I have been a stranger in a strange land.- Exo_2:22.
For more than a generation Moses has disappeared into the desert, and, whilst he enlarged his religious ideas by contact with the priest of Midian himself, the change produced in the temperament of the future deliverer was mainly owing to the chastening severities and the appalling solitudes of his new environment. He needed these hard and inhospitable tracts of Midian, not only as a sanctuary from the wrath of Pharaoh, but also as a school to prepare him for his coming work as emancipator and nationbuilder.
Strange change this from the painted halls of Egypt, perfumed with spices and cooled with plashing fountains, to the coarse black tent of the shepherd that scarcely keeps out the heats of noon or the winds of night! To pass, within a few short weeks, from the emerald fields and shaded orchards and sumptuous banquets of the Nile to the precarious wells, the sand storms, the scrub-patches, and the dates and coarse bread of the desert was a transformation few would welcome. The man who had known from childhood the touch of fine linen upon his limbs must now wear the coarse hair-cloth of the mountain herdsman. A few months ago he might have allied himself by marriage with the royal or priestly families of Egypt, but now he is glad to take for his bride a sun-burnt maiden from the sheep-folds, whose talk ranges chiefly over the commonplace topics of wool, dairy work, querns, and primitive ovens for bread-baking. To a man trained in the best arts of the day, and moved by large ambitions in religious statecraft, such a life must have been insufferably narrow and irksome; but at length he resigns himself to its duties and finds therein quiet contentment of spirit. He once expected to be the founder and first prophet of a religious commonwealth, but his old ideals have vanished. Little by little he breaks himself into his new life. As he wanders through the round of successive seasons over the blistering sands and up the grim wadies, whose silence is unbroken for weeks, save by the bleating of the flocks and the screaming of vultures, the passion, self-will and presumptuous recklessness of the first phase of character in which he has been presented to us die down to the roots, and this change in the man has changed the history of the world.
Some years ago I was struck with the vivid yet delicate sensitiveness to the life and power of nature shown in the following story which is told by Mr. Owen Rhoscomyl in the Christmas number of the Idler. The scene is laid in the Western Prairies of America:-“Two days ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh a-crawl with terror upon his loosened bones, white-lipped and wide-eyed with frantic fear, uttered a yell of horror as he dashed the spurs into his panic-stricken horse, in a mad endeavour to escape from the Awful Presence that filled all earth and sky from edge to edge of vision. Then, almost in the same flash, the unearthly light died out of the dim prairie, the veil swept across into place again; and he managed to check his wild flight and look about him.… It was as if his spirit stood apart from him, putting questions which he could not answer, and demanding judgment upon problems which he dare not reason out. Then he remembered what this thing was which had happened. The prairie had spoken to him, as sooner or later it spoke to most men that rode it. It was a something well known amongst them, but known without words, and as by a subtle instinct, for no man who had experienced it ever spoke willingly about it afterwards. Only the man would be changed; some began to be more reckless, as if a dumb blasphemy rankled hidden in their breasts. Others, coming with greater strength perhaps to the ordeal, became quieter, looking squarely at any danger as they faced it, but continuing ahead as though quietly confident that nothing happened save as the gods ordained.”1 [Note: W. M. Ramsay, The Education of Christ, 7.]
O all wide places, far from feverous towns;
Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;
Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;
Vast pallid clouds; blue spaces undefiled-
Room! give me room! give loneliness and air-
Free things and plenteous in your regions fair!
O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,
O God of freedom and of joyous hearts,
When Thy face looketh forth from all men's faces,
There will be room enough in crowded marts!
Brood Thou around me, and the noise is o'er,
Thy universe my closet with shut door.
Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all
Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave.
God in thee, can His children's folly gall?
Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?-
Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;
Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm!1 [Note: George MacDonald, Organ Songs (Poetical Works, i. 288).]
1. What a contrast there is between the man who goes into the desert and the man who comes out of it. We saw him step forth from the palace, the judge and the ruler-the man born to command; and if he is not obeyed there is a sharp and ready method of dealing with the offender. Smite him, kill him if need be. A young hero this who will not stand any nonsense; and when his heart is on fire take care of yourself-he can shoot lightnings, forked and well-aimed. But his heart is saddened; this fighting and smiting does not succeed. Then come the days of loneliness and disappointment softening him. This man must fail that he may succeed. Failure alone can fit such men for success. The life of the shepherd is gradually toning down the lordly ruler and making him more simple and brotherly. This communion with God in the solitudes has loosened him from himself. The very calling of the shepherd day after day has developed gentleness and kindly forethought and patience. He learns to walk slowly that the tired sheep may keep up with him. He stoops, he who was the fierce warrior, to lift the little lamb and carry it in his bosom. Day after day he thinks only of the panting flock, searching out the shade for them, and leading them where they can lie down in the green pasture. So does this Moses come to be diffident, pitiful as a father, forbearing. And when God comes to him with the great commission, he has room for God, much room; he who was “mighty in deeds and in words” is afraid of himself. He is “not eloquent,”-who will heed him? Pharaoh will not hear him or Israel receive him. So Moses becomes the meekest of men. How? He has been to school. Where? In the wilderness. For what? That he may learn to lead the flock of God like a shepherd; that he may bear with them, and pity them, and be not only brave, but patient and gentle. So was he fitted for the great work that God had for him to do.
2. It was not only essential that the leader of the Exodus and the lawgiver of Israel should be intellectually able, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in words and deeds; not only morally noble, one who could choose “rather to be evil entreated with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” It was essential that he should have the deep spiritual experience and the solitary fellowship of soul with the Highest which constitute those who have them in some sense poets. The promulgator of the new religion, which in the end was to develop into a universal faith, must learn to see every bush in the wilderness ablaze with the Divine glory, burning but not consumed; and to hear God's eternal law proclaimed as with the sound of a trumpet by every thunderstorm which rolls its echoes among the mountains.
In the training of every man who would attain to the highest type of human life, and to the greatest possible power to influence other lives for good, there is something more needed than the culture of the intellectual, something more even than the development of the moral, nature, before it reaches the power to render any sacrifice required by God and duty. If we would attain the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ all this must be crowned by the spiritual. We must learn to see the vision and to dream the dream. We must rise into fellowship with the unseen, and behold the world transfigured in the light that never was on sea or land. Our eyes must be open to the glory of the Lord, which shines refulgent on every bush, and our ears must be quick to hear His voice, which whispers in every passing breeze and waxes louder and louder in every storm. We must attain that reverence without which the highest gifts are vain, and be willing to bow as children before the unfathomable mystery of God, taking our shoes from off our feet because we stand on holy ground. All this can be reached only through habitual retirement from the babble of the world, through patient waiting for God's promised revelation to faithful hearts and God's appointed time for opening to us the path of duty.1 [Note: James Brown, Sermons with Memoir, 172.]
