The Gospel of the Pentateuch Part 15

He who has brought the Jews to the edge of the promised land must not have the honour and glory of taking them into it. He must have no honour and glory. That must be G.o.d's alone. Man must be nothing, and G.o.d all in all. Moses must die in faith, not having received the promises, as many another saint of G.o.d has died.

And why? To teach him and the Jews and us that man IS nothing, and G.o.d is all in all.

Moses had given way to the very temptation which would beset such a man. He had spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and said, 'Hear now, ye rebels, or ye fools, must WE bring you water out of this rock?'

WE, and not G.o.d. He had claimed for himself the power and glory of working miracles. The miracles, he thought for a moment, were his, and not G.o.d's. And it may be that this was not the only time that he had so sinned. He may naturally have thought that he had some special power and influence with G.o.d. But be that as it may, the Jews were trained to believe that the miracles were G.o.d's, G.o.d's immediate work, and not performed by the wisdom or sanct.i.ty or supernatural power of any saint or prophet whatsoever. Let the Jews once learn to give the honour and glory to Moses, and not to G.o.d, and the whole of their strange education went for nothing. Instead of wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d they would begin to wors.h.i.+p saints. Instead of trusting in G.o.d, they would begin to trust in men; whether on earth or in heaven matters not. If Moses was to have the honour and glory, the Jews would surely grow into a superst.i.tious, saint- wors.h.i.+pping, miracle-mongering people, and come to ruin and slavery thereby. They were to fear G.o.d and nought else. To trust in G.o.d and nought else.

So Moses must vanish out of their sight, sadly and mysteriously.

All they know of him is, that he is punished for a sin which he committed long ago, as you and I may be. All they know of his death and burial is, that his body was not left foully to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; for the Lord buried him. They know not how, and did not need to know. And we need not know. Enough for them and for us to know that no dishonour was done to the grand old man; that as he died far away on the lonely mountain top without a child to close his eyes, his last look fixed upon the good land and large which lay spread out below, of entering which he had been dreaming for forty--it may be for more than forty--years. Enough for us to know that the kindly earth received his body again into her bosom, and that the true Moses--the immortal spirit of the man-- returned to G.o.d who created him, and inspired him, and sustained him to be perhaps the greatest man--save One who was more than man--who ever trod this earth.

So our human feelings, like those of the Jews, are satisfied. But Moses is not to be wors.h.i.+pped by them or by us; no splendid temple is to rise over his bones; no lamps are to burn, or priest to chant round his shrine; no miracles are to be worked by his relics; no man is to invoke his patronage and intercession in their prayers. The people whom he has brought out of Egypt are to be free--free from the slavery of the body, free from the more degrading slavery of the soul.

And so they go on over Jordan to fulfil their strange destiny, to fight their way into the promised land, to root out the Canaanite tribes, whose iniquity was full, whose sins had made them a nuisance not to be suffered on the earth of G.o.d. But do they go to establish a golden age; to become a perfect people?

Nothing less. To become, according to the book of Judges, just what Moses foretold--an ignorant, selfish, often profligate and disorderly people, doing each what is right in his own eyes, falling continually into idolatry, civil war, and slavery to the heathens round about. Nothing more shows the truth of this history than its humility, its continual confession of sin, its readiness to confess the ugly truth that the Jews are a foolish, ignorant, unmanageable, lawless, sensual race, stiffnecked and rebellious, always resisting the Holy Spirit. The immense difference between the Old Testament history and that of all other nations is, that it is a history not of their virtues, but of their sins; and a history, on the other hand, of G.o.d's punishments and mercies. G.o.d in the Old Testament is all, and the Jews are nothing; and one may say that it differs from all other histories in this, that it is not a history of the Jews themselves at all, but a history of G.o.d's dealings with them.

If any man chooses to explain that, by saying that the story was all invented by priests and prophets afterwards, to rebuke the people for falling into idolatry, he must have his fancy. Thought is free- -for the present, at least--though it is written that for every idle word that men speak, they shall give account at the day of judgment.

But one question I must ask, and I am sure that British common sense and British honesty will ask it too: If these prophets were really good men, fearing G.o.d, and wis.h.i.+ng to make their countrymen fear him likewise, would it not have been a rather strange way of showing that they feared G.o.d to tell their countrymen a set of fables and lies? Good men are not in the habit of telling lies now, and never have been; for no lie is of the truth, or can possibly help the truth in any way; and all liars have their portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. And that such men as the prophets of whom we read in the Old Testament did not know that, and therefore invented this history, or invented anything else, is a thing incredible and absurd.

Here we have the Old Testament, an infinitely good book, giving us infinitely good advice and good news, and news too concerning G.o.d-- G.o.d's laws, G.o.d's providence, G.o.d's dealings, such as we get nowhere else. And shall we believe that this infinitely good book is founded upon falsehood? or that the good men who wrote it could fancy it necessary to stoop to falsehood, and take the devil's tools wherewith to do G.o.d's work? That they may have been imperfectly informed on some points there is no doubt; for the Bible tells us that they were men of like pa.s.sions with ourselves, and they may not always have been true to the Spirit of G.o.d who was teaching them, even as we are not, though he teaches us. They only knew in part and prophesied in part; and now that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away; the mystery of Christ was not revealed to them as it has been to us by the holy apostles and prophets of the new dispensation, of which St. Paul says, comparing it with the knowledge which the old Jews had when the gospel came, That the glory of the law had no glory, by reason of the more excellent glory of the gospel. They may, I say, have made slight errors in unimportant matters, though it is far more probable that those errors have crept into the text, as the Scriptures were copied again and again through many centuries by different scribes, of whose perfect good sense and honesty we cannot be certain. But who that really values his Bible cares for them any more than he cares for the spots on the sun which he can find through a telescope? The sun still s.h.i.+nes, and gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible still s.h.i.+nes, and gives light to every soul of man who will read it in reverence and faith. But that the prophets ever invented, or ever dared to tamper with truth, is a thing not to be believed of men whose writings are plainly, by their own meaning and end, inspired by the Holy Spirit of G.o.d.

One more reason--and a reason which to me is unanswerable--for believing, like our forefathers, that the Old Testament is true.

The Old Testament, as well as the New, tells us of the 'n.o.ble acts'

of the Lord--of certain gracious and merciful and just things which the Lord did to the children of Israel. But if that be not true, what follows? That G.o.d has not done the n.o.ble acts which men thought he had, and therefore that G.o.d is not as n.o.ble as men thought he was; that men have actually fancied for themselves a better G.o.d than the G.o.d who exists already.

Absurd.

Absurd, truly; and if you choose to call it by a harder name still, you have a right to do so.

Do not you think that G.o.d must be better, not worse; more generous, not less; more condescending, not less; more just, not less; more helpful, not less, than man can fancy or describe? Are not the riches of Christ unsearchable, and the mercies of the Lord boundless? Is he not able and willing to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think? Did not even St. Paul say that he only knew in part and prophesied in part? And must it not be true of the whole Bible what the beloved apostle St. John says of his own Gospel, 'And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written?'

Bear that in mind, remembering always that the G.o.d of the Old Testament is the G.o.d of the New likewise; and whenever you read, either in the Old or New Testament, of the n.o.ble acts of the Lord, say boldly, as millions of hearts have said already, when the good news of the Bible came to them, 'This is so beautiful that it must be true. The Spirit of G.o.d in the Bible, and the judgment of the Church in all ages, bears witness with my spirit that this is true.

So ought G.o.d to have done, and therefore surely so hath G.o.d done.

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do RIGHT?'

Footnotes:

{0a} Evidences, Part III. Cap. iii.

{0b} Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lect. xviii. p. 401.

{7} I must say that all attempts to put a later date on these books seems to me to fail simply from want of evidence. I must say, also, that all attempts to distinguish between 'Jehovistic' and 'Elohistic' doc.u.ments (with the exception, perhaps, of the first chapter of Genesis) seem to me to fail likewise; and that the theory of an Elohistic and a Jehovistic sect has received its reductionem ad absurdum in a certain recent criticism of the Psalms.