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his own language, but in that of the Bechuanas, among whom he had laboured for more than fifty years, Mr. Moffat depicted his career in Africa, telling some laughable anecdotes of his adventures with the natives. Alluding to the change which came over their social tastes and habits after they embraced Christianity, he remarked that some men believed in civilising and then evangelising, but his experience went directly to the contrary. He might have preached civilisation for fifty years without the smallest result, so

pertinaciously did the people among whom he lived cling to their native manners and customs. The one thing that was wanted in Africa was native agency. His simple telling narrations of his work in Africa were listened to with the deepest interest. Speaking of the influence of the gospel on barbarous people, after what he had seen over and over again, he said he would be a missionary even were there no heaven to gain and no hell from which to escape.

FOREIGN LETTERS RECEIVED.

CUTTACK-W. Bailey, Sept. 11, 18; W. Brooks, Sept. 11.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society, from
September 18th to October 18th, 1871.

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Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by T. HILL, Esq., Baker Street, Nottingham, Treasurer; by the Rev. J. C PIKE, the Secretary, and the Rev. H. WILKINSON, the Travelling Agent, Leicester, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books, and Cards may be obtained.

THE

GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER, 1871.

THE PARABLE IN THE GRAVE OF MOSES. “And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.-Deut. xxxiv. 6.

So closed the earthly career of Moses, the greatest of Israel's sons. On the plains of Moab he had just spoken his last, his farewell words of blessing to a people, whose deliverance from bondage and training for a pure and godly national life had been the absorbing passion of his heart for more than half a century. And now at God's bidding he wends his solitary way up Nebo's lonely heights, and enjoys, from the top of Pisgah, the thrilling prospect of the land flowing with milk and honey-a land, however, he is only to see, and not to enter; and then, as though his appointed work were done, the holy man lies down to die, and God takes up the lifeless body of His servant, and buries it in His own grave formed out of one of the clefts of the rock in the neighbouring valley. The prophet was going up to his death and burial, and he knew it.

Yet he climbed those hill-sides without faltering in his step or fear in his heart, and marched to the closing scenes of life with as much strength and heroism, if not with the same exulting joy, as when he sang in sight of defeated Egypt, "The Lord hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." And VOL. LXXIII.-NEW SERIES, No. 24.

though God had suddenly cut off "his strength in the way and shortened his days," because of his angry haste and peevish distrust at the waters of strife, yet was not His lovingkindness withheld from him, for "He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor." And now

"By Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave.
And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er;

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

And had he not high honour?-
The hill-side for a pall

To lie in state, while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes
Over his bier to wave;

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave."

Nor is this strange but beautiful story of life's ending, unquestionably unique as it is, out of keeping with the career of this distinguished Leader of the Hebrews and Prophet of the Most High God. Such a blending of light and shade, of surpassing brilliance and oppressive darkness, is a fit emblem of, and a most appropriate climax to, his chequered and many-sided life. Exposure and peril attended his infancy, but soon gave place to courtly protection, queenly caresses, and most

royal privileges. His manhood dawns with kingly promise, vast learning, and the enjoyment of all that heart can wish; then breaks out in fierce struggle, righteous indignation and heroical self-sacrifice; and afterwards speeds its way towards perfection amid the bleak solitudes of the desert and quiet communion with the God of the mountain and the flood. Brought into closest relationship with the Hebrew people, in rapid alternation come trial and triumph, chagrin and cheer, exulting delights and sad disappointments, matchless meekness and uncontrollable anger, sublime self-abandonment and weakening distrust, until he gazes with rapt soul on the vision of Canaan, and then dies in the very fulness of his vigour; and God closes the scene by digging his grave and directing his funeral with all that tender pity and condescending affection which had gladdened the great man's heart in its severest anguish, and graced his life both in its brightest and darkest moments.

Thus this register of the Burial of Moses seems to us another parable of the Divine Care; another forcible dissuasive from heart-corroding anxieties; another soothing message from the heavens with regard to the taking down of "this earthly tabernacle" in which we dwell, the work we have to leave behind us, and the ignorance in which we are often left on subjects that affection would strongly urge us to know completely. It speaks to us of God's care for the bodies of His servants when they are dead; for the work of His servants when they have left it; and for the highest welfare of His children at all times.

I. "And He buried him." When Moses was a babe, and exposed to the harsh law of the Egyptian king, enacting the murder of all the male Hebrew children, God, through his mother, provided him with a sure defence in the little

pitch-covered boat that guarded him from the monsters of the river and floated him along its waters to the hands of the tender-hearted daughter of Pharaoh; and now the life of His servant is spent, the same Lord selects a befitting home for his body in the ravine over against Bethpeor. He who gave him his schooling amid the splendour and opulence of an Egyptian court, shielded him in the desert, made him the Redeemer and Leader of His people, also confers upon him even the higher honour of putting him in His own burying-ground with His own hands; just as loving friends then and now would eagerly and assiduously show their high esteem and warm affection for those who had been taken from them by death. Moses was not forgotten by the Lord when his work was done, and the sands of life had run out. God cared for his dead body. Even the victory of the King of Terrors does not banish our frail flesh from the embrace of our Father's infinite love.

It is gladdening to us who have now to walk through the valley of the shadow of death to know that "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints," that up to the last moments of our mortal life our Father's love does not fail us, and that even amidst the agonies of separation from long-loved companions, and the quivering weakness of exhausted nature, God, like a loving and pitiful Nurse, bends over us with soothing words and comforting and sustaining presence. But is there not even a richer pity shown towards our weakness, which so often fetches its keenest sorrows from the unseen future, in the Scripture revelation of the Lord's care for our perishing dust? For we cannot altogether and always separate ourselves from our bodies, or think that after death somehow or other our life will not be sympathetic with the fortunes of our decaying and wasting bones. A divine instinct forces us

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to revere the tabernacle out of which the living tenant has gone, and a fleet-winged fancy penetrates the morrow and selects the spot where the structure shall be kept till the day that it is fitted up anew for its perfected spirit by the Judge of quick and dead. Bury me with my bairns," said a dying wife in plaintive strains I shall never forget, to her tearful husband; "bury me with my bairns, I should like to lie with them till the resurrection." By faith Joseph, when he was dying, gave commandment concerning his bones, and desired they, at least, should enter the land of promise. Nor does Christianity ignore the body; rather it proves it to be a partaker of the manifold blessings of Christ-redeemed by His blood, inhabited by His Spirit, and destined to be raised again a spiritual body by His power who is able to subdue all things unto Himself. Matthew Henry says: "As the death of God's saints is precious, so is their dust; not a grain of it is lost, but the covenant with it shall be remembered." Our buried children are safe in our Saviour's keeping. He has the keys of the grave; let us not fear. He is the guardian of the graves of His servants, be they in the neighbourhood of the teeming city, or under the spreading yew in the quiet village; in the far-off colony, or in the depths of the sea; and the God who buried Moses will bring every one forth in the great day of our transfiguration in the heavens. "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope."

And it is the more remarkable that the "Lord buried him," because in this his early death Moses had paid the penalty denounced by God for the transgression of one of His express commands. In the twentieth chapter of Numbers we are told the children of Israel were in great need of water, and with an impatience and fretfulness enough to anger the

meekest man on earth, they complained against Moses, questioned his kindness, and said that he had brought them out of Egypt only that they might die in the wilderness. As usual, the troubled man went from the complaining people to the pitying and helpful God; and God heard his cry, and told him to take his rod and speak to the rock, and the rock should hear and the waters gush out. And Moses took the rod and gathered the congregation before the rock; when, lo! as he looked at the unbelieving, ungrateful, and petulant crowd, a fierce whirlwind of anger seized him, and in his fury he exclaimed, "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 waters came out abundantly," and the thirsty multitude refreshed themselves at the flowing streams. But the man of God had sinned, grievously sinned. He, the leader and commander of the people, had mistrusted the God he was to glorify, taken the vengeance of the Lord into his own hands, met evil with evil, and in his indignation against men had broken the law of God. This was a great wrong, for "to whom much is given, of them much is required;" and therefore God said to Moses, "Get thee up into this mountain and die.

Because thou didst trespass against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah Kadesh, thou shalt see the land, but shalt not go thither." And the penitent, and pardoned, but punished man, went up the mountain and was obedient to death, even such a death of dishonour. Yes, dishonour; for though he was one hundred and twenty years old, he was in the full vigour of health; "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." No premonitions of approaching decay quivered in his speech, sounded in his steps, or flashed from his eye. He was not an old, decrepid, worn

out man, with tottering foot and palsied nerve; the grasshopper a burden, and desire itself failing in the heart. Instead of that, he was still girt with manly strength, firm in his grasp, tenacious in memory, and quick in every sense; a hale, hearty son of the wilderness, in the very prime of his powers, and with the currents of life fast flowing within him. But suddenly, just as a well-equipped vessel in full sail, with all her hands and cargo on board, is sucked into the cavernous depths of the sea by a maelstrom, without the chance of hoisting even one signal of distress, so, for his distrustful anger, Moses is the prey of death when in the plenitude and maturity of his powers. Nevertheless the Lord, in His pitiful love, buried the body of His devoted servant in a grave of His own choosing and guarding, and thus conferred upon him the highest honour that man ever received.

Verily God does not retain His anger for ever, nor will He always chide. He will not utterly take away His lovingkindness from His people, nor suffer His faithfulness to fail; yet when they break His statutes and keep not His commandments, He will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Forgiveness of sins does not necessarily foreclose punishment. They may co-exist. God has other penalties than hell for the violations of His laws, and those other penalties overtake the believer in the Lord Jesus with no less certainty and weight than they do such as reject Him. We have the unspeakable joy of pardon, and are sure of the inheritance of the saints; but if we sow to the flesh we shall of the flesh reap corruption, in the degree that our life is fleshly, and selfish, and without Christ. The remission of the guilt of that sin which has enfeebled health and sapped the strength of the body will not forthwith flush the fount of life with energy and baptize

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the body into new power, though it may set forces in operation which shall beneficially counter-work the evil consequences of former sins, and in some cases completely remove them. Nathan told David that the Lord had put away his sin: Thou shalt not die; howbeit because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child shall surely die, and the sword shall not depart from thy house, and evil shall rise up against thee in thine own home." So it came to pass. The king was forgiven, but his forgiveness stayed not the swift march of terrible plagues. He lost his child; his throne was taken away from him by Absalom, and he only regained it by the death of his much-loved but usurping son. Discord rung out its wildest notes in his family, and vice stained with its deepest dyes the children of his bosom; and his own name comes down to posterity with so dark a stigma upon it that the rolling seas of time have not yet washed it off, and never will. And do not the stories of Gideon with his ephod, Samson and Delilah, Uzziah and Hezekiah, and of the disease, affliction, and death in the Corinthian church, as well as the annals of "Moses and Aaron among His priests," justify the Psalmist when he says, "Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions ?" The remission of the punishment of perdition, and the removal of the guilt of sin by the sacrifice of Christ, will not protect a believer from all the temporal consequences of his misdeeds. God's mercy shall not depart from him, but if he commit iniquity God will chasten him with the rod of man, and with the stripes of the children of men." No infatuation is so absurd, no error so monstrous, as that which supposes that the sins of a believer in Christ will not weaken him, unlawful indulgences not deprave, and negligence,

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