The Momentous Choice
By faith Moses, Avlien he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” — Heb. XI. 24-27.
When Hercules had grown up lie went out into a solitary place to muse over his future course of life. After a while he saw two female figures approaching; the one in white apparel, with a noble aspect, open and innocent; the other painted and bedizened, and looking to see if people looked at her. As they drew nearer, this last ran briskly up, and was the first to accost him: — “Oh, Hercules, I see that you are perplexed about your path in life. If you will make a friend of me, I shall conduct you the smoothest and most charming road. You will not be troubled with business, or battles, or tasks of any kind; but your whole study shall be where to find the best wines and the nicest dishes, the newest scents and the most fashionable clothes, the merriest companions and the most exciting amusements. And you need take no trouble about the wherewithal, for if you will surrender to my guidance there are friends and familiars of mine who will take care to provide the supplies.” “And pray, madam,” said Hercules, “what may be your name?” “My name,” she replied, “is Pleasure, although my enemies have nicknamed me Vice.”
Then said the other: “Hercules, I knew your parents; and from what I saw of you in your boyhood I am sure you are capable of noble deeds; but I must not deceive you with delusive promises. As the Higher Powers have arranged the world, you can hope for nothing good or desirable without labour. If you want the gods to be your friends, you must serve them; if you want to be loved by your acquaintances, you must make yourself useful; if you want your field to be fruitful, you must till it; if you want to be honoured by all Greece, you must do it some great service; if you wish to be a mighty warrior, setting free your friends from chains and slavery, you must take lessons from some good soldier; you must learn to bring the body into subjection, and must submit to discipline.”
It was a frank statement, but there was in the speaker a truth and winsomeness which at once secured the honest heart of Hercules, and he rose up to follow Virtue along the rugged path to immortality.^
The choice of Hercules was no myth in the case of Moses. He had only to continue as he was, and he had everything that heart could wish. He had only to conform to the wishes of the kind-hearted Thermuthis, and his future was already made. A palace was his home, royal dainties were his daily fare, pages and lackeys were around to anticipate his every wish, and there was nothing to restrain the love of amusement or the appetite for sensual indulgence.
But at whatever period he first learned it, Moses had come to know that he was no Egyptian. Belike he had learned it from his parents early. His parents were believers. It was from their “faith” in God, and in all probability from some special revelation regarding their remarkably beautiful child, that they had ventured to conceal him so long; and after his wonderful preservation and promotion, it is not likely that, either for their own sake or their people’s sake, they would hide from him his birth or his hoped-for destiny. At all events, in due time Moses came to know it, and the decision to which he came is one of the most heroic things in history. But, like all the higher feats of heroism, its motive and inspiration was his faith. God had promised to
1 Xenophon, Memorabilia, ii. 1.
Abraham, “In thee and in thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed;” and Jacob had died predicting, “The sceptre shall not depart from Jndah till that Shiloh come to whom all nations shall rally.” And this Moses believed. He believed that the poor down- trampled people in Goshen were greater than their tyrants and taskmasters. He believed that, broiling out there amongst the brick-kilns, were slaves whose descendants would throw into the shade all the pomp and power of Pharaoh. Above all, he believed that the true God was none of those idols on whom Egypt wasted its worship, and to whom it erected fanes so imposing; but he believed that the one living God was that unseen Creator whom his fathers had worshipped, of whom he had never seen any image or symbol, who had built his own temple in the universe, and who to Abraham had foretold, “Thy seed shall be four hundred years a stranger and a servant in a foreign land; and afterward I shall punish their oppressors, and bring out themselves with great substance.” And, acting on this belief, he refused to be called the son of the princess. No doubt she thought it perverse, nor could his companions admire his taste. To avow such base connections they thought mean-spirited and abject, and the very thing of which Moses gloried as his nation’s destiny had become a
1 Gen. XV. 13, 14.
subject of derision. It seemed a pleasant fancy — a Messiah emerging from these mud-fiehls, a sovereign of mankind who should boast for his ancestry hodmen and brick-bakers; and in the mouths of the heartless but humorous Egyptians the hope of Israel had become a taunt and a byword. But Moses believed it, and “the reproach of Christ” was to him greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; and, in circumstances far more trying, he made a choice more noble than the son of Alcmena, for he not only preferred virtue with all its hardships to sin with all its pleasures, but renounced all that this world could offer, for the sake of a people who had nothing earthly to ofTer in return.
The choice of Moses was an act of faith. It was “through faith that he refused to be called the sou of Pharaoh’s daughter;” just as it was “through faith” that his parents hid him. And this is well explained by what afterwards is added: “He looked away to the future recompense;” “he endured,” — he held out or bore up, — “as seeing Him who is invisible.” There was an attraction in the pleasures of sin; but Moses looked away from these allurements to pleasures higher and more enduring. There was terror in the monarch’s frown, but Moses took refuge from it in the smile of a mightier Potentate. And this was faith. ‘Had he merely closed his eyes on the charms of Egypt, — had he merely steeled his nerves against the threats of Pharaoh, — it might have been manly or noble-minded; but besides that without faith he was not likely to have done it at all, through faith he could afford to do it cheerfully. God had opened his eyes and shown him in heaven a better and enduring substance, so he could lay down without a sigh a chain of gold or even a kingly crown. God had opened his ear, and through all the din and angry demonstration, like father Abraham before him, a sustaining voice upheld him, — “Fear not, for / am thy shield;” and though the idols of On were so awful to their votaries, and though Pharaoh had an army at his beck, the Lord on high was mightier than all, and Moses went through with it serenely, sublimely, “as seeing Him who is invisible.”
Prom time to time the Lord allows to take place like trials of the faith of His people. In the reign of Louis XIV. the Protestants were the flower of France, just as France was then the foremost of nations. Owing to their superior intelligence and morality the Huguenots had got into their own hands a large share in the trade and the largest share in the manufactures of the kingdom. They were prosperous and wealthy and increasing, when a decree came forth proscribing the Protestant religion and prohibiting all Protestant worship. By a double stroke of despotism every Protestant minister was banished, every Protestant layman was interdicted from leaving the kingdom. But whilst the Calvinistic laity were kept at home, they were ordered to consign their children to the care of Romish teachers, they were forbidden to employ any but Romish servants in their families, and death was denounced on those who should attend any other than Romish worship. For the faith of some these penalties were too awful, and they yielded and conformed. But a glorious army preferred the reproach of Christ, and showed that they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. They loved their beautiful France, and they hardly hoped to find another land with an air so elastic and with an inspiration so gladsome and gay: but France was not heaven, and after a few years of the better country the fogs of England and Holland would be forgotten. They loved the home of their fathers, and grudged to surrender to the Papist and stranger the fields they had bought with their earnings and the orchards they had planted for their children. And some of them, like Eapin and Savery, and Lyonnet and Basnage, were scholars and men of science, and they grieved to leave behind them the libraries and learned reunions of Paris. And the attempt was dangerous. If intercepted they were doomed to the galleys; that is, for the rest of their days they were chained two and two on benches in long flat boats,
D and obliged to row with long heavy oars, unsheltered from the weather, and allowed no other bed at night than the bench to which they were fastened by day. Yet, looking anxiously at it, they saw no alternative. To return to Popery would be to deny the Lord who bought them, and even if caught and consigned to the galleys, it would be better to “suffer afiliction with the people of God than to .enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” And so by faith they forsook France, not fearing the wrath of the king, and the sentinels whom he had posted along the frontiers. Hid amongst bales of goods on ship-board, or in empty casks with only the bung-hole to breathe through; venturing to sea in open boats without provisions in wintry weather, with nothing to give their famished children but the falling snow; fine ladies disguised as market-women, and trundling barrows along the miry roads; grey-headed nobles driving cattle, or travelling by night and lurking in barns or caverns all day, — three hundred thousand of them earned their recompense of reward, and if they impoverished France they have ennobled Europe, and enriched the records of the faith by their martyr-like migration.
Events like these — the decision of Moses, the flight of the French Huguenots, the death of our own worthies, — God permits from time to time as trials of his people’s faith and tokens of His own power to support and carry tliroiigli. And they are of great value as tests or touclistones of our own sincerity, and as incentives to our own devotedness. Have we a faith like theirs? From the things present do we look away to the future recompense? And amidst all the witnesses of our conduct, do we remember that great Spectator who is invisible?
The lesson is especially significant to those who are in the outset of their career, and who have not yet given themselves to God. Let us look at it as calmly and yet as carefully as we can.
Perhaps you don’t much like the people of God. You say that they are dull and melancholy, censorious and severe, narrow-minded and bigoted, and that you cannot take to them at all. Well, you certainly are not bound to love gloom and moroseness and uncharitable partisanship, and it is to be regretted if the Christians you have met are marred by such infirmities. They would be far nobler characters and much worthier of their name if they were bright and open, expansive and magnanimous. And that is the sort of Christian which the Lord asks you to become, — upright and manly, brave and truth-loving, with a mind as highly cultured as you please, but with a pure heart and a fervent. It is not so much with God’s people as with God Himself that you have to do, and His claims are paramount. To Him give your heart. He asks it, He deserves it, and if you have a heart to give, and hold it back from infinite excellence, — if you have a heart to give, and refuse it to your best Benefactor, — there may be blemishes in Christians, but amongst true Christians there is no one with ingratitude so base and rebellion so dark as yours; there is no one saying to the best of Beings, “Depart from me,” none turning his back like you on the Friend of sinners.
Hard words and strong, but I fear too true: for if conduct speaks as well as words, is not this the language of your life? — “0 God, I do not love Thee. I wish Thou wert not so holy; I wish Thou wouldst not haunt me. I sometimes try to love Thee by hoping that Thou art kind and easy and indulgent to the foibles of poor wretches. But when I turn to the Bible my mind shuts up: I cannot love a God so righteous, strict, and true.” Is not this the language of your life? — “0 Christ, I cannot thank Thee. That kingdom of heaven which Thou didst open is not one into which I desire to enter. That heaven which Thou didst purchase has no attractions for me, except as the only asylum from hell. If it was to save from sin that Thou didst die, I have no present wish for such salvation.”
And this brings out what is possibly the main point after all: “the pleasures of sin.” I have no doubt that Christ’s great competitor is Sin, and if it were not for some habit, evil and inveterate, perhaps the most of men would be Christians.
I cannot agree with those who speak as if sin had no pleasures. Surely all experience is against them. Probably the consciousness of many here contradicts them. If there were not something very sweet in the devil’s bait, would so many nibble at it with full knowledge that a fatal hook is lurking underneath? if the flowers were not fair and the fruits were not tempting, would so many venture within the precincts where prowls the murderer of souls?
To some intoxication has its pleasures. They like to forget their misery or to feel their powers enhanced by the false and flattering cup; or they like to look at life with the purple tints it wears as seen through the mantling amethyst. Such pleasures has this sin, that they will drink though ruin stares them in the face. They will drink though the clothes are rotting off their backs, and the flesh is wasting from their bones. They will drink though decent friends are dropping off and desolation reigns in their joyless and dismantled dwelling. They will drink although in their sober intervals spectres haunt their brain, and God’s own warning, “Drunkards shall have their portion in the lake that burneth,” is fearfully countersigned by the fire already kindled in their bosom.
Others cannot resist the pleasures of sense and the gratification of the coarsest appetites. The books they read are bad; the places they frequent are infamous; their very “mind and conscience are defiled,” and “having eyes full of adultery they cannot cease from sin.” It is a shame to seak of the things they do; but surely they would not do them if they did not feel some fearful fascination in their swinish paradise.
To some a pleasant sin is gambling. They know it to be wrong, they feel it to be low, they confess that it is foolish; but they still go on. They have burnt their fingers once or twice, but still their fingers itch for the golden pieces which the tempter holds out to them in his red-hot tongs; and rather than not bet or go back to the billiard-room they will risk the workhouse and the prison, the outlaw’s hue and cry, the gambler’s blood -besprinkled grave.
No indeed, there is no use to deny a fact so clear and manifest. Sin has its pleasures. Some of these pleasures are so great as to act on certain minds like a spell or a sorcery. Like the little bird within spring of the rattlesnake, they look uneasy at sight of their enchanting enemy, and flap their wings, and flutter to and fro, and do everything but the one thing that would save them — everything but fly away. Sin has its pleasures, and consequently the minister of Christ pleads at a prodigious disadvantage, for he can only appeal and argue from without, whilst sin has already its advocate within.
Yet, brethren, try to look at it dispassionately. We admit that sin has its pleasures; must you not admit that it has also its pains? Is there not sometimes pain at the moment — a musk-rat in the bottle — wormwood in the wine — the miserable mar-all consciousness that you are doing wrong? the consciousness that this Sunday excursion is clouded by God’s frown — the consciousness that in these gains of ungodliness you are resisted by a father’s prayer? And when the pleasure is over, is there not often a pain in what follows? When the crackling of the thorns has subsided, do you find aught but the ashes — perhaps too the scorpions which the fire has awakened? The debauch is over — not so the headache; the night at the casino is over — but when will be an end to its consequences? the race- week is over, but when will its debts be discharged, and when will you see an end to its debasing or dishonest entanglements? And what of the lucid intervals? When moments of reflection clear and sober come — what do you think of yourself? You who have been living the beastlife, who have thrown the rein on the neck of appetite and allowed it to run away with the man and the immortal, what cau you say for yourself? You who have wilfully put out the eyes of your understanding and doomed the mighty Samson to work so gross and grovelling — what say you for your moral suicide? What say you for having slain and buried the purest tastes and highest powers which God had given you? And you who have been living the demon-life — who as the sceptic or seducer have ruined another’s hope or another’s virtue — who as the gambler have expatriated yourself from the domain of Providence and been obliged to give up prayer — what say you for converting into instruments of iniquity those very faculties which might have been used to serve God and bless your brethren? — what say you for all the ruin you have wrought and which you never can restore?
Perhaps this is a lucid interval. So think now what you will think at last. These pleasures of sin “are but for a season.” Another world awaits you, and oh how soon its unending realities may enclasp you! It is the prospect of that world which gives such importance and urgency to the present. My hearer, you are to exist for ever! Your Creator has given you the priceless but awful endowment of immortality. Oh do not make that immortality a perpetuity of woe!
“As on a sphere all smooth and round,
End and beginning are not found;
For ever, even thus with thee — Unending, vast Eternity,
Eternity! Eternity!
How long art thou, Eternity!
0 Man, full oft thy thoughts should dwell
Upon the pains of sin and hell,
And on the glories of the pure.
That both beyond all time endure.
Ponder, 0 Man, Eternity!”
Of that eternity you are soon to be the inhabitant, and whatever you are when you enter it, that you must continue all throughout. And sin has no pleasures there. The season of enjoyment is past; the season of remorse and punishment has come. Even now you are not without the occasional presentiment — for although you may bury your sense of immortality you cannot extinguish it: you may besot and stupify it, but it wakes again. 0 that it would cry so loud as to scare you from your sins before you hear the waves of the eternal ocean chiming, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he that is holy, let him be holy still.” 0 that it would rouse you who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, before you hear that strange and startling sentence, irresistible, irrevocable, that inverted gospel which your own impenitence extorts from no other lips than those of a long-rejected Saviour, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Oh brethren, look away from the things present, have respect to the recompense of reward. Those prudential prospective faculties which you use so often to secure a temporal good, use them to insure a holy and happy immortality; that self-denial which you often exert, abjuring for days and years together ease and enjoyment, in order to win wealth or fame, exert it here, and in order to insure an eternity of blessedness renounce for the season of this mortal pilgrimage the pleasures of sin. A “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,” and there is no effort so vehement but it would be worth while to exert it here. In order to break off from the society of a bad companion, towards whom he felt a fatal fascination, we have read how Alfieri the Italian dramatist got his hair cropped, so that he should be unfit to go out of doors, and made his servants bind him in his own arm-chair till he was cured of his infatuation. And such are the struggles of men in earnest. By force like this should you take the kingdom of heaven rather than lose it altogether. By force like this should you rescue from the enemies now swarming over it that pearl of great price, your never-dying soul.
Yet, after all, it is not force, for which there is occasion here so much as faith. Moses opened his eyes, and illusions fled away. He put his hand in the hand of God, and forth from the impure and idolatrous purlieus of Memphis was led by way of INIidian and Sinai and Pisgah to heaven. By faith he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; but in so doing he rose to a higher rank, for at once God called him His son. By faith he renounced a fortune purchased by sinful compliances, and instantly found that he was richer than ever, — rich in peace of conscience and in the friendship of All- sufficiency. By faith he forsook Egypt, and in that very forsaking found life everlasting. By faith he surrendered the pleasures of sin; at the very longest they could have only lasted for fourscore years, and must have run very low before the end of that “season:” for three thousand years he has been enjoying the pleasures which are at God’s right hand, — pleasures which neither pall nor perish, for they are pleasures evermore.
So, dear brethren, look away from the things immediately surrounding, and surrender to the influence of those which are not the less urgent because “invisible.” By faith you know that you must die, although that final hour of your earthly history is not seen as yet; and when it comes the merriest of companions will be but a sorry comforter. You will want some one who can go into God’s presence with you and so befriend you there as to take off the terror which must otherwise attend a guilty creature’s interview with his Sovereign and Judge. But by faith you know — if not, learn it on the instant, — that there is a Friend of sinners, God’s beloved Son, who will with all zeal and all efficacy perform that gracious office then, if you accept His friendship now. He is invisible, but He is not far away. He is here present; and how it would rejoice His tender generous heart if this very moment you would say, “Lord Jesus, Thou art worthy, and to Thee I give myself, body, soul, and spirit, to be for ever Thine. Lord Jesus, Thou art mighty: keep me from sin and Satan; keep me to Thy heavenly kingdom. Lord Jesus, Thou art merciful: wash away my sins in Thy own most precious blood; take me from the fearful pit and put into my mouth the new” song of the pardoned sinner: —
* A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my strength and righteousness,
My Saviour and my All.’”
On the night after Hedley Vicars read in his Bible, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,” he could hardly sleep for thinking over that most wonderful of all truths which a sinner can discover. But it was enough. His mind was made up. “If this be true for me, henceforth, by the grace of God, I will live as a man should live who has been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.” He displayed his banner. The Bible, lying open on his table at this passage was thenceforward to tell what a Saviour he had found, and under whose colours he intended to march the rest of his journey. And God gave him grace to hold on, till in the trenches of Sebastopol the bullet pierced his heart, and the good fight was ended. Oh my friends, young and old, who are not yet decided, may God give you grace to do as that gallant soldier did, as did the most illustrious of all the Hebrews! May He so reveal to you the surpassing worth of your never-dying soul, and the peerless claims of the Son of God the Saviour, that there shall henceforth be no more halting betwixt two opinions, but that for you to live henceforward shall be Christ — the sole foundation of your hopes, the supreme object of your affection! Oh that the Holy Spirit would in His mercy make you wise and make you willing! Oh that He would make this a time much to be remembered, and this place to you ever sacred and ever dear as the valley of decision!
No; do not say, I will attend to it very soon, but this is not a convenient season. Perhaps it is not convenient; perhaps you have projects in view or engagements in hand which prevent you from instantly commencing a Christian career. If so, it would be better to abandon them instantly; for if you wait till the devil gives you leave to come to Christ, you will wait too long; if you wait till pride and vanity, till worldly-mindedness and sinful passions, give their vote for goodness and for God, you will wait till repentance comes too late, and wisdom costs too dear. But why delay? Is it anything so dreadful that you are asked to do? Is it such a hardship to give up husks for royal dainties — the prodigal’s rags for robes of beauty — the swineherd’shovel for the Father’s bosom? You say this season is not for you convenient. But is there no other whose convenience ought to be consulted? Must the teacher wait till it is convenient for the pupil to take his lesson? Must the sovereign be kept waiting tin the criminal shall make up his mind about accepting the pardon? Must the physician wait till the patient, who has received an envenomed wound, shall have leisure to take the remedies? Must the Saviour stand here, and follow you hence, and hover round you, offering you that pardon which He purchased with His blood? and is He bound to wait tiU you are disengaged, or have a fit of sickness, or some scrap of useless time to spare for Him? And must that kind Monitor and Persuader, who has so oft dealt with you, and despite your inveterate earthliness almost persuaded you, must the Holy Spirit wait till you are willing to be made more willing? Ah! I know not how it may be with you, but with that God whom you have offended, and who now offers to be reconciled, this is the time convenient. With that Saviour who this day holds ont His arms of invitation, saying to you, 0 sinner, ‘’’ Come unto me,” this is the time convenient. With that gracious Convincer who this moment makes you anxious in order to make you happy for ever, to-day, this hour, is the time convenient. Oh then harden not your heart! With God this is the day of grace — this is the accepted time — let it be to you also the convenient season, and then it will be the day of salvation!