CHAPTER IV.

THE BURNING BUSH.

"I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt."-EXOD. iii. 3.

"The good will of Him that dwelt in the bush."-DEUT. xxxiii. 16.

HERE we have the greatest teacher, a great scholar, a great sight, and a great truth. You are a scholar of God as Moses was the big bell has rung for you, and God has called you too by name; and a good scholar you shall be if you have Moses' spirit.

His attention was splendid. He looked and looked again; he halted; he turned aside; he stood still; he filled eyes and mind with the amazing object; he pondered it in his heart.

The first word for soldiers and scholars is attention. The word means a stretching forth towards, as of the little nestlings when they crane their necks over the edge of the nest for their food. The true scholar continues attending, for great truths are printed upon our minds as pictures are printed upon paper by chromolithograph. Each colour is printed by itself, so that there are some fourteen printings before the whole picture is conveyed to the paper. In the same way it takes time to impress any great truth upon our minds. Ideas are like chemicals: they need time and heat to tell. It is astonishing how much any child can learn when he attends with patience. The pity is that the preacher would often need to find words and ears too, for the heart is apt to play truant when God is the teacher.

Wonder and curiosity were strong in Moses as he said, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." The Bible invites you into a wonderland of grace and truth. Thoughtful wonder is the mother of knowledge: it moves you, as it moved Moses, to ask the reason why.

"Far seen across the sandy wild,
Where, like a solitary child,

He thoughtless roam'd and free;
One towering thorn was wrapt in flame-
Bright without blaze it went and came:
Who would not turn and see?"

Holy fear was strong in Moses as he put off his shoes from off his feet (ver. 5). To go barefoot in the East is a mark of humility.

"The shepherd talks with God apart,

And, as he talks, adores.”

When you are learning the great things of God and the soul, you too are on holy ground, and should then put off the sandals of the soul-those soiled thoughts that come to our spirits from touching the world. And do not draw too near: have the sweet awe that fears to profane holy things. Some folks have little reverence, and come too near the mystic bush, so that their finer feelings are blackened and scorched by the fire. They grow rudely familiar with things divine. Humble obedience was the fruit in Moses of this great object-lesson, for, at God's bidding, he went straight from the bush to Pharaoh. You learn all You learn all your lessons

ill unless they make you obedient to the voice of God.

If you have these four marks-attention, wonder, holy fear, and humble obedience—you may claim to be among the schoolfellows of Moses; and like him, with your eyes full upon it, you will learn the lessons of the burning bush. Make this bush, then, for halfan-hour, the home of your thoughts. It is the first plant-emblem of the Jewish people as a whole.

Holy Spirit, be Thou our teacher, while we study
I. The Bush.

II. The Bush burning.

III. The Bush unburnt.

I. The Bush.

It was one of the common stunted growths you may see to-day in the desert: some root out of a dry ground: a bramble-bush, or heath, or thorny acacia, or tamarisk: one of the humblest of living shrubs, quite unlike the cedar, the oak, or the palm. And this child of the desert, without stateliness or grace, is a picture of the cause of God and Church of Christ, so far as the outward eye can see. How small the Church in Egypt then was compared with Egypt's idolatry. The Egypt of that day has been made to live before us by famous discoveries, and by books like those of Dr. Ebers, which wonderfully light up some pages of the Bible. the museum at Cairo, the Pharaohs, with whom the Israelites had to do, grin at you from their mummycases. You may see their photos in the shop windows. Egypt's idol temples were then, as they still are in their ruins, among the wonders of the world, and enormously rich. Their idol-worship was most gorgeous, and upheld by all the power of the State. Jehovah's worship by its side was like a solitary heathbush in a forest of the cedars of Lebanon.

In

What a very small cause Christ's seemed when He died on the Cross! How majestically Pagan Rome overshadowed it! During the first three centuries there are only some ten or twelve short and scornful notices of Christ's Church in all the books of heathen writers; and yet soon after that the Church hurled heathen Rome from its throne, and conquered the world.

When wandering over the enormous ruins of Ephesus, and gazing at its vast theatre, of which we read in Acts xix., I thought how poor Christ's cause in Ephesus must have seemed in Paul's day, and how invincible Diana's! Yet to-day in the whole world there is not one Demetrius to speak a good word for Diana, while millions adore Jesus Christ. Why, Christianity was first brought to Europe by Paul and Silas. When they crossed over in a miserable sailing boat, they were so poor, I can believe, that they could scarcely between them raise money to pay their fare: all their baggage amounted probably to only two old cloaks and some parchments. These two men were the whole of Christ's Church in Europe to begin with. But God was with them, and they conquered so completely that to-day you cannot find in the wide world one man or woman or child who bows before any of the gods or goddesses who then had dominion over all mankind, with the exception of Jewry. All these idols have passed away for ever. Think also of the handful of unknown missionaries who first brought the Gospel to Britain when all the Britons were painted savages. Think of our own Columba and his little crazy coracle that carried the fortunes of Christ's Church, so far as our ancestors were concerned. The bush surely teaches that the Church should not try to out-Cæsar Cæsar in earthly pomp, that we should not be eager to wed worldly grandeur to the things of Christ, and that we should never despair of the day of small things in our foreign missions, That lowly bush in the