Isa. x. 17). But God reveals Himself in this thorn
bush as a fire which does not consume; and such a revelation tells at
once Who has brought the people into affliction, and also that they are
not abandoned to it.

To Moses at first there was visible only an extraordinary phenomenon; He
turned to see a great sight. It is therefore out of the question to find
here the truth, so easy to discover elsewhere, that God rewards the
religious inquirer--that they who seek after Him shall find Him. Rather
we learn the folly of deeming that the intellect and its inquiries are
at war with religion and its mysteries, that revelation is at strife
with mental insight, that he who most stupidly refuses to "see the great
sights" of nature is best entitled to interpret the voice of God. When
the man of science gives ear to voices not of earth, and the man of God
has eyes and interest for the divine wonders which surround us, many a
discord will be harmonised. With the revival of classical learning came
the Reformation.

But it often happens that the curiosity of the intellect is in danger of
becoming irreverent, and obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and
thus the voice of God must speak in solemn warning: "Moses, Moses, ...
Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground."

After as prolonged a silence as from the time of Malachi to the Baptist,
it is God Who reveals Himself once more--not Moses who by searching
finds Him out. And this is the established rule. Tidings of the
Incarnation came from heaven, or man would not have discovered the
Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples "What seek ye?" and
told Simon "Thou shalt be called Cephas," and pronounced the listening
Nathaniel "an Israelite indeed," and bade Zaccheus "make haste and come
down," in each case before He was addressed by them.

The first words of Jehovah teach something more than ceremonial
reverence. If the dust of common earth on the shoe of Moses may not
mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry into the presence of our
God mean passions and selfish cravings? Observe, too, that while Jacob,
when he awoke from his vision, said, "How dreadful is this place!" (Gen.
xxviii. 17), God Himself taught Moses to think rather of the holiness
than the dread of His abode. Nevertheless Moses also was afraid to look
upon God, and hid the face which was thereafter to be veiled, for a
nobler reason,