p. 77Ladies and Gentlemen,—
We have not yet done with the history of the exodus. There are other features in the narrative of a like character with those already passed under review—in this respect, namely, that their record cannot be accounted for, except on the supposition that the things recorded really happened. There are always some things which men might write, whether true or not, such as those that glorify a writer’s party or nation, or tell against an adversary; but there are things in which there is no scope for such a motive: where the motive is all for silence, rather: and where the making of a record can only be the result of truth.
What other reason could possibly have influenced the writers of Numbers to write down that Moses was so afflicted with the murmurs and discontents of the people as to ask God to kill him. “Kill me, I pray thee, out of hand. . . . let me not see my p. 78 wretchedness. Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me. . . . Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom?. . . They weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh that we may eat . . . Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people?” (Num. xi. 15, 11, etc.). No human motive, such, I mean, as would create fiction, could inspire these sentences. They reflect discredit on the Israelites in shewing them in the light of provokers of Moses, and they do not help to exhibit Moses in the aspect of the meekest and most long-suffering of men. If they are true, we can understand them having been written. If they are not true, it will baffle the most fertile imagination to suggest a reason for their having been written. And if they are true, see then what they prove: that Moses and Israel were in the wilderness; and then consider the questions that rise: Whatever brought them into such a place? And however did they get out? To both these questions the Bible answer is complete and rational. Answer: That God brought them out of Egypt, and took them into the wilderness of Sinai, via the Red Sea, through a watery passage which closed on the Egyptians and drowned them; and that God sustained them in the wilderness, by a supply of manna for forty years, and then brought them into the land under Joshua.
If God did not do this, where is the rational answer? If it was not a work of God, then, of course, it was a human performance dictated by the policy of Moses and the elders; and how, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, do you account for the success of such a mad expedition as taking a host of people p. 79 into a region of country where it was impossible for them to live a month, and keeping them there alive for forty years, and bringing them out at the end in a condition fit to subjugate the fortified country of Canaan? You cannot get away from the urgency of these questions except by acting the irrational part of shutting your eyes, and shelving the obligation to interpret the facts that are before you. The Bible is a fact: you cannot get away from it. The presence of these painful narratives is a fact. They must have come there by some motive operative in the writer. As soon as you seriously try to imagine any other motive than truth, you will find how hopeless a task you attempt: and if the motive was truth, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, the things happened, and all the inferences they yield are established, even if we did not have the overwhelming confirmation of Christ’s appearance 1850 years ago, the fulfilment of prophecy, and the existence of the Jews at the present day.
Consider, next, their approach to the land of promise, at the end of the forty years’ sojourn in the wilderness. Emerging from the wilderness, they found themselves to the north of the gulf of Akaba, on the frontiers of Edom, on the south of the promised land. Through Edom is the nearest and the easiest way. To go round, eastward, will take them through a dreadful country. So the record is (Num. xx. 14) that “Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom,” with this request: “Let us pass through thy country,” offering at the same time to keep to the highway, and to pay for everything they might get. The answer was, “Thou shalt not go through.” So Israel turned away and marched eastwards to Mount Hor to make a circuit, “and p. 80 they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way” (Num. xxi. 4).
Can you imagine invention at work here? Is it not all very prosaic and painful, and natural? Very well, take the sequel; “And the people spake against God and against Moses.” Did they? If they didn’t, what in the world led the recording scribe to write such a thing? If he had said, “And the people behaved with sublime resignation in the midst of all their difficulties. Not a murmur was to be heard anywhere. Even the children said, ‘We must be patient under all these troubles, because we are marching to the promised land,’” we might have suspected some gloss or colouring, or even invention. We could at all events have recognized a motive for fictitious narrative; but “the people spake against God and against Moses.” If an Egyptian had written this, or an Assyrian, or a Roman, we might have recognized a desire to belittle Israel’s reputation—true or not true—but written by an Israelite in the national records, is there any motive adequate to the explanation of such a record except the simple one of truth?
Now, if true, you cannot refuse the associated incidents: “And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.” You say, “Well, what of that? Very likely serpents would plague any company of people in such a rocky region: and that would be Israel’s way of explaining it.” If the matter had stopped just there, there would not have been the forcible argument that presently arises out of it. It does not stop there. “And Moses prayed for the p. 81 people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole: and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Num. xxi. 8, 9).
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, what have you to say? Do you join the fashionable critic of modern times, and say that the story of the serpent of brass is a legendary incrustation upon the serpent-biting experience? If you say this, it must be for some good reasons, presumably, Ladies and Gentlemen. What are they? It cannot be because you know the story is legendary, because you were not born till ages after the occurrence. It cannot be that you know anyone who was present at the time, and who can assure you that the story is untrue, because the episode is over 3,000 years old, and the men who witnessed it have been in their dust of death for ages. It cannot be that you rely on some other document than the writings of Moses, which gives you a full, true, reliable and scientific account as to these transactions, and contradicting Moses in all these particulars, because there is no other documentary record approaching it in antiquity or authority. There are a few sneers by Berosus and Manetho who lived 1,500 years after the event, and who are effectually disposed of by Josephus in his argument against them.
I fear, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have no reasons that will stand a moment’s consideration. Nay, there is nothing but the persistent intellectual prejudice of inexperience. I know it is so, if you will pardon the presumption. Because the moderns see none of these things and find Nature changeless and immobile, p. 82 therefore, say they, these works of power are impossible. Most illogical argument! No mortal experience can be the standard of the past in any department. Evidence—not our theories of the possible—is the only rule of faith in what has been. With the evidence we are dealing in the existence of a narrative that cannot be accounted for on any principle but its truth. This evidence is buttressed laterally in a powerful way. Christ, whose name fills the world, has identified himself with this particular bit of history in a special manner. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jno. iii. 14, 15). If you cry “legend” you condemn Christ as an errorist, who mistook legend for history. Nay, you pit yourself against common history, for it is on record in 2 Kings xviii. 4, that Hezekiah, a righteous king of Judah, “brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made (about 800 years before)—for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan (a piece of brass).”
Ladies and Gentlemen,—As educated people, guided by evidence, you are bound to accept the account of the brazen serpent as truth, and no legend. If so, realize what follows: that God was in the midst of Israel, working His purpose out among them by the hand of Moses; and that the work of Christ is the continuation and consummation of that work, out of which will yet come hope and salvation, where science has none to offer.