itled to encourage his
people, because he could encourage them, because he saw and announced
the kindly meaning of that tremendous scene, because he dared presently
to draw near unto the thick darkness where God was.

And therefore the day would come when, with his noble heart aflame for a
yet more splendid vision, he would cry, "O Lord, I beseech Thee show me
Thy glory"--some purer and clearer irradiation, which would neither
baffle the moral sense, nor conceal itself in cloud.

Meanwhile, there was a fear which should endure, and which God desires:
not panic, but awe; not the terror which stood afar off, but the
reverence which dares not to transgress. "Fear not, for God is come to
prove you" (to see whether the nobler emotion or the baser will
survive), "and that His fear may be before your faces" (so as to guide
you, instead of pressing upon you to crush), "that ye sin not."

How needful was the lesson, may be seen by what followed when they were
taken at their word, and the pressure of physical dread was lifted off
them. "They soon forgat God their Saviour ... they made a calf in
Horeb, and worshipped the work of their own hands." Perhaps other
pressures which we feel and lament to-day, the uncertainties and fears
of modern life, are equally required to prevent us from forgetting God.

Of the nobler fear, which is a safeguard of the soul and not a danger,
it is a serious question whether enough is alive among us.

Much sensational teaching, many popular books and hymns, suggest rather
an irreverent use of the Holy Name, which is profanation, than a filial
approach to a Father equally revered and loved. It is true that we are
bidden to come with boldness to the throne of Grace. Yet the same
Epistle teaches us again that our approach is even more solemn and awful
than to the Mount which might be touched, and the profaning of which was
death; and it exhorts us to have grace whereby we may offer service
well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe, "for our God is a consuming
fire" (Heb. iv. 16, xii. 28). That is the very last grace which some
Christians ever seem to seek.

When the people recoiled, and Moses, trusting in God, was brave and
entered the cloud, they ceased to have direct communion, and he was
brought nearer to Jehovah than before.

What is now conveyed to Israel through him is an expansion and
application of the Decalogue, and in turn it becomes the nucleus of the
developed law. Its great antiquity