XIX. The Divine Glory. "I beseech thee, show me thy glory."-Ex. XXXIII. 18. WHEN the funeral of Da Costa took place last month at Amsterdam, when the church was filled with mourners and the grand organ had played a soft and muffled tune, the music grew articulate and the assembly melted into tears as they sang, "Like as the hart for water-brooks In thirst doth pant and bray; My soul for God, the living God, And in God's sight appear?" They felt that the words were true. They were descriptive of the brother departed. As philosopher and historian, as jurist and divine, above all as the sweet singer of the Netherlands, his had been a life of achievement; but still more conspicuous than all achievement was a certain air of unrest—a certain pressing forward and looking upward—in one word, 293 a certain aspect of continual aspiration. The goal of his spirit was God. It was neither to the temple of fame nor to the chair of science that his ambition had pointed; but he had showed plainly that the magnet which drew him-which, in the meanwhile, made him touch the earth so lightly, and which, by and bye, would draw the very soul forth from the body, he showed that this mighty attraction was infinite excellence. And now he had reached it. He had reached the living God, and was drinking from that river of pleasures for which he had all his life been panting, and tears of triumphant sympathy mingled with their tenderness. And no doubt it deepened the feeling to remember that the same funeral hymn had sounded over the grave of a still mightier minstrel, Bilderdijk, thirty years before, whose life, like Da Costa's, had been marked by high genius and exalted goodness, but still more by longings after a greatness and goodness which earth has not got to offer, and which it is needful to put off these bodies in order to attain. Where intellectual elevation and deep devotion exist together there is sure to be somewhat of this feeling. Moses is an instance. Through eighteen lectures we have traced his history and his services -as scholar, warrior, patriot, as leader of the Exodus, as mediator between the people and their celestial Monarch; and we have had occasion to admire him as the man of genius, as the man of culture, and above all as the man of God. But nowhere do we get a more vivid glimpse into the depths of his being than just in the words of our text, and, taken in connection with the man and with all the attendant circumstances, they teach us many a lesson. 1. They teach us that it is God's glory which an enlightened spirit longs to see. There are sights which we are accustomed to speak of as "glorious;" and of these Moses had seen many. He had seen Pharaoh in all his glory, and as a resident in the court and as a military captain he had seen his own share of martial pomps and ovations. He had seen glorious landscapes-the Nile brimming over with bounty, sunrise from behind the Pyramids, and the majestic mountains of this great wilderness; and the ninetieth Psalm and all the poems in the Pentateuch show how alive he was to the spectacles of beauty. But the glory after which he panted was God's own: "For Thee, O God-O living God! --for Thee." And so, my friends, it is well if you 'belong to that little company who inherit the earth, for on the most of men this glorious universe is wasted. At sight of ocean, earth, or sky their eye never tingles, their bosom never heaves, the tear But if you be not only susceptible never runs over. but devout, mingling with your emotion, and often overmastering it, will be the feeling of God's own presence, and in a sense not pantheistic but truly scriptural you will see Him ride past on the wings of the wind, and will feel His rest-giving nearness in the sabbath of the silent hills; the eye that never closes will look down on you from amongst the twinkling stars; suspended a solitary waif in the centre of that round-rimmed sea, infinitude above and mysterious miles below, the everlasting arm will enclasp and uphold you; and like the Hebrew priest in the holy place, viewing the brightness which emanated from within the Holy of Holies, as from under the edges of the veiling night an opalescent splendour begins to issue into the eastern sky, you will welcome the coming day with something like the prayer, "O Thou that sittest between the cherubim, shine forth." And yet, although there is far more truth in such feelings than in their absence-although a universe blank and silent, with no God living and moving in it, is a universe with the glory blotted out,—the mind which sees the most of such glory will long for something more, and even amidst the sublimest scenes of nature will wistfully repeat the prayer, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory." 2. And if we pass to revelations more articulate and explicit, we shall find the principle still obtain, and he who has seen the most is the likeliest to ask for more. In this respect no one had been more favoured than Moses. The "God of glory" had appeared to him at the bush, and had spoken to him the incommunicable name. He had seen the glory of God on that night, so much to be remembered, when Jehovah's royal ensign fired the firmament, and under Heaven's immediate guidance the glorious march began. And but a few days were past since this Sinai smoked, and whilst the glory of the Lord like devouring fire encircled the mountain-top, the voice of the Eternal filled the surrounding solitudes with words which echo still and shall never pass away. But all this did not suffice, and in the mind of Moses there was only enkindled a longing for some manifestation more intimate and soul-contenting. Jehovah's answer shows in what direction the heart of Moses pointed. "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," says Moses. "Yes," answers Jehovah, "I will; I will show thee my goodness, my kindness, and my grace." Of majesty and grandeur he had already seen as much as heart could wish, as much as the frail body could endure. The personality, the might, the holiness of the Most High were never likely to be effaced from his awe-struck spirit as long as he had any being; but still amidst all its condescension, what wonder if the terrible majesty still left an impression of something far-off and formidable? But just at this very instant in the |