Unto the Hills

I suppose everybody has a sort of hill-country in their life. I mean that in every lot there is a place where indifference rises into desire, a place where the dead level of monotonous concerns towers in aspiration and ambition. I cannot conceive of a life where the entire territory is like an unchanging and uniform plain. Somewhere every life rises into wish, and hope, and admiration. It may be that the hill-country in a life is only a low and unimpressive range, or it may be that it rises into vastnesses of radiant glory. It may be that the high land is only the little hill which John Bunyan calls Lucre, with its silver mine, and which lured so many pilgrims to their perdition. Or it may be that the attractive range is found in those other heights which Bunyan unveils to us, those heights of Beulah-land, where the birds sing continually, and the flowers appear, and the sun shines night and day. Yes, the hills may be of varying order, as widely different as the rugged Rockies and the sweet green heights of the Lowlands of Scotland. But every life has its hill-country to which the soul looks up in hearty longing and in eager quest. And it is a great thing to find a life with a great and noble range, its heights of desire as pure as snow-clad Alpine peaks on which are born rivers of beneficent energy which quicken and fertilize the fields of the plain. Now, it is a very happy, and also a very serious and responsible prerogative in life that we can choose our mountain ranges, and our lives can face and approach them in progressive admiration and hope. It may be helpful if I name two or three superlative heights which I think ought to be in everybody’s hill-country. They are venerable with history. They are rich in proffered bounty. They have all the arresting glory which always distinguishes the hills of God. And the first hill which I will name is the hill called Sinai. Sinai ought to form part of the landscape of the soul. It is a majestic height. It is cloud-capped, and veils of mist swirl about its slopes. It is the hiding place of mystery. Out of its dark, secret depths there came the divine voice, uttering God’s holy will in the ten Commandments. Sinai was the birthplace of the moral law. It was in the sombre testing of Sinai that the moral order was imposed upon chaos. It was on Sinai that licence was supplanted by freedom. Sinai stands for the conquest of anarchy. It is an august height, and thunder and lightning play round about its cloaked summit. It is described in the Word of God as “a mountain that burned with fire,” “the home of blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words.” Sinai proclaims the law of the Lord.

Well, now, that wonderful peak must be in our mountain range. Sinai has not crumbled away to the plain. Its commandments are not the ghostly whispers of a dead world. Its august decrees have not lost their virtue like some system which has had its day and ceased to be. The ten Commandments are not interesting curiosities for some antiquarian museum. Not one single charge in all their charges has been abrogated. They are as authoritative to-day as on the day when the sound of their proclamation broke the age-long silence of the desert.

They are as modern as the Parliamentary legislation of last session, and they are far more imperative. And, therefore, do I say, that when we lift up our eyes unto the hills, Sinai must be one of the hills, and it must lay its impressive moral sovereignty upon the entire landscape of our life. What think ye? Is there any need of Sinai in our personal life? Is there any necessity for the urgent pressure of the ten Commandments? When we put them on one side recall what happens. Think of the expediencies to which we resort. Think of our moral compromises. Think how subtly we wriggle out of obligation. Think of the nature of our excuses. Think how easily we make the worse appear the better reason. Think how cunningly we can dress up duplicity, and how daintily we can throw an altar cloth round about a falsehood. It is perfectly amazing, when the moral light is turned down, how skilfully we can juggle with things. I remember some time ago seeing a very attractive looking Bible, and when I turned to open it I found it was a cash-box. Which thing is an allegory of many other things. We can give worldliness a very pious appearance. We can throw a sort of priestly cloak about a deed which goes forth to devour a widow’s house. We can be amazingly expert in diluting moral obligation and mixing wine with water. We can betray our Lord with a compromise. Aye, there is a way of selling an article which at the same time sells the Lord. When the moral light burns low, vices begin to parade as virtues, and it may come to be that we are scarcely aware of the delusion.

And, therefore, it is a mightily disturbing and invigorating influence to get near this mountain called Sinai, and to stand before the Lord. There is something profoundly correcting in standing there alone and letting the ten Commandments ring their solemn decrees in our attentive and receptive ears. As we stand there, listening to the Commandments, moral compromises are ripped asunder like cobwebs in a tempest. I do not know anything which would just now be more healthy than the solemn introduction of the ten Commandments into the parlour, into the club, into the counting-house, into society. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” “Thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It is a great and a deepening thing to lift the eyes upon this hill called Sinai and to listen to its bugle speech. Sinai lays a strong grip upon our chaos, and it transforms loose compromise into noble decision.

And, surely, if Sinai is needed to-day in personal life it is equally needed in corporate life. There are morally anarchic influences ravaging society. The imperative of the moral law is flouted as a myth. The anarchy is touching marriage with its defilement. It is desecrating the family. It is dissolving every kind of sacred bond. It is dishonouring covenants. It is unloosening the sanctity of speech. It is laughingly decrying the necessity of worship. We have been forgetting Sinai, and I am afraid that the hill called Lucre, with its silver-mine, has been taking its place. And, therefore, I am pleading that, in personal and in national life, Sinai be re-established in the mountain range of our ideals. Sinai is the sublime height of moral law. Sinai is the proclamation of God’s most Holy Will. ‘Thy righteousness is like the great mountains.” “I will lift up mine eyes unto this hill, from whence cometh my help.”

But I could not advise anybody just to have the hill called Sinai in front of their door. Judging by the knowledge of my own heart, and from

161 the experience and testimony of others, to live with Sinai only is to have an oppressive and terrifying companion. And we are not intended to do it. There is another height in God’s wonderful mountain range which is intended to be the complement to Sinai, and the second takes away the paralysing terror from the first. And the second hill is the hill called Calvary. I do not think that either hill is intended to hide the other. Shall we rather say that each can be better apprehended in the light of the other? Sinai is the proclamation of law. Calvary is the proclamation of love in which that law is fulfilled. I think it is quite impossible to express the amazing difference between Sinai and Calvary, for human speech can no more hold the wonder than a cockle shell can hold the Atlantic floods. But those who are familiar with both heights delight to use even the faulty instrument of speech in lame attempts to make known their discoveries. And wonderful things are told us about the two mountains, and the most wonderful is this — that He who gave the law on Sinai is j on the Cross at Calvary. On Sinai God speaks ’ in words. On Calvary God speaks in stupendous act. Let us try to feel the difference.

Go back to Sinai. On Sinai we have most vivid Commandments. It is the vividness of a search-light. Nay, is it not so much light as lightning. It is terrific rather than pacific. There is little genial warmth about it. There is very little of comfort and little of sunshine. Sinai is very austere. There are no flowers about. Sinai is law without grace. It is decree without promise. Its commandment is more a cold guide-post than a friendly guide. Sinai is very impersonal. God is in hiding. Only His voice is heard.

But look again. On Sinai God is commanding; we do not see Him suffering. He makes known His will; He does not reveal His heart. We see His antipathy to sin; it blazes before us; we do not see His sympathy with the sinner. Can God grieve? Sinai has no answer. Can I God suffer? Sinai has no answer. Can God weep? Sinai has no answer. Can God love? Sinai has no answer. And if we have broken the commandment of Sinai, and broken it again and again, and if we ourselves are broken in the breakage, we do not meet any winsome face of healing reconciliation when we turn our face to the mist-covered mountain. Sinai has no amelioration. Sinai has no cordials, no antidotes, no balms. We are broken, and over the blackness of Sinai there shines no star of hope.

We must turn to the second hill, the hill called Calvary. On Sinai we see God’s holy will; on Calvary we see the sacred heart. On Sinai law is enthroned; on Calvary grace comes down our souls to meet, and glory crowns the mercy seat. I do not take the burden of my sin to Sinai. I do not know the way. I have not heard of its healing springs. And indeed I am not invited to take my burden to Sinai; the invitation comes from Calvary where the veil is lifted upon infinite love. On Calvary we have the amazing spectacle of a suffering God, and in His sufferings we find the springs of our forgiveness. We ought never to grow coldly accustomed to this wonderful news. Calvary ought to throw us into new surprises every time we see it, and every time we hear its story. God weeping is infinitely more wonderful than God speaking. God suffering is infinitely more awful than God punishing. God on the Cross is infinitely more amazing than God on the throne.

Will you pardon a personal reference? It concerns a memory of my boyhood that has never lost its colour or its strength. It is the memory of my mother reproving me in tears. Punishment might have been bearable but I could have faced it. But tears, they vanquished me! A mother’s suffering for a son’s disloyalty to truth. — there was something in that which made my act repulsive and at the same time unveiled to me a heart of love and reconciliation and peace. May I not ascend by that little human slope of filial experience to the Cross of my Lord on the hill called Calvary? There our God unveils our sin, and there He unveils the love which forgives the sin and can redeem the sinner. Sinai has no place for sinners, Calvary has no place for anybody else. There we can take our burden and we need never bring it away.” Now I saw in my dream that Christian ran till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in and I saw it no more. Then was

Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, ‘He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His death.’ “Sinai means the proclamation of law and the conquest of anarchy. Calvary means the proclamation of love and the conquest of sin. Sinai is the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud. Calvary is the voice of love and mercy, the evangel of redemption. “I will, therefore, lift up mine eyes unto this hill from whence cometh my help.”

There is a third hill that must fling its beneficent influence upon our life. I can face anarchy in the intense light of Sinai. I can face sin in the tender reconciling light of Calvary. But there is another terror upon my road. His name is Death. Havoc is in his hand. He is a spoiler, and he seems to rend ruthlessly the loveliest vesture of human fellowship. A life may be sweet and whole as a beautiful garden, and then in the garden death makes a grave, and somehow or other the grave appears to fill the garden. If the grave were the goal of things, if it were the end of love and of all noble endeavour, the game would not be worth the candle. And there he is, the Terror! I cannot escape him. And more terrible still, my loved ones cannot escape him. Is there nothing else? Is death the final master in the house, and is destiny consummated in him?

I go to another hill, and I lift mine eyes. It is the hill called Olivet. And what is there? The Lord of Sinai is there. The Lamb of Calvary is there. But He is there as the Lord of life. On Calvary I saw the Lord upon a Cross; on Olivet I see Him clothed in deathless life. He entered the gates of death, He broke the power of death, He came again the Conqueror of death. On Sinai I see the conquest of anarchy. On Calvary I see the conquest of sin. On Olivet I see the conquest of death. Olivet blazes with the light of immortality.

And so this third hill is a wonderful minister in the transformation of my life, and especially in the transformation of its exit from this bourne of time and space. Olivet reveals to me that death is not a terminus but a thoroughfare. In Christ Jesus death is not my master but my servant. Olivet assures me that the last word is not good-bye but good-night, and it throws into my darkness the glorious harbingers of dawn. The music of the Gospel sings to me of home. Did not our Saviour say, “If it were not so I would have told you “? To know the Lord of Olivet is to be immune from the final dominion of death. “Because I live ye shall live also.” And, therefore, do men and women go to Olivet, and in its spiritual inspiration they sing such words as these — “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” And such words as these — “Whether we live we live unto the Lord, or whether we die we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore or die we are the Lord’s!” And such words as these — “So shall we be for ever with the Lord!” Only as Olivet is in our life can we use the words which are on Canon Wilberforce’s honoured grave in the cloisters of the Abbey: “He lives, he wakes! ‘Tis death is dead, not he!” Olivet is the mount of eternal morning.