Christ amid many
perplexities and obscurities. And so the patriarchs, who knew God
Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah, were not lost for want of the
knowledge of His name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living Being
to Whom all these names belong, and Who shall yet write upon the brows
of His people some new name, hitherto undreamed by the ripest of the
saints and the purest of the Churches. Meantime, let us learn the
lessons of tolerance for other men's ignorance, remembering the
ignorance of the father of the faithful, tolerance for difference of
views, remembering how the unusual and rare name of God was really the
precursor of a brighter revelation, and yet again, when our hearts are
faint with longing for new light, and weary to death of the babbling of
old words, let us learn a sober and cautious reconsideration, lest
perhaps the very truth needed for altered circumstance and changing
problem may lie, unheeded and dormant, among the dusty old phrases from
which we turn away despairingly. Moreover, since the fathers knew the
name Jehovah, yet gained from it no special knowledge of God, such as
they had from His Almightiness, we are taught that discernment is often
more at fault than revelation. To the quick perception and plastic
imagination of the artist, our world reveals what the boor will never
see. And the saint finds, in the homely and familiar words of Scripture,
revelations for His soul that are unknown to common men. Receptivity is
what we need far more than revelation.

Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith of his countrymen, by a
solemn repetition of the Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they
shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that is to say, with a
palpable interposition of the power of God, "and with great judgments."
It is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase, afterwards so
common. Not mere vengeance upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in
question: the thought is that of a deliberate weighing of merits, and
rendering out of measured penalties. Now, the Egyptian mythology had a
very clear and solemn view of judgment after death. If king and people
had grown cruel, it was because they failed to realise remote
punishments, and did not believe in present judgments, here, in this
life. But there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Not always, for
mercy rejoiceth over judgment. We may still pray, "Enter not into
judgment with Thy servants, O Lord, for in Thy