on which he beheld. From this book
we learn that, side by side with the most intimate communion and the
clearest possible unveiling of God, grew up the profound consciousness
that only some attributes and not the essence of deity had been
displayed.

It is very instructive also to observe the steps by which Moses is led
upward. From the burning bush to the fiery cloud, and thence to the
blazing mountain, there was an ever-deepening lesson of majesty and awe.
But in answer to the prayer that he might really see the very glory of
his Lord, his mind is led away upon entirely another pathway: it is "All
My goodness" which is now to "pass before" him, and the proclamation is
of "a God full of compassion and gracious," yet retaining His moral
firmness, so that He "will by no means clear the guilty."

What can cloud and fire avail, toward the manifesting of a God Whose
essence is His love? It is from the Old Testament narrative that the New
Testament inferred that Moses endured as seeing indeed, yet as seeing
Him Who is inevitably and for ever invisible to eyes of flesh: he
learned most, not when he beheld some form of awe, standing on a paved
work of sapphire stone and as it were the very heaven for clearness, but
when hidden in a cleft of the rock and covered by the hand of God while
He passed by.

On one hand the people saw the glory of God: on the other hand it was
the best lesson taught by a far closer access, still to pray and yearn
to see that glory. The seventy beheld the God of Israel: for their
leader was reserved the more exalting knowledge, that beyond all vision
is the mystic overshadowing of the Divine, and a voice which says "No
man shall see Me and live." The difference in heart is well typified in
this difference in their conduct, that they saw God and ate and drank,
but he, for forty days, ate not. Satisfaction and assurance are a poor
ideal compared with rapt aspiration and desire.

Thus we see that no conflict exists between this declaration and our
belief in the spirituality of God.

We have still to ask what is the real force of the assertion that God
was in some lesser sense seen of Israel, and again, more especially, of
its leaders.

What do we mean even by saying that we see each other?--that, observing
keenly, we see upon one face cunning, upon another sorrow, upon a third
the peace of God? Are not these emotions immaterial and invisible as the
essence of God Himself? Nay, so invisible is the r