Marah

’ Moses cried unto the Lord, and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters [of Marah], the waters were made sweet.” — Ex. xv. 25.

The Red Sea is crossed, the Egyptians are drowned, and that most ancient as well as most magnificent song of triumph has been sung, — a song so sublime that we purposely postpone exposition; in its spirit and its circumstances so sublime that even Revelation offers no other entirely parallel, and its companion and counterpart is only known to those who along with “the Song of Moses the servant of God” sing also “the Song of the Lamb.”

It was a great deliverance, and the people felt it deeply. Perhaps there never was a gush of purer gratitude than poured from the lips of all that million as Miriam’s timbrel led the dance; and as one after another the swell bore helpless to their feet the steed in gorgeous housings or his stiff and stalwart master, the exultation leaped up anew, and the shout, “Sing to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” They were a people near to God. They felt as if they were entirely in His hand, — the people whom He had purchased, and whom He designed to plant in the mountain of His holiness. And if it could have been put to them, ‘’ After this will you ever doubt God’s power or providence? — will you ever wish that you had another God or were your own masters? “— they would have replied in one unanimous outburst, “The Lord is my strength and my salvation: He is my God, and shall reign for ever and ever.”

But a little week is hardly past, they have only gone three days into the desert when the Eed Sea minstrels are changed into mutineers and murmurers; and as soon as their first grievance is remedied they find a new hardship and a fresh occasion for despair, and for charging God and His servant foolishly. It is no longer, “The Lord is my strength,” but “What shall we drink?” It is no longer, “Thou, Lord, in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed,” but “Would God we had died when we sat by the flesh-pots! for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill us with hunger.”

At first sight this looks fearfully ungrateful and monstrously fickle, and we are apt to praise ourselves obliquely, — we are apt to get up a little sly self-complacency by bearing hard on the perversity of Israel. But if we would judge righteous judgment, we must advert to the actual facts of the case. To begin with, was there not a real hardship? Few of us can enter into it, for few of us in health have gone without food for so much as four-and-twenty hours together, and the sensation we call thirst is no more like the mad and raging fever of the desert than our cool and verdant plains are like the baked and blistering rocks of that burning wilderness. This was their predicament. After marching three days through dust and fiery drought they came on wells clear and limpid-looking; but the moment they put the water to their lips it was poison. What wonder if they uttered a great cry of disappointment and horror! After a month’s absence from Egypt they were no nearer the land of their hope than when they first set forth, and to aggravate the trial their provisions were spent. The supplies which seemed so ample on the 15th of Abib were exhausted by the 15th of Zif; and was it no hardship to be obliged to slaughter the flocks and herds with which they had intended to stock their expected farms? — was it no hardship to feel their own strength decaying, and to see their children coming round them with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, and crying for that bread which they no longer had to give?

It is easy to swim on dry land; it is easy to be a Samson as long as the Philistines are only phantoms in the air; but “judge not that ye be not judged.” Have you ever tried to go through your daily task with a throbbing, bursting brain, or even with an aching tooth? Have you tried against all- comers to keep your temper? When worn with successive nights of wakefulness or watching, have you tried to stay your soul on God, and hold forth a sunny face all day? Or, when the balance hung betwixt a loved one’s life and death, have you tried to say, “Thy will be done?” If so, you will judge in the spirit of meekness even the poor mourning Israelites, lest thou also be tempted.

Another consideration is, they were new to it. True, their life in Egypt was hard enough; but it was not the* best preparative for this kind of experience. As slaves, they were abject, resourceless, spiritless; they had no long look forward; they lived within the day. If the flesh-pot was full they had no further wants, because no higher hopes, or at least they found it better to have none. And you know very well. the worth of a mainspring, the value of some motive sufficiently persistent and powerful. Hence it is that, accustomed to refined society and elevated pursuits, a Park or a Clapperton does not grudge to spend years in dreary wastes and among treacherous savages, for the solution of scientific problems and the extension of the bounds of knowledge, is the hope set before him; hence it is that, in the heroism of humanity, a Kane or a M’Clintock braves the rigours of a hyperborean winter, and, sustained by the hope of bringing succour to those that are ready to perish, takes joyfully the blast which, without this hope, would freeze within the bones the marrow; hence it is that, in the dreary trench, amidst the drifting snow, the high-bred noble and the peasant soldier alike bear up, remembering that God and England expect from them their duty; and hence it is that an Eliot, a Zinzendorf, a Jadson, constrained by the love of Christ, and striving to speed the day when His saving name shall be everywhere renowned, can face without a fear the heathen clamouring for their blood, and can sing psalms in the death-prison.

But although the Hebrews had a hope set before them, it was new to them, and they had not learned to live upon it. Although they had found a God, even He was new to them, and they could only trust Him when His eye was visibly upon them, and His arm sensibly around them. I^escued at a rush, carried through the Eed Sea in a mass, all saved at the self-same moment, they were a nation born in one night; and whilst this made them so far the more signal trophies of God’s goodness, it also conspired with outward influences to give to their moods of mind a peculiar sympathy or simultaneousness. They were twins a million times repeated, and in the close contiguity of their camp their feelings flowed and ebbed together; and although a Caleb or a Joshua, or some rare spirit, might retain his steadfastness, it was difficult to resist the contagious ardour or depression, and the narrative proceeds as if all murmured or rejoiced together. “The people murmured,” “the children of Israel murmured,” “the whole congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron.”

There is another remark which we would here interpose, and it applies to several of the miracles here recorded. A frequent attempt has been made to reduce them to incidents, which, although surprising, were not supernatural. For instance: there is still found in the midsummer months in that peninsula of Sinai a substance now called manna. It is a sweet, gummy exudation from the Alhagi, the tarfah or tamarisk, and other plants, produced by the puncture of an insect; and it is either scraped from the leaves, or gathered up where its drops have trickled down to the ground; and many travellers and interpreters have pronounced this to be the manna or “bread from heaven” on which the Israelites subsisted for forty years in the desert. If so, the miracle is not much diminished, for the entire crop of tree-manna in the Sinai peninsula amounts only to six or seven hundred pounds weight each year, which to the Israelites would have been at the rate of the hundredth part of a grain to each person per day. But the tree-manna has none of the properties mentioned by Moses except the size and the sweetness. It is not perennial. It is not found at all seasons, but is restricted to the midsummer months; and far from being available for forty years successive, there are years when there is none of it. It does not on the sixth day exude in double quantity, and entirely intermit on the seventh, and far from having any propensity to putrefy, if kept all right, few things keep better. Nor do we suppose that any straightforward unsophisticated reader would draw any other conclusion from the narrative of Moses, and the allusions to that narrative in the Psalms and New Testament, than that it was a miraculous table which was spread for Israel in the desert, and that they were fed in a way unwonted from God’s own garner.

At the same time, there is a principle applicable to many miracles on which we would gladly dwell if an occasion like this permitted. Miracles are no violations of the laws of nature — thereby meaning the laws of God — the principles on which the Most High conducts His own procedure. Although to our experience they are rare and exceptional, they are neither efforts to Omnipotence, nor are they episodes and interruptions in the scheme of the

unchanging I am. They are the evolutions of a higher law, which for the moment seems to set aside or supersede the common law, the ordinary course of Providence; but, as we might expect from their majestic Author, these miracles are no mere whimsies or vagaries, no monstrous portents or idle prodigies such as Eastern imagination has delighted to invent, but the signs and wonders of One who is wise in counsel and excellent in working — signs which in a moment transport us into the presence-chamber of Omnipotence, but wonders which are wonderfully marked by the same wisdom, goodness, holiness, of which we have examples in His familiar well-known ongoings.

Hence in miany miracles we are not surprised to find the reappearance on a scale of sudden expansion or enlargement of facts or principles with which we have long been conversant. The letters are on a gigantic scale, or as they run along the wall they float and flicker with a dazzling light; and yet in a moment we recognise the self-same handwriting, — the autograph inimitable, unmistakable, which we have all along beheld growing in the grass or projecting its revelations on pages of the Bible.

In virtue of this Divine self- consistency there is often what we would call a natural element in the most supernatural interposition; and so far from lessening the value of the miracle, does it not impart to it new beauty and significance? Not to say that there is no waste of the wonderful, is it not worthy of the Most High that by accelerating His own processes, or making new uses of His own creatures, He should exhibit effects which in any hand but His, these processes, these creatures, would be powerless to display? and in that boundless diversity which marks His manifestations, whether ordinary or extraordinary, who shall say which is the most Divine, the miracle where the whole springs forth direct, startling and stupendous, from a simple fiat; or the other, where there exists a germ already in some familiar phenomenon, — a phenomenon, however, which by virtue coming forth from God suddenly expands into dimensions confessedly Divine? Was it not a miracle, when to the whelming billows Jesus said, “Peace, be still! “and by that word, creating an instant calm, He saved the drowning mariners? But when just at the moment an angry king was about to grasp the fugitives, — when just at that moment God made an east wind to blow, and split a passage through the flood, walling it up on either hand, was there nothing supernatural in the opportuneness of the breeze, nothing supernatural in its unprecedented power? When to the barren fig-tree Jesus said,” Henceforth no fruit grow on thee for ever,” no hail-storm fell, no caterpillar came, but feeling at its heart the awful word, instantly withered away, the conscious cumber-ground. But is it less than supernatural and divine wdien to the tyrant it is said, “Let my people go, or to-morrow about this time expect a grievous hail,” and to-morrow at that time the icy shrapnell — the hurtling hail- shower — pounds into the earth the sprouting corn, and shatters every tree? That hail, is it not the hand of God? that east wind, is it not His breath? and in wielding either at the moment, and for the special end, was there not the same omnipotence as went forth in the word, the mere will expressed of Jesus? Coming to the case in hand, we are extremely interested to learn that a pearly- looking substance, suggestive of honey, is still found in that Arabian wilderness; for although it cannot account for the miracle, it accounts for the key-note on wdiich that “miracle was pitched. I^ow that He was about to feed His famished children with supplies straight from His own storehouse, the Most High selected a substance congruous to the place and in keeping with their circumstances. In the bare and burning desert He did not cause to spring such rice- crops as they had left in the deep inundated soil of Egypt, nor did He perplex them by raining all around them what they would not have understood, — the ready-made loaves, the bread-fruits of the then unknown Southern Isles; but selecting a palatable product of the place, or a substance near akin, to these pensioners at Heaven’s gate, the Great Almoner gave what was none the less Heaven’s bread, because a sample somewhat like it was indigenous, — all the more truly Heaven’s bread, because the existence of that other showed how well adapted it was for desert pilgrims. And just as the Lord Jesus, when about to feed five thousand hungry guests, as He did not fling away the five loaves which were actually forthcoming, but used them as the starting-point or key-note of His miracle, multiplying them a thousandfold, — so when about to feed His million guests for forty years, Jehovah did not ignore the handful of meal already in the barrel, the few drops which already trickled from the tarfah-trees, but multiplying the supply a hundred-thousandfold;

instead of a mere taste of honey-dew; instead of a few tiny and tantalizing particles, with Divine profusion He emptied a whole garner over them every night, and scattered it round their tents thick as snow on Salmon.

These little links are valuable. Eightly regarded they do not make the supernatural less wonderful, but they make it more instructive and more interesting. They afford a revelation of God’s character whilst letting forth a coruscation of His power; and they are gentle inclines by which from the level of every day we may ascend towards the throne of an ever-wakeful, ever-working Omnipotence, — gangways or bridges by which our feeble steps may cross over from the frail barque of our own existence — circumscribed, mist-bounded — to the everadjacent mainland of the infinite and the eternal.

This principle we have little hesitation in extending to Marah and the sweetening of its waters. It is quite true, as Professor Johnston and others have shown, that some kinds of water, brackish or bitter, may be rendered drinkable by steeping in them certain woods or berries; and there is a legend that the waters of China were so bad that the people could not drink till a certain sage pointed out a little tree whose well-known leaves many of us consider an improvement to even the best of water. But we cannot help feeling that in a context like this we must rise higher than any such rationalistic rendering of the incident; for even if any plant efficacious for such purposes had grown in the region — as several recent travellers strenuously deny, — its virtues were unknown to Moses till the Lord revealed them, and even after that they must have been singularly enhanced in order to supply to such a multitude a pure and potable beverage. “The Lord showed unto Moses a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet;” and the supernatural character of the occurrence comes out more strikingly in that standing promise, that “statute and ordinance” by which it was followed: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” As much as to say,” My dealings with Israel shall be the converse of My dealings with Egypt. They were resistful and rebellious, and I sent them punishments and plagues: but if you be diligent and docile, I will heal and comfort you. And accept the earnest: behold the sign. As my wonders in the field of Zoan began by turning into blood the delicious waters of the Nile, so my wonders in the wilderness begin by turning into sweetness the bitter springs of Marah. Jehovah Eophi: I am the Lord who healeth you.

Surely there was a lesson which, running to these waters, Israel read, and which it would be a pity if it were lost on us.

In itself water is one of the best of things. Pure, cool, pellucid, it is the good gift of God, — a cup of cold water the very emblem of unmingled blessing. And as it comes from heaven, it is always clear and uncontaminated; it is only in earth’s reservoirs that it sometimes gets muddied, and sometimes even poisoned. There are salts of copper in the soil through which the current percolates; the manchineel has shed its deadly fruits into the fountain, or an enemy has passed this way and drugged the wells.

Books, leisure, learning, friends, and children, — wealth, accommodations, — the beautiful in nature, the exquisite in art, are all the gift of God, and as they come from God they are all pure and unalloyed: If the cup which catches the morning dew itself were clear as crystal, — if the pool that receives the rain had nothing miry or deleterious in it, good and pure would the gifts remain. But alas! too often it is a bad and bitter soil, — a proud and selfish spirit, a morose and murmuring heart, a godless, and so a hopeless, joyless mind, into which the mercy comes, and when the moment arrives that the happy possessor should drink and be refreshed, he turns away disgusted. “What ’s the matter with the well? It looks clear enough. What’s the matter with the man? He has a good house, an ample income, a fine family; but the curl of contempt, the wrinkles of unrest on his countenance, the ‘vanitas vanitatum’ in his tones, proclaim dissatisfaction and discontent. What ’s the matter? Don’t you know? The water was good enough till once it came there: but here the soil is Marah. It is the bitter soil that makes the bitter fountain; and you must give the man a better heart, — more humble, more thankful, more genial, more devout, — in order that he may get the full enjoyment of the good and perfect gifts which God bestows.” It must, however, be admitted that besides the Marah within there are bitter fountains to which God in His providence sometimes conducts His people. That is to say, in their way to the better country, God sometimes sends His people trials where they looked for blessings. A child dearly loved and doated upon is taken away. Another is spared to turn out neither a credit nor a comfort. A beloved relative is laid aside by lingering sickness, or is banished to the ends of the earth, or is still more mournfully secluded from your society by the great gulf of an imagined wrong, a wounded spirit, or a mind diseased. Or after a toilsome tramp through the desert you have attained the oasis: you have made your modest competence, and in this rosy little hermitage you hope to spend life’s evening quietly and not uselessly, when, lo and behold! your sight is failing, or the power of locomotion is withdrawn, or some incipient malady gives warning that to suffer will henceforth be a main part of your vocation.

What ever shall you do? Whom shall you imitate? the multitude or Moses? Moses was as much disappointed as the people, for he was as parched and faint as they; but whilst they murmured, he cried to God. And so, if wise, will you. Cry to God. There is a remedy! There is that at hand which, if you knew it, would make all right again, and the Lord can easily show you what it is. Perhaps he may bid you move forward another stage, for at Elim there are palm-trees and pure water in plenty. But most likely He will put you on a plan for sweetening those mercies which are for the present embittered. His name is the Lord the Healer. If you be diligent and docile, if you hearken to His voice, and do that which is right in His sight. He will make all things work together for your good; and by the tender sympathy He raises up, by the timely help He sends, by the gentle sustaining of His own spirit inwardly, He can work such a change on Marah that where once you stood aghast in horrible surprise, you can now stoop down and as you drink abundantly shall wonder to find that it is no longer bitter.

“For there’s a wonder — workiog wood,
I’ve heard believers say,
Can make these bitter waters good
And take the curse away.

The Cross on which the Saviour died

And conquer’d for His saints,
This is the tree, by faith api)lied,

Which sweetens all complaints.

Thousands have found the bless’d efifect,
Nor longer mourn their lot;

While on His sorrows they reflect
Their own are all forgot.

When they by faith behold the cross,
Though many griefs they meet,

They draw a gain from every loss
And find the bitter sweet.”