Bible Commentaries

The Drowning of Pharaoh

Exodus 13:21-22).

What is the great doctrine of that expression?

This:—The consciousness of the Divine presence is in proportion to the circumstances in which we are placed. In other words, our circumstances determine our consciousness of the Divine nearness. Sometimes life is all day—almost a summer day with great spans of blue sky overhead, and where the clouds gather they gather in beautiful whiteness, as of purity akin to the holiness of the inner and upper cities of the universe. Then what do we want with fiery displays of God?—they would be out of keeping, out of reason and out of proportion. There are days that are themselves so bright, so hospitable, so long ending, and so poetic in all their breezes, and suggestions, and ministries that we seem not to want any dogmatic teaching about the personality and nearness of God. All beauty represents him. Any more emphatic demonstration would be out of harmony with the splendid serenity of the occasion. Then there are periods in life all night, all darkness, all storm or weariness. We cannot say where the door of liberty Exodus 14:11-12).

That is a miracle in very deed! That is the marvel that astounds the reason, the heart, the imagination, and the conscience. That is the miracle which grieves Heaven. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." That is the upsetting of the law of continuity. That is the violation of things permanent. That is an ugly and wicked twist in the movement of the law which you call "the persistence of force." After all they had seen,—after all the miracles of love, and grace, and deliverance, and comfort,—after all they had known of the government of God,—they turned round with so base a falseness and smote, as with darts seven times whetted, the heart of Moses their leader. That is the impossible miracle. How mean we are and paltry in our judgment and in thinking that the dividing of a sea or the breaking up of a firmament is the impossible thing, when every day we are working in our own degree and region moral miracles that make the breaking up and reconstruction of the universe mere child's fancy and child's play. Why do we not fix our attention upon moral incongruities,—violations of moral law, rebellion against natural instinct? He who smites his father or his mother violates every law of nature with a more forceful and violent hand than the God who interferes or intervenes in his own infinite machine—the universe—to do what pleaseth him for the good of his creatures. We like little intellectual puzzles;—we flee away because "conscience makes cowards of us all," from the violations of moral law of which we are guilty. We love to speak of "continuity,"—it costs us nothing; it does not wring the conscience, it does not set up a bar of judgment in the life; it has a bold resonance which we can utter without moral expense or agony; therefore we play upon it; it delights our intellectual vanity. When we come to ourselves we shall know that we have sinned against Heaven and against ourselves and are no more worthy to be called children. In the sublime agony we shall forget all physical miracles in the stupendous wonder that we have grieved the Father's heart.

"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 their right hand, and on their left" ( Exodus 14:22).

Did they really do this? Why not? Suppose we set aside the miraculous incident for a moment and ask: What does the writer mean to convey by this high imagining? He means to convey this lesson, namely, that a way was found where a way was supposed to be impossible. Is that his meaning? Yes. If that is Exodus 14:10).

How soon we are driven into a panic! In the very midst of our prayers we are startled into atheism. A sudden fear shoots through the soul, sometimes in the very act of intercession, and petrifies the holy aspiration, so that we rise from the altar worse than when we bended down before its sacred stones. The incidents show us human nature in a spirit of rebellion and ingratitude. "And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?" How we are like staves that break in the hands of those who use them! There is but a step between the truest friendship and the bitterest enmity. The brother who adores you to-day will hate you tomorrow, if you cross his will or stain his pride. Here is human life in a condition of utter helplessness.

"Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord" ( Exodus 14:13).

These are noble times—times when we have to be everything by being nothing; days when our poor arms have to fall down at our sides unable to do the very simplest thing in the way of self-deliverance or self-extrication from difficulty. This threefold condition was the state of the world prior to the birth of Christ. The world was in a state of panic and distress; the spirit of rebellion and ingratitude urged itself against the heavens, it had exhausted every possible means of self-deliverance and self- Exodus 13:10.

Memory needs to be vivified.—We pursue this kind of practice in our own household life.—The recurring birthday is a recurring joy.—Every child in the family has its own method of celebrating its nativity.—Great mercies should create their own anniversaries.—It is well to sanctify our time by religious recollections and consecrations.—There is no need to fall into superstition in this matter.—We may be but sparing ourselves when we relax our religious discipline on the ground that religious observances may become superstitions.—Every act of life is capable of debasement; but it does not therefore follow that life should be without action, and particularity of observance and ceremonial. The Church is a help to remembrance, so is the ordinance of the Lord's Supper.—We ourselves are at liberty to set up milestones by the road, and to set aside special days for the remembrance of particular acts of providential revelation and care.—Every line in the diary should have in it something of God.—There is a deep spiritual sense in which every day is a birthday, and every morning a new year.—They use time well who find in it many new points of newness—that Exodus 13:17-19.

God's mercy is continued beyond the mere act of deliverance.—God does not sit down outside the gate saying, "You are now free, do all the rest for yourselves."—Little acts follow great deeds in the wondrous economy of the Divine providence.—There is a preventative ministry in the government of life.—Near cuts to the goal are often dangerous cuts; to go across country instead of round by the proper circuit may appear to be very clever and successful, but it is only the cleverness and the success of suicide.—Do not consider that we are out of the road because the road seems to be longer than it might have been.—Often better to be in the wilderness than to be in the battlefield.—God so orders his providence that men have services to render which considerably assist the detection of the path of duty. The services may be of an incidental and indirect kind, and may not always be accredited with their proper bearing and influence in life.—Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.—The carriage of the bones of Joseph had much to do with the progress of Israel in the wilderness.—The solemnity of a vow was upon Israel.—A dying man had given a direct charge to the children of Israel and had received an oath, and that oath was amongst the people as an inspiration, an encouragement and a discipline.—God thus often charges our lives with sacred ministries which have an incidental bearing upon the steadiness of our course. We have made promises, or entered into engagements, or signed covenants, or done something which comes up again and again in the life and says, "You are bound to go forward; you cannot retreat without falsehood and cowardice."

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you."— Exodus 13:19.

A very simple thing it appears to be to us that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.—The circumstance is full of poetry and moral significance.—Do not we all carry with us the bones of the past? This is the very pith of history.—If we did not take the past with us the present would be a continual disappointment,—a line coming and going without bringing with it any opportunity of service and enlargement of soul.—Much depends upon our conscious and intelligent relation to the past—We ought to have brought a good deal with us from all the centuries that are gone.—If we have come up out of them empty-handed, we have by so much turned the counsel of God to non-effect—Every wise heart is carrying up with it memories, vows, oaths, traditions, sacred impressions, and is under the responsibility of trusteeship to the future to be faithful to all the highest claims of the past. Poor is he who has no history behind him.—He becomes the victim of every combination of circumstances; the dupe of every tempter that assails his heart with unfamiliar and lying promises.—To carry up the past may steady our whole movement and give it dignity in times of fear and depression.—However little we may be in ourselves, we are charged as messengers of Heaven to carry on certain work and to connect transient periods of time and so assist in the consolidation of human history.—On the other hand we must guard against the worship of ancestry which is founded upon mere superstition.—We do not carry the bones of Joseph, we honour his service and redeem our own pledge.—What bones all Christians have to carry!—Think of all the heroes, witnesses, martyrs, and confessors of the past, and let the humblest Christian pilgrim realise that he has it distinctly in his charge to carry forward such histories and testimonies to the age that is to follow.—Whatever Israel carried through the wilderness derived importance from the fact that it was associated with the bones of Joseph.—Those bones kept Israel from going back to Egypt.—When Israel reeled in its purpose and thought of returning to the land of tyranny the question would arise again and again, What are we to do with the bones which we promised to carry up and to protect by burial in another land?—By many curious lines and ties does God bind us down to the fulfilment of our destiny.—The record is not all written in plain letters; many an invisible line now and then comes into sight to show us that under all the great letters which the naked eye can see there are writings and meanings which are only disclosed to patient waiting and scrutiny.