIT lusteth against the flesh,, and the flesh against the SPIRIT,” describes the battle in which the Holy Spirit, not our spirit, wages the warfare, and always wins the victory. May the Lord lead every weary heart to the surrender and the decisive trust which will bring this glorious triumph. This is our right under the Gospel just as much as it was Isaac’s by the promise. Sarah, in this, represented the Holy Ghost, who is ever demanding for us our sanctified rights and pressing us forward to claim them. Let us yield to her pleadings, and “cast out the bondwoman and her children.”

It is also implied that this deliverance brings us not only into the life of the Spirit, but into the liberty of the Gospel. “They that are led of the Spirit are not under the law.”

Until we reach this experience the soul is ever acting in some sense under bondage and compulsion. Henceforth its service springs from life and love, and is “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Besides the application of this incident to the individual Christian, it has also a larger reference to the two dispensations of law and grace; Hagar and her son representing the Mosaic system, and Isaac and his seed the dispensation of free grace under the Gospel. Like Isaac and Ishmael the former has given place to the latter, and we live in the enjoyment of its light and love and holy liberty. Against the idea of returning back to the bondage of that law through the Judaizing spirit, Paul earnestly protested in his letter to the Galatians, and emphatically taught that the spirit of the law would ever lead to the works of the flesh. It is as true today, and as necessary to be remembered. Mere morality and discipline must ever fail to produce the fruits of true holiness. They can only spring from the grace of God, the love of Christ, and the living power of the Holy Spirit.

SECTION IV — The Sacrifice of Isaac.

The expulsion of Ishmael does not end the trials of Abraham’s covenant child; there is yet to come a deeper test and a profounder lesson, and a test and lesson that have their parallel in every consecrated life. The command suddenly comes one morning which consigns all this hope and happiness to the dark and inexorable decree of death. “Take now, thy son thine only son, whom thy lovest,” is the mysterious mandate, “and offer him for a burnt offering, on one of the mountains that I shall show thee.” We are accustomed to look at this scene chiefly from the side of Abraham, and think of the amazing faith and fortitude of the father’s heart that could yield not only its affections, but its very faith and hope and all that was linked with God and the future, in blind obedience and submission, and yet unfaltering faith, to this strange and awful test. All this is true, and all is worthy of the high approval which God Himself has placed upon it. It was the supreme test of Abraham’s faith and obedience. But have we looked at it aright from the standpoint of Isaac? Have we thought of all that it meant to that sensitive and shrinking boy, — the strange and sudden separation from his mother’s side, the parting that must have been so trying, the journey of three long days of suspense, that strange reserve of anguish in his father’s face that could not speak, yet could not conceal the overhanging shadow, the innocent question “where is the lamb?” the sudden bursting upon his consciousness of the full meaning, as he himself was bound and laid upon that altar, the silent submission, all the more impressive because no word is given us of his suffering, the strange horror of seeing his own dear father stand above him with that gleaming knife, the awful moment of agony and suspense in which an eternity could be felt before the hand was stayed and the tragedy averted? It was the same to Abraham, it was the same to Isaac, as though the sacrifice had been accomplished. The bitterness of death was past, and to all time and eternity Isaac never could forget the memories of that hour. He had really died in the surrender of his will, and his future life was overshadowed with the consciousness that he was as one raised from the dead. So the Scriptures speak of it, and so must they have felt it.

Not only was it the figure, as nothing else ever was, of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by His Father’s hand for our salvation — a sacrifice which had no arresting hand to stop, no voice to say, “There is a lamb to take His place ” — but which went through all the darkness and bitterness and mystery of death for us.

But it has an equally important meaning for our spiritual life. It is to us the symbol of the death of self and the surrender of our inmost life to God which comes oftentimes, in Christian experience, even after that deeper life which we saw begun in our last section. The expulsion of Ishmael means separation from sin and the flesh. The sacrifice of Isaac means the death of self, and the dedication of the inmost will and life and being unto God.

By various ways the searching test is made, and the soul is led to yield itself to His will; and, in the hour of sacrifice, find its life, and henceforth “live not unto itself, but unto Him who died for us and rose again.” Henceforth it is easy to yield to everything that God wills. The spirit has been melted and bowed, the head has been laid low on Jesus’ breast, and the keynote of life is “not my will, but thine be done”; and while God gives back even Isaac, and gives His higher, better will to each of us, it is henceforth quite different. It is so linked with Him, and so mingled with our self-renunciation that it is no longer we, “but Christ that liveth in us.” Thus must we learn to lay everything, not only the evil, but the good on His altar, and hold even our highest hopes and sweetest promises and divinest blessings and inmost life as His and all for Him, writing upon them: “Of Him, by Him and for Him are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen.”

SECTION V — The Marriage of Isaac.

The bridal of Isaac and the wooing of Rebekah is a sample of sacred romance as beautiful in its way as the story of Eve, and is as full of literary charm as it is of sacred meaning.

The fact that Isaac had but one bride in an age of polygamy was a marked type of his illustrious Antitype, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is gathering to Himself His one spiritual and beloved partner in the fellowship of His glory and His kingdom. Isaac’s bride was chosen by the most deliberate counsel and care from his own kindred in distant Mesopotamia; so God is calling out of this remote world a people for his Son, and a race who are linked with Him by the kindred ties of His own blood. Eleazar, Abraham’s servant, who was entrusted with the choice of the bride, is the striking type both by his name and character of the Holy Spirit, through whom God is calling and leading us to Christ. Like the faithful servant, the blessed Spirit comes on his long and distant journey to seek and find the soul that he is wooing. He meets us, as they met Rebekah, in our common life and in the simple incidents of our human experience, which often lead to the greatest decisions of life: like Rebekah at the well and the other woman in the parallel scene at Sychar. As he laid before Rebekah and her family the claims of Isaac, and spake not of himself, but of his master and his son, and all his wealth and glory, so the Holy Spirit hides Himself behind His work and message, and ever seeks to reveal to us the glory, and beauty, and the claims of Jesus. As Eleazar exhibited to Rebekah, and even placed upon her person some of the treasures which Isaac had sent, so the Spirit not only shows us, but gives us the precious things of Christ, and blesses us with the tokens of His love, even before our full betrothal and unconditional consecration. Like that ancient messenger He gently waits a little season for our answer, and then, like him, He presses the urgent call, “Wilt thou go with this man?” Like Rebekah we must each answer for ourselves. Christ will have no unwilling wedded ones, but demands our wholehearted and joyful surrender. “Hearken, O daughter, and consider” is His cry; “forget also thy kindred, and thy father’s house: So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.” Rebekah’s reply is as prompt and unequivocal as ours should ever be. “I will go,” is the answer which links her forever with the most glorious hopes and destinies of humanity. She has nothing to give but simply herself; that is all He asks from us. Her very wedding robes, and even the veil in which she is to be presented to Isaac, were brought by the servant, and were presented to her before she meets her husband; and clothed in his robes, riding upon his camel, led by his servant, and wholly consecrated to be all his own, she goes forth to meet him.

What a procession! What a picture of our standing! Thus we, too, may wear the wedding garments ere we meet Him at the marriage. He asks from us no costly portion, but gives us all He requires from us. While we are told in one verse that “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready,” we are also told in the next it “was granted to her that she should robe in fine raiment, clean and white — the righteousness of the saints.” Her robes were “GRANTED TO HER” like Rebekah’s, and, like ancient wedding garments, at the very door of the king’s palace. We meet Him in His own beauty and character, and are accepted not for what we are, but for what he makes us and is made unto us. Sanctification, thus, is all of grace, for “we are His workmanship, and created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God before hath PREPARED that we should walk in them.”

Let us put on our heavenly raiment, and keep our garments with holy vigilance, “lest we walk naked, and they see our shame.” And as when Rebekah beheld her lord approaching, she wrapped herself in his veil, and so met him with a token that he could not mistake, so when we shall come to our Master, may we be found not having our own righteousness, but that which is of the faith of Christ, wearing the robes which all heaven will recognize as the token of the bride of the Lamb.

The procession is at length nearing home, and Isaac had gone out to meet it. It is eventide, and others do not see the meeting fully, as, clasped in each other’s arms, they enter the bridal tent, and Rebekah becomes the wife of the chosen seed, and the future mother of the Redeemer Himself. So, too, shall it be in a little while; we shall behold on the distant horizon the signs of home, but ere we reach it our blessed Lord will have hastened to meet us on the way. It may be the eventide of life. It will be the eventide of the world’s history; and our meeting with Him in the air may not be seen by earth’s busy myriads, but we shall know Him and He shall recognize us by the tokens He has given, by the robe we wear, and by the witness of the Holy Spirit who shall be with us still. Happy meeting! Blessed hope! True home! The eternal idea of every marriage feast and wedding veil and throb of earthly love. God grant we may be found in that happy company.

SECTION VI — Isaac’s Wells.

The later scenes of Isaac’s life are not quite free from clouds. In an hour of trial and famine, he seems to have acted without divine counsel. He went down into the country of the Philistines, where he found abundance of food, and had an extraordinary measure of worldly prosperity, but where he had no recorded instance of the Divine presence, and met with continual trouble from the inhabitants of the land. There seems to be no doubt that in this he acted wrongly, and has become an example to us of the needless troubles and unavoidable spiritual loss which will ever follow even tacit disobedience, and the acting of our own wisdom, prudence and self-will. Isaac obeyed so far that he did not go down to Egypt; but he went a little out of the land. So we, without going into the world, may touch its spirit and get complicated with its entanglements in some things, and so have to learn Isaac’s lesson.

The first trouble arose from the lack of water, and when they dug the necessary wells or rather opened the ancient wells of Abraham, their enemies strove with them, and claimed the prior right to them. The world will easily get the best of us when we fight it on forbidden ground. Isaac showed at least the power of grace in the spirit which he manifested, notwithstanding his mistake. He did not contend with them, but moved on from well to well, leaving them in possession, and calling the wells by the names suggested by his bitter experiences: “Contention,” “Hatred,” and finally “Room,” when at length they let him alone. We shall always find room enough when we, like him, pursue a course of gentleness, and prefer a temporary sacrifice to an unseemly strife.

This quality of patience and endurance appeared more strongly in Isaac than any of the patriarchs, and had its real root in the self-sacrifice through which he had passed on Mount Moriah. So they who have died with Christ once for all, will not find it hard to die daily on the innumerable crosses of life’s trials.

At length he moves entirely out of the land of his sojourning, and pitches his tent at Beer-sheba in the land of promise. Immediately, that very night, God appears to him in token of His approval, and renews with him His covenant, while his servant comes with the tidings that “afresh and invaluable well has just poured out its abundant waters in the camp. They give it the name of the covenant that has just been renewed, and call it Beer-sheba, or “the well of the oath.” So we shall find that a decisive return to the exact line of God’s covenant will ever bring to us deliverance from our troubles, the presence of God, and the fountains of blessing.

Not only so, but the Philistines were glad to come to Beer-sheba and beg an alliance with Isaac and his tribe. The man whom they persecuted and asked to leave their presence while he was on their level, is sought for as a friend and counselor when he rises to his true place and separates himself from them. So we never can bless the world till we are separated from the world, and never can lift it up until we get on a higher level than its own. The men who are not afraid of losing their influence are the men whom God will give influence with others. The men who are willing to risk the loss of the world’s friendship, for the sake of God, are the men to whom the world will go in its hour of need for comfort and help and heavenly blessing. Let us be true to God! Let us ever stand within the confines of our inheritance, and God will bless us and make us a blessing.

More than any of the ancient patriarchs, Jacob speaks to us. He comes nearer to our life in human infirmity, in human imperfection, in human worthlessness, in human suffering, trial and discipline, and in the grace of God, which was magnified by all these things.

God calls him a “worm,” as a true figure of his grovelling, crooked, naturally selfish, and supplanting nature. But God gave to the worm the mightiest of names, the name of a “Prince with God,” showing that grace can take us in our lost estate, and seat us with Christ in heavenly places, making us partakers even of the Divine nature.

SECTION I — Jacob’s Birth.

The first symbol that comes up in the life of Jacob is his birth. We see here a figure of his future. It would seem as if in him there was, even in his mother’s womb, some of that inborn spirit — the beginning of that faith which afterwards developed so mightily. So Hosea says, “He took his brother by the heel in his mother’s womb,” as if in some way he had that in him which pressed him afterward to claim the mightiest promises of God.

SECTION II — His Birthright.

The birthright to the ancient patriarchs seems to have involved not only the headship of the tribe, but the spiritual privileges of the Divine covenant. They seem to have understood in some measure — Jacob did, and Isaac at a later period — that there was more involved in the birthright than the mere headship of his house. Undoubtedly his mother had taught him the hopes involved in his birth and the promises which heralded it, and, looking down the ages to come, he may have seen afar the coming of the Savior and linked with it the hope of his eternal future. This it was what made the act of his claiming the birthright, notwithstanding all that was mean and selfish in the way he got it, an act worthy of the highest commendation. Had he claimed it by the rights that belonged to him according to the promises given before he was born, it would have been an act of the highest faith. It is the same act which we perform when we prize and claim the offer of our salvation and sonship in the family of God, and let everything go to secure it. This had been promised to him before his birth, as his mother had, no doubt, taught him, and he should have put in his claim and let God work it out. Jacob, however, mingled his own infirmity with the faith that would otherwise have been right.

He claimed the prize with the tenacity of faith, and then marred his faith by adding his own works. God counted the faith, dropped out the works, and burned out the sin with the discipline of suffering. And yet we cannot forget that he saw its value, and Esau despised it. Esau said, “I am at the point to die, what use is it?” Esau had no sense of the eternal future, or he would have prized the birthright above all earthly treasures even in the dying hour. Jacob saw the treasure, and eagerly claimed it, and made it his own. So you stand with Jacob when you claim your birthright; when you lay hold on your gospel rights; when you take with a firm faith, not only the covenant of mercy promised before you were born, but when you press on to take your whole inheritance in God — not only to be saved, but to be sanctified; not only to believe, but to become an heir of God, a prince with Israel, and a partner of the glory of your Savior. This is the meaning of the birthright, and the faith that claims it.

But while we imitate his faith, let us avoid his unbelief. He that believes enters into rest. He that works, works because he does not believe. When you are sure God has given you the blessing, you rest. But when you are afraid God will fail or Esau outwit, then you try to help and only succeed in hindering. Jacob’s falls were caused by the crookedness of his own nature which God had to burn out of him. God help us to learn the lesson, and so believe that “in quietness and confidence shall be our strength,” and we shall not only hope, but “quietly wait for the salvation of God.”

SECTION III — Jacob’s Vision.

We pass on to the third emblem of his life, that is, the vision at Bethel.

It came in the darkest hour of his life, when midnight was around him, and a stone was his pillow — a symbol of the darker and sadder lot which seemed to await him. And yet it was in that dark hour in the wilderness, on that stony pillow, that the God of heaven was about to meet him in covenant blessing. The vision of Bethel tells of God’s first revealing of Himself to the soul that has chosen Him. Jacob chose God when he chose the birthright. But God had not met Jacob. Jacob was like us when we take the promise, and have not yet seen the Promiser. You kneel at the altar, and claim the blessing; you hold it by faith, but God always makes the faith a reality. The days pass by, and when He seems to have forgotten his promise, and faith begins to faint, then it is that all heaven gathers about you. You trust God. When it begins to grow dark and dangerous, when Esau threatens your life, when it is with you the wilderness, the midnight and the stony pillow, then God comes and meets you, and makes real to your soul that which was accepted by your simple faith before. So it has been with you in the revelation of Christ’s indwelling Spirit; so, perhaps, in the healing of your body; and so it has been in prayer for temporal things for which you have believed. Vision first, then victory; faith first, then sight; trust simply in His word, and then God Himself in all the fulness of a blessed realization.

Jacob’s vision is also a foreshadowing of the pathway of his own life. He sees a ladder, and the top of it reaches to heaven, while God appears at the top as the God of his fathers. How it teaches us that the only true ladder of life is one that reaches to the sky. Jacob’s ladder went all the way up to heaven. The ladders of human ambition only reach a few years ahead. Man’s highest ambition is satisfied when he can mount the pinnacle of fame, or reach the fulfillment of some cherished dream: knowledge, perhaps; friendship, perhaps; or, perhaps wealth. That is the length of their ladder, it reaches only a very little way. There are fifty, sixty, seventy, perhaps, it goes up as high as fourscore years, but Jacob’s ladder had scarcely begun then; it reached to heaven. O, you that are young, and, looking to the future, and count so much on it, have you made sure of the highest issues of life and eternity? Let your ladder reach up to the sky.

And then Jacob’s ladder was not only a long one, but it ascended step by step, rung by rung; not all at one bound, but little by little, moment by moment; so God is leading us on, on, step by step. Are you willing thus to walk patiently moment by moment, overcoming and ascending?

Again Jacob’s ladder rose out of the darkest hour of his life; and so our blessings are born out of our greatest trials. Is your pillow a hard one? Is your sky very black? Look out for the ladder; it is there against the sky. You will see it if you look up. Shut your eyes and ears to all the care, fall asleep on Christ’s bosom in the trust of faith, and it shall meet your vision with its heavenly vistas and its Divine covenants of promise.

But the best is that Jacob’s ladder ended with God, and it had God at the top of it, and God all the way down, holding it up yonder that it might not slip, and supporting the traveler at every step. Let your ladder be guided by His hand, not leaning against the cloudy tower of your ambition, but by the hands that were pierced for you. Have you never noticed a servant, or some one busy about your house, how they wanted you to hold the stepladder while they climbed it? There is one, dear friends, to hold the ladder while you mount to heights that would make you tremble but for His everlasting arms.

And once more we are taught that not only is God at the top of the ladder, but the angels of His providence are moving up and down every rung, and guarding your steps. So your way is under His direction. Every step is under His care. And so He says to you, as to Jacob, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land: for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

Again, Jacob’s vision is the symbol not only of life’s pathway, but of Jesus Christ Himself — the open Door and the only Way of communion and communication with heaven. Christ Himself has given us this interpretation of Jacob’s vision. Speaking to Nathaniel under the fig tree (who seems to have been reading this very chapter) he says, “Here after ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” As much as to say, “I am the ladder of Jacob; it is through me that heaven is open; it is on account of my work that the angels of God come, and henceforth it is not to be in the old visionary way, but through the flesh of the Son of God, that you are to have communion with God.” So God is not only at the top of the ladder, but all the way along. Jesus Christ comes from God, and reaches down to man, a living ladder of human steps, and saying at every step, “I am the Way; I am the Shepherd; I am the Guide; I am the Life; I am the Author and Finisher of your faith.” Is Jesus your Ladder, dear friend? your Way? your Life? Is every step you take a step in Jesus? Is every step you take a step with Jesus? A keeping step with Jesus? A walking in Him as well as with Him, and a finding that He is something unto you, this week, and week by week, that He never was before? This is the blessed meaning. It is God at the beginning, God at the end, God all the way along, and God all and in all.

Again, we see not only the pathway, and the ladder, but the covenant and the consecration. Jacob rises, and on the altar consecrates himself — with poor, imperfect words it is true — and if it looks like wavering faith, still God takes it, and henceforth his life is linked in tender bonds with Jehovah’s everlasting love. Have we made that consecration and claimed that covenant? Is there a voice saying to you, beloved, “I am with thee, and I shall keep thee in all the places thou goest; and I will not leave thee until I have done all I have spoken to thee of”? Is it not safe to leave all in those mighty arms? Has He given you this mighty word, “I will not stop until I have done all unto thee that I have spoken to thee of”? How terrible life’s perils without it; how blessed with it. Have you said, like Jacob, “Of all Thou hast given me, I will give the tenth”? Or, rather, have you cried, “It is all Thine, and I am Thine, and Thou art mine”?

SECTION IV — The Victory at Penuel.

We see Jacob now many years further on, but not many rounds up. He is about where he was at Bethel, and so God has to throw across his path a tremendous shock to arouse him to the true meaning of his life. He lets a trial come that threatens the life of himself and his dearest ones. His infuriated brother with hundreds of armed followers is sweeping down upon him. Here are the little ones, and here the helpless wives and flocks, and the pilgrim with his staff is helpless against the mighty warrior. It is an hour of most extreme trial; but poor Jacob is at it again, putting out his feelers, sending on his presents, and trying to coax the lion, and see what his ingenuity can effect. Then there seems to come over him a sense of his helplessness, and putting his dear ones in the hand of God, he goes alone at Jabbok’s ford. It was night again; a dark night; there was not a star in the sky, and I am afraid he did not even see the ladder there now — but he had it out with God, and God came nearer than He had in Jacob’s dream. Clouds and thick darkness are round about His throne, and in the darkest clouds you will find Him. But it is different from the vision at Bethel. The danger is nearer now, and God is nearer too. Then it was God at the top of the ladder, now it is God on the level of Jacob, wrestling with him; having Jacob in His very arms; and Jacob able to put his arms around his very God. God has come very close to Jacob, because God wants Jacob henceforth to live very near to him. That wrestling has much of mystery in it. That deep, convulsive struggle some of us can understand who have ever had a night of agony, in which it seemed as though your very loins were wrestling, and the cords of your very heart were taking hold of something invisible. So Jacob went through the mystery of trial, and came forth in the morning another man. It is impossible to analyze all this without destroying the beauty. I took up a hyacinth blossom this morning; it was beautiful and very fragrant; I took it in my fingers and pressed it, and the fragrance was gone. So you have to take the spirit of these things. There are lessons here that touch many points. It teaches us that out of the thing that is hardest, we often may get the greatest blessing. Out of the thing in your life by which you are nearly crushed, you are to have your grandest victory. Out of the thing that seems ready to conquer and destroy you, God wants to bring to you a faith that you never had before, and a revelation of his love and power that you never dreamed of. That very thing you thought a stumbling stone, God means to make a pillow for your head, and a ladder of ascension to His very presence. So do not wait until you get into a comfortable position, and say that then you will live a Christian life. “I am going to get to a certain place; I am going to get things fixed up; and then I will serve God.” Don’t say that, but go to God and let him fix up the things, and you will be a Christian through the very experience your trial and deliverance have brought you.

There is something else here that we must have to be strong in prayer, and that is the element of intense earnestness. There is something else in prayer, I know — a rest and trust; but I do not think the rest comes before the throes of agony are past. There is something in prayer that takes hold of God, and cries, “I will not let thee go until Thou bless me.” It is not weakness; it is earnestness; it is life; it is the throes and travailing of a birth that cannot come any other way. It isn’t doubting; it is power, and it will end in rest if yon will let God have his way. This is the meaning of your distress and the burden that is on you. It is the Holy Ghost “groaning within you with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Do not try to work up a frenzy of prayer; that is offensive to God and good taste; but when you have the throes and the agony of Jacob’s prayer, remember Christ had it, too.

And then, again, we learn at Penuel not only the efficacy of the prayer that overcomes, but also the element that breaks down. Jacob did not get his answer by struggling, until at last he yielded, and fell prostrate at the feet of Him that wrestled with him; then he received the blessing. The angel touched his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, and in his anguish Jacob gave a cry of despair, and he fell at the feet of the Mighty One, crying, perhaps, “Lord, help me; I cannot even pray any more.” And God may have said, “It is done; you have your answer and your lesson; you have been too strong; you have tried to do too much. You thought you could wring the blessing from Esau, outwit Laban, and now propitiate Esau; you have tried to do things yourself. O Jacob! fall a helpless child at My feet, and let me be your strength, and carry you henceforth.” And as he fell, I am sure he did not go quite down; he fell into the arms of God and as he went forth, though halting on his thigh, he was leaning on Omnipotence. He had not as strong a thigh, but he had an infinitely stronger Savior. And so, beloved, when we come to this place, too, where our strength is gone; and when we have no arm but Christ’s, I am sure that, after that, we can say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

I need not say the answer came to Jacob next morning. God came to him here, and Esau had to follow. The next morning Esau was there — but a tamed lion — with weeping eyes, and loving arms, and a brother’s heart, meeting his brother with reconciliation and tenderness. God had done all that. We must have power with God first, and then we have it with others.

But the best of all was that Jacob was a new man. And God said as he rose, “Thou shalt no more be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name, for, as a Prince, hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” And so, brethren, we rise out of our trials, ourselves gone — the old man and woman canceled,, and wearing His new name. What you want to get rid of isn’t the sins of Jacob, but Jacob himself. It is to leave yourself, and go out another person in the life of Christ.

SECTION V — Jacob’s Return to Bethel.

He did not get his full blessing at once; he seems to have got away from it for a while, and God says a little later, “Arise, Jacob, and go to Bethel, and stay there.” After our hours of prayer and victory, we may go back. You say I had such a blessing, but I lost it. You can go back to Bethel and dwell there. Perhaps you cannot go to the same altar, but you can be in the same arms. Go back to Bethel; then God will finish the work, and the covenant will be confirmed forever. The failure of Jacob to do this fully was, perhaps, the secret of all his later trials; Jacob went back, but he did not stay there. If he had, I believe he would have escaped the bitter trials that followed. But a little later we read that Jacob wandered through the land again. And soon after came the shame of Dinah’s fall; the strife of his sons; the betrayal and sale of Joseph to the Midianites; and the wreck of Jacob’s hopes for years. O, consecrated children of God, it is a glorious thing to get over Jabbok, but it is a more terrible thing after that to go back! Jacob went back from Bethel, and for a time he had the bitterest cup that a mortal ever drank. I don’t know anything sadder than the second failure after consecration. We read in Judges that after they had entered the promised land, they went back to sin, and their fall lasted four hundred years. O, you that have come, be sure to stay at Bethel; rear your altar, and dwell forever under the shadow of His presence!

The closing scenes of Jacob’s life are full of instruction and comfort. At last it is all right, and standing before Pharaoh he can say, “All things have worked together for good.” “The angel that led me all my life long, and hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.” It was all right at last, and it will be all right for us poor erring ones. But how many sorrows we may escape and how many snares we shall miss if we will always literally and wholly obey our covenant God, and abide in Him.

SECTION VI — Jacob’s Grave.

The last emblem that I shall give you, is Jacob’s grave. He was dying in Egypt; he called his family about him and his beloved Joseph, and said, “If I have found grace in your eyes, swear unto me that you will not bury me in Egypt, but with my fathers in their burial place.” So they swore unto him, and after a time the long procession moved back again, and they laid him in Machpelah’s Cave. Jacob was looking to the time when the trumpet should sound, and the dead arise, and he wanted to have his very bones within the covenant of God. And so, beloved, have you chosen your grave among God’s people — I don’t mean so much your literal grave, as the future, the resurrection glory? That was the beautiful faith of Joseph when he died; he commanded that his bones should be carried back when Israel went through the Red Sea. And God wants us to look out for our bones — not as some people do, looking forward to their funeral expenses or a grave stone — but for the time when you shall rise again, and your dust shall be glorified with Christ and his ransomed ones, or covered with everlasting shame and contempt.

Dear friends, what a life; how weak, how poor, how wrong, how erring, how much it needed the grace of God. But the God of Jacob — how tender, how faithful, how good, how patient; and He is willing to be your God and mine. Let us take Him in the spirit of the old hymn, which has been the cradle song of our childhood.

“O! God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed,
Who, through this weary pilgrimage,
Hast all our fathers led.
O! spread thy covering wings around
‘Til all our wanderings cease,
And at our Father’s loved abode
Our souls arrive in peace.”

Book 1, Chapter 8, Part 1 — EMBLEMS FROM THE STORY OF JOSEPH.

The beautiful story of Joseph’s life is the worthy climax of the first book in the Bible, and may well stand as one of the stately and colossal pillars in the portal of the Temple of Divine Truth. It is one of the few blameless lives of the Bible, and stands side by side with Enoch and Daniel in its unblemished loveliness. It is full of the most affecting and practical lessons for our Christian life, and touches at every point our experience of suffering and trial as the children of God, and the great principles of Divine Providence which God is ever working out in each of our lives. And, in the higher realm of typical teaching, it foreshadows the character, and sufferings, the grace and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ with a vividness and power unsurpassed by any of the figures in all this wondrous gallery of divine symbolism.

We shall glance at Joseph’s life and character in both these connections, with respect not only to our Christian life and character, but also to his great antitype, the Lord Jesus Christ, blending both aspects as the changing panorama may require.

SECTION I — Joseph’s Birth.

He was his father’s beloved son, and so the fitting type of the well-beloved Son of God. Nor should we fear to claim the same place and fellowship in Him, for He Himself has taught us that if we are united to Him, and He abides in us, the love wherewith the Father loved Him is in us also, and we are made accepted in the beloved. It will make our trials easy if we always begin the story of our life like Joseph’s, with this blessed certainty that we are God’s beloved ones. There is something beautiful in the simplicity with which John calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” without the faintest consciousness of presumption. So let us press close to the Divine heart, and love will usually get the place it claims.

SECTION II — Joseph’s Dreams.

The consciousness of his coming destiny was divinely impressed on the heart of the child, and with ingenuous frankness he gave the fullest expression to what must have seemed his extravagant pretensions and expectations; and although rebuked and ridiculed by his jealous brothers, he still persisted in his confidence and testimony. So upon the consciousness of Christ’s early childhood came the foreshadowing of His lofty character and destiny even when but twelve years of age. It forces itself into His precocious questions and confession: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And afterwards, even in the face of His enemies, and in spite of their hatred and persecutions, He witnessed invariably to His own divine character and glory until, at last, it cost Him His life. So also to the believer, God unveils, both by His Word and Spirit, the vision of his high calling. Sometimes the veil is lifted higher, and the soul is permitted to know enough of the divine plan to prepare it for service, to fortify it against trials and sufferings, and inspire it for sacrifices and triumphs in the cause of Christ. So the great Apostle pressed on with the invincible cry, “I must see Rome;” “I am sure that I shall come to you in the fulness of the blessing of Christ;” “I know that in nothing I shall be ashamed;” “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom –” “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” So also he says to Timothy: “According to the prophecies which went before on thee, that by them thou mightest war a good warfare.” It was for the joy set before Him that our Master endured the cross and despised the shame, and we, too, shall overcome as we steadily hold in view our high calling and our immortal crown.

SECTION III — Joseph’s Sufferings.

The sufferings of Joseph are preeminently typical of the sorrows laid upon his great Anti-type, our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1.) He was hated and envied of his brethren, because of his testimony concerning himself and his claims to his father’s special love; so Christ was hated by his brethren, persecuted, rejected, and at last condemned and crucified, chiefly on account of His claim to be the Son of God and, His unfaltering witness to His Messiahship and glory.

(2.) Joseph was sold to his enemies for twenty pieces of silver; and so the Lord Jesus was betrayed and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles by the council of His own nation, and judged and condemned, in spite of the attempts of Pilate to release Him.

(3.) Joseph was separated for many long and lonely years from his fond father, and was really given up for dead; and so Jesus left His Father’s bosom, and even bore the very hiding of His Father’s face and the anguish of His wrath and judgment on account of sin, and at last died under the dark cloud of divine judgment.

(4.) Joseph was exposed to the most powerful temptations from the world, the flesh and the devil, but resisted with inflexible fidelity to the will of God and the voice of His conscience; so Satan assailed the Son of God with all the allurements and solicitations of evil, but found nothing in Him. Of Joseph we have no recorded blemish or willful sin, but of Jesus we know that he was “holy, harmless,” undefiled and separate from sinners, “and was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.”

(5.) Joseph was accounted guilty of the sin of others, and really suffered innocently, because of another’s wrongdoing; so Jesus “was made sin for us who knew no sin,” and bore “the iniquity of us all.” He was crucified under the judgment of human and ecclesiastical law as a criminal, and was so accounted by His own contemporaries and judges. This is the keenest of all humiliations, to be assumed guilty of that which we utterly abhor. The shadow of sin upon the soul is darker even than its penalty.

(6.) Joseph humbled himself to a lot of the deepest degradation and the most menial drudgery and toil, and did it willingly and with all his heart, accepting his situation with beautiful submission and patience; so Jesus became not only “the Man of sorrows,” but a man of toil, laboring at His workbench, with sweat of brow and weariness of frame like the poorest of men; and, to the end of his life, knowing all the hardships of poverty and want, weariness and homelessness. “The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” was His uncomplaining cry, “I am among you as he that serveth,” was his chosen place.

(7.) Joseph became the companion of criminals in Pharaoh’s prison; and so our blessed Savior “was numbered with the transgressors,” crucified between two thieves and accounted a malefactor.

(8.) Joseph was the victim of wicked men, and, in all his suffering, he knew that they were held responsible for their voluntary wickedness; yet he recognized in all his sad experience that it was the will of God using and overruling the passions of men to fulfill His higher ends of benevolence and wisdom. In speaking afterwards of his suffering, Joseph adds no word of reflection or regret; he sees the hand of God in every step, and above every sinful hand. He says, “God sent Me before you, it was not you that did it but God: Ye meant it for evil, but God sent it for good to preserve much people alive.” So the Lord Jesus Christ ever recognized His sufferings and death as the plan of His Father’s wisdom and love, and the chosen path of human redemption, and yet at the same time involving a no less degree of guilt on the part of those who wickedly ministered to His destruction. And so Peter declares in the beginning of Acts: “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and, with wicked hands, have crucified and slain.” And so the Lord declares himself to His earthly judge, “Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above,” and yet with strange solemnity he adds, in the very spirit of the truth we have just stated, “Therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.”

(9.) The sufferings of Joseph were not lost, but were the means in God’s marvelous providence of saving his house and the whole world from death; and so the type is transcendantly fulfilled in the glory and eternal issues of Christ’s cross and shame, in the salvation of myriads of the redeemed from eternal death. It was this that enabled him on the threshold of that cross to cry, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” “The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

Turning now to the application of all this to our own lives, we find in Joseph’s sufferings a beautiful example of the spirit a Christian should exemplify under trial and affliction.

(1.) Like Joseph, our sufferings may often come from our own brethren. Many of the bitterest cups of our lives are put to our lips by the hands of those we love. When men attempt to polish a diamond, they either use another diamond or diamond dust, and so God has to purify us by the hard attrition of our dearest friends, and often our fellow Christians. Shall we not, like Joseph, see His hand above their’s, and take our lesson and hold our victory.

(2.) Like Joseph, we must also expect to be tried, misunderstood, hated, persecuted and wronged by the world. We should not expect less than our Master, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” The secret of victory lies in the spirit of integrity and an unfailing confidence in God as one that is mightier than the world, and that will “bring forth our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday.” “Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls unto Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.”

(3.) Like Joseph’s, our sufferings will often come to us through the grossest injustice on the part of men, involving loss, and even shameful reproach. The verdicts of public opinion and human authority are not always equitable, and many of God’s dearest children have lived long under the ban of the severest injustice. This seems at first to human nature very hard to bear, and yet the apostle has said it is better to suffer for well doing than for ill doing. “If when you do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable unto God. For hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again: when he suffered he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”

(4.) Like Joseph’s, our sufferings may be aggravated and prolonged by the neglect and ingratitude of others, and even those whom we have most kindly befriended. The fellow prisoner whose release Joseph predicted, forgot him the moment he returned to his place and escaped his own misery, and left Joseph languishing in his neglected prison for years, when one word would have set him free. So our hearts will often ache at the inhumanity of men and the ingratitude of friends. Oftentimes we shall find our best services unappreciated and unrequited, and shall even be cruelly stung by those we have benefitted or even saved. How much suffering there is even among God’s children which one word would avert, or the smallest sacrifice would prevent. But we must learn to endure and to wait, to render every ministry unto God, rather than to men, and accept our recompense not from human gratitude, but from our Master’s righteous hand. How exquisite the answer of the great Christian soldier who, when parched with thirst after a bloody battle, was handed a cup of water by his attendant, and as he was about to hold it to his famished lips, he saw the hungry eyes of a wounded enemy looking at the water. Hastening to his side he handed him the cup, but the man instead of taking it made a sudden feint, and then by a quick movement tried to strike his noble benefactor with a death wound in return for his love. The brave officer sprang back and saved his life, but his attendant, with fierce indignation raised his sword and was about to bury it in the body of the miscreant. But the good man held him back, took his sword from his hand, disarmed the wounded enemy, and then handing the cup of water to his attendant, quietly added: “Give it to him all the same.” So let us love and bless.

(5.) The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary weight through long monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its spring, and without the grace of God is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair. Joseph’s was a long trial, and God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,” but He knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal. “Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing!” “The God of all grace who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Jesus Christ, after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you; to Him be glory forever and ever, amen.”

(6.) Like Joseph, let us meet our sufferings in a spirit of courageous cheerfulness and make the best of them. Joseph might have given up and said, “There is no use trying; everything is against me,” as many a young man is tempted in adversity to do. But Joseph went into Potiphar’s kitchen, not to repine and fret, but to be bright and useful and do his very best; and he so succeeded that before long he had the highest place in the household. And then, when the scene was changed from the kitchen to the prison, Joseph again, instead of giving up in sullen despair, and feeling that there was no use trying, resolved to make the best of this position, and so succeeded that ere long he was chief of the prisoners. Wherever he found himself he did his best, and having succeeded in a pantry and a prison he was ready for a palace and a throne. The man who cannot succeed in a trying position is not fit for an easier one. This lesson of Joseph’s life takes hold, as no other in the Scriptures, of the practical questions that meet every man, and especially every young man, in the battle of life.

(7.) Like Joseph, we shall find it indispensable in the time of trouble to retain our integrity as a jewel above all price, and keep the conscience so pure that by well doing we shall be able to silence the ignorance of foolish men and give the devil no place for his assaults upon our faith. Joseph’s heart would surely have been crushed, if, in the dark hour he had been compelled to say like his brothers afterwards, “I have been verily guilty, therefore this distress has come upon me.” If we have been guilty in anything let it be quickly rectified, and it shall be forgiven, and then, with a pure conscience and a true heart, we can stand against all the storms of trial.

(8.) The support of Joseph in his trial was the confidence and consciousness of the Divine presence and the constant assurance which sprang from his early faith that God’s hand was overruling all his life. There can be no doubt that in these dark hours his early dreams ever shone like a pole star of hope upon the midnight sky, and “for the joy set before him, He endured the cross and despised the shame.” We must hold fast to our faith and hope, or we cannot overcome the billows of sorrow. We must ever recognize the hand of infinite love in all our trials, and never for any instant listen to the devil’s whisper, “The Lord has brought us hither that he might destroy us.” This was the cowardly cry of a wicked king, but faith’s answer ever is “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble: therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed and the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea.” “The Lord God is with me, therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.” We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne calmly awaiting the hour when with adoring rapture we shall say, “All things have worked together for good.”

(9.) Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow, than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a “need be” for every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance will surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessings; and if we have the qualities that fit us for a throne, all earth and hell cannot keep us from it when God’s time has come. We cannot see it now, but shall surely find in God’s “afterwards” the benefits and the necessity of the discipline which His patient love has held us to so strictly, and yet so wisely, in the experience of life.

SECTION IV — Joseph’s Exaltation.

The startling suddenness and transcendent greatness of the change which passed over Joseph’s life in a few hours, seems almost too romantic to be true, but such transitions are not so sudden as they seem. Joseph had been quietly prepared for all this through the preceding years, and had learned his lessons so well that the mere outward circumstances of his promotion were much less to him than they seemed to others. He recognized in his new position simply a divine call to new service, a situation requiring new duties and divine support, and proceeded to fulfill his new responsibilities with the same simple fidelity as he had shown in his humbler positions. While virtually the ruler of Egypt and the entire world, he used his high trust as a place of service, and went throughout the whole land of Egypt with the same painstaking care as one of his humblest subordinates. The change that came to Joseph was sudden and complete. His prison was exchanged for a palace; his shame for the highest honor; his position of degradation for one of authority and prominence, and his lonely suffering life for a happy home and the fellowship of a beloved and noble wife and family; while as the years rolled on all that was lost was restored, the broken ties of home were healed, his dear father and fond brother were given back to his arms, and the very brothers that had betrayed him were reconciled to his affections and made to see the sin and folly of their crime in a manner so wonderful and delightful that it took out of the past every bitter memory and painful sting, and turned the saddest trials he had known into the sweetest blessings of his life and others. And the scene closes with that which to him was the highest of all enjoyments, the opportunity of returning good for evil, ministering to the happiness of those he loved, cherishing and nourishing his father’s house and his brethren with all the riches of his glory, and seeing them and the entire world blessed and even saved through the ministry of his suffering life. Surely this was, indeed, a transformation of suffering into glory and blessing. All this was the type of Christ’s exaltation, and the pledge of our reward.

(1.) It foreshadows the exaltation of Jesus, after the shame and suffering of the cross, to the resurrection life and heavenly glory upon which he entered.

(2.) The relation of Joseph to Pharaoh suggests the mediatorial office of Jesus Christ with the Father, administering as he does the government of the universe, and having all things delivered into His hands. Pharaoh answered every petition that came to him with the message, “Go to Joseph!” and so we have access unto the Father through Him, and receive the riches of grace and the blessings which we need and claim. All the treasures of Egypt were in Joseph’s hands; all the store, which saved and fed the famishing people, was given out at his orders; and so “it hath pleased the Father that in Christ should all fulness dwell,” “and of His fulness have we received grace for grace.”

(3.) Joseph was virtually ruler over the land of Egypt and the entire world, and so Christ has been invested with like power in heaven and in earth. He is established “far above all might and dominion, and every name that is named, both in this world and that which is to come, and is head over all things to the church.” Let us ever remember, when we look at the forces around us and our bitter trials, that

“He everywhere hath sway,
And all things serve His might;
His every act pure blessing is,
His path unsullied light.”

(4.) The marriage of Joseph, after his exaltation, has been applied by some interpreters to the gathering of Christ’s church to Himself in the heavenly places. It was not during His life of shame and suffering, but after His ascension, that He established the church, and her true place with Him — even in the present dispensation — the place where she should ever recognize herself as sitting, is by His side in glory. This also is part of His glory, and is to be His eternal joy, the church of His love and the partner of His nature and His throne.

(5.) The years of plenty, and then the years of famine which followed them, seem to foreshadow: the first, the dispensation of grace which is now proceeding; and the second, the time of tribulation which is coming upon the earth before the end, out of which He “shall gather His people to meet Him in the air.” It was during this time of famine that Joseph’s brethren came to him and were reconciled. And so it shall be during the days of tribulation that Christ’s brethren after the flesh, the Jews shall recognize Him, repent of their sins, and be restored to His friendship and blessing, and afterwards share with Him in their own separate national life, as in Egypt of old, the blessing of His millennial kingdom. This is to be one of the crowning glories of the once rejected Nazarene that “they shall look upon Him they have pierced, and shall mourn,” and shall be reconciled to the Messiah that they delivered to the Gentiles, and that God has made such a blessing to the Gentiles, as He made Joseph of old. This whole story, therefore, is the picture in some degree at least, of the millennial times, and, no doubt, the fulfillment will bring out many resemblances and correspondences which we cannot now foresee.

The story of Joseph is not only a picture of Christ’s exaltation, but is to us the pledge that the trials we endure for Christ shall “work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” In a little while the trials of the present will be exchanged for glories and enjoyments which will make us ashamed that we ever murmured or shrank in the brief ordeal, which was only God’s beneficent school to educate us for our kingdom. This is the chief lesson of Joseph’s life, to teach us the outcome of sorrow, innocently, bravely, and triumphantly endured, according to the will of God. It cannot harm us, and the recompense is beyond our highest thought. An ancient monarch found on ascending to the throne from which a usurper had long excluded him, that one of his faithful adherents was lying in a prison because he had dared to dispute the tyrant’s claim, and had been true to his exiled master through years of bondage. The victorious king commanded the noble captain to be brought into his presence and the chains struck from his limbs. He then ordered an attendant to weigh them in his sight and then bring from the palace treasures bag after bag of gold, and weigh them on the same scales. Then turning to his faithful friend, he said: “You have worn these chains for me, now you shall have their weight in gold; you have languished in a prison for me, now you shall have a palace, and all your sufferings shall be rewarded by their exact equivalent in riches and honor.” And so for us “it is a faithful saying, if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer, we shall also reign.”

SECTION V — The Grace displayed in Joseph’s Life and Character.

Higher far than all his glory, is the glorious fact that he used it only for others. The crown of Joseph’s character, like his greater Antitype, is love. He stands ever as the highest type of Jesus, our suffering, forgiving brother, and our gracious and benignant Lord.

(1.) We see the beneficence of Joseph’s spirit in his kindness, even in his humiliation, to those about him. He ministered to his suffering fellow prisoners. And so Christ went about continually doing good, and all who are like Christ will live to use every station as an opportunity of service, and leave behind them even in the vilest and meanest place, only memorials of blessing.

(2.) We see, next, his graciousness in the use he made of his exalted power. Not for himself did he hold the scepter of Egypt, but for the people he served and saved. The abundance that came to his care was simply regarded as a trust for others, and husbanded for the time of their need. So Christ has been exalted to the right hand of power, not for His own selfish magnificence and enjoyment, but that He might be a Prince and a Savior. So he has received all the fulness of the Father that He might give it to the race for which He died. His heavenly life is as unselfish as His earthly, and could we behold Him now, it would still be the ministering priest, the girded servant, the gracious and ever-willing benefactor of all who need His help and care. He is not an Oriental despot, but a loving, toiling, ever accessible friend; never perplexed, never overwhelmed with any difficult situation, never preoccupied, but ever ready with open ear and heart and hand to hear our cry and help our need. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Seeing that we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. For we have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Like our exalted and beneficent Master, so must we also use our place of privilege and blessing for service and for others. We are trustees and stewards of the manifold grace of God, and the more fully we receive, the more fully we must learn that “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and that the very condition of keeping our blessing is that we shall “be a blessing.” A selfish Christian is as inconsistent and impossible as a selfish Christ. We, too, are come to our kingdom for such a time as this. Years of famine are coming to the souls around us; in a little while they shall be perishing for eternal bread; they need our prayers, our help; and even although they may not know it now as we do, yet the day is coming when they shall reap the blessings of our faith and our foresight. Let us be true to our trust, and thus worthy to stand with Joseph and his greater Master, as the dispensers of God’s blessings to a dying world.

(3.) The preeminent picture of Christ’s heart is seen in Joseph’s relation to his brethren, and his wise, and yet tender, forgiving love. In the wronged and injured brother we see the Savior, and his rejection by those for whom he died. In the long years of indifference and forgetfulness that followed, we behold a picture of the patience that waits while men go on in callousness and hardness of heart. In the troubles that at last overtook them and brought them unconsciously to their injured brother for help, we see how God at length compels the obdurate heart by bitter trials to come to Him, even though it may not yet know Him. In the position of those brethren at the feet of Joseph, unknowing, yet not unknown, we see the sinner whom Christ is drawing to Himself, but who yet does not even know that He is drawing, but is just driving on in some blind course of desperate heedlessness. In the wise and even stern discipline through which Joseph gradually brought them to reflection and the recollection of their sin, and awakened in their breasts the slumbering voice of conscience, we see the exquisite process through which the Holy Ghost convicts the hardened heart of the sinner, and lets its own memories and convictions gently prepare it to receive His mercy. In the deep tenderness that Joseph held in check through all this long ordeal, we see the love that Christ often bides under His sternest discipline and longs to pour out upon our breast when we are ready to receive it.

At length the hour of reconciliation comes; and as in our case, so it begins with Joseph, and not with the guilty brothers. God is the first to meet us in reconciliation, and it is His love that awakens our trust, and His grace that quickens our heart into grace. How fully Joseph forgives; how tenderly he meets the men that had so pitilessly sacrificed him; how generously he insists that they shall forget and forgive themselves; how he tries to banish every painful memory; how he receives them to his very heart and home, and feasts with them in the absence of all other guests; and how royally he provides for them and theirs, sharing with them his wealth and glory, and sending for them to dwell with him amid the abundance of the land and in its fairest region.

All this is infinitely more realized in the love of Jesus, who has been more cruelly wronged. He draws with wiser, tenderer influences of love and power. He it is who says “I will heal their backslidings; I will love them freely for mine anger is turned away.” Not only does he forgive, but he forgets; not only does he save from wrath, but He receives us to His friendship, feasts us at His table, feeds us with His own very life, shares with us His riches and glory, and takes us to be with Him where He is in all the riches of His kingdom and inheritance.

As we have already suggested, this will receive a literal fulfillment bye and bye in the actual seed of Jacob, the literal brethren of Jesus, but it is also fulfilled in the forgiveness and reconciliation of every heart that has learned to know Him as a “friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Have we learned to know Him by this tender name and this exquisite type, and shall we realize with a sweetness unknown before, and reflect upon others, in our turn, like Him, the meaning of these lines?

Yes, for me, for me He careth,
With a brother’s tender care;
Yes, with me, with me He shareth
Every burden, every fear.

Yes, o’er me, o’er me He watcheth,
Ceaseless watcheth night and day:
Yes, e’en me, e’en me He snatcheth
From the perils of the way.

Yes, in me, in me He dwelleth —
I in Him, and He in me;
And my empty soul He filleth,
Here and through eternity.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” “This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake unto him in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; who received the lively oracles to give unto us.” Luke 24: 27; Acts 7: 37.

We need not repeat what has been said in a former volume, that all these ancient scriptures are God’s pictures of Christ. We shall now renew our study of these emblems as we next find them, in the Book of Exodus. We have seen that the first book of the Bible is almost a table of contents of all that was to follow; and that the germ truths of the whole system of redemption are there made living in the personal characters and the symbolical figures that God gave in a series of object lessons to the infant class of His church. In the Book of Exodus the vision grows more vivid, though not less spiritual, and not less Christly.

SECTION I — The Ark on the Nile.

The first that we call attention to is the ark of faith, as we may call it — that little vessel to which a Jewish mother entrusted all her hopes and all the hopes of her people in that hour of strange and terrible extremity; and out of which God brought through His chosen servant, the hope and the deliverer of the church. This picture of Moses and his rescue is the real parable of the whole story of the Book of Exodus, and all that it means — namely, the work of redemption. The word Exodus means “taken out,” and the word Moses means “drawn out.” And so the Exodus tells how the children of Israel were taken out of Egypt, and thus how we are taken out of the Egypt of sin in like manner. And Moses is the figure of their deliverance and ours; and thus his name became expressive of the whole story of the Exodus. He, too, was condemned to die by the harsh decree of the cruel Pharaoh, and he was laid on the altar of death by his mother’s trembling hands. He was given up to die, and to her was as really dead, almost, as though he had been taken out of her arms and buried. And then he came back to her as much from the dead as Isaac came back to his father. Thus he becomes the symbol of death and resurrection. There is a trial in front of every blessing. There is a cross everywhere, and there is a crown on the other side; and only thus can we enter into the mystery of God’s working; in the life of faith. Little Moses must die and come back to his people, as Christ must be crucified and raised again; and your life must be laid on the altar if you are to come up in resurrection power. So the story of Moses is the parable of resurrection, redemption and the Christian life.

And in handing over that which is so dear to us, there must be faith. We cannot do it unless we trust God. That mother could not have put her cherished one on the bosom of the Nile, if she had not thought that God’s hand was under him, and God’s power going to deliver him. It is really a question whether Abraham could have yielded up Isaac as he did, if he had not had faith. It glorifies that act, to be told that Abraham believed Isaac would somehow be given back, even from death. It was the faith that made it possible to go through the death. It was the joy that was set before Him that enabled Jesus to endure the cross, and despise the shame. And so God does not take any of us as blind sacrifices, and put us to death in a sort of brutal and hopeless surrender, but He gives us the blessed consciousness that we are in the hands of infinite love, and that, though we may not see how, yet somehow God has for us nothing but blessing, and an outcome of mightier joy and service, and issues that shall reach out through eternity for His glory and for the good of others. So it was here; little Moses, kept in her home, would have perished. Little Moses, on the Nile, is still alive in his work, and has become the leader of faith for the millions that have followed in his footsteps. And so, the clinging hands that would hold back what God is calling you to give Him are cruel, foolish hands; and your true life and their true life must ever lie in the example of this ancient mother. Just place all at His blessed feet, and all eternity will unfold to you an hundred fold.

Again, not only do we see faith here, but we see God’s providence — that takes the things that we cannot keep, and guards the things for which we cannot care. We are not walking in the dark; there are eyes above us, and around us, and on every side, that slumber not nor sleep. And God can take the very things that you are most afraid of; God can take the very things that are breaking your heart; God can take the very things that seem to be your enemies, and make them the very occasion of your deliverance, and the instruments of your highest blessing. Poor Jochabed was perhaps haunted with the fear of the cruel Pharaoh and his daughter; but she lived to see them the instruments of blessing. The very thing that seemed to condemn her child to death made him the child of a king. The hard fortune by which he was taken from her arms was the doorway by which he was given back. And the very river to which she consigned him, and by which it seemed she was putting him in a watery grave, carried him on the voyage by which he passed from being a Hebrew captive to be the Lawgiver of the world. The very things that are hard to suffer become the scaffolding for building God’s temple, without which He could not have fulfilled His purpose. And so with the story of Joseph. He had to go into the dungeon to be a Prince. And Moses had to be decreed to death, to be cast into the waters, to be saved, and become the instrument of God to save these people. O let us trust that inscrutable Providence, which is so full of mystery to many, and which hides behind His trials and discipline plans and purposes of love and wisdom. And so, through this little floating vessel let us learn the secret of self-renunciation; let us learn the secret of trust, and let our trembling hands place all that is dear in His infinite arms, and ever keep them there; and with wondering hearts we, too, shall know how wise, how strong His hand.

SECTION II — The Burning Bush.

The second emblem in the Book of Exodus is the fire of the wilderness, the Burning Bush. We come to it in the third chapter of Exodus, second verse: “And. the angel of the Lord. appeared unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And He said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt.” Here we see the story of Egypt again represented in symbol, just as it was in the waters of the Nile, only the figure here is not water, but fire. It grows more intense, more terrible. And so God’s image to us of trial and of trouble is both water and fire, and He has given us a promise for both. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior.” And so, while the waters of the Nile tell of the engulfing tribulation, the burning bush tells of the tribulations which seem to be a consuming fire. The bush referred to here was a little stunted shrub that still grows in the wilderness of that country. It was not a palm tree, it was not a beautiful bush full of blossoms. It was a fitting type of these and of the church of God, although a despised little thing. And so it is with our Christian life — a root out of a dry ground, like the heath in the desert, to the eye of man; not only obscure, but burning with fiery trial. Fire represents here what had been represented to Abraham in the smoking furnace of his vision. It represents the fiery trials of our lives, the things that burn down deep into the very fibers of our being, the flames that penetrate and seem to become the very substance of our soul. Fire is strangely intense and intrinsic, it goes into the very substance of things. It somehow blends with every particle of the things it touches. Somehow, there are trials that penetrate so that some of us do not know a moment of life without them, nor a spot that does not hold them. There are seasons of trial — what is called, in the Bible, “the day of evil.” There are the physical trials, the social and domestic trials, and the things that grieve the tenderest sensibilities, and break the loving, sympathizing heart. There are the trials of uncongenial surroundings and unfavorable circumstances. There are the severer trials that come to minds more sensitive, to the minds that have more points of contact with what hurts; so that the higher the nature the higher the joy, and the greater the avenues of pain that can come. And then there are the deeper trials that come as we pass into the hands of God, as we pass from the psychical and intellectual into the spiritual nature; as the Apostle says, “The fiery trial that is to try you.” When it first comes, we shrink back from its unnatural and fearful breath, and we say: “O this cannot be from the hand of a loving Father; this cannot be necessary to me.”O the fearfulness of the struggle, the strange, sulphurous smell that comes from its exhalations, and so sickens and withers, sometimes, our spiritual sensibilities. And then the pains and sufferings that come from God’s own hand, when He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, when He lets it burn, and burn, and burn, and burn in, until it seems that we must be burned to ashes, and we are indeed at last burned to ashes, “for our God is a consuming fire.” The Holy Ghost shall baptize you with fire. And this fire sometimes means suffering in your deeper spiritual being, until your soul becomes partaker of the virtue of God, and then all the fires cannot consume you. I know that some of you can understand this. This is one of the things that does not need philosophy to explain. Christ knew it, and He talks to us as a suffering people. The Bible avers that we are the children of affliction. Though trial does not spring from the ground, or from the clouds, yet man is born to it as the sparks fly upward. But, blessed be His name, if you are God’s workmanship, the bush burns, but is not consumed. If one branch of God’s little shrub is reduced, or calcined by that little flame, it does not harm anything that is real. They walk through the midst of the fire, without the smell of the flame on their garments, and come forth, set free from its vehemence and fury, set free from the very chains that had been on their limbs when they entered the furnace. God tells us that trouble cannot harm us if we are His. He was showing Moses that His people could not be destroyed by these persecutions, for, the more they were persecuted, the more they grew and multiplied. Our troubles have not harmed us, if we are the Lord’s. We shall suffer no loss through them.

But we must get the victory through faith. We must get above the billow, or it will sink us. The moment you cease to fear it, that moment it ceases to harm you. He says, “The waters shall not overflow you.” He says, “The flames shall not kindle upon you.” The flames will burn something, but nothing that is divine. God must burn all else some day, and it is better now. The fire will try men’s souls to see what they are, and where there is hay or stubble, it will burn like tinder, in the last day: is it not better now? There are things in you that will burn, but they are not divine things. God wants you to be made free from everything that would consume. I take a piece of paper and put it in the gas jet, and how quickly it burns up. But I can keep a piece of gold there all day, and yet it is not burned: it may melt, but it is all there; it is indestructible. And so God wants to take out of you and me that which is perishable. “O,” let us say, “anything in me that will not stand in that day, let it go, and give me that which will stand.” If the faith withers, maybe it was not faith. And if the song dies out, maybe it was only an earth song. Possibly God is letting your natural strength wither, that you may take the strength of God; letting your old powers shrink, that you may get rooted in the rock. That which burns out is transient and earthly, and God is burning it out that you may get something better. You know that He is burning out the dross of sin; are you willing that he should? I have no doubt that there was some way in which the children of Israel were being prepared for their future by their sufferings. We may not understand it, but God does. And so the peaceable fruits will come out of our trials. And is it not wonderful that here the very figure that is used to express the suffering, the very emblem of their terrible furnace of affliction, is the type of Christ Himself. The burning flame is God’s most ancient emblem of His own image, and the one that shines preeminent above all other symbols among His ancient people. In Eden He appeared as the fiery Shekinah.

And preceding, or following, the children of Israel in their journeys, was the pillar of cloud and fire. And so the symbol of God throughout the Old Testament was fire. In the tabernacle the Spirit of God was represented by the flame above the ark. At Mount Sinai He came down in the fire and in the lightning. When He came to judgment, He came in fire. So, again, when Elijah called on God on Mount Carmel, He answered by fire. When the Holy Ghost came, we are told in the Book of Acts that cloven tongues of fire sat upon each of the disciples. Thus fire was the special enrobing of the Divine form. It tells not only of our sorrow, but of Him who comes to us in our sorrow. And so, as we look at the licking tongues of flame, and think of its consuming power, lo! suddenly it becomes transformed, and over its glowing figure we behold the name of God and read these words: “I am that I am.” And so this figure of the burning bush not only represents the suffering church, but also God in the midst of His people, pervading them with His life, and thus making them indestructible in the midst of trials and temptations; sustained and upheld by His own indwelling, and His mighty all-sufficiency. Dear friends, do we know this indwelling fire? It is not the God of judgment who is a consuming fire, but the language of the Apostle is: “Our God is a consuming fire ” — the God that comes to us, the God that we love to have come to us. Has He come to us as a fire? Has He come to consume the perishable and the corruptible, the sinful and the narrow? Has He burned out of you the foolishness, the sinfulness, the weakness, and the selfishness? Will you let Him? O this is a wholesome fire; it is a blessed fire. The thing you want consumed is a wilderness of woods and swamp. When a fire starts in a swamp, how quickly the wild things get out. How the serpents hiss and flee, and how everything is cleansed. God wants to burn the nest of scorpions out of your heart. Ask Him to let the fire in. If you have anything wrong in your heart, ask Him to come and consume it. There are things in your bosom that you want burned out. You want it as empty as a vessel that has been through the flames. We need not only to be washed out, but to be burned out, if we would be pure vessels fit for the Master’s use. Ask Him to send the fire, and receive it as the fire of love. O for the Divine love that endureth all things, that hopeth all things, that never faileth. Let it burn on and on and never cease — the unquenchable fire of God in the heart. Then shall it be what the fire is in the wheels of human industry, moving the machinery of life. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Before the day closes, you may be like that burning bush, baptized with fire, a glowing thing — little and obscure, but a wonder to earth and heaven, alive with light and glory and purity; nothing in yourself, but, like that wire which runs along your streets, charged with electric fire so that a man would not dare touch it, it is so alive. So you, though little and lowly, may be fiery channels to touch other lives, and make them yield to Him. Let us realize that the dispensation of today is supernatural as that of Pentecost. It was the Holy Ghost that was in the shrub; He is as present here, and He can make of you all you will let Him.

SECTION III — The Rod of Moses.

The third emblem we shall look at is the rod referred to in the fourth chapter of Exodus. Moses said: “But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.”

Then God did not say to him, I am going to give you some great sign, but He said: “What is that in thine hand?” And he said, “A rod.” That was God’s sign to Moses that God was to be with him. Dear friends, when the Lord wants to give you a sign to the world that He is in you, He is not going to do it by an astonishing emblem. He is going to say to you, “What is that in thine hand?” He is going to take the commonest thing in your life, and make it mighty in His service. He is going to prove that His presence is in you, and that He is going to work with your nothingness and simplicity. The very thing of all on which the commission of Moses rested, was the simplest and smallest and weakest thing about him. That little shepherd’s crook, the little thorn bush he had cut in the desert, is to be the weapon with which he is to go to Pharaoh and challenge his power, and open a pathway for God’s redeemed people to walk through the sea on dry land, and bring the cloud of glory to lead as they marched forth. That little rod, the very emblem of insignificance and weakness, is the emblem of God’s power and the token of His presence. Beloved, do you want to know whether God is in your heart, whether God is really all in all? Then, what are you doing with that in your hand? What is God making out of your common life? And is God using the little things about you, and your very weakness? What has God made out of your rod? That is what it all means. It does not mean that you are to get into an ideal state, and when you are particularly strong and adapted to your work, God is going to use you, but God is going to start now; He wants to take you today; and the very thing He wants to baptize with the Holy Ghost is not something that you hope to have by the spring or the autumn, but what you have got this morning or evening. The very trial in your life from which you want deliverance, and then be at God’s disposal, He wants to take now and make it the opportunity of your service. The very work in your hand now, he wants to come into and make a token of his power. The very thing you are trying to get over and make satisfactory to yourself, He wants surrendered as it is. God meets you with that which is in your hand, and He wants to use you with what you have, and what you are, and then prepare you for whatever he has in reserve for you in His purpose of wisdom. And so we find, all through the Bible, that God takes people in the place He finds them, and in the relations His providence has already given them, and uses them. So not only with Moses but a score of others, God has taken their occupation, and made them illustrious examples of His power. He came to Joshua, and used him for what he was fitted — a soldier. He came to Deborah, and used her as he would a woman. He came to Miriam, and said: “What have you?” “A harp,” she answered, and He used her to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. He came to Hannah she had a mother’s heart — and He took that, and out of it came Samuel and his service. He came to Samson, and He did not wait for anything better than an old skeleton bone — that was enough. He came to David, the shepherd boy, and made him a king before he had any military training, or knew anything of a courtier’s life. And so, at a later period, He took Paul, the tent maker, and William Carey at his bench, and David Livingston throwing his shuttle, a missionary before he ever saw Africa. And so He takes you; you do not need to be anything better than the burning bush. That is not perhaps all He will yet use. If He shall give you culture, He will use that when it is in your hand. But He will not use you until you use what you have. If the fire is not burning in your heart, do not put on any more green wood. What are you doing today? or what are you letting God do? It was not Moses that did it — it was God. Moses tried to do it forty years before, but God would not have any of his trying. Moses had put himself in the front, and took his sword and killed an Egyptian and hid him in the sand; and then he said, “That is the way I am going to treat all that misuse my brethren;” but the next day he was glad to run away and hide from the consequences of his impulsiveness. God would not have him then. But now for forty years He has been slowly tempering him; he has been steeping in the waters of patient trial; he has been getting humble, so that now God has to goad him, and push him out. He says: “I cannot speak, Lord; send anybody, but do not send me.” When God gets him there, reduced to the smallest of proportions, the meekest of all the men that ever lived, He says: “You are ready for work; now, Moses, I am going to take that rod, and with it break the arms of Pharaoh, and open the way for my people, and bring waters from the desert rock and make you an instrument of power.” Is it not the New Testament lesson? “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in His presence.” He wants only to have our nothingness. But we must have Him. And so, as the closing lesson, we want to learn that, back of the story of the burning bush and the rod, there is another fact that overshadows all, transcends all — written in the sky, written on the sacred page, written henceforth on Moses’ heart, and I hope, on ours — the mighty name that God pronounces for the first time, “I AM;” “I AM THAT I AM.” “Lord, how will they know? How will I get them to accept me?” “Certainly, I will be with thee. I am that I am.” You! Why you have not anything to do, but just to go. But I AM, and you are not. You are a little shrub. I am the fire that burns in it. And no man dare touch it any more than he dare touch that charged wire, to harm it. What does it matter about the brush, if the right painter wields it? What does it matter about the harp; if the right musician plays it, he can bring music out of a broken string. And so, “I am;” and if you want anything more, “I am that I am.” It is just, “I Am — I Am — I Am.” It is the Personal One — the One we have been learning to receive, trying to get out of His way and make room for Him to come in. So, over against our nothingness, over against all we fear or desire on earth or in heaven, let us put “I Am.” He keeps on saying it through the New Testament. He says it to His disciples on the stormy sea. He says it to you, “It is I, be not afraid.” And He is hovering over us between earth and heaven — and again, about to ascend, He speaks unto His disciples, saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, and, lo, I AM with you all the days, even unto the end.” It still is “I Am.” And again, in the latest book — in the Apocalypse — He adds, “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more.” O this is the secret of power. It is not merely ceasing from yourself, but it is seeing Him. It is not merely dying, but it is letting Him live. It is not merely saying, I am not sufficient to think anything of myself, but it is putting out your hands and saying, “but our sufficiency is of God.” “Having nothing” — it would kill us if we stopped there “but possessing all things.” That is the reason He wants you to get off the old raft, that you may get on yonder ship of power and all-sufficiency. That is the reason He wants you to let go your old miserable way for, and be carried by the train of His almighty power. O how many of us have stopped with the discouragements, the nothingness. Now, beloved, take hold of His strength. For everything you have let go there is an hundred-fold — take it. Have you done so? Come, that God may fill your life. Place all that you have at His feet, and before the sun goes down you shall triumph there. Moses and Jehovah: the rod is enough, only let God wield it. Somebody wanted once to see the sword of Richard Coeur de Lion — I think it was Saladin the Saracen — and when he saw it he said: “Why, that is not half so good a sword as mine; that is nothing but a cleaver. Look at my sword,” and he took out the burnished blade and doubled it until the point touched the hilt. “Look, it is elastic, and this blade is like a razor.” The man quietly looked at him, and then said: ” Saladin, it is not the sword of Richard, it is the arm of Richard that wields it, that makes it what it is.” O beloved, we are enough, you are enough, if we will only let Him hide us in His shadow, and uphold us with His hand. “I am He that holdeth the seven stars in my hand,” He says. O take His great name today. Fill up the blank in your own covenant, and write after that: “I am; I am joy; I am power; I am love; I am faith; I am providence; I am in the future, and in the past; I am Jesus; I am thine; I am in thee; I am thy faith, and thy power, and thy salvation; — nay, take me bodily, and own me utterly, for I am thy God, You are not your own. I am not my own, but thine. I am thine and thou art mine.” Amen.

SECTION I — The Brick Fields of Egypt.

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.” “And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof.” “So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt, to gather stubble instead of straw. And the taskmasters hasted them saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw. And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick, both yesterday and today, as heretofore? Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people.” “And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in an evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not diminish aught from your bricks of your daily task.”

This is the picture which God has given us of the bitter bondage of His ancient people, which is a type of the rigid slavery of sin and Satan. The land which had been their asylum in the beginning, had become to them an iron furnace and a place of oppression.

Through all the succeeding centuries the language “I am the Lord the God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” has been the strongest and most vivid picture of our redemption from the power of Satan, and this present evil world.

To us, as to them, it began with a scene of innocence and blessing. But soon another king arose over our once holy and happy Eden; and the prince of this world holds his captives in a thrall more perfect, and a servitude more debasing than Pharaoh or Israel ever knew.

The brick fields of Zoan are fitting emblems of some of its rigors. The very material of which the brick is made suggests the idea of the earthly and perishable. The symbol of God’s enduring work is not brick but stone. The heavenly house is founded upon a rock, and its separate materials are living stones. But the houses of Egypt and Babylon are built of clay, and symbolize the transitory and earthly character and issue of all that pertains to this present evil world.

The poor votary of Mammon is spending all his strength to build a house which will crumble, like himself, into dust when a few more years shall have passed away.

The aggravation of this bondage, however, was that the oppressor demanded the severest tasks, without even supplying materials or resources. This is exactly what Satan does with all his victims — demands that they shall make brick without straw.

He is the great master of an evil conscience; and he loves to lay upon the troubled heart the yoke of the law, quite as well as he does to break its obligations. One of his favorite methods of crushing his victims is to demand of them an impossible righteousness, and then to accuse them and condemn them and drive them to despair because they have not fulfilled it,although he knows that they are wholly unable to do so.

How dreadful is the bondage of a soul conscious of its sin and shortcoming, constantly desiring to do better, and indeed, rushing into a thousand resolves and purposes of right doing, and yet sinking deeper into the captivity of corruption, and beaten for every failure with the cruel rod of an accusing conscience, and a remorseful despair. How different His gentle sway, who commands nothing without also giving the power to fulfil it; and who says to the weary and sin-trodden world, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The figure reaches its climax when it is added that the wages of this pitiless service was literally death. The cruel decree not only demanded that the race should be crushed and prostrated by these severe exactions, but also that it should be ultimately extinguished, by the consignment to a cruel fate, of every male child.

So our hard master not only seeks our service, but has determined upon our utter destruction. Nothing less than the blood of our soul will ever satisfy his fiendish hate and malignity. He is not satisfied with our physical death, but his sting strikes us with an eternal wound, and smites with an eternal death. What fools men are. They are building what they think are their treasure cities; but like the piles of ancient Rameses and Pythom they pass into the hands of others, and the wretched toilers go down to an eternal grave. “Thewages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This cruel bondage is as unrelenting as it is severe. Pharaoh has no idea of letting his captives go. He may make a little compromise, and consent that they shall go for a few days into the wilderness to worship God; but they must not go very far away. In no case must they go out of Egypt; and even if they go they must leave their cattle and their children as hostages. So the world holds men. It has no objections to a moderate amount of religion, so long as it does not separate us from the world, or lead us very far from its practices and spirit; and like Pharaoh it always insists on holding our family and our property. Where Satan has not all the hearts, he generally controls a large part of the capital, even of the professed people of God. Parents who themselves would not dream of indulging in doubtful association and pleasures, allow their children unrestrained liberty in the enjoyment of the world.

It is a blessing when God makes the bondage so bitter that His people awake to the realization of its meaning, and cry like Israel of old for deliverance. Like them the cry will be met, not only by the Lord’s mercy, but by the enhanced severity of their trials. The nearer the hour of deliverance came, the more terrific was the heat of the iron furnace. And so it is, often, that in the very depths of despair the morning breaks and the deliverer comes to us. “When the tale of bricks is double, then cometh Moses,” is the beautiful proverb already referred to, in which the sad story of Israel crystallizes its hope; and many a soul has found it true in the experience of salvation or providential deliverance.

Let us stop and ask ourselves what all this means for us. Are we in the brick fields of Egypt, or in the free and happy tents of the redeemed? Are we building the house of sand which will crumble into decay and ruin in a little while? or are we building not only on the rock, but also of the precious, indestructible materials of gold, silver, and precious stones, which will not only stand the test, but shine the brighter in the flames of the final day?

Are we serving that cruel master, the world, who deceives us by his fair promises, and makes us think we are building palaces for ourselves, and then snatches them from the crumbling fingers that can hold them no longer, and repeats the story of the world’s deceiving promises in the lives that come after us?

Are we the wretched slaves of a tyrant who is not only using all our strength for his own selfish ends, but who is slowly and inevitably crushing us to an eternal death; who has determined not only to destroy our lives, but to devour our immortal souls? Or are we under the bondage of an evil conscience, and a law that can no longer save or sanctify, wasting our lives and spending our strength for nought, in a futile endeavor to keep our resolutions, and reform our lives, overcome our passions, and fulfil the demands of that law; and then with every failure sinking deeper into helplessness and despair? Blessed be God! for us the hour of redemption draweth nigh. The rigors of our bondage are but the last frantic, convulsive efforts of our tyrant to hold us. The Great Deliverer has come to bind up the brokenhearted; to preach deliverance to the captives; to set at liberty them that are oppressed; to deliver us from the power of darkness and translate us into the kingdom of His dear Son. Only let us recognize our true condition; let us take His side against our oppressor; let us not, like them, refuse Moses when he comes to set us free; let us lift up our cry to heaven, and the answer is already spoken. “Behold the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me, and I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. I have surely seen the affliction of my children which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them.”

SECTION II — The Ten Plagues.

The first stage of the deliverance of Israel was the judgment of God upon their oppressors. And the plagues of Egypt are types of the dealings of God with our spiritual adversaries in the great work of redemption, both in its inception, and final consummation.

We have already seen the principle of salvation by destruction vividly illustrated in the story of the deluge, where Noah and his family were saved by water. The destruction of Pharaoh is a similar illustration of the same principle. The ten plagues of Egypt were directed not only against the persons and property of the king and nation, but more especially against the devil-gods and deified naturalism of the land.. “Against all the gods of Egypt,” God says, “He will execute judgment.” The ten successive plagues, which filled the river with blood, and the land with swarms of frogs, flies, locusts; which smote the cattle with disease, the fields with hail and fire, the sky with darkness, and all the homes of Egypt, at length, with death, were not only tokens of God’s displeasure against the wicked tyrant and the corrupt people, but a still more direct and fatal blow at the dragon-head of him who was the real lord of Egypt; the Prince of the powers of the air; the Ruler of earth’s ungodly nations; and the God of this world.

The Nile, the flocks, the beetles, the cattle, the sun, and the King himself, were all representatives of the Divine principle, and objects of idolatrous worship. And they were all in turn smitten in helpless judgment by the hand of Heaven, that Egypt might know that they were but the mockeries of a false religion, and the counterfeits of the true God, who was about to magnify Himself in the redemption and history of His chosen people.

These plagues foreshadowed the judgments which began to fall upon the head of Satan, even in the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus, and which are to each their culmination in the plagues of judgments of the last day.

The first three of these fell alike both on Israel and the Egyptians; implying that to a certain extent, even the people of God share the sufferings and retributions which sin has brought upon the earth. But the last seven were exclusively confined to the Egyptians, and seem to contain a prophecy, or at least a prefiguring shadow of the seven last plagues, which a little while are to fill up the cup of earth’s calamities, and immediately precede the personal advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rev. 16.)

The doom of Pharaoh in the Red Sea is the type of the final overthrow of Satan and his earthly viceregents at the opening of Christ’s millennial reign. Not always will right be on the scaffold, and wrong upon the throne. “He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse; but there is an end to the wickedness of the wicked, and his rod shall not forever rest upon the lot of the righteous.” The chain is forged, and the sword is whetted which are to find and smite the tyrant and oppressor of the ages; and soon the cry will rise again: “The accuser of our brethren is cast down. Rejoice, O ye heavens, and be glad, O ye inhabitants of the earth. Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” As on the farther shore of the Egyptian sea they sang the song of Moses, they shall finish the refrain in a grander chorus, and sing the song of Moses, and the song of the Lamb before the sea of glass, saying, “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.” (Rev. 15: 3-5, 19: 6.)

Section III — The Paschal Lamb.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts, and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.” “And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.” (Exodus 12: 1-14.)

Thus did Jehovah mark the starting point of their national history by this crimson token of redemption. So for the church of the New Testament, and so for every redeemed soul, the beginning of months is the cross of Calvary, and the shed and sprinkled blood. The Paschal Lamb was but the summing up in one enduring ordinance of all the sacrificial types which had been already instituted for nearly thirty centuries.

The selection of the lamb on the tenth day of the month, and its being kept until the fourteenth, suggest unmistakably the coming of Christ in the fulness of time, and the three and a half years of his public ministry after he was set apart to his redeeming work by his baptism and while waiting for the accomplishment of his sacrifice. The death of the lamb before the whole assembly of the children of Israel reminds us of how he was delivered up by the national council of his own people, and formally condemned to death at the hands of the Romans. The very time of its death corresponded exactly with the sacrifice of Calvary. The sprinkled blood expresses our personal application of the merits of his death; and the efficacy of that blood in averting the stroke of the avenging angel, is fulfilled in the security into which redemption brings us, and the complete justification and acceptance of the soul that has found refuge under the precious blood.

The flesh of the lamb reminds us that Christ is not only a substitute for us, but the very substance and subsistence of our spiritual life through his living union and communion with us.

As it was eaten that same night that it was slain, so we must feed on Christ from the moment that we accept him.

The unleavened bread helps us to remember that our most holy faith leaves no place for the indulgence of sin, but requires our turning from all iniquity if we would claim that redeeming blood. And the bitter herbs spell out the story of repentance and contrition in the life of every forgiven soul. This, then, was the ground of their redemption, and this is the purchase of ours. “We have redemption, through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace,” “not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you;” “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, be glory and dominion forever and ever.”

Have we learned to blend the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb? Are we resting under the precious blood? Are we feeding upon the flesh of the Paschal Lamb? Is our bread unleavened? Are our feet sandaled, our staves in hand, and our pilgrimage begun? “Are you sure the blood is on the door?” An old Hebrew legend tells us this was the cry of a little girl that first Passover night. “Father, are you sure?” They looked and found it had been entrusted to another and neglected. With eager hands it was quickly sprinkled, and the little heart could rest while waiting for their journey to begin. O if any one who reads these lines is still in Egypt and under the black wing of night and judgment, haste thee to apply it. The gentle Lamb stands with bowed head by your side. For a little longer he offers his bosom to death, and his blood to wash away thy sin. One cry of penitence, one look of earnest longing, one touch of simple faith, and you shall have passed under the protection of his death and life. The one shall cancel all your guilt; the other shall quicken and keep all your future life in covenant love and care. And this hour will be to you the beginning of the months of your eternal history; and shall not be forgotten even when before the sea of glass, you sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.

Notice most emphatically, that the safety of Israel did not depend upon their personal feelings or merits, but on the attitude they took with respect to the Lamb, and the blood. And so, beloved reader, your eternal future absolutely hangs upon your relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Out from under the blood you are lost whoever and wherever you may be. Under its sprinkled canopy you are as safe as an angel, and as dear to God as his only, well beloved Son.

SECTION III — The Passage of the Red Sea.

“And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and overtook them encamping by the sea. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today; for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward. But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on the right hand and on the left. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared: and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on the right hand and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.” (Exodus 14: 8-31.)

Such is the sublime type of our salvation, repeated afresh in every new and great deliverance which comes in the life of faith. The principles are ever the same. God alone must deliver, and we must let Him, ceasing from our own works, implicitly trusting Him, and fearlessly obeying and following Him. This is the beautiful figure of the committal of faith, when the soul first comes in trembling fear to Christ for salvation. Pursued by its sins and its bitter adversaries, it sees no way before, and there is no retreat behind. Then comes the blessed word, “Stand still and see the salvation of God.” Our first act must be to cease from our own efforts to save ourselves; the next to keep our eye upon God; and then the third, to go forward, not in the old and restless way of the self-effort, but in simple obedience to His leading, and in confidence in His promise. There may seem no pathway but the raging sea; but the soul may commit itself securely to Him, and at once step out into the darkness of the inevitable future and it will find a pathway for redemption and victory.

So we must act in the great crises of difficulty and danger that meet us along the pathway of life. Our first expressions are usually those of distrust and fear, like poor flying Israel; and our greatest danger is that we shall become so agitated and active in our wild efforts to save ourselves, that God cannot really help us. Therefore His word again is to stand still. We must absolutely stop all our contriving, fretting and rushing hither and thither, and let the Lord take charge.

Next we must get our eye on Him, and see the salvation of the Lord, and know that He will fight for us; and as we do this we must continue to hold our peace. We must not begin again the outcries of fear or impatience; we must rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. Then will come the moment to go forward, and our going shall be safe and effectual. There may be no pathway visible. It may be stepping into the cold floods for a moment. But we shall find dry land as we advance, and on the farther shore shall have a song such as they only know who have learned to trust in the dark, and sing in the night.

“March on then right boldly,
The sea will divide,
The pathway made glorious,
With shouting victorious,
We’ll join in the chorus,
The Lord will provide.”

The passage of the Red sea was not only a beautiful symbol of the committal of faith, but also of death and resurrection. Hence it is called by the Apostle Paul, “baptism unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” It expresses the radical idea of baptism very vividly — namely, death and resurrection life. It was a seeming grave, as our baptism is; and yet, like ours also, only a seeming death; for they found the solid ground beneath their feet. And yet it was really death to their enemies. And so as we become united to Christ in his death and resurrection, the only things that die are our spiritual enemies. And on the farther shore we see the Egyptians as helpless corpses, unable ever to harm us again.

Thus God permits us to bury our sins, our past lives, our old selves, and even the world of Egypt which has enslaved us, and debased us. This is the glorious meaning of the cross of Jesus. And all who have really accepted it in its real meaning can sing

“I’ve passed the cross of Calvary;
I’m on the heaven side.”

Again, beloved, where do we stand amid these ancient figures of redemption? Have we ceased from our own works and accepted the salvation of the Lord? Have we gone forth in a full committal of faith, and begun like them our Christian pilgrimage? Have we died to sin, and recognized our guilt as buried in the depths of the sea? Nay, have we died to the spirit of self and the world, and left the spirit of Egypt forever behind us? Are we living on the Canaan side of the cross? Have we learned the secret of deliverance in the narrow places of trial through the stillness of faith and the interposition of God? Let us go forth from these meditations with a clearer view of our complete redemption, our line of eternal demarcation and separation from the world, our real resurrection life, and our glorious prospects as we now begin amid the teachings of these ancient types, our Christian pilgrimage.

SECTION V — The Song of Moses.

It only remains to add in conclusion, that the song of Moses and of Miriam on the farther side of the Egyptian sea was the key note of the song of salvation in every redeemed soul; the song of deliverance which every visitation of God’s providence inspires; and the song of him in which all these notes shall yet be gathered up amid the choirs of glory.

Have we learned that first song, Isaiah 12: 1-2, “O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.”

Have we learned the song of deliverance, which is first the Berachah song going before the redeemed like the choirs of Jehoshaphat; and then bringing up the rear with praise for accomplished blessing? And shall we have our part in that grander chorus where the multitude that no man can number, out of all kindreds and tongues and peoples and nations shall sing and shout, “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and blessing.

The Pillar of Fire.

We have here a picture of the pillar of cloud and fire, the guide of the Hebrew pilgrims through the wilderness, as it led them through many a changing scene of trial and education. All this is a picture of our life as the Holy Spirit leads us through the wilderness by ways we have not known.
It was customary, as we learn from history, for ancient armies to be preceded by just such a signal as this. Alexander the Great was accustomed to send before his army vessels of fire that sent up pillars of smoke and lurid cloud that the army might see which way they were marching. We know this to be true of many of the ancient Egyptian armies. So it was natural for the Israelites, it was not unnatural or rather it was preternatural, for it was only suggested by men’s customs, but was infinitely higher and greater. The whole account of this Divine figure is particularly sublime and instructive.

It is a little difficult for us to take in the picture. When they were on the march it appeared, probably, like an enormous cloud of smoke, visible to all in the pathway, and moving on with majestic form like some heavenly being guiding their path; and when the camp was to halt, the movement would cease; and, instead of becoming a leader in their march it would spread like a curtain, over the camp, becoming a heavenly pavilion sheltering them from the desert sun, and seeming to spread the wings of God’s very motherhood of God about them; making them feel as though they were hidden in the secret of His tent. What a beautiful spectacle it must have been when this began to droop, and then spreading on every side, like a mother bird spreading abroad her brooding wings, shutting out the rays of the sun, and becoming better than the shade of the palm trees, or even their desert tents. They knew they might sit down under its shadow or find the heat of the burning desert became suddenly as cool as a summer day overcast by the grateful clouds of heaven.

And again as the night came on and the march was weary, and protracted day after day, and they feared they might lose their way, it became literally a light around and before them affording the cheer and safety which light always brings. And when they feared that enemies might be around them, or behind them, as indeed they were when the Egyptians pursued them, it went behind and stood like a rampart with artillery and garrisons of heaven, and looking terribly down on their foes with a fiery anger which forbade them to approach God’s protected ones.

If you trace this figure through the Scriptures, you will see that all the references we have made are warranted. He spread it above them like a cloudy covering to shade them from the heat of the day, and to lead them in the darkness of the night.

And sometimes from the midst of the pillar would come the voice of God. Often we are told God spoke to Moses and one time God spoke to the children of Israel out of the midst of the fiery cloud. It was the type of God’s presence with his ancient people, and, in the New Testament, of his presence through the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus Christ with His Church and in the hearts of His children. Thus this precious third person of the Trinity ever becomes the guide and guardian of our pilgrim life, and our hearts are turned to Him with gratitude and holy confidence. May that Blessed Teacher fold us in the shadow of His presence, that we may know by living experience what all this means, that we shall not have to wonder about, it, but each shall say, “I know it for myself as well as the preacher does.” As a dear old lady said last night in one of our meetings: “I can’t keep still; He is singing in my heart!” Standing there, apparently a foot higher than her ordinary stature, and her face shining like the glory of the ancient cloud, she said, “You don’t need to tell me about that; I know it.” It is the voice of the Shepherd; it is the wing of the mother dove; it is the presence of God; it is the Holy Comforter; it is that which has come to you; it is that which is in your heart; it is that of which He said: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; He will joy over thee with singing.” Let us draw a few lessons from this figure. It was a preternatural symbol. It did not depend on any of the laws of nature. It was not carved like a pillar of stone. It was not an embroidered banner, such as armies carry at their front. It was something not made by hands; it was a battle-flag presented from the ranks of heaven, and had no touch of earth about it. Indeed, it was contrary to the laws of nature. There it hung in the skies without any pole to support it. It walked in midair independent of the laws of gravitation. It was a supernatural token of the living God, who does not need to go by our rules; does not need to be dependent upon our ideas of things, or our modes of working; but when the Spirit of God goes before you it is not always a presence regulated by natural laws; it is a presence which will sometimes overleap what you thought and intended. It was not an easy way for the children of Israel to go through the land of Arabia; and the way you are led may not be the way you would have gone. But it is not accomplished by your provisions or your precautions, or your reasonings. If our lives are divine, their leadership will be divine, and our pathway divine; and we will frequently go where man would not dare to go alone; and where we would not expect to be sustained, were we judging by the light of our own reason, or the principles of our own sense and judgment. It is a Divine guidance, a supernatural presence, independent of all but God’s own infinite power and will.

Again: We see in this pillar of cloud and fire the mingled elements of light and fire, which have all their natural symbolical significance. First, there was light; the light of truth; the light of personal spiritual vision; the light of His presence; the light that shows us the truth, and then the way that we are to walk. Himself the Light, Christ comes to bring us all our light, and also the sight to see the light.

Again: The cloud as well as the light suggests something about God. Cloud is the opposite of light; the cloud hides the light, and the breaking of a cloud reveals the light. It suggests to us the idea of the shadow that hangs about His Presence — the mysteries which we cannot always penetrate or perceive, and the fact that the leadings of the Holy Spirit are not always to be perfectly understood!

There is not only light, but there is veiled light; light that comes to you in clouds and thick darkness, light that comes to you with its dark side as well as its bright side. Is it not true that He leads you by a way that you have not known? Is it not true that your life is hid with Christ in God? that you will not always see what He means, and you will not always behold His unclouded face? When you look up for the light, lo it is a cloud. Is there not a dark side to the Holy Spirit? Does he not sometimes hide you in the shadow? Does He not sometimes take you where it seems very dark? You asked God to show you joy; instead of joy, it was deep humiliation and tears; and you did not know until afterwards that was His blessed answer. But when you yielded and followed, the pillar of cloud became a day star of light.

Not only is He represented as the light and the cloud, but the fire. Fire is more than light. The fire has warmth as well as light. Fire is the element of intrinsic purity and mighty power, that gives us a sense of the living forces that are able to consume the evil, destroy the adversary, and endue us with God’s own might. God is a consuming fire as well as an illuminating presence. The Holy Ghost baptizes the willing heart with fire; a fire that consumes all that you would gladly lose; and quickens and purifies all the energies of the soul and clothes us with God’s infinite power and righteousness.

Again: The pillar of old preceded them as their leader. So the Holy Ghost tells us we shall be guided by His presence. The Christian that does not understand this, is losing much that is most precious in his experience. God has told us He will go before us; that we will not be safe without Him: and that He will make us know His voice. Have you learned this blessed secret?

Again: The pillar of fire not only preceded them, but followed them. It went behind them, and stood as a wall of terror and defiance to their foes. God is not only our guide, but our guardian; and we might rather have the Holy Ghost defend us, than all the pens or bayonets of earth. This is His blessed word, “The Lord shall be thy rearward.” In ancient times the shepherds were accustomed to build fires in the desert to keep the wild beasts away: so He says, “I will be a wall of fire round about, and the Glory in the midst:” The fire may burn awhile, but Joseph comes out of prison at last. The tempter may triumph for a while, but David sits for fifty years on his throne, and praises the Lord that has kept him so marvelously. “They that trust him shall never be ashamed.” Take the Holy Ghost for your leader and your defender. Leave your trials and your vindication to Him; and He will take care of them, and now if you will, leave them, utterly leave them there, and walk on in helplessness and obedience.

This fire not only went before and behind them, but it went in the midst; for we read that while they were passing through the Red sea, the fire just went through the camp, for a moment enveloping the whole company, and then taking its place behind. This is a beautiful picture of how the Holy Ghost comes through our midst, not only walking before and behind us, but coming into our being, possessing every faculty of our nature, and becoming the vital impulse of all our power.

It is beautiful to notice the time that He did this. It was not at the beginning; but in the very crisis of their life, when they were going down into the dark floods pursued by foes from behind and about to take the hardest step they had ever taken. But at last a power they had not known came among them. It entered the hearts and bosoms, became one with their inmost lives; they could feel the conscious baptism on their whole being and they were not afraid. What a beautiful picture of the Holy Ghost in our lives. At first He is away ahead. We see Him as a doctrine. O, how that doctrine does shine out when first we learn the truth about the Holy Spirit! When God first showed me this blessed reality of the Third Person of the Trinity, it seemed I could never preach about anything else, or pray about anything else. And I could scarcely feel patience with others because they did not always talk about it.

There was a time when this Blessed One seemed to stand as a great lurid light against your sky. You were looking at Him, and following a little way off, as near perhaps as you dare. But there came a time when it grew so hard and dark: and then a voice said, “Go into this dark and angry flood; step into the Red sea.” And as you stepped in you could hear the chariots of Pharaoh behind, and it seemed as though there were but a step between the soul and wreck. Then it was that the doctrine of the Holy Ghost seemed to disappear; and instead of that, in your very heart of hearts, the very depths of the soul His presence came, the cloud moved from before and passed right through your being, and it has seemed to pervade and cover everything from that time; a conscious life that is part of all your existence. Do you remember that scripture in Corinthians where the Apostle says “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bound or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit?” He baptizes you until you are buried as in an ocean, and then you begin to drink of that ocean until you are saturated with it. But it is in the hour of difficulty, when all the resources fail, when even He cannot be an object for you to look at any longer, but must put His arms about you and take you closer. O, dear friends! have you ceased to look at the Holy Ghost, have you ceased to trust the Holy Ghost to do things for you, and even to be your guardian and have you come to take him in his indwelling, all-pervading life? to see him less and have him more and just partake of all the fulness of his life?

Again: This Holy Spirit was not only the Leader and Defender, the Baptizer and the Indweller, but He was also the spirit of rest. Many times he did not march, but stood still; and then He commanded them to stop and took them into the secret of His presence, and bade them wait. And so with you, there will be times when you will not see your pillar. There will be times when Jesus will be in the hinder part of the ship asleep. There will be times when you will be so empty, you will feel as though you never had anything in you, but are an empty shell. There will be times when you will not have any place to go, or any of the restlessness of natural excitement. Ah, that is what tests some Christians so much. They get on well in the cavalry charge, and when there is action, but to make them be still and wait on God, they fail; they break down; they cannot hear the voice which bids them rest. But in the pilgrimage of God’s ancient people, we are told that when the pillar of clouds rested, the people rested; at its going they went, and rested at God’s bidding. The trouble with some of you is, that you have gone before the pillar. There are a great many times when God wants us to keep still. A great deal of the Christian life consists in the little word of three letters, n-o-t. Read the ten commandments, and almost everything in them is “thou shalt not.” Read the story of the Christian life in that marvelous 13th chapter of First Corinthians and you will find it full of the things that love does not do. So the greatest work of the Holy Ghost is to call a halt, and quiet his children, and teach them to be dead to their own activity, and work and plans. We must learn to allow the pillar of cloud and fire to rest; and then get quiet ourselves under His shadow from the heat of the day. So the Lord shall be thy keeper and thy shade. Now the Lord is never your shade unless you are still. When they were marching the pillar was not a shade. Every little while He saw they needed to be sheltered, and rest a little. So He made them stop. And if you are going to know the Lord as a keeper, you will have to know Him as a shade. Then it goes on to say, “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night,” and then the next comes, “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” Ah, now you can march again. This beautiful psalm is the psalm of the pilgrim: the Lord leading you, and the Lord overshadowing you, without slumbering or sleeping; and so keeping you from this time forth, and even forevermore.

And then again, this pillar was most glorious at night. When the darkness fell and the lights of earth were gone, it loomed up there like a celestial palace in the sky, or like the brilliance of the jasper throne. It hung over them in darkness by day, but only by night was it bright. And so you have found His presence brightest when every joy had fled; and how the song has just burst out in the night, into loud hallelujahs. It was when the sun was set and a horror of great darkness fell on Abraham, that a burning lamp passed before him. It was when the disciples had climbed the rocky heights and it was the midnight hour, suddenly there shone a light above the brightness of the sun, and His garments became exceeding white, and a voice said, “My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” These are the hours of blessing. O, beloved! turn them into Transfiguration mounts with Jesus in the midst.

Again: This ancient pillar sometimes spoke to them. Out of it came the voice of God. So this is not a silent presence. “And the sheep follow Him for they know His voice.”

Finally: It was a constant presence. He took it not away all through the wilderness, and even when they turned aside for a little time it was withdrawn, but again he restored it and said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” “He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, or fire by night.” “He bore them and carried them all the days of old.” “He led them through the waste howling wilderness: he bore them as on eagle’s wings.” “As a flock goeth down into the valley, so the Spirit of the Lord rested upon them; so He led them by His own right arm, to make for Himself a glorious name.” Thus God led them ever; and even when they refused to go into the land of promise, after a little while He forgave them, and went with them through the wilderness, in the way He did not choose. And so this long suffering Holy Ghost for two thousand years, nearly, has been treated by the church of God as disobediently and yet He has not taken away for a day that illuminating presence. Through all church history He is with His people, and will be until Christ comes. He has been with you in your Christian life; even if not fully in you, he has been before and behind you.

This leads us to another thought. If not directly scriptural its lesson is at least most true. The pillar of cloud and fire led the children of Israel only to the Jordan. And when they entered the promised land with Joshua, it accompanied them no farther, but from that time forward, the presence of God was veiled between the cherubim, and behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies. Is there no teaching in that for us? May it not show that during the wilderness life, the presence of the Holy Ghost is perhaps more marvelous, more wonderful, more startling; some might say has more of stupendousness and glory about it, but when we get nearer to God, it is an inner presence, not an outer. It is visible, not to the eye of sense, but in the chambers of the heart even where we enter the holy of holies, and dwell in the secret place of the Most High.

Have we not seen something like this in our own experience? At the beginning God led more by sense. There was more of that which the little child needs, object lessons, and bold pictures and scenes and a great deal of nursing. But when we get into the inner presence of God, when we had consecrated ourselves, utterly and unreservedly, when we had become His priests and kings, and gone into the tabernacle of Jehovah to dwell in His pavilion; then, the pillar of clouds was not seen in the sky, but His presence was more gloriously within, like the Shekinah presence in the ancient temple. When you pushed aside the curtain and stood within the holy of holies, then you could see the glorious manifestation, not a cloud reaching up to heaven, but an ever-burning flame between the cherubim, where, until his people deserted him in the days of Ezekiel, He revealed His glory not as the God of heaven riding on the clouds, but as the God who loves to dwell in the very secret chambers of the lowly spirit. Quiet, perhaps, and unknown to the world it may be, but it is a presence that fills the heart with constant rest and satisfaction. So, beloved, there is something better for you than even the visible presence. There is a place in your heart where He will come if you will take Him. If you will cross the Jordan and get out of the wilderness if you will be willing to die in the floods that separate you from yourself and your past; if with Joshua for your leader you will pass in, and live by faith and not by sight; then you will find that inner place, then you will find the holy of holies in your heart, where God will dwell with His own love and glory, and you shall know the meaning of such verses as this: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” “If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” “I will be to them a little sanctuary.” “A man shall be a hiding place for the wind and a covert from the tempest like rivers of water in dry places; and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Have you come into all this? Come this day into this inner chamber; let the pillar of the cloud and fire come a little nearer; let it descend from the clouds to the heart; let not God be to you somebody away up there, but somebody right here; not somebody you see in the book or the vision, but My presence in your bosom, in your being; the life of life, and love of love. Moses said, “Wherein shall it be known that they are thy people, and wherein shall we be separated from all other people of the earth, except it be in this, that thy presence goeth with us; if thy presence go not with us, carry us not up.” God had said, “I will send an angel; I will give the same power as though I were present.” “O, not so, my Lord, if thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence.” And He said, “My presence shall go;” and that was not enough. “Lord if you have heard my prayer in this, if I have found grace in thy sight, Lord, I beseech thee to show me thy glory; not only thy presence, but I want this Shekinah inside, this inner presence.” And the Lord said, “Yes, you shall see it; they can see the cloud, but come in, Moses, and I will hide thee in the cleft of the rock, and I will make all my glory to pass before thee.” And he came and revealed the name of the Lord, a Lord God merciful and gracious, keeping mercy for thousands; that was the inner revealing of God.

Dear friends, when He thus comes to you, and today I believe he will so come to many of your hearts, it will be through faith. When Joshua passed over the Jordan, his great promise was this: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” His was to be a life of faith; he believed in the unseen God, and God was revealed. Take Him today by faith, and so He will be revealed in you.

As I passed out of this room on Friday, one came and spoke to me, to whom I had spoken before, when her heart was very heavy and longing for His presence, and I had asked the Lord to show her just what it meant. She came to me Friday and said, “I have found it; the Lord came to me and said, ‘Are you willing to trust Me by simple faith? Are you willing to receive me with a heart that knows no joy, no sensible sign of my presence, and to trust Me without fear? Are you willing to be withered?’” She said, “Yea, Lord.” And then she said all the terrors, all the darkness fled; and such tides of gladness just swept into her being. So let us recognize that presence, even if we do not see it in the shining signal above us. It is hidden there. Don’t you know that they of old could not always see the Shekinah? but it was always there. So trust Him; and when you go from this place, follow Him. For that is the secret of His eternal leadership whom God hath given to them that obey him. This is the secret, the joy of the Holy Ghost. The Lord help you to yield, believe, obey, and rejoice in all the joy of the Holy Ghost.

“And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt; but God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.” Ex. 13: 17-18.

“So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah; for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes,I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee. And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters.” Ex. 15: 22-27.

SECTION I — The Pathway of Trial.

We have here a picture of the pathway through which God led his ancient people immediately after their redemption. It is symbolical, of course, of the pathway of our own pilgrimage, even as their redemption was the emblem of our redemption from the bondage of sin and misery.

We are told here that the Lord led them not by the way of the Philistines, which was near, “but about by the way of the wilderness of the Red sea.” So we infer that God does not always lead us by the nearest way, and certainly not by the easiest way, as he calls us to Him. And this is the type of the trials of our Christian life. A reason is given: “Lest they repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” God could not trust his people to go the easy way, and so he had to lead them the longer way, and discipline them.

There are many other things about the way He led them, which apply to us. The first was that He might have them apart with Himself, and train them for the future. And so God has to take all His children apart to teach them. Our dear Lord had to go apart into the wilderness forty days before He began his ministry. Let us not wonder if we share His life. Moses had to go forty years apart before God could use him. And Paul went three years into Arabia, where he was separated to God, and then came forth to do his Master’s work. When the gardeners of this city are preparing their beds, they go out and find black loamy earth, and then they can raise almost anything in the ground that comes from the virgin soil. And so when God wants to raise spiritual harvest He says, “I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her, and I will give her vineyards from thence,” that is from the soil that comes from her wilderness experience. So, beloved, if you had an easy path you would become a coward, and run away every time you saw a Philistine. The people that have no trials and discipline are just like this, they are soft and cowardly. And the one that God wants to make strong to undergo the journey to Canaan, he has to make hardy by discipline and training. He leads you by the hard way that you may be harnessed, may be trained as a soldier to fight the battles of your life, educated for your work by the very things you are going through now.

Another reason he led them through the wilderness, was to show them what worthless creatures they were. In Deuteronomy he tells them very fully, in the eighth chapter, “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no.” That was another reason why He led them through the wilderness. If they had gone the short way, they would have gone in with floating banners, and the idea that they were a wonderful people; but when God led them this way, they soon discovered themselves. They would have found it out later, when they came into Canaan, and would have been defeated by it. But God had to show it by the way of trial, before they could come to their future inheritance.

And so God leads us through the wilderness to show us what we are. There are people that can go through a hard march all right, but when they have to go through the hard little things, they break down. They will bear severe pain; or undertake some great service; or seem marvelously useful in some public enterprise that gives them an eclat of success and applause. Let them go through a desert march, or where Sherman’s army had to cross the continent, or Napoleon’s army had to go through the Russian campaign, or Woolsey’s army in Egypt, and they go through all right. But the least little thing defeats them. They become sour and distrustful and ungrateful; and if they do not go back to Egypt, they do not deserve any credit for it, for they would go if they could; and they blame Him bitterly because he brought them out.

Beloved, it is a wonderful thing to find out that God is not trying to show you how much you are, but how little good you can do by yourself. It was the most extraordinary discovery I ever made in my Christian life, when at last I fairly found out that what the Lord wanted of me was to have a tremendous lot of failures, until I broke completely down and gave up, and then had Him work it out for me. I do not mean that I gave up, but I gave up trying it myself. I had been looking to Him occasionally, but he wanted me just to depend upon Him all the time, and to look to Him for everything. So He leads you through the wilderness; He wants to humble you, to prove you, and see if you will keep the commandments, or not.

Another reason is to show how little this world is worth: How little it has that can supply an immortal soul, and how God can be the supply of the soul. He took them out into a barren wilderness where they had not anything to support the three millions of people for a day; and for all those years he supported them on the sands of Arabia, day by day spreading their table, and making the water flow from the rocks, and meeting their complaints and recriminations with blessing. They did not get their support from the desert. There was not any water there to supply them, nor any bread to sustain them. Modern researches have endeavored to explain the manner and method by natural laws. There are little plants in the desert; a few grains can be picked up under the tamarisk trees, a sort of balsam that drops from the branches sometimes; but it is not enough to support a single life for a day. And it is ridiculous to try to explain the Bible this way. The boundless and permanent supply shows that it was from the hand of God. This was intended to show that God can supply all our needs Himself. We read in Deuteronomy, “He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not,” that is, which is not a product of earth. He did this to show them that God was enough for their supply. This shows us that God leads us through the narrow places so that when everything fails us, He can do it for us. God leads some people through that kind of suffering, so they can look the devil in the face and say, “God led me through this place, and nothing ever can be harder than the way he led me.” He put Paul up as a sort of spectacle or gazing-stock. He said, “We have had all sorts of suffering; we have been sunk in the sea, and stoned until we have not a bit of vitality left.” And then he says, “Though sorrowful we are always rejoicing.” God wanted to show that His grace was sufficient. When the desert affords no food, and all is a waste of desolation, then God will make it blossom as the rose.

Now, beloved, if God leads you through trying places, don’t say “it is because God wants to destroy me.” It is that he may show you that he is able for that, and he can create a supply that would have never been known, if you had not had that need. So turn your dark cloud into a background for a rainbow, and just begin to praise Him, and rise through it to a deeper knowledge of His character. Will you take these lessons to yourself? It is the very way by which He is to educate you. How little you can depend upon your resolutions, and plans; but He is enough for your trials and difficulties, and even for the weakness and worthlessness of your poor unreliable nature.

Now, let us look briefly at their trials, and then at the wonderful way in which God met them. The first was, no water. The second was, bitter water. And the third, threatening sickness. We are not told they had sickness, but the healing implies it. God leads them into the wilderness of Shur, and they seem to be threatened with a famine. Then they come to a fountain in the oasis; they go to drink, but turn from it in disgust, for it is foul and bitter. And then they turn in disappointment and anger upon Moses, and upon God, and reproach them for having brought them on their journey. It is just like positions that come to us; we reach places where we seem to be shut in on every side. Perhaps some of you are there now. God wants to teach you that the old way is not to be the way any longer. And you must look to Him and not to the springs of earth, henceforth.

And then they came to water, and they said, “We have it at last,” and lo! it was bitter. Do you not know what that is? Do you not know what it is after you have turned to some old friend, and leaned on some arm, to find, suddenly, that it becomes different from what it used to be? Your old friend does not understand you. And those things in which you used to joy have no pleasure now. Perhaps the thing you looked to becomes the opposite of what you sought. Perhaps the very thing that comes to you as a deliverer, becomes the saddest trial of your life. God has to let it be so. Our first resource is to go to them. Instead of looking up, we have hunted in the desert to find springs, and found many, and God had to turn them into gall, and show us that the only real help could come from Him. And then there came sickness, or threatened sickness. And so it has come to us. O how God feels for poor suffering men and women, especially those that carry heavy burdens under the strain of infirmity. How — as I have gone among the humble ones that toil for bread, as I look back upon what a pastor finds in the lives of those he lives among — how I have felt Christ must weep for the tired women that crowd our cities, that have the responsibilities of their children, and sometimes their support, and yet live such weary, suffering lives through physical disease. O how I have thanked God when I have seen His help coming to these, and found that it can lift their burdens off their bodies as well as their souls. There is many a poor mother working all the day, and half the night, and carrying in her body some hidden disease. And it was upon such as these that Christ looked with compassion, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and He healed them, and said to them in words that are not exhausted yet, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

SECTION II — The Branch of Healing.

Let us now see the provisions of His grace for them. First, we have the sweetening of the bitter water. He lets them find its bitterness, and then He turns it into sweetness. “And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink?” And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, which, when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. The bitter waters are not taken away, but they are neutralized and turned into a source of nourishment. You know what this means, dear friends; you know the difference between the sweet water that was always sweet and the bittersweet, more wholesome, and more delightful to the taste of the mature Christian heart. That is what God does; He lets the bitter come, and when we have eaten the little book which was bitter in the mouth, in our inner being it is sweeter than honey. There are chastenings that seem hard and bitter, but afterwards they bear the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Do you not know what it means to yield yourself to God, so it seems a real death to put your dearest on the altar, and raise the hand to strike, and when it is done, O the blessedness of knowing that you pleased God; the ineffable sweetness of His words, “Now, I know that thou lovest me, because thou hast not withheld thine only child.” He seems to say, “I know what you feel; I understand you as no one else, and you understand me as you never could have done.” O the delight of being with Him in the dark places — alone with Him: and having His communications of love and grace, and saying, “Thou hast known my soul in adversity.” And then, at last, to find the very things you thought the gates of death become the gates of heaven. The very thing you thought would break your heart turns into songs of joy, and pathways open up that never could have come but for this obedience, this sacrifice of yourself to God’s will.

How does this sweetness come? It comes by casting the branch of healing into the waters. And this branch is always at hand. God does not have to create it. It was growing by the spring. It is always growing near the trial, and you can always find the branch that will turn the sorrow into joy. How, sometimes, He has shown us a verse that we never saw before, and lo! our trial was turned into sweetness, and we arose in victory and praise. How often when you have felt as you must sink you have found a blessed promise, and have cried out, “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory?” Sometimes, when struggling with your wicked heart, He has given you a vision of His victory and with His coming the battle has ceased, and like the disciples you were at the land whither you went. We have all got verses marked in our Bibles that bring back whole chapters of life’s history, and which you would not exchange for all the world.

You can go to London, and read there on the towers, written by the fingers of martyrs and prisoners who have languished in the Tower, such promises. You can go to Rome and see them in the ancient catacombs, promises which enabled them to declare that the insults and torments of their persecutors were robbed of their sting, just because the Lord Jesus Christ had made His Word real, and had caused them to triumph over suffering.

Dear friends, have you learned to use the branch that grows beside your door, that turns your tears to joy?

SECTION III — The Covenant of Healing.

And we have not only this branch of healing, but the covenant of healing. “There He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of those diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” So not only did He provide for the trials of the wilderness, but for the physical infirmities of life.

Here we see first, that this Divine healing is to be from Him alone. “I will do it.” It is to be a continuous thing. It is in the present tense. It is “I, the Lord thy God am healing.” Day by day, He declares “I will be the strength of your bodies.”

Again: it is to be by obedience. “If thou wilt diligently walk in my statutes.” It is necessary that we shall both hear and obey. And a great many of our sicknesses come because we are well-meaning, but we do not understand God. We go into the forbidden path without meaning to, and our diseases have come again. So he bids us listen as well as do.

Again: there is to be a distinction between you and the world. The Lord wants to put a line between the world and the Egyptians: “I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians.”

We see further, that this was a covenant and an ordinance for them. So this is just as much an appointment of God as redemption. And if you do not accept it, you are going to rob your life of one of its sweetest supports. We do not plead for any favorite idea, but we stand on God’s ancient covenant, and God forbid that we should turn it aside. I do not see how any candid man can. The only way that any one can try to explain this is by saying that this passage referred to the plagues of the Egyptians. But that would be ridiculous, because they had not feared any of the plagues of Egypt; they had not been subject to them. They had been kept from them, and now it would seem absurd for them to need this promise. Forty years later, God renewed the same promise and covenant again, in stronger words, “I will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.” And we know that he did not put the plagues of Egypt on their enemies then.

And then you notice just another word in this ancient ordinance of healing. “There he proved them.” It seems that this was to be a kind of test in our Christian lives, whether we would trust God, or go to man. It seems sometimes as though God wants to show us whether we have a real trust in him, or are making believe, because the things we trusted for are a long way off. He proved them to see how far they made God real. I have found, and I think many of you have found, that when sickness and suffering come, and you have to find whether you have a living God, or not, it searches your soul; and when you have got hold of Him, it makes God intensely practical thereafter in your life.

We do not want anybody to think that this principle of God’s healing should be crowded upon any soul, or that you are to get into any bondage of conscience; God wants you to be fully persuaded in your own mind. But if you will take this ancient Scripture, and trace your Bible through, you will find one uniform teaching — that God met his people with all-sufficiency for all their trials; and that He undertook to be for their bodies what He was for their souls — Jehovah Rophi, the God that changeth not.

Dear friends, do take this into your lives; you that are struggling under infirmity and debility; how much you need this Christ to breathe into you His strength every moment. No words can tell how near it brings the Savior to your life, to feel that every breath you draw is very part of His vital being. How sanctifying it is; how it makes you walk with Him in constant obedience; and how it seems to give you double strength. The strength that we get from Christ seems to go so much longer and farther. I wish I could make you feel as He makes me feel, in a busy life that grows busier every day. This supernatural strength is delightful. It almost seems as though one could not stop to sleep. It is not human, it is His; and every breath seems to accomplish more than mere earthly power. The things we do in this Divine physical strength go farther, they reach the hearts of men; and God seems to set them going through eternity. This is “a statute,” a Divine law, and you cannot experiment with it. You must take it with the certainty that it is just as solid as the Rock of Ages. And if you take it, it will keep you until your life work is done. It will not keep you forever. There will come a time when you can say “I have finished my work.” But until it comes, there is strength for you, according to all the measures of your needs.

SECTION IV — The Wells and Palms of Elim.

There is yet one more picture here, the wells and palms of Elim. They come just after the waters of Marah. “And they came to Elim where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees; and they encamped there by the waters.” This is a sweet break in the monotony of the picture; an oasis in the waste of desolation. It seems to rise before us with the soft verdure of loveliness and rest; and as we read the passage it is like a very Eden of coolness and repose; the very name Elim speaks of rest and freshness. It is the type of the times of refreshing that God sends us after weary seasons of suffering trial. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

The wells tell us of supplies of water, and the palms of freshness in the midst of barrenness. There were twelve wells, and seventy palm trees. I love to think of the twelve wells as standing one for every month; teaching that God has some new revelation of Himself, some new supply of grace for every changing season of life. And then the seventy palms tell us of a blessing for every year. Seventy years seem to be the average of human existence, and so there are seventy palms and twelve wells — a well for every month, a tree for every year. They tell us that all our life long we may be fruitful, that there is fruit to be borne in youth, and also in old age. It does not mean that everybody ought to live for seventy years; but as that is God’s measure of life, so God has as many palms as He has years. He has something for us to do at the beginning, and something for the end. Beloved, let us come to drink of these wells. Shall we call the first the heart of the blessed Jesus himself? Surely, that is where we want to begin. And shall we call the second the blessed Comforter, the Holy Ghost, ever running over with joy and living water? Shall we find the third in the Father’s everlasting and infinite love? Shall we find the fourth in this blessed Word of God with its endless supplies for every kind of need? Shall we say the next is the well of salvation, with water enough not only for our salvation, but for all the world’s! Shall we call the next the well of grace, where we can come with our buckets every morning and fill them there? Then we have the well of holiness; the well of healing; the well of joy, bubbling over, and ceaseless in its flow; the well of prayer where we can continually come, and not find it too deep, or say like the woman of Samaria, “We have nothing with which to draw;” side by side with this stands the well of faith; and, perhaps, best of all is that well which, like one of the geyser springs, is continually rising even above the level of the ground, and sending forth new fountains on every side, we shall call it the well of praise. And so God bids us come and drink at all the wells. As the garden of God has its twelve manner of fruits, so we have these twelve fountains of blessing. We need never wonder at the freshness of His supplies of grace.

Some, again, apply this to the twelve tribes; it is blessed to think that there was a well for each one.

The seventy palms tell us of an infinite variety of fruits. The very fact that the palm tree grows in the desert, shows that the Christian can grow anywhere. The palm wants the desert sun. It will not grow in the rich black soil. It wants the desert because it grows up and it grows down; it strikes it roots below the sand heap; and it sends its succulent leaves up, and if there is a breath of moisture, the palm tree can suck it in. And so God says that we are to be like palm trees in this, that we can grow in the hardest soil, and find what we need in Him. If you have Christ in your heart you can grow anywhere. You can be a happy Christian in society and at home. You can be happy in uncongenial society, in the workshop, in the boarding-house, or wherever you are. It is not true that we have got to be ruined because our surroundings are evil. If you have the roots, and the right kind of leaves, you can make the desert a garden; and the people will encamp around you.

The palm tree has an infinite variety of fruit. They say they can make almost anything out of it. Out of the roots you get sago and arrowroot, and many of the most delicious and valuable articles of commerce. The very fibers they weave into many useful objects. The sap yields delicious juices. Then we have the fruit, the date, cocoanut, and many others. The palm produces about a hundred staple articles of commerce. And so if you are a palm tree, you will be good for everything; not only tall, stately, and nice to look at, but you will have a shade for the people around you, and you will have practical and substantial utility about your life. And, moreover, like this ancient tree of Elim, you shall keep growing and multiplying year after year, until in youth and old age you shall have fulfilled all the ministry of a consistent and beautiful life, and it shall not have been one, but seventy, palms.

But if we have the palm trees, we must have the wells; and if we have the palm trees and the wells, we must go by the way of Marah.; we must start by the Red sea and follow the pillar of cloud and fire; and we must not be afraid of the wilderness. O shall we not follow on, hearkening to His word till we shall come to the waters of Elim and encamp there and sweetly sing:

“I’ve found a joy in sorrow,
A secret balm for pain,
A beautiful tomorrow
Of sunshine after rain.
I’ve found a branch of healing
Near every bitter spring;
A whispered promise stealing
O’er every broken spring;
An Elfin within its sunshine,
Its fountains and its shade;
A handful of sweet manna
When buds of promise fade.”

Dear friends, God help you to turn into life this desert region. It is so real, I am sure it is real to you. And I dare tell you in His name this morning to follow Him. You shall have the wilderness, and the waters of Marah; but there is here a branch that will make it sweet; and O such blessed resting places by the way; and bye-and-bye, not Elim’s palms merely, but the tree of life that is in the midst of the garden, and the water clear as crystal, and all the beauties of the paradise of God.

And bye-and-bye there shall be the river clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, the tree of life with its twelve manner of fruits that yielded its fruit every month, and the tabernacle of God with men, where the tents never will be folded, the encampment broken up, or the lonely desert ever return again. Happy day! All hail! Amen.

THE MANNA, THE ROCK AND THE VICTORY.

1 Cor. 10: 3, 4, and 13: “They did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

These three verses give us the substance of three important incidents in the Book of Exodus, in the 16th. and 17th. chapters, describing the giving of the manna; the opening of the Rock in Horeb; and the conflict of Israel with Amalek. These three things, I say, are all summed up in these three verses. “They did all eat the same spiritual meat,” seems to be the manna. “They did all drink the same spiritual drink,” leads us back to the rock and its flowing rivers. And the last verse quoted, reminds us of the conflict and victory which they obtained in Rephidim as the type of our conflict and victory over our Amalek.

We will look a little at God’s supply for our spiritual hunger, thirst and temptations.

SECTION I — The Manna.

First, then, the manna needs only a simple exposition, and the key to every exposition, I think, your own heart and experience must furnish. You will not understand this unless you know something of this hidden manna which Christ gives to him that overcometh. We read that some of this manna was put into a golden pot and laid up before the Lord to be kept for future generations. And this teaches us that the real substance of this manna is kept for us through all the ages. For Jesus says, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna.”

1. The first thing we notice is, that this was supernatural bread. It did not grow from the soil of the desert, but was somehow sent by the power and wisdom of God and given to them from above.

And so our spiritual life, beloved, must be sustained from unnatural and supernatural causes. A Christian cannot subsist on his own strength. A Christian is more helpless than a worldling. And the nearer you get to God, the more we are dependent upon God, and the less able to draw our life from the old sources. You will starve upon the husks of this world unless you have learned to feed upon this manna.

Let us talk to each other’s hearts today. Are you living on the spiritual bread? Have you something in your life which is more than the breath of the oxygen and the carbon, which is more than the nitrogen of the food, and the phosphates and ingredients of that which is called bread? Is your soul feeding on something more than the thoughts of men, and the affections and fellowships of life? Is your body upheld by something better than its own cohesive forces and elements? A poor lump of dust, how readily you fall to pieces; how you hunger and how you thirst, if you do not know something of this. O, you have begun to follow Jesus, are you trying to live on the old comforts? You cannot do it. You must be constantly refreshed; you must be constantly comforted; you must be constantly fed from the love of God; from the thoughts of God; from the life of God. For He does not only give us His thoughts, He gives us His very heart’s life.

2. I learn another thing: It was simple of bread; there was no variety. They did not start with their different courses, and various dishes, and end with dessert; but they had manna for the first course, and the second course, and the dessert. It was all manna; and they got tired of the sameness.

And so the Christian has only one kind of manna. That is the trouble today, they want variety. And if you will read the columns of yesterday’s Herald, you will see there enough dishes set forth to satisfy a French cook. I read of a church the other day that had been killed with that kind of food in six months. You cannot live on such things. God feeds his people on one kind of bread; it is Jesus Christ. It may be presented in a thousand forms, but it is Christ; a living Christ; a redeeming Christ; a faithful Christ; an overcoming Christ; the Christ in whom, and for whom you live; Jesus only. Are you satisfied, or are you getting sick of this one kind of Bread? I am so glad that the dear friends who gather here, have not been drawn by dainties. I sometimes say to my friends when they speak of this little flock, and of the insincerity of Christians, and their desire for earthly things, I say, the little flock that comes here is not drawn by any such things, any human agencies, splendid rhetoric, or oratory, or music; but they have simply Christ, I trust, the living Bread. And it is a joy to think that one is surrounded by such, for only as they love it will they come to hear it.

And did you ever notice that God said to the Hebrews that the reason He gave them this kind of bread was to prove them and see what kind of people they were? “Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law or no.”

You can prove God’s children by their tastes. If they love God and his Word, you can depend on them. He says again in Deuteronomy: “Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at the latter end.” Dear friends, if you have no taste for prayer and worship, and the Word of God, you will be sure to break down. Your love for God’s Word, is a test of your spiritual character and faithfulness. And you will never love God’s Word until it fills you; you will never care for the Bible, until it becomes bread to your hearts. A lady said to her friend, ” I cannot like the Bible as you talk about liking it; it does not seem real to me as it seems to you.” And her friend said, “the reason is, it never speaks to you. Sometime when you are in trouble,” and she was all broken down then, “you ask the Lord to lead you to some verse that He will speak to you particularly.” The very next day her face was shining when she met her friend and said, “O, He has given me this word;” it promised her healing; and before the week was gone, she was indeed cured. And she is in a Western city today, among scores and scores of those that have been helped by her simple testimony, testifying just as fully as I am preaching to you today; and when I was there last I was met and welcomed by hundreds of Christians drawn together by her life and testimony. Six months before she had not any interest in the Bible; but she took the promise and lived upon it, and then she was interested.

God wants you to turn His Word into manna for yourself, and the manna is just Christ and His personal life.

3. And yet, although this manna only consisted of one kind of bread, it contained all that was necessary for the nutriment and support of their life. God just concentrated in that little round coriander-like seed all the elements of nutrition. Just as the chemists tell us that the milk we drink contains in it all the forms of nutriment necessary, so the manna included everything. How beautifully it teaches us that Jesus Christ is everything. I am so glad that you do not have to get Christ today, and then the next week hunt up some different Gospel, and some new sensation. But it is one thing, and that thing includes all others “As ye have received theLord Jesus Christ, so walk ye in him.” It is the same as when you first tasted it; it will be so through all the years to come; and Jesus Christ will be the very same Jesus through all the ages of eternity.

Dear friends, do you believe that in that blessed Redeemer there are all the supplies of your life, for pardon, for sanctification, for wisdom, for redemption, for service, and that you can just take that personal Savior, and He will become to you everything that you can ever need for comfort, victory, or for blessing to others?

4. Again: this manna was a very insignificant looking thing, a thing that would be very easily overlooked. So Christ is a root out of a dry ground and despised of men. And this Bible is a very common looking thing in many houses, and many think it isa very dry book. But only gather its manna and it will be, as we are told about this manna, as sweet as oil and honey.

This manna had to be gathered every day, or it would become corrupt and breed worms. There are hearts, too, that are corrupting, and their very religion has mortified and turned to an open sepulcher, because the people have not maintained their communion with God. They are living on the old manna of a century ago. The sweetest and purest truth will become infected and unclean, if you do not constantly live on a present Christ, and renew your communion every week and every day. You cannot live on the blessing of this morning, you must still drink afresh, and feed on the Bread of Life, just as the Passover must be eaten on that day, and everything that remained was burned with fire. You will learn that this daily abiding in Christ is the secret of your Christian life.

It is very beautiful that the manna fell on the dew. They found it in the morning, imbedded or lying in the sparkling dew; a little grain of manna, and a trembling drop of dew. You know the dew is the type of the Holy Ghost, the gentle Comforter that drops upon us His promises and His commandments, as if they fell fresh from heaven itself.

5. Again: the manna and the Sabbath are strangely linked together. This chapter tells us about the Sabbath. For the first time since the creation we find it still observed. You know that a little more than a month later, the Sabbath was given in the ten commandments; but here before the commandments, we find the Sabbath existing. It seems as though God would show us that spiritual food and spiritual rest must go together. The Sabbath is the type of the peace that passeth understanding. The people that are feeding on Christ, are having Sabbath rest; such people are not agitated by the troubles of life, but can stand the tempests of evil, and the trials of life and not be moved because their hearts are established in Christ.

Dear friends, have you learned the meaning of this? We read this morning such strange and mighty words as these: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” Do you know what that means? Jesus Christ a living being, feeding your very being, as if a living soul were breathing life into you every moment, sustaining you inwardly and outwardly! O may the Spirit reveal Him to you. This alone can satisfy and sanctify. This alone can make you strong for service. And this alone, is Christianity. It is not the brain feeding on human thoughts, or Christian doctrine. I say deliberately, that all the Bible reveals is husks and not bread without this experience. One of the most distinguished of the German commentators, who wrote on every book of the Bible said, “I have written about them all. I have explained them all. I understand them in some sense, but I know nothing of it in my heart.” That was not Living Bread; that was feeding on husks, and on straw, and not on the kernels of His Word. Or that was feeding, if I might change the figure, on the raw wheat, and not on the flour. It is not the Bible only, or the church only, but Christ making it all personal; and there is the same difference between the letter with Christ in it, and without, as between the letter I pick up on the street and know nothing about the writer, and the letter I get from the friend I love. There is a person behind the latter. There is a person behind this page. As you read it this morning, does it glow in your heart?

SECTION II — The Water.

We turn to the second verse: “They did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.” The people had come to Rephidim, which was one of the oases in the Arabian desert, a place where ordinarily there were fountains. Indeed, travelers tell us today there are fountains there. It was a place of rest. They supposed they would find water as usual; but instead they found the stream dry, the trees withered, and everything desolate and barren. And so the people burst out into wild clamors. They did chide with Moses, and murmured against the Lord. They said, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” And God, instead of meeting them with judgment as they deserved, met them as He ever did. He told Moses to call the elders aside. They were responsible men that could bear witness of it, as the disciples could afterward tell of the resurrection of Jesus. He took these men with him to the place of the fountain, and there before the rock the pillar of cloud and fire took its stand, towering above it, and Moses took the rod and smote the rock, cleaving it asunder; and instantly there poured from it a stream of water, and spread through the camp, and through the oasis, until the people, with eager cries of gladness, were struggling for it and drinking its flowing tides. Eastern travelers tell us how the caravans do when they come to water, they are so delighted; the horses plunge in, and the people crowd upon one another into the stream, until their cries of delight are mingled with shouts of alarm, as they trample each other in their eagerness. And so here they brought their suffering cattle and they all drank and drank. And it would seem that this fountain never closed, but the waters continued to pour forth, until it became a living stream. For Paul says they “drank of that Rock that followed them.” It went along as they went along; and though sometimes it could not be found above the ground, they could dig down and find it, they could open a little cavity, and it would burst forth again. And so there was water all through the desert from this opening in the rock. They drank of the Rock that followed them, and it was the same spiritual rock, it was Christ. Water is one of the symbols of spiritual things. We see it in Genesis in the story of poor Hagar. We find its preciousness again in the reign of Ahab, and the life of Elijah. Christ tells the woman of Samaria of the well of water springing up unto everlasting life. And John speaks of the river clear as crystal that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, and to which the Spirit and the Bride say come, and of which all who will may take freely.

For us, this means the fulness of salvation. More specifically it means the work of the Holy Ghost. The bread is the type of Jesus, and the water of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is referred to under this image of water in His refreshing grace. Flowing around us in the ocean, above us in the air, the moisture that fills the atmosphere, and without which life cannot exist, one of the most important ingredients that constitute the physical universe, water is the vivid symbol of His Infinite and Illimitable grace. It tells also of the freeness of the Holy Ghost for all who will receive Him without money and without price.

Notice, first, that this water comes from the riven rock. The rod of the lawgiver had to strike the rock before the water came. And God had to smite His Son before the day of Pentecost and the joy of the Holy Ghost could reach our hearts. Not only was the water started, but left flowing, and ever since that the Holy Spirit has been in the church. He is here today; He is for you today. There is no limitation of the fulness of His blessing to those who will receive.

Not only did the water continue to flow from the rock, but through the desert; a channel was prepared for it; and when thechannel was not there, it flowed beneath the ground. And so the Holy Spirit does not travel in aqueducts but everywhere. Traveling through Italy first, I was struck by the vast aqueducts of the country, lifted up like our elevated tracks. If I had been thirsty I could not have reached them. God’s water flows in all places. The great peculiarity of water is that it flows down. It will go as high as its fountain head, and as low as the neediest. And so the Holy Ghost goes through your desert life; into the hard place of your life; into your weary round of toil and down to the lowest depths of sin and misery. The men and women before me have a struggling life. I am glad that I know something of work, and Christ knows more. I do not believe that a lazy, indolent man can taste of the full joys of His grace. Christ walked the whole circle of our life Himself, and so these streams flow through your common life. Some of you are going from here to cook your own dinners; tomorrow you are to pass through hours of trial, of toil and business, with all its pressure, and its monotony. It does not matter much, if you have the Divine supply and you can have it for the morning and afternoon and evening,as well as in the hours of sacred service. I do not know anything I am more thankful for, than the sufficiency of Christ for the twelve hours of the day and the twelve hours of the night. I am sure I should have died long ago if I had not found in Him a continual refreshing and delight. I do not believe in merely getting through. I do not believe in riding in an emigrant train; you can have a palace car all the way. God will make it easy for you. He loves to see you put your hand on the hardest things, and find them easy through Christ. This living water is for the desert, and not for those glorious eminences. You dear school girls, it will make your brain clearer, and brush the cobwebs from your mind. And it will help you, toiling women. How God’s heart goes out to you. He knows what a life you are living. But He will go with you everywhere.

Now we want to tell the world about this sort of grace. We do not want a religion of silver slippers, or kid gloves. But we want it to be practical heart work. I think I sometimes seem extravagant when I talk about this side of Christianity, but it has been so real to me, you must indulge me.

SECTION III — Conflict and Victory.

And now one more lesson; and that is, the conflict with Amalek. I am so glad that God does not let the battle come until you have got the bread and the water. If Amalek had come before the manna fell, and before the rock was opened, I am afraid he would have had his own way. But God fortifies you for the battle by filling your life and heart with His sufficiency.

In the first place, this battle with Amalek stands for the temptations that come to us from the flesh. Amalek was a descendant of Esau, and Esau was a man of the flesh. The whole race of Amalek includes the Canaanites; it was at least a branch of theCanaanites. It stands for that in men and women which is animal; but it stands not only for the coarse appetites of the animal, but for the tastes and desires and ambitions which are fleshly, and not pure and heavenly. We can have a business that is earthly, and we can have a business that is consecrated. We can have joys that take hold on the earth, and yet are rooted in God, or we can have these things all center in the earth. Do you know what it is to have an earthly intellect as well as an earthly lust? Amalek stands for all this.

It seems Amalek came a long distance. He came unprovoked; he was not attacked by Israel; but he came himself, because he hated this new way, and he wanted to destroy it before they got to Sinai and the Tabernacle. And you do not know where the campaign will begin; perhaps on the way home today; sitting at the dinner table; or in some of the things that will meet you before night. He will perhaps be along to close up the Lenten season. So Amalek came to fight with Israel. And it seems to intimate here, that Amalek will come until the end, because it says God will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

Another thing I want you to notice, he came not where the pillar of fire was; he does not come there; but he came behind, in disguise, in strategy. And we are told in Deut. 25: 18. “How he met them by the way, and smote the hindmost of them, even all that were feeble behind them, when they were faint and weary; and he feared not God.” It is so like his sneaking way. He came and fought the weary. If your face is set steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, he will not be there. If you are away in front, you will not see him. But if you are doubting, and lingering behind and compromising with the world, afraid to trust God with all your heart, you will find him. He came and fought the hindmost. Don’t get feeble; don’t linger behind; do not take back seats in Christ’s house; always press forward. Where God promises anything, say that is for me. If God commands anything, say, Lord, I will do it. When your faith is weak, or your hope, the flesh is apt to get control by its desires or its fears.

He is the type of our earthly adversaries that come in the world around us, and come often with combined and tremendous power, O how easy it would be to prove this, by turning back the leaves of your life. Dear young friends, what has blighted you? it is the flesh. What has sapped the springs of your life? O if I could tell of the young men that come sometimes to tell me the story of their wreck, it would make your heart ache. Perhaps it was unhallowed reading, to gratify their fleshly taste, not very grossly at first, the book that pleases, the sensational columns of those devilish newspapers; it makes one sick all over to read the headlines.