The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons

And, thank God, no one need go far to look for such books.  I do not mean merely religious books, excellent as they are in these days: I mean any books which help to make us better and wiser and soberer, and more charitable persons; any books which will teach us to despise what is vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what is noble and high-minded, pure and just.  We need not go far for them.  In our own noble English language we may read by hundreds, books which will tell us of all virtue and of all praise.  The stories of good and brave men and women; of gallant and heroic actions; of deeds which we ourselves should be proud of doing; of persons whom we feel, to be better, wiser, nobler than we are ourselves.

In our own language we may read the history of our own nation, and whatsoever is just, honest and true.  We may read of God’s gracious providences toward this land.  How he has punished our sins and rewarded our right and brave endeavours.  How he put into our forefathers the spirit of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth and justice, the spirit of loyalty and order; and how, following the leading of that spirit, in spite of many mistakes and failings, we have risen to be the freest, the happiest, the most powerful people on earth, a blessing and not a curse to the nations around.

In our own English tongue, too, we may read such poetry as there is in no other language in the world; poetry which will make us indeed see the beauty of whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.  Some people have still a dislike of what they call foolish poetry books.  If books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with them.  But poetry ought not to be foolish; for God sent it into the world to teach men not foolishness, but the highest wisdom.  He gave man alone, of all living creatures, the power of writing poetry, that by poetry he might understand, not only how necessary it was to do right, but how beautiful and noble it was to do right.  He sent it into the world to soften men’s rough hearts, and quiet their angry passions, and make them love all which is tender and gentle, loving and merciful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is gallant and honourable, loyal and patriotic, devout and heavenly.  Therefore whole books of the Bible—Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms—are neither more nor less than actual poetry, written in actual verse, that their words might the better sink down into the ears and hearts of the old Jews, and of us Christians after them.  And therefore also, we keep up still the good old custom of teaching children in school as much as possible by poetry, that they may learn not only to know, but to love and remember whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.

Lastly, for those who cannot read, or have really no time to read, there is one means left of putting themselves in mind of what every one must remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a savage.  I mean by pictures; which, as St. Augustine said 1400 years ago, are the books of the unlearned.  I do not mean grand and expensive pictures; I mean the very simplest prints, provided they represent something holy, or noble, or tender, or lovely.  A few such prints upon a cottage-wall may teach the people who live therein much, without their being aware of it.  They see the prints, even when they are not thinking of them; and so they have before their eyes a continual remembrancer of something better and more beautiful than what they are apt to find in their own daily life and thoughts.

True, to whom little is given, of them is little required.  But it must be said, that more—far more—is given to labouring men and women now than was given to their forefathers.  A hundred, or even fifty years ago, when there was very little schooling; when the books which were put even into the hands of noblemen’s children were far below what you will find now in any village school; when the only pictures which a poor woman could buy to lay on her cottage-wall were equally silly and ugly: then there were great excuses for the poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were lovely and of good report; if they were often coarse and brutal in their manners, and cruel and profligate in their amusements.

But even in the rough old times there always were a few at least, men and women, who were above the rest; who, though poor people like the rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies of God’s making.  People who kept themselves more or less unspotted from the world; who thought of what was honest and pure and lovely and of good report; and who lived a life of simple, manful, Christian virtue, and received the praise and respect of their neighbours, even although their neighbours did not copy them.  There were always such people, and there always will be—thank God for it, for they are the salt of the earth.

But why have there always been such people? and why do I say confidently, that there always will be?

Because they have had the Bible; and because, once having got the Bible in a free country, no man can take it from them.

The Bible it is which has made gentlemen and ladies of many a poor man and woman.

The Bible it is which has filled their minds with pure and noble, ay, with heavenly and divine thoughts.

The Bible has been their whole library.  The Bible has been their only counsellor.  The Bible has taught them all they know.  But it has taught them enough.

It has taught them what God is, and what Christ is.  It has taught them what man is, and what a Christian man should be.  It has taught them what a family means, and what a nation means.  It has taught them the meaning of law and duty, of loyalty and patriotism.  It has filled their minds with things honest and just and lovely and of good report; with the histories of men and women like themselves, who sinned and sorrowed and struggled like them in this hard battle of life, but who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.

This one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this Sunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other story-book to read—who could not even read themselves, but had to listen to others’ reading; that it has taught them to be good sons, to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life; and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has really done more to civilize and refine them—to make them truly civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages—than if they had known a smattering of a dozen sciences.  I say that the Bible is the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor, high and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and that any man who tries to shake our faith in the Bible, is doing what he can—though, thank God, he will not succeed—to make such rough and coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were five hundred years ago.

And I tell you, labouring people, that if you want something which will make up to you for the want of all the advantages which the rich have—go to your Bibles and you will find it there.

There you will find, in the history of men like ourselves—and, above all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect Man—perfect Man and perfect God together—whatsoever is true, whatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every virtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire.  Read of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on them with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed on; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus Christ himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.

And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.

SERMON IX.  MOSES

(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

EXODUS iii. 14.  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible—excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ—the story of how a family grew to be a great nation.  You remember that I told you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history of a family.

Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.

Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.

Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and made them free men.  And how God did that (for God in general works by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race—Moses.

It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.

Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.

Let us read from the account of the Bible itself.  I should be sorry to spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own: ‘And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.  Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.  And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.  Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens.  And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithon and Raamses. . . .  And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.  And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein: and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.  And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold the babe wept.  And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.  Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?  And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go.  And the maid went and called the child’s mother.  And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.  And the woman took the child, and nursed it.  And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.  And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.’

Moses, the child of the water.  St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; that is, adopted by her.  We read elsewhere that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from his own writings, especially that part called Moses’ law.

So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages.  Brought up in the court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world, he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man could teach him in those old times.

But that would have been little for him.  He might have become merely an officer in Pharaoh’s household, and we might never have heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning and statesmanship of the Egyptians.

For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a man believe in God, and trust God.  ‘And therefore,’ says St. Paul, ‘he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; esteeming the reproach of Christ better than all the treasures in Egypt.’

And how did he do that?  In this wise.

The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong; which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any human being abused and trampled on.

And that spirit broke forth in Moses.  ‘And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.  And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.’

If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.

But he will see fair play among his people themselves.  They are, as slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome among themselves.

‘And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian?  And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.  Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.  But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian’—the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.

So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute righteous judgment in the earth.  He had lost all, by trying to do right.  He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh’s court.  Now he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert.  He had made his first trial, and failed.  As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them by his hand; but they understood not.  Slavish, base, and stupid, they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.

And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years of age.  Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.

It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year: but, no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks alone.  Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt, and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him.  Thinking over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he should ever be able to help them.  Thinking, too, and more than all, of God—of God’s promise to Abraham and his children.  Would that ever come true?  Would God help these wretched Jews, even if he could not?  Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?

That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that forty years, there can be no doubt.

If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it was God who spoke to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand as desperate, dangerous, hopeless—and, humanly speaking, as wild as ever man went upon.

But Moses never lost faith or patience.  He believed, and he did not make haste.  He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain.  No man will wait in vain.  When the time was ready; when the Jews were ready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty years’ patient thought, was ready; then God came in his own good time.

And Moses led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.  And there he saw a bush—probably one of the low copses of acacia—burning with fire; and behold the bush was not consumed.  Then out of the bush God spoke to Moses with an audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says plainly, and I see no reason to doubt that it is literally true.

‘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.’

Then followed a strange conversation.  Moses was terrified at the thought of what he had to do, and reasonably: moreover, the Israelites in Egypt had forgotten God.  ‘And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?  And God said unto Moses, I Am that I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.’

I Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses.  That message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news which was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Ay, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in the happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the blessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the wilderness thousands of years ago.

And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and returned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may serve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy firstborn.’

A strange man, on a strange errand.  A poor man, eighty years old, carrying all that he had in the world upon an ass’s back, going down to the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the greatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst of all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had conquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples, and palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the face of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that rainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the features of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power till he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on earth.

And to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of Israel free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the Israelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them all as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an outcast too, who had fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might be killed on the spot, as Pharaoh’s only answer to his bold request.  Certainly, if Moses had not had faith in God, his errand would have seemed that of a madman.  But Moses had faith in God; and of faith it is said, that it can remove mountains, for all things are possible to them who believe.

So by faith Moses went back into Egypt; how he fared there we shall hear next Sunday.