p. 45Ladies and Gentlemen,—
Perhaps I am wearying you with my monotonous argument on the Jewish murmurings. The immense importance of the matter at issue is my apology for insistence. Perhaps a sense of this may lead you to endure it. For if the Bible be true, what an unspeakable mistake to turn our backs upon it. Intelligence will never forgive itself making such an irremediable mistake, when the actual state of the case becomes self-manifest in the visible resumption of the work of which the Bible is what we may call the half-finished record.
I directed your attention last month to the fact of Israel’s murmuring at the want of food in the wilderness. We next have the water supply failing, which was natural in such a place with such a large collection of people. If there is anything will make people more mutinous than the lack of food, it is the lack of water, especially in a hot climate, such as in the main prevails in the Sinaitic peninsula.. p. 46 Moses had brought them there; therefore against him their complaints are directed: “Wherefore is this, that thou hast brought us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, “What shall I do to these people, for they be almost ready to stone me?” So it is written (Exo. xvii. 3, 4). The point lies in the fact of its being written. Why was it so written? Here we are not dealing with theory or fancy or plausible myth. Do, Ladies and Gentlemen, forgive me for earnestly asking you to open your eyes and face this matter of fact. The record is in your hand. The murmuring is there. How came it to be written there? If the history is any way fictitious, can you suggest any explanation of such a fiction being invented—that the Israelites, under Moses, of whom they make their boast in all generations, were discontented and mutinous against their leader on the subject of water at the very beginning of their national existence? Your knowledge of human nature, and of the ways of man in the compiling of natural archives, must forbid you to imagine any other explanation than this, that Israel is exhibited in this unloving attitude at the beginning, because it was the attitude they actually took; and that Moses wrote these things because, and only because, they happened (leaving the question of inspiration out of account for the time being for the sake of argument). Now, if they actually happened, what follows? If they murmured for want of water, was it not because there was an absence of water? And if there was an absence of water, what explanation is there of this, that Israel survived the want of water, and came out of the Wilderness a whole and sound assembly forty years afterwards? Was it by natural p. 47 supply? If so, how could the murmuring have arisen? and would not a history that truly recorded the murmuring, have truly recorded the occurrence of a natural supply, as it does in, all other matters where natural supply provided what they required?
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Mosaic record furnishes a complete answer. It tells us that Moses, in his distress applied to God to know what to do in such circumstances of practical urgency. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thy hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses DID SO in the sight of the elders of Israel.”
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, what are you to do with this account? You cannot ignore it. It is there. It was there ages before we were born. Are you going to say it is not true? How can you? Every door of reason is closed against such a view. If you took such a position, you would have to maintain either that Moses did not write this account, or that Moses wrote what he knew to be untrue. You cannot maintain the former without contradicting the testimony of a whole nation for 3,000 years, and accusing Christ of error: and you cannot maintain the latter without contradicting the whole character of the Bible, and the whole career of Moses. You would have to involve yourselves in the absurd, the incongruous, the morally impossible. If you do not say the story is untrue, if you admit that Moses wrote it, and wrote it in all sincerity—what then? Are we not shut up to the conclusion that it was a p. 48 Divine interposition that relieved Israel from the terrible dilemma of a water famine in a thirsty wilderness?
Here I would like to call your attention to the peculiar guarantee of veracity which we posssess in the case of a second occurrence of this nature, that happened later during Israel’s wanderings (you will find the two separate occasions indicated in the itinerary of Israel’s journeyings contained in Num. xxxiii. see verses 14 and 36, compared with Num. xx. 1). In the first case, Moses smote the rock as commanded, and an abundant and welcome water supply came forth to man and beast. In the second case, Moses was commanded to “Speak to the rock,” with the assurance that the water would come; but when “Moses and Aaron gathered together the congregation before the rock,” Moses said (in the exasperation caused by their long-continued and unreasonable insubordination), “Hear now, ye rebels, must we fetch you water out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice and the water came out abundantly. In this case, Moses exceeded his commission (smiting instead of speaking to the rock): and he obscured the glory of God, in taking the credit of the performance to himself.
Where the guarantee comes in that I referred to is here: the record adds, “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” To this Moses himself referred in the most pathetic manner in the rehearsal of events delivered by him to Israel on the plains of Moab, at the end of the wanderings, just p. 49 before the entrance into the land. In the course of his magnificent address, as recorded in Deuteronomy, he said (chap. iii. 23): “I besought the Lord at that time saying, O Lord God,. . . . I pray Thee, let me go over and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the Lord was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the Lord said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto Me of this matter.” The reason alleged for this refusal is explicitly set forth in the closing passage of the life of Moses: “Get thee up into this Mount Abiram, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel. And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered. Thou shalt not go into it, because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the desert of Zin; and because ye sanctified Me not in the midst of the children of Israel” (Num. xxvii. 12; Deut. xxxii. 49-52).
Ladies and Gentlemen, with an imperative voice, as of rousing thunder, reason demands the consideration of this most singular passage of history—a passage so absolutely incapable of being accounted for on any hypothesis but one. Here is Moses, in the very history of Israel’s deliverance, proclaimed an offender against Divine law as the reason of his death before the completion of the work in hand. Can you imagine such a representation creeping into Israel’s history on any principle but that of truth? Could you imagine such a representation being invented? What possible reason could there be for such an invention? Could it be to glorify the memory of Moses? It tarnishes it for ever. Could it be to p. 50 clear Israel’s character from any imputation arising from the premature death of the national leader? It has the reverse effect. It indelibly fixes upon Israel’s perversity the responsibility of the mistake that prevented Moses from seeing the triumph of the work. It is impossible to suggest any motive for such a record of the close of the life of Moses. Try your hand at it and see. You must fail, where every one has failed before you.
There remains but one explanation, namely, that Moses is exhibited in the light of a transgressor at the end of his days, simply because he acted the part recorded. If so, God brought water miraculously out of the rock for Israel’s supply in the wilderness: for this was the only occasion and explanation of the attitude of Moses that constituted his offence in the case. Take this away, and there was no offence or occasion for it. Ladies and Gentlemen, you cannot take it away. It is fixed and staked in the ground, and buttressed by surrounding supports, in a way that defies the utmost violence to uproot it from the history of man.