The Pattern in the Mount

See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.’’ — Hen. viii. 5.

Twat is the secret of all progress. An ugly fact is seen in the light of its ideal, and the work of reform is begun. Some man has seen the pattern in the mount, and he brings the glowing rectitude and places it side by side with familiar realities, and he exposes their crookedness and fatalalienation. ‘“Repent,” he cries, and in obedience to his word and vision a revolution is born. It is when the pattern in the mount is lost, or when it has been forgotten, or when we have deliberately hid it away that we fall into an indolent contentment. When the shining, convicting pattern is missing we become “‘ at ease in Zion,” and foul and ugly things are undisturbed. Crooked happenings do not distress us. Nay, they appear as the quite natural and companionable furniture of our lives. Wronged people do not arrest or alarm us because we do not see their angels as in the presence of our Father in heaven. We must see the heavenly pattern if we would see the earthly perversion of our Father’s will.

If, therefore, we would have a period of wise revolution we must have a preparatory period of wise revelation. All healthy revolution in spirit and in circumstance, in character and in conduct, must begin in the glory of spiritual vision. ‘‘ Where there is no vision the people perish.”. But where the vision is given and welcomed there will be the health of disquietude, and we shall begin to have the stirrings of a new day in movements of desire and will, and in the awaking energies of agitation and action.

And what is to be our pattern in the mount except the holy mind of Jesus Christ? If in all matters of right and wrong, matters of moral principle, we seek the mind of Christ, we shall surely have before us the pattern in the mount. What does Christ think about the poor? What does He rn roca cert ee ee 224 The Pattern in the Mount

think about their rights? What is His pattern for holy dealing? And has He any pattern for marriage? And what is the ideal in glory concerning the purposed stature of every man? And what is His ideal as to the relation of races, the fellowship of all the tribes and peoples which jostle one another on the planet? And so with countless other questions which we might ask in the holy mount. We should find that the patterns would be given.

Sometimes the patterns are given to us with amazing brilliancy. Sometimes a pattern is made to blaze in the soul of some man or woman in lines of fire. It burns in the very texture of their being, and it kindles their awakened spirit into vehement speech and action. These are our prophets. They can say with Jeremiah — “There is in mine heart as it were a burning fire... and I cannot contain!” Their eyes have seen “the dawning of the glory of the Lord.” They have received the pattern in the mount, and they dare not be disobedient to the heavenly vision. And that is the first necessity of our day, to seek the pattern in the mount, Yo& LXIII