Part 10 (2/2)

Many a commander has ere now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel without trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on the spot; by the sound rule that it is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

And so it was with the Israelites in the desert. All depended on their obedience. G.o.d had given them a law--a const.i.tution, as we should say now--perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them. If they once began to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them.

That great, foolish, ignorant mult.i.tude would have broken up, probably fought among themselves--certainly parted company, and either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites--who were ready enough for slaughter and plunder. They would never have reached Canaan. They would never have become a great nation. So they had to be, by necessity, under martial law. The word must be, Obey or die. As for any cruelty in putting Korah, Dathan, and Abiram to death, it was worth the death of a hundred such--or a thousand--to preserve the great and glorious nation of the Jews to be the teachers of the world.

Now this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel. They rebel against Moses about a question of the priesthood. It really matters little to us what that question was--it was a question of Moses' law, which, of course, is now done away. Only remember this, that these men were princes--great feudal n.o.blemen, as we should say; and that they rebelled on the strength of their rank and their rights as n.o.blemen to make laws for themselves and for the people; and that the mob of their dependents seem to have been inclined to support them.

Surely if Moses had executed martial law on them with his own hand, he would have been as perfectly justified as a captain of a s.h.i.+p of war or a general of an army would be now.

But he did not do so. And why? Because MOSES did not bring the people out of Egypt. Moses was not their king. G.o.d brought them out of Egypt. G.o.d was their king. That was the lesson which they had to learn, and to teach other nations also. They have rebelled, not against Moses, but against G.o.d; and not Moses, but G.o.d must punish, and show that he is not a dead G.o.d, but a living G.o.d, one who can defend himself, and enforce his own laws, and execute judgment--and, if need be, vengeance--without needing any man to fight his battles for him.

And G.o.d does so. The powers of Nature--the earthquake and the nether fire--shall punish these rebels; and so they do.

'And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me.

But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth and swallow them up, with all that appertain to them and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord.'

Men have thought differently of the story; but I call it a righteous story, and a n.o.ble story, and one which agrees with my conscience, and my reason, and my notion of what ought to be, and my experience also of what is--of the way in which G.o.d's world is governed unto this day.

What then are we to think of the earth opening and swallowing them up? What are we to think of a fire coming out from the Lord, and consuming two hundred and fifty men that offered incense?

This first. That discipline and order are so absolutely necessary for the well-being of a nation that they must be kept at all risks, and enforced by the most terrible punishments.

It seems to me (to speak with all reverence) as if G.o.d had said to the Jews, 'I have set you free. I will make of you a great nation; I will lead you into a good land and large. But if you are to be a great nation, if you are to conquer that good land and large, you must obey: and you shall obey. The earthquake and the fire shall teach you to obey, and make you an example to the rest of the Israelites, and to all nations after you.' But how hard, some may think, that the wives and the children should suffer for their parents' sins.

My friends, we do not know that a single woman or child died then for whom it was not better that he or she should die. That is one of the deep things which we must leave to the perfect justice and mercy of G.o.d.

And next--what is it after all, but what we see going on round us all the day long? G.o.d does visit the sins of the fathers on the children. There is no denying it. Wives do suffer for their husbands' sins; children and children's children for whole generations after generations suffer for their parents' sins, and become unhealthy, or superst.i.tious, or profligate, or poor, or slavish, because their parents sinned, and dragged down their children with them in their fall. It is a law of the world; and therefore it is a law of G.o.d. And it is reasonable to be believed that G.o.d might choose to teach the Israelites, once and for all, that it WAS a law of his world. For by swallowing up those women and children with the men, G.o.d said to the Israelites, it seems to me in a way which could not be mistaken, 'This is the consequence of lawlessness and disorder--that you not only injure yourselves, but your children after you, and involve your families in the same ruin as yourselves.'

But there was another lesson, and a deep lesson, in the earthquake and in the fire. And what was this? that the earthquake and the fire came out from the Lord.

Earthquakes have swallowed up not hundreds merely, but many thousands, in many countries, and at many times.

Fire has come forth, and still comes forth from the ground, from the clouds, from the consequences of man's own carelessness, and destroys beast and man, and the works of man's hands. Then men ask in terror and doubt, 'Who sends the earthquake and the fire? Do they come from the devil--the destroyer? Do they come by chance, from some brute and blind powers of nature?'

This chapter answers, 'No. They come from the Lord, from whom all good things do come; from the Lord who delivered the Israelites out of Egypt; who so loved the world that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for us.'

Now I say that is a gospel, and good news, which we want now as much as ever men did; which the children of Israel wanted then, though not one whit more than we.

Many hundreds of years had these Israelites been in Egypt. Storm, lightning, earthquake, the fires of the burning mountains, were things unknown to them. They were going into Canaan--a good land and fruitful, but a land of storms and thunders; a land, too, of earthquakes and subterranean fires. The deepest earthquake-crack in the world is the valley of the Jordan, ending in the Dead Sea--a long valley, through which at different points the nether fires of the earth even now burst up at times. In Abraham's time they had destroyed the five cities of the plain. The prophets mention them, especially Isaiah and Micah, as breaking out again in their own times; and in our own lifetime earthquake and fire have done fearful destruction in the north part of the Holy Land.

Now what was to prevent the Israelites wors.h.i.+pping the earthquake and the fire as G.o.ds?

Nothing. Conceive the terror and horror of the Jews coming out of that quiet land of Egypt, the first time they felt the ground rocking and rolling; the first time they heard the roar of the earthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the magnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys cleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place; and discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of fire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew not when.

What could they do, but what the Canaanites did who dwelt already in that land? What but to say, 'The fire is king. The fire is the great and dreadful G.o.d, and to him we must pray, lest he devour us up.' For so did the Canaanites. They called the fire Moloch, which means simply the king; and they wors.h.i.+pped this fire-king, and made idols of him, and offered human sacrifices to him. They had idols of metal, before which an everlasting fire burned; and on the arms of the idol the priests laid the children who were to be sacrificed, that they might roll down into the fire and be burnt alive. That is actual fact. In one case, which we know of well, hundreds of years after Moses' time, the Carthaginians offered two hundred boys of their best families to Moloch in one day. This is that making the children pa.s.s through the fire to Moloch--burning them in the fire to Moloch--of which we read several times in the Old Testament; as ugly and accursed a superst.i.tion as men ever invented.

What deliverance was there for them from these abominable superst.i.tions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was G.o.d's kingdom, and not Moloch's at all; to know with Micah and with David that the hills were molten like wax BEFORE THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD; that it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations of the world; that it was HE who made the sea flee and drove back the Jordan stream; that it was before HIM that the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of shaking were G.o.d's battles, with which he could fight for his people; that it was he who ordained Tophet, and whose spirit kindled it. That it was he--and that too in mercy as well as anger--who visited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and earthquake, and great noise, and storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.

That the earth opened and swallowed up those whom G.o.d chose, and no others. That if fire came forth, it came forth from the Lord, and burned where and what G.o.d chose, and nothing else. Yes. If you will only understand, once and for all, that the history of the Jews is the history of the Lord's turning a people from the cowardly, slavish wors.h.i.+p of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning mountains, and all the brute powers of nature which the heathen wors.h.i.+pped, and teaching them to trust and obey him, the living G.o.d, the Lord and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be clear to you throughout; but if not, then not.

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