should be the grave or the guardian of that babe; and there did appear but little hope for grand results arising from a casa contingent upon so minute and microscopic an accident. Yet, it was predetermined, before the world began, that that babe should live and be the deliverer of his people, and the great and suggestive foreshadow of the Son of God. Over that tiny ark, rocked upon the wild waves, partially hidden by the bulrushes, there were marshalled all the cherubim of the sky; around that little babe were the everlasting arms that weary not, and will not give way; all things might perish, it could not. How great was the contrast between Pharaoh on his throne and Moses the infant in the ark! The natural man would say that on that throne and around it were all the elements, the certainty, the earnest of endurance, greatness, victory; and in that ark, and about that babe, all the symptoms of decay, of weakness, of death; but it really was not so: the one went down and perished with all his chivalry, like a ship, in the Red Sea; the other led forth the hosts of Israel to progress, to victory, to the promised land. In later days, we have seen Luther, a poor monk, speaking a great truth; Leo, the most powerful of the pontiffs that ever wore the tiara, treating him and all such with consummate contempt; and yet, the truth of God, whether in the babe rocked upon the waters of the Nile, or in the monk's bosom, half buried in a convent, is immortal and imperishable, and all besides is weakness. The arc that truth describes is not to be measured by a human foot-rule; it is to be measured, if measured at all, only by the inexhaustible promises and the eternal faithfulness of God. The Nile might sweep away Pharaoh's palace, it could not overwhelm that ark; the lightning may rend to atoms the gigantic oak, it does not touch the frail violet that blooms amid the rank grass at its roots; it is not the strength or bulk of the thing, but the presence of Deity, that makes it strong. no How wonderfully does God overrule the schemes, the passions, and the wickedness of man, to the furtherance of his own great ends! Pharaoh heard that a Hebrew child should dispossess him of his throne. Egyptian prophecies said so, doubt, the mere confused echoes of what was uttered in the oracles of God,— but, at all events, it was what Pharaoh believed. His fears aroused him to action. He determined, lest the feared Hebrew babe should grow up, to murder every infant that should be born. All he did, however, only expedited the great purpose of Heaven; for his own daughter became the guardian of the child that was to overturn his throne, his own palace became the nursery of the very babe that he dreaded. It was not the power of Moses, but the sin of Pharaoh, that broke his sceptre, and swept away his kingdom. Truly, God restrains the wrath of man, and overrules the remainder of it to praise him. We have here an evidence of God's perpetual presence with his church. The church was represented in Moses, and its existence was contingent on a babe's life. Yet God was there, just as he was in heaven. Jesus is no more with the portion of the church that is in heaven, than he is with the portion of the church that is on earth. "Go and preach the Gospel; I am with you always, to the end of the world." "When thou passest through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." Crowns may withhold their splendor, wealth its contributions, genius its eloquence, all things may conspire against Christ's church, but it is founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Persecution always fails in promoting the ends it has in view. Pharaoh used its weapons, and they proved a miserable mistake. It has been tried by other men, and it has equally failed. We never can put down a lie by persecution, we never can sustain a truth by injustice. Truth repudiates every assisting weapon that is not drawn from the armory of heaven, and what is false shrinks from the aid of the pure and lofty in every age. Truth can only be supported by her own weapons; the weapons of her warfare are not carnal, and, because they are not carnal, they are necessarily and invariably mighty. Bless, and blessings will return upon you in a thousand forms. Curse, and the curse will return upon him that utters it. Wind a chain around the arm of a brother, and, by a great law, the other end of it will be wound about your own. He that unsheaths the sword in all probability will perish by the sword. We need to know this, and in the present day to act on it, more than ever. It may be that power will not be our protection, that high places will not be our shelter; but, blessed be God, if all power should cease to defend, and all law should be against us, the Bible remains, the God that wrote it remains; faith, hope, love, remain; and these are mighty, for to God they go, as from God they originally came. CHAPTER VI. THE CHOICE OF MOSES. "Tears, what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot, "Albeit, as some have done, Ye grope, tear-blinded, in a desert place, And touch but tombs; look up, those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.' "Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” HRBREWS 11: 25. MOSES chose, not only in heart, or in principle, as we may do, but in fact, when the alternative was before him, affliction with the people of God; and rejected, personally and practically, all the pleasures of a palace, because sin was there. We have recorded in this passage what was presented to the choice of Moses, one of two states. There was sin under the roof of Pharaoh, and amid the pomp and grandeur of a palace; there was affliction in the company of a poor, persecuted body of slaves, laboring at brick-making, and crushed by a terrible tyranny; the one the prescription of his conscience, the other the enjoyment and delight of man's passions. On the one side Moses saw a path strewn with roses, fragrant with their per fume; but underneath the roses, serpents and poisonous reptiles, that would sting the foot that trod them, and the hand that gathered them. On the other side, he saw nothing but a black road, and a dark and a miry way, but over it the sunshine of the face of his God, and at the end of it joys at his right hand, and real pleasures, not the pleasures of sin, forever. His choice was between sin, whose pleasures were momentary and external, and holiness, with its afflictions, which also are momentary and external. It does not imply that with a palace there are always sins and pleasures, nor does it mean that with the people of God there are always afflictions. Men have been, and may be, in a palace, holy, prosperous and happy, in the profession — the heartfelt profession-of the Gospel of Jesus. It is always, and everywhere, the heart that makes the atmosphere about us, and not the circumstances that make the heart. A holy man must be a happy man everywhere. A man whose conscience is racked with a sense of sin must be miserable, place him where we will. We see still before us two great elements, between which Moses was placed, the one, sin with its supposed, imaginary real, and, when real, momentary pleasures; and the other, God's people, God's cause, and God's walk and way, with its contingent accompaniments, in his case actual accompaniments, - afflictions. What is sin? A word uttered in a moment, with a meaning inexhaustible forever. That monosyllable "sin" is the most awful, the most dreadful thing in the whole universe of God. It is essential evil. Disease is not evil, death is not evil, suffering is not evil; but sin is unmitigated, unrelieved, unmingled evil. It is what a discord is to the ear, what ugliness is to the eye, what disease is to the body, what death is to humanity; it is all these compressed into one. We cannot conceive fully what is in that monosyllable, sin. It rent |