The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Moses: A Study

Hebrews xi. 24-26

—Such entrance had the tempter won to soul
Less single, faithful, free from self. For him,
The lesser praise of sacrifice is lost
In high obedience, that perceives no choice;
In faith, so fixed on glories of the promise,
That all immediate and more personal good
Devoid of lustre shows, uncertain, dim,
Like men and trees and shapes of earth to eyes
Long filled with splendours of a western sun.
Happy the people are in such a case!
Yea, blest are they for whom their God provides
Deliverer so meet!

"It came into his heart to visit his brethren."

Some souls there are, confined in given sphere,
Who feel within an energy divine
That could, with freer scope, do mighty things:
They see high work untouched around them lie,
The work sure inner witness ear-marks theirs,
But cannot reach it—so hemm'd in are they!
Wish for a thing enough, times, and again,
To importunity, though it be dumb,
The wish is given; these one day wake to find
Hindrances vanished, the work brought to their hand,
As with permit to test their fitness for it.
No weak mistrust of self their ardour damps;—
With lofty confidence and fearless zeal
They essay their powers: the goal draws near: when lo!
Some casual failure in self-mastery,
Some want of judgment, tact, or reticence,
Makes shipwreck of the whole! Do they escape,—
Barely escape, seizing their lives as prey,—
Then, in hot agony of self-abasement,

Which is but pride taking the lowest place
That so no further fall be possible,
The condemnation issues from themselves,
They had refused to read in obstacles
That hindered their advance. "They are not fit,
They never were, they never will be fit
For aught but to escape from eyes of men
And silent creep to an unhonoured grave!"

"Moses was content to dwell with the man."

Only the warped in mind do fret and fume
And spend their force in mad attempts to shift
The stubborn bounds that fix their place in life.
True natures acquiesce—holding as creed
That Circumstance, a sacred oracle,
Speaks with the voice of God to faithful souls
"Content to dwell"
With Midian's shepherd chief and herd his flock,—
The only record of the prophet's mind
In all those forty years.

"The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."

High years! that stand
As the red-letter era of our race:
Days when a man did prove how high, how deep,
Mere man might reach in knowledge of our God:
Height never soared, depth never sounded since,
Save by the Son Who shares the Father's essence.
O Mystery of Grace! that any man,
Standing for forty years with open breast
Beneath the full down-dropping of the Spirit,
Should be at last so utterly fulfull'd,
Possessed, imbued, with the mind divine,
That apprehending human eye could meet
The gaze of God!—that He, once among men,
Should note the glow of answering sympathy!

Proofread by LNL, December 2008