“As Moses ground the golden image worshiped by Israel to powder, so Christ came to overthrow and blot out of the world every vestige of the religions or believings that exalts the animal and degrades the spiritual in man. He heralded the age of gold and fire.”
“And was Apis overthrown by the child?”
“Not immediately; that is not the way of Him who knows no haste; but in His own good time its fall came. Egypt, hoar with deep thinkings on the master problems of life, death, eternity, did much in distant times to color and express the beliefs of all peoples. It became a school of religious as well as the theater of some of their greatest, bloodiest conflicts. Let me recall some of the steps. First, I’ll begin with the revival of the true faith under Moses, which was the revival of escape, the only way to preserve God’s people from utter defilement. Thou hast read in thy Holy writings how the conflict began between the king and Israel’s leader:
And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.
And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?
We will go three days journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God, as he shall command us.”
“Why was Moses so anxious to get away so far!”
“I’ll show thee; that was then a mystery, now explained. Egypt worshiped a bull devoutly; the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice to God a red heifer. The color, red, was an antetype of the saving blood to be shed on red Calvary. Moses, methinks, desired to get away that he might reveal this sacred mystery, so far as he discerned it, to those to whom it was sent. Follow me now with pious, frank heart. The Israelites antagonized the customs of Egypt sharply by offering before God the finer, weaker animal, and now, girl, as I read of Mary and her child waiting about Memphis, I discern the past and that present meeting. It seems to me that He who thundered to Pharaoh ‘let my people go’ rëappears in the form of the child, the pitying shepherd, seeking the lost sheep amid earth’s offscourings. More, as I think of Mary, the beautiful outcast, following the fortunes of her Divine Child down into that dark land, and also remember how His blood finally crimsoned her life, I recall the red heifer offered on Israel’s ancient altars. Mary, for the world’s sake, through her maternity, was laid on the altar.”
“Father Adolphus, you dazzle and yet convince me. How wonderful all this seems!”
“I see the Holy Child in Egypt, the building nation of earth, as the founder of a new order of building. Now follow me, child. After the garden and the wilds, where primitive man abode, there came the Tabernacle and Temple. When man enters into the benign influences of social life, he begins building a house to shelter and seclude his own. When he takes God or a god into his society he builds a temple. If there be growth and culture he decorates his buildings, hideously at first, æsthetically after practice. Presently he becomes a scientific builder and a philosopher. Then to him life is all building. He grasps the thought that he is the architect of himself, of his character, of his future. If his religious life is deepened he expresses all his philosophy, all his aspirations in monuments and temples. Moses and Solomon, in tabernacle and temple, but repeated the deeds of Egypt. But Egypt built under the sun, the patriarchs under the Spirit. Egypt had done its best, reached the end of its resources, having filled the land from the Delta to the cataracts of the Nile with pyramidial monument and august fanes. But building under the sun, in the light of nature only, was building in the dark, at least half the time. Christ, the architect of all that is enduring, confronted the achievements of those ancients as a merciful destroyer. He came to them to turn and overturn that, after the ruins, their mind be turned to a building upon and with the precious living Corner-Stone! Try to remember all this. Christianity is on the eve of a new building age. The crusades are ended. Now for religious palaces! But these in turn will be thrust aside, that all may give themselves to build souls up for eternity!”