e
lived a strange and isolated life. At each new interview the glory of
his countenance was renewed, and when he conveyed his revelation to the
people, they beheld the lofty sanction, the light of God upon his face.
Then he veiled his face until next he approached his God, so that none
might see what changes came there, and whether--as St. Paul seems to
teach us--the lustre gradually waned.

His revelation, the apostle argues, was like this occasional and fading
gleam, while the moral glory of the Christian system has no
concealments: it uses great frankness; there is nothing withdrawn, no
veil upon the face. Nor is it given to one alone to behold as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord, and to share its lustre. We all, with face
unveiled, share this experience of the deliverer (2 Cor. iii. 12, 18).

But the incident itself is most instructive. Since he had already spent
an equal time with God, yet no such results had followed, it seems that
we receive what we are adapted to receive, not straitened in Him but in
our own capabilities; and as Moses, after his vehemence of intercession,
his sublimity of self-negation, and his knowledge of the greater name of
God, received new lustre from the unchangeable Fountain of light, so
does all true service and earnest aspiration, while it approaches God,
elevate and glorify humanity.

We learn also something of the exaltation of which matter is capable. We
who have seen coarse bulb and soil and rain transmuted by the sunshine
into radiance of bloom and subtlety of perfume, who have seen plain
faces illuminated from within until they were almost angelic,--may we
not hope for something great and rare for ourselves, and the beloved who
are gone, as we muse upon the profound word, "It is raised a spiritual
body"?

And again we learn that the best religious attainment is the least
self-conscious: Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.

CHAPTERS XXXV-XL.

_THE CONCLUSION._

The remainder of the narrative sets forth in terms almost identical with
the directions already given, the manner in which the Divine injunctions
were obeyed. The people, purified in heart by danger, chastisement and
shame, brought much more than was required. A quarter of a million would
poorly represent the value of the shrine in which, at the last, Moses
and Aaron approached their God, while the cloud covered the tent and the
glory filled the tabernacle, and Moses failed to overcome his awe an