True Words for Brave Men

me into you."-

arch the Scriptures, in every chapter and verse of it, from beginning to end. For from beginning to end, from Genesis to Malachi-from the Gospel of St. Matthew to the end of the Revelation-what our Lord said of the Bible st

the Jews in his time, "I AM hath sent me unto you." Elijah, Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. John, St. Paul, might have said the same. And so may God's ministers now. And I, howe

by it. Moses meant what God meant, and unless I mean the same thing

every one can say of himself-I am-and it may seem strange that God should have chosen for His own especial name, words which you and I m

a man, I am bad, or I am good, or I am an Englishman, I am a soldier, I am a sailor, I am a clergyman

and becoming something different from what we were a minute before; first of all we were created and made, and so became men; and since that we have been every moment chang

e Time, God made the years; and once there were no years to count by, no years at all. Remember how long had God Himself been, before He made Time, when there was no Time to pass over? Remember always th

like that and so worship it, and have other gods beside the true God, and so break the first and second commandments, as thousands do who fancy themselves good Protestants, and hate Popery and idolatry, and yet worship a very different sort of god from the "I AM," who sent Moses to the children of

iends, here is the root of the whole Gospel, the root of all our hope for this world and for the world to come-fo

a being is God? Is He far off? Millions of miles from this earth? Does He care nothing about us? Does He let the world go its own way right or wrong? Is He proud and careless? A self-glorifying Deity whose mercy is not over all His works, or even over any of them? Or does He care for us? Does He see us? Will He speak to us? Has He ever spoken to

care for men, God does see men, God is not far off from any one of us." Ay, God speaks to men-God spoke to Moses and sai

r the other to preach repentance and righteousness, and to teach men all that was good for them; and when men would not listen to them, but shut their ears to them and drove them out, kill

ng God, who wills that none should perish, who sends to seek and to save those who are lost, who sends His sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil. A God who so loved the world which He had made, in spite of all its sin and follies, that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. A God who sits on His throne for ever judging right, and minister

. And always active, always working to do good to all his creatures, like that exact pattern and cop

AM hath sent

igns and wonders for their sakes, and brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm. Were they high-spirited and brave? On the contrary, they were mean-spirited and cowards, murmuring against Moses and against God, if anything went wrong, for setting them free; ready to go back and be slaves to the Egyptians rather than face danger and fight; looking back and longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, where they eat bread to the full, and willing to be slaves again and have all their men children drowned in the river, and themselves put to hard labour in the brick kilns, if

nly an ignorant, brutish, cowardly set of people, fallen lower far t

yearned over them all the more, and longed to make them good. Just because they were so unclean and brutish His holiness longed all the more to cleanse them. Because they were so stupid and ignorant, His wisdom longed to make them wise. Because they were so miserable, His pity yearned over them, as a father over a

rcases fell in the Wilderness. A sad forty years they were for Moses also, as he says in that sad and glorious Psalm of his (Ps. xc. 7, 8): "We consume away in thy displeasure, and are afraid of thy wr

r all those forty years. He fed them with manna in the w

t to raise us from the death of sin (which is the only death we need to be afraid of) to the life of righteousness-the only life worth living here, the only life which we can live beyond the grave! A just God, a merciful God, a patient God, a generous God, a gracious God; a God who

gnify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory