The Pattern in the Mount

“See that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.” — Hebrews viii. 5.

The elements which make a perfect work are two — a perfect workman, and a perfect pattern. A perfect workman must have perfect faithfulness and perfect skill; and so, to make any accomplishment entirely complete, faithfulness and skill must join in the fulfilment of the perfect plan. It is very much like the casting of some great work in metal. There is skill in the mixing of the elements. Faithfulness is like the pervading heat which keeps the whole mass fluid. But the plan or pattern of the work is like the mould into which the well-mixed and molten metal must be poured, that it may get form and value, and not remain a merely shapeless mass.

There are, then, two great reasons why men’s

1 Preached at St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire, Sunday morning, 2d July 1S82; and at the Chapel Royal, Savoy, London, Sunday morning, 20th May 18S3.

2 B works are failures: one is the lack of the personal qualities of faithfulness and skill in the worker; the other is the absence of a pattern, or the presence of a wrong pattern, in which the faithfulness and skill take shape. The first kind of failure is common enough. Plenty of people there are who, with most perfect plans of life, are so unfaithful or unskilful that their lives come to nothing. But the second kind of failure also is abundant. The world is full of men who, with great faithfulness and skill are doing little, because the plan, the standard, the pattern of their life is weak or wrong. To them, and of them, let me speak to-day, using for my text these words out of the old Epistle to the Hebrews: “Sec that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”

The warning had been given to Moses when he was about to make the Tabernacle. The leader of the Jews was full of faithfulness, and all the skill of all the people was at his command. He could make what he would; but never in all the world before had there been such a tabernacle as he was now to build. There was no precedent or accepted rule. And so we read in Kxodus that God called him up into a high mountain, and there, in some mysterious way, He gave His servant a description of the Tabernacle which He wanted him to build. He showed it to him in elaborate detail, and when, upon the seventh day, Moses came down from Mount Sinai, the unbuilt Tabernacle was already in existence in his mind, as it had been already before in existence in the mind of God. Not yet had it any material existence; but its idea was there. It was not visible or tangible. The gold, the silver, and the brass, the blue and purple and scarlet, the fine linen and goats’ hair, the rams’ skins dyed red, the brilliant lamps and carved cherubs shone as yet in no earthly sunshine; the fragrance of the spices floated on no earthly air; the curtains waved in no terrestrial breezes; the stakes which held the structure had been driven in no field of our common ground; it was not yet in being as a material fact, a bright, strange apparition, such as by and by moved with the host of the Israelites and filled the tribes of their enemies with wonder. But yet, in a true sense, it was — it had existence, when God had opened the chamber of His will in which the idea of the unbuilt Tabernacle already stood complete, and showed it to His servant. All that afterwards took place, all the slow building of the Tabernacle by the offerings of the people, was but the transference from the region of ideas to the region of realities of that which existed already in the mind of God.

We have only to enlarge the conception which is in this story and to make it general, and we come at once to one of the loftiest and most inspiring thoughts of human life. As the old Tabernacle, before it was built, existed in the mind of God, so all the unborn things of life, the things which are to make the future, are already living in their perfect ideas in Him, and when the future comes, its task will be to match those divine ideas with their material realities, to translate into the visible and tangible shapes of terrestrial life the facts which already have existence in the perfect mind. Surely in the very statement of such a thought of life there is something which ennobles and dignifies our living. It takes something of this dreadful extemporaneousness and supcrficialness and incoherence out of our life. The things which come to pass here in the world arc not mere volunteer efforts of man’s enterprise, not self-contained ventures which are responsible to nothing and to no one but themselves. For each of them there is an idea present already in the thought of God, a pattern of what each in its purest perfection is capable of being. Out of the desire to realise that idea must come the highest inspiration. In the degree to which it. has realised that idea must be the standard of judgment of every work of man. To-day begins a baby’s life.

A child is born into the world this Sunday morning. What shall we say about that child’s unlived life? No man can tell what it will be. Its lessons are unlearned, its tasks untried, its discoveries unmade, its loves unloved, its growth entirely ungrown, as the little new-born problem lies unsolved on this the first day of its life. Is that all? Is there nowhere in the universe any picture of what that child’s life ought to be, and may be? Surely there is. If God is that child’s Father, then in the Father’s mind, in God’s mind, there must surely be a picture of what that child with his peculiar faculties and nature may become in the completeness of his life. Years hence, when that baby of to-day has grown to be the man of forty, the real question of his life will be, what? Not the questions which his fellow-citizens of that remote day will be asking, What reputation has he won? What money has he earned? Not even, What learning has he gained? But, How far has he been able to translate into the visible and tangible realities of a life that idea which was in God’s mind on that day in the old year when he was born? How does the tabernacle which he has built correspond with the pattern which is in the mount? Ah, somewhere in the universe of God, dear friends — if not among our brethren beside us, if not by our own hearts — somewhere in the universe, that question is being asked to-day of every one of us who has grown up and left his youth behind him. Moses may, if he will, go on and build a tabernacle to suit himself, and as its self-willed architecture rises, the people may gather around it and call it wonderful, and praise the builder’s genius, but God’s eye is judging it all the time simply by one standard, simply by its conformity or non-conformity to the pattern which, long before the hewing of the first beam or the weaving of the first curtain, existed in the mount.

All this is true not merely of a whole life as a whole, but of each single act or enterprise of life. We have not thought richly or deeply enough about any undertaking unless we have thought of it as an attempt to put into the form of action that which already has existence in the idea of God. You start upon your profession, and your professional career in its perfect conception shines already in God’s sight. Already before Ilim there is the picture of the good physician, the broad-minded merchant, the fair-minded lawyer, the heroic minister, which you ma)’ be. You set yourself down to some hard struggle with temptation, and already in the fields of God’s knowledge you are walking as possible victor, clothed in white and with the crown of victory upon your head. You build your house, and found your home. It is an attempt to realise the picture of purity, domestic peace, mutual inspiration and mutual comfort, which God sees already. Your friendship which begins to shape itself to-day out of your intercourse with your companion has its pattern in the vast treasury of God’s conceptions of what man, with perfect truthfulness and perfect devotion, may be to his brother man. It is not vulgar fate and destiny; it is not a mere settlement beforehand by God’s foreknowledge of what each man must be and do, so that he cannot escape. The man’s will is still free. The man may falsify God’s picture of him, he certainly will fall short of it; but it is the essential truth of the Father comprehending all his children’s lives within His own, the infinite nature containing the finite natures in itself and holding in itself their standard.

The distinction between ideas and forms is one which all men need to know, which many men so often seem to miss. The idea takes shape in the form, the form expresses the idea. The form, without the idea behind it, is thin and hard. The form, continually conscious of its idea, becomes rich, deep, and elastic. He who once gets the sight into that world of ideas which lies unseen behind the world of forms never can lose sieht of it again, never can be content with any act of his until he has carried it into that world and matched it with its idea. To the man who is trying to do just or generous things, but who is perpetually conscious of how imperfect is the justice or the generosity of the things he does, it is a constant incentive and comfort to be sure that somewhere, in God, there is the perfect type and pattern of the thing of which he fails. That certainty at once preserves the loftiness of his standard and saves him from despair. This is the power of ideality, of the unfailing sight of the perfect ideas behind the imperfect form of things.

If all that I have said be true, then it would seem as if there ought to be in the world three kinds of men — the men of forms; the men of limited ideals, or of ideals which are not the highest; and the men of unlimited ideals, or the highest ideals, which are the ideals of God. And three such kinds of men there arc, very distinct and easy of discovery-. First, there arc the men of forms, the men who, in all their self-questionings about what they ought to do, and in all their judgments about what they have done, never get beyond the purely formal standards which proceed either from the necessity of their conditions or from the accepted precedents of other people. They never get into the regions of ideas at all.

How many such men there are! To them the question of their business life never comes up so high as to mean, “What is the best and loftiest way in which it is possible for this business of mine to be done?” It never gets higher than to mean, “How can I best support myself by my business?” or else, “What are the rules and ways of business which are most accepted in the business world?” To such men the question of religion never becomes: “What are the intrinsic and eternal relations between the Father God and man the child?” but only, “By what religious observances can a man get into heaven?” or else, “What is the most current religion of my fellow-men?” There is no unseen type of things after the pattern of which the seen deed must be shaped. Every deed is single and arbitrary and special, a thing done and to be judged, not by its conformity to some eternal standard of what such a deed ought to be, but simply by its fitness to produce results. Such a man judges a deed like a hatchet, solely by whether it will split wood. The deed no more than the hatchet has any true character, any conformity to or departure from an essential and eternal type. Of course no visions haunt a man like that. He dreams no dreams of finer purity and loftiness which might have given a more subtle and divine success to acts of his which the world calls successful. He lives in a low self-content, and knows no pain or disappointment at his actions unless his act fails of its visible result, or unless other men condemn the method in which he happens to have acted.

It would be sad, indeed, to think that there is any man here to-day who has not at least sometimes in his life got a glimpse into a richer and fuller and more interesting sort of life than this. There is a second sort of man who does distinctly ask himself whether his deed is what it ought to be. He is not satisfied with asking whether it works its visible result or not, whether other men praise it or not. There is another question still, Does it conform to what he knew before he undertook it that it ought to be? If it does not, however it may seem successful, however men may praise it, the doer of the deed turns off from it in discontent. If it does, no matter how it seems to fail, no matter how men blame it, he thanks God for it and is glad. Here is a true idealism; here is a man with an unseen pattern and standard for his work. He lives a loftier, and likewise a more unquiet life. He goes his way with his vision before his eyes. “I know something of what this piece of work ought to have been,” he says, “therefore I cannot be satisfied with it as it is.” What is the defect of such an idealism as that? It is, that as yet the idea comes only from the man’s own self. Therefore, although it lies farther back than the mere form, it does not lie entirely at the back of everything. It is not final; it shares the incompleteness of the man from whom it springs. It may be born of prejudice and selfishness. It is the source very often of bigotry and uncharitableness and superstition. These are not seldom the fruits of narrow ideality. The man of no ideas is not a bigot. The man of largest ideas has outgrown bigotry. It is the man who asks for principles, the man who seeks to conform his life to some conception of what life ought to be, but who seeks his pattern no higher and no deeper than his own convictions, it is he who stands in danger of, and very often falls into narrowness and pride and the insolent, uncharitable demand that all men shall shape their lives in the same form as his.

Therefore it is that something more is needed, and that only the third man’s life is wholly satisfactory. I said that he not merely looked for an idea to which he wanted to conform his life, but he looked for that idea in God. Literally and truly he believes that the life he is to live, the act he is to do, lies now, a true reality, already existent and present, in the mind of God; and his object, his privilege, is not simply to sec how he can live his life in the way which will look best or produce the most brilliant visible result, not simply to see how he can best carry out his own personal idea of what is highest and best, but how he can most truly reproduce on earth that image of this special life or action which is in the perfect mind. This is the way in which he is to make all things according to the pattern which is in the mount.

Does it sound at first as if there were something almost slavish in such a thought as that? He who thinks so has not begun to apprehend the essential belonging together of the life of God and the life of every man. For man to accept the pattern of his living absolutely from any other being besides God in all the universe would be for him to sacrifice his self and to lose his originality. But for man to find and simply reproduce the picture of his life which is in God is for him not to sacrifice but to find his self. For the man is in God. The ideal, the possible perfection of everything that he can do or be, is there in God; and to be original for any man is not to start aside with headlong recklessness and do what neither brother- man, nor God dreamed of our doing; but it is to do with filial loyalty the act which, because God is God, a being such as we arc ought to do under the circumstances, in the conditions in which we stand. Because no other being ever was or ever will be just the same as you, and because precisely the same conditions never before have been and never will be grouped about any other mortal life as are grouped around yours, therefore for you to do and be what you, with your own nature in your own circumstances, ought in the judgment of the perfect mind to do and be, that is originality for you.

What quiet independence, what healthy humility, what confident hope there must be in this man who thus goes up to God to get the pattern of his living. To-morrow morning to that man there comes a great overwhelming sorrow. Bereavement breaks open his house’s guarded door, and the unbroken circle is shattered at what seemed its dearest and safest spot. The man looks about and questions himself — What shall he do, what shall he be in this new terrible life, terrible not least because of its awful newness, which has burst upon him? Where shall he find the pattern for his new necessity? Of course he may look about and copy the forms with which the world at large greets and denotes its sorrow, the decent dreadful conventionalities of grief. He may alter his dress and moderate his walk and tone, and even hide himself from sight, and so give all his pain its proper form. That does not satisfy him. The world acknowledges that he has borne his grief r4 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. I.

most properly, but he is not satisfied. Then, behind all that, he may reason it over with himself, think out what death means, make his philosophy, decide how a man ought to behave in the terrible shipwreck of his hopes. That is a better thing by all means than the other. But this man does something more. The pattern of his new life is not in the world. It is not in himself. It is in God. He goes up to find it. There is, lying in God’s mind, an image of him, this very man, with this very peculiar nature of his, of him bearing this particular sorrow, and trained by it into a peculiar strength, which can belong to no other man in all the world. That image is a reality in God’s soul before it becomes a visible thing in the man’s soul living on the earth. To get up, then, into God, and find that image of his grieved and sorrowing life, and then come back and shape his life after it patiently and cheerful ly, that is the struggle of the Christian idealist in his sorrow, of the man who tries to make all things according to the pattern which is in the mount. Can we not see what quiet independence, what healthy humility, what confident hope there must be in that man’s struggle to live out through his sorrow the new life which his sorrow has made possible?

But now it is quite time for us to ask another question. Suppose that all which we have said is true; suppose that there is such a pattern of the truest life, and of each truest act of every man lying in God’s mind, how shall the man know what that pattern is? We can see into what a mockery our whole truth might be misread. “Yes,” one might say, “God has in Himself the true idea of you, but what of that? How will that help you? You cannot go up into His mind to find it there. You must go on still blundering and guessing, only trembling to know that at the last you will be judged by a standard of which you could never get a sight while you were working at your life. Look up, poor soul, out of the valley and know that on the top of yonder shining mountain lies folded safe the secret of your life, the oracle which would, if you could read it, solve all your mysteries and tell you just exactly how you ought to live. Look up out of the valley and know that it is there; and then turn back again into the valley, for in the valley is the home where you must live, and you can never read the oracle which you know is there upon the mountain -top.” What mockery could there be like that? How must the poor man bend his head like a beast and go plodding on, refusing to look at, trying to forget, the mountain where his secret lay, and where he must not climb! Is that the fate of man who knows that in God lies the image and the pattern of his life? It might seem to be, it has very often seemed to be, but it can never really be to any one who really knows and believes in the Incarnation, the life of the God-Man among men. Do you not see? Is not Christ the mountain up into which the believer goes, and in which he finds the divine idea of himself. As a mountain seems to be the meeting-place of earth and heaven, the place where the bending skies meet the aspiring planet, the place where the sunshine and the cloud keep closest company with the granite and the grass: so Christ is the meeting -place of divinity and humanity; He is at once the condescension of divinity and the exaltation of humanity; and man wanting to know God’s idea of man, any man wanting to know God’s idea of him, must go up into Christ, and he will find it there.

I would not have that sound to you fanciful and vague, for I am sure that there is in that statement the most sure and practical of truths. It was so in the old days of the visible incarnation. Sec how, when Jesus walked on earth, the men and women who were with Him there were always climbing up into the mountain of His life, and seeing there what God’s idea of their lives was. A young man, puzzled with matching commandments, weary of wondering which little corner of duty he should make his own, came up to Christ, came up into Christ, and asked, “Lord, which is the great commandment?” and instantly, as Christ looked at him and answered him, the man saw a new vision of himself, a vision of a life filled with a passionate love of the Holy One, and so he went back determined not to rest until he had attained all holiness. If he came down from Christ a larger man, giving his whole life thenceforth to the attainment of the love of God, and letting all duty do itself out of the abundance of that love, that was the way in which he did all things according to the pattern which had been shewed to him on the mount. Into that mountain of the Lord went up John Boanerges, to see God’s idea of him as the man of love; and fickle-hearted Peter, to see God’s idea of him as the steadfast rock; and trembling Mary Magdalene, to know herself beloved and forgiven. Nay, up that mountain went even Judas Iscariot, far enough to catch sight of God’s Judas, of the man resisting temptation and loyally faithful to his Lord. Up that mountain went Pontius Pilate, and for a moment we can see flash before his eyes the ideal of himself, the true Roman, the true man, God’s Pilate, brave and honest, unscared by shouting Jews or frowning Caesar, standing by his convictions and protecting his helpless prisoner against His brutal enemies. Every man who came to Jesus saw in Him the image of his own true self, the thing that he might be and ought to be. Hundreds of them were not ready for the sight, and turned and went their way, to be not what they might be, nor what they ought to be, but what they basely chose to be. But none the less the pattern had been shewed to them in the mount. And so it has been ever since. All kinds of men have found their ideals in Jesus. Entering into Him, the timid soul has seen a vision of itself all clothed in bravery, and known in an instant that to be brave and not to be cowardly was its proper life. The missionary toiling in the savage island, and thinking his whole life a failure, has gone apart some night into his hut and climbed up into Christ, and seen with perfect surencss, though with most complete amazement, that God counted his life a great success, and so has gone out once more singing to his glorious work. Martyrs on the night before their agony; reformers hesitating at their tasks; scholars wondering whether the long self-denial would be worth their while; fathers and mothers, teachers and preachers whose work had grown monotonous ami wearisome, all of these going to Christ have found themselves in Him, have seen the nobleness and privilege of their hard lives, and have come out from their communion with Him to live their lives as they had seen those lives in Him, glorious with the perpetual sense of the privilege of duty, and worthy of the best and most faithful work which they could give.

Cannot you go to Christ to-day and find the idea of yourself in Him. It is certainly there. In Christ’s thought at this moment there is a picture of you which is perfectly distinct and separate and clear. It is not a vague blurred picture of a good man with all the special colours washed away, with nothing to distinguish it from any other good man in the town. It is a picture of you. It is you with your own temptations conquered, and your own type of goodness, different from any other man’s in all the world, in all the ages, perfectly attained. If you give up your life to serving and loving Christ, one of the blessings of your consecration of yourself to Him, will be, that in Him there will open to you this pattern of yourself. You will see your possible self as He sees it, and then life will have but one purpose and wish for you, which will be that you may realise that idea of yourself which you have seen in Him.

This, then, is the great truth of Christ. The treasury of life, your life and mine, the life of every man and every woman, however different they are from one another, they are all in Him. In Him there is the perfectness of every occupation: the perfect trading, the perfect housekeeping, the perfect handicraft, the perfect school teaching, they are all in Him. In Him lay the completeness of that incomplete act which you did yesterday. In Him lay the possible holiness of that which you made actual sin. In Him lies the absolute purity and loftiness of that worship which we this morning have stained so with impurity and baseness. To go to Him and get the perfect idea of life, and of every action of life, and then to go forth, and by His strength fulfil it, that is the New Testament conception of a strong successful life. How simple and how glorious it is! We arc like Moses, then, — only our privilege is so much more than his. YVc arc like a Mi who at any moment, whenever the building of the tabernacle flagged and hesitated, was able to turn and go up into the mountain and look once more the pattern in the face, and come down strong, ambitious for the best, and full of hope. So any moment we may turn from the poor reality to the great ideal of our own lives, winch is in Christ, with one earnest question, “Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to be?” We may pierce through the clouds and reach the summit, and there, seeing His vision of our possibilities, be freed at once from our brethren’s tyranny, and from our own content and sluggishness, and set to work with all our might to fulfil God’s image of our lives, to be all that He has shown us that it is possible for us to be, to make all things in these valley lives of ours after the pattern shewed to us in the mount.