vii. 18), of one also who had unlearned, in the
experience now of eighty years, the desire of glittering achievement and
martial fame, who knew that the deepest fountains of real power are
hidden, and was content that another should lead the headlong and
victorious charge, if only it were his to hold, upon the top of the
hill, the rod of God.

Once it was his own rod: with it the exiled shepherd controlled the
sheep of his master; that it should be the medium of the miraculous had
appeared to be an additional miracle, but now it was the very rod of
God, nor was any cry to heaven more eloquent and better grounded than
simply the reaching toward the skies, in long, steady, mute appeal, of
that symbol of all His dealings with them--the plaguing of Egypt, the
recession of the tide and its wild return, the bringing of water from
the rock. Was all to be in vain? Should the wild boar waste the vine
just brought out of Egypt before ever it reached the appointed vineyard?
And we also should be able to plead with God the noble works that He
hath done in our time. For us also there ought to be such experience as
worketh hope. As long as the exertion was possible even to the heroic
force which age had not abated, Moses thus prayed for his people; for
the gesture was a prayer, and a grand one, and must not be criticised
otherwise than as the act of a poetic and primitive genius, whose
institutions throughout are full of spiritual import. While he did this,
Israel prevailed; but the slow progress of the victory reminds us of
these dreary centuries during which we are just able to discern some
gradual advance of the kingdom of Christ on earth, but no rout, no
collapse of evil. And why was this? Because the sustaining and permanent
energy was not to flow from the prayers of one, however holy and however
eminent; three men were together in the mountain, and the co-operation
of them all was demanded; so that only when Aaron and Hur supported the
sinking hand of their chief was the decisive victory given.

Now, the lesson from all this does not concern the High-priestly
intercession of our Lord, for the office of Moses is consistently
distinguished from the priesthood. Nor can the notion be tolerated that
if our Lord requires mortal co-operation before asking and being given
the heathen for His heritage, which is obviously the case, the reason
can be at all expressed by that weakness which needed support.

No, the Lord our Priest is als