Verses 26-32
Practical Alternatives
This is the closing portion of a very long discourse delivered by Moses. The discourse begins in the twenty-second verse of the fifth chapter and extends to the end of the eleventh chapter. Within these points Moses rehearses the Decalogue and its leading principles; beyond the range of principles he has hardly yet gone. The next chapter opens with details, and insists upon special and clear applications of the morals which Moses had heretofore inculcated. The preacher winds up this portion of his discourse with a solemn appeal; he brings the great question to a point. He has not conducted himself merely as a lecturer upon moral philosophy, stating various theories with great learning and skill, and leaving his listeners to come to their own conclusions. There are no such lectures in an inspired book; they are in their right place in strictly human literature an ample field within which men may indulge their genius and exhibit the results of their investigations. Moses comes with a law. Rightly or wrongly, that is the position which he assumes. He is not an intellectual reasoner merely an inventor of systems, a critic of extinct ages; he says he has brought two tables written with the finger of God, measurable and intelligible as to letters and applications, but underneath them, and above them, and round about them is the mystery of Eternity. How does this noble preacher conclude his expositions and rehearsals? He does not divide the people into two classes: he sets before them alternative courses: proceed upon the line of obedience, and you come to blessing; proceed along the line of disobedience, and a curse is the inevitable necessity, not a threatening, not an exhibition of fretful vengeance, but a spiritual necessity: a curse follows evil-doing, not as an arbitrary punishment, but as the effect, which can never be changed, of a certain, positive, operating cause. This, therefore, takes out the personal element. We are not divided as on the right hand and on the left. Instead of classifying the hearers, Moses classifies the alternatives; and thus grace follows law, a species of mercy asserts itself in the midst of the severest and most critical of all moral legislation. The dart is not aimed at any particular man, nor is the favour dispensed in any spirit of selection and partiality; but two great courses are indicated, two distinct issues are classified, and it is for us, reasoning upon history and observation, to say whether the prophet of the Lord touched the vital line whether he trifled with the occasion, or whether he spake that which is today confirmed by experience and observation or human development and progress. What if everything round about us be confirming the testimony of Moses? What if the Decalogue be written every day of the week? What if in the operation of moral influence it can be distinctly proved that the Bible is one, that the word of the Lord abideth for ever, and that, whatever changes may have occurred, obedience still leads to blessing, disobedience still leads to cursing, and it is not within the wit or the strength of man to change that outgoing of law and consequence?
A very precious thing it is that we have only to obey. At first it looks as if we were humbled by this course of service, but further inquest into the spiritual meaning of the matter shows us that in the definition of right and wrong, law and righteousness, God has been most tenderly-pitiful towards us, and law is but the practical and more visible and measurable aspect of love. Again and again we have seen that we are not moral inventors. God has not propounded a writing to us, to find out which is right and which is wrong; nor has he left to us the wild liberty, which would have been so full of disappointment and pain, of discovering for ourselves which way we would take, not knowing the definite issue of either course. There is nothing arbitrary in the revelation of eternal law: by its very nature it is a quantity which lies beyond our vision, and which does not submit itself to the rearrangements of our invention. Things relating to mere convenience, momentary rights, boundaries which are being continually enlarged and contracted as civilisation may require, with regard to these we are legislators, makers of law, having in our right the gift of reward and the infliction of penalty; but even these things are wrong if they are not built upon rocks we never laid, if they do not express the eternal harmoniousness, the infinite righteousness of God. In so far as they approach the divine thought, they will abide, they will daily vindicate their own justice; and in so far as they do not express the decree of Heaven, all time is against them; not a star in the wide heavens is on their side; they must go down by a pressure as irresistible as it is immeasurable and invisible. Happy is the man who has discovered that he is not meant to be a moral inventor a maker of morals, that he has to accept a revealed morality and an offered righteousness: that God has been so kind to him as to arrange the whole way of life, so that the wayfaring man need not lose the path. This down-letting of a moral revelation is an aspect of the grace of God. When we come into fuller grace, clearer apprehension of the divine mind, we call the law an assistant guiding us to school not so much a schoolmaster, as the English has it, as one who takes us by the hand and guides us to the schoolmaster; but, even then we begin to see that the law, if written on stone, was written by a hand of love; if set forth in letters that seem to burn in the intensity of their purity, yet did those very letters light us into inner meanings, into the very hidden sanctuary of God. When will men learn this? When will they at once and for ever confess it, and so save themselves from endless and profitless trouble? The Christian position is that the whole scheme of righteousness is revealed: whatever is right, true, pure, good, lovely, honest, and of heavenly savour has been given by God, so that the disappointing exercise of invention is superseded or is rendered of non-effect. One who knows the universe, because he made it, and all eternity, because he inhabits it, has condescended to tell us what is good, what is true, what is pure, what is right. If we were inspired by the right spirit, we would instantly stand up in thankfulness and bless the Giver's name, and ask but one other favour that we might have eyes to see the innermost meaning of the law, and hearts trained, disciplined, and sanctified to accept and obey it, and express it in noble behaviour.
Is it true, within limits that we know, that obedience leads to blessing and disobedience to cursing? Sometimes we have to interrupt the divine reasoning that we may assist ourselves in its comprehension by the study of analogy upon lower ground. Is it true that there is a seed-time, which, if neglected, will be followed by desolation and death? Disprove that, and you will largely enable yourselves to disprove higher and more spiritual propositions. Is there a Bible of agriculture a distinct revelation of the mysterious way of astronomic and agricultural and chemical forces? Is there a Moses of science a man who comes to the ages with two tables of stone, telling us what nature has told him after waiting upon her day and night for many a year? The man abides by facts: he says, I have studied nature, I have been a patient student in her temple, and I have seen that this and that are essential to a harmonic association with her principles and requirements. He must leave the law; if he is wrong, he will soon be disproved; if he is right, then the critics cannot put him down. The appeal must always be to experience, to fact, to known circumstances, and provable assertions. A pity, indeed, some might say, that men cannot form their own opinions as to whether they will avail themselves of the day assigned to seed-sowing. Why should not men make a calendar of their own about these things? The calendars are copies: the writing of man is only what man has heard in the solemnity and silence of some Sinai. The appeal, after he has spoken, lies to earth, time, season, and by the issue not by his pretence or claim let him stand or fall. But may there not be many varieties of methods? Certainly; but the earth abideth for ever. We must study the effect of the central and eternal quantity within which we have no liberty, and then the changeable and adaptable circumstances and forces within which we may for the moment imagine ourselves to be masters and governors. A marvellous, mysterious combination is our life of necessity and freedom, an eternal quantity and a continually-changing atmosphere; within that system we live. Is it true that there are laws of health ten commandments, more or less, about the body? Then there is a Bible of physiology; there is a Moses who speaks with the authority of nature about the human system and its relations to all its environment. Is it true that want of exercise, accompanied by plentifulness of food, leads to the degeneration of muscle? Why were we not left to settle that ourselves? Is there a law upon this? Is it true that children born in the springtime and in the winter are marked by greater vitality than children born at any other period of the year? Why were we not left to say in the family circle itself when children shall be healthy, when vitality shall rise and when it shall fall? Is there a law of sleep and of labour? If so, then, the Bible is a larger book than we supposed. If all these little outside Bibles are true and can challenge facts to prove their truth, it is not difficult to rise to the higher level, and to say, There may be a Bible meant for the soul; there may be a revelation addressed to the reason, and to the higher reason called faith, and to the higher self called the spirit. This higher revelation has not the immediate advantage of the lower Bibles, because they deal with earth, body, space, time, measurable quantities: but the higher Bible deals with soul, spirit, thought, will, eternity; by the very grandeur of its claim it dispossesses itself of that immediateness of proof which lies within the handling of the lower revelations and testimonies. But this must not be considered a disadvantage: this belongs to the glory and the necessity of the case. He who operates within a radius of a few inches can be, apparently, quicker in his movements, more precise and determined in his decisions, than the man who claims the globe as the theatre of his actions. So the Bible, having the disadvantage of dealing with spiritual quantities, must be judged, so far as we can approach it, by the spirit of the lower laws, or the laws applying to the lower economy. Is there any curse upon indolence? Does indolence rise for a moment from its pillow to smile satirically at industry, saying, I shall be to-night as rich as you are: mean to slumber and sleep and doze in many a happy dream, and when you come back at eventide from the field where you have been wearying yourself my hands will be as full as yours; go your unprofitable and vexatious way? When did indolence say so? Or, saying so, when did indolence prove the truthfulness and reality of its doctrine? When was not indolence stabbed by its own satire, and made to tremble under the infliction of its own scorn? Then there is a Bible relating to industry, service, stewardship, faithfulness, who does not uphold that Bible? Is there an employer of labour in the world who would not say, Such a Bible proves its own inspiration? And is there an honest labourer in the world who would hesitate to accept that Bible, being compelled to its acceptance by the very constraint of necessity? So then, we cannot do away with this law of blessing and cursing: we cannot set up a rival system of nature; we are bound to accept the very earth; we are driven account for it as we may to accept the light of the sun; we are so pressed and humbled that we must wait for the former and the latter rain. Yet what liberty man has! What pranks he plays in chemistry! How he amuses himself in the invention of lights! How, having once invented a candle, he cannot rest until he has invented a larger light, and when he has invented his largest light he takes care to put it out before the sun rises, or the sun will put it out for him! God will not allow two creators: he himself reigns. He is still creating, and man is left but to invent, and arrange, and adapt, and borrow: find him where you will you find man a debtor; and the universe asks its brightest genius, "How much owest thou unto my Lord?"
The argument is this: seeing that in the field, in the body, in the social economy, there is a law of blessing and a law of cursing, who shall say that this same reasoning does not culminate in a great revelation of heaven, hell; "the right-hand," "the left-hand;" eternal life, everlasting penalty? If the analogies had been dead against that construction, we might by so much have stood in doubt and excused ourselves from completeness of service; but every analogy becomes a preacher: all nature takes up her parable and speaks the revelations of her God: all life beats with a pulse below a pulse, the physical throb being but an indication of a growing immortality. We stand in a solemn sanctuary. We cannot get rid of law. The spiritual is a present blessing or a present curse. We cannot be happy with a bad conscience: it hardens the pillow when we need sleep most, it upsets all our arrangements, or makes our hand so tremble that we cannot clutch our own property; and we cannot be unhappy with a good conscience: without bread we are still in fulness, without employment we are still inspired by hope, without much earthly charity or largeness of construction of our motive and force we still retire within the sanctuary of an approved judgment and conscience. Blessing is not a question of posthumous realisation, nor is cursing. Heaven is here, and hell in germ, in outline, in hint, in quick, burning suggestion. Even now sometimes men know not whether they are in the body or out of the body by reason of religious entrancement and ecstasy; and there are men who, if they dare put their feeling into words, would say, "The pains of hell gat hold upon me." "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked;" "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished;" "Be sure your sin will find you out." Who can fight God and win the battle?
The last words of Moses in this paragraph show us that new situations do not necessitate new morals. This is proved by Deuteronomy 11:31-32 : "For ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein. And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which I set before you this day." Morals do not change. Methods change, systems vary, theology readjusts its statements and retranslates itself into the growing language of a growing civilisation, all that is true; but the abiding quantity is the law, the revelation of God in Christ, the living Son of the eternal God Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. We have no right that changes its claims according to the side of the river which it is upon: right is right on this side Jordan and on that side Jordan: there is no cis-Jordan righteousness and trans-Jordan morality. Right is right the universe through, because God is one; evil is evil everywhere, because divine holiness is unchangeable. Look not to time, place, change of circumstance or situation, for the acceptance of a vicious morality: the universe is against it; eternity condemns it. Right is possible here, and only in one way: the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin; there is a fountain opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness. Availing ourselves of that one way we lose nothing; taking the very lowest view of the whole mystery, we gain much because of an expansion of our own view of human nature and human possibility, and, at the last, when the great leap must be taken, if we leap into nothingness, we have had a wonderful joy all the way we have taken wonderful communion, marvellous blessing in good-doing, intellectual and spiritual enlargement, in growing power cf prayer; but, if the leap be into life, judgment, an eternal state of consciousness and apprehension, who wins: the fool who has no God, or the Christian who has been trusting in the living God and his Saviour Jesus Christ? To that inquiry who will reply In words? To attempt an answer in syllables would be to lower the occasion. That is an inquiry which brings its own ineffable reply.
Prayer
Almighty God, thy Son Jesus Christ is our Saviour. He is mighty to save. The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. We were lost: we were as sheep going astray, turning every one to his own way; but we have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. We have been brought by a way we knew not and by paths we could not understand. This is the miracle of grace; this is the surprise of Heaven. Once we were blind: now we see; once we had no future: now life and immortality are brought to light. We long for the future; we live in heaven; we are the sons of God. We bless thee for a word of love and hope and joy: it fills the heart; it makes the spirit glad; it is the inspiration of heavenly grace. Meet with us when we gather together around thy Book, and help us to understand its best meaning, to feel its holy influence, and to respond to its gracious appeals. Thou knowest who are carrying heavy burdens, whose eyes are full of tears, whose hands are feeble and can no longer do life's pressing work; thou knowest also the prodigal children, thankless offspring, difficult to manage in business, in the home, and on the highway; our whole life is spread out before thee in clearest vision, and there is an answer in heaven to all the necessity of earth. Lord, answer thy servants; be gracious unto them who are clothed with the white linen of the saints. Thou wilt not see them put to shame; thou wilt try them with many a chastening sorrow, but in the deliverance of thy people thou wilt magnify thy grace. Wash us in the sacrificial blood; cleanse us from the condemnation of sin; make us pure with thine own purity; and in thine own due time gather us to the hills of heaven. Amen.
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