heroism, of
self-devotion have often wiped out and seemed to atone for preceding
lives of dissipation and uselessness. The life of Christ would have been
inefficient without His death. Had He only lived and taught, we should
have known more than was otherwise possible, but it is doubtful whether
His teaching would have been much listened to. It is His death in which
all men are interested. It appeals to all. A love that gave its life for
them, all men can understand. A love that atoned for sin appeals to all,
for all are sinners.

But though this is the chief point of analogy there are others. We do
not know _precisely_ what the Israelites would think of the Brazen
Serpent. We need not repeat from the sacred narrative the circumstances
in which it was formed and lifted up in the wilderness. The singularity
of the remedy provided for the plague of serpents under which the
Israelites were suffering, consisted in this, that it resembled the
disease. Serpents were destroying them, and from this destruction they
were saved by a serpent. This special mode of cure was obviously not
chosen without a reason. To those among them who were instructed in the
symbolic learning of Egypt there might be in this image a significance
which is lost to us. From the earliest times the serpent had been
regarded as man's most dangerous enemy--more subtle than any beast of
the field, more sudden and stealthy in its attack, and more certainly
fatal. The natural revulsion which men feel in its presence, and their
inability to cope with it, seemed to fit it to be the natural
representative of the powers of spiritual evil. And yet, strangely
enough, in the very countries in which it was recognised as the symbol
of all that is deadly, it was also recognised as the symbol of life.
Having none of the ordinary members or weapons of the wilder lower
creatures, it was yet more agile and formidable than any of them; and,
casting its skin annually, it seemed to renew itself with eternal youth.
And as it was early discovered that the most valuable medicines are
poisons, the serpent, as the very "personification of poison," was
looked upon as not only the symbol of all that is deadly, but also of
all that is health-giving. And so it has continued to be, even to our
own days, the recognised symbol of the healing art, and, wreathed round
a staff, as Moses had it, it may still be seen sculptured on our own
hospitals and schools of medicine.

But whatever else