There you will find, in the history of men like ourselves—and, above all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect Man—perfect Man and perfect God together—whatsoever is true, whatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every virtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire. Read of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on them with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed on; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus Christ himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.
And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.
SERMON IX. MOSES
(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)
EXODUS iii. 14. And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.
And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible—excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ—the story of how a family grew to be a great nation. You remember that I told you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history of a family.
Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.
Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.
Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and made them free men. And how God did that (for God in general works by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race—Moses.
It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.