SERMON XXV.

THE VEIL ON THE FACE OF MOSES.

EXODUS XXxiv. 35.

And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses's face shone and Moses put the veil upon his face again until he went in to speak with him.

I OBSERVED in the beginning of my last sermon that Moses was a man much honoured of God, and here is another very striking instance of it. Though he had not been permitted to see the face of God, for that glory he could not have endured, yet a glory is put upon his own face, which made him an object of wonder, and even of alarm, to his countrymen. After he had had that gracious manifestation which God was pleased to make to him while he was hidden in the cleft of

the rock, he was taken up again into the mount, and there remained with the Lord a second time as before. He again received the ten commandments, written once more with the finger of God on two tables of stone, in place of those which he had broken, with other laws of a judicial and ceremonial nature. When he came down from the mount with these in his hand, it was seen that a divine brightness shone upon his face, which made him appear to them something more than human. He himself was unconscious of it, but Aaron and all the people were struck with such an awe that they were afraid to come nigh him. He called them to him, and that they might converse with him freely, he put a veil upon his face while he talked with them. And it appears that he constantly wore the veil in all his intercourse with them, but put it off whenever he went to commune with God, and to receive instructions from him. There he would ever have it renewed and brightened again at the splendour from which it had been derived; and doubtless on every return from such visits the Israelites

would evidently perceive that he had been with God. Now this would greatly tend to increase his authority among the people. There could not be a more striking attestation to the divine appointment which he had received, as their leader and law-giver, than this supernatural appearance. It invested him with a mark of honour such as no diadem on his brow, or crown on his head, could possibly have conferred; and decisively marked him as one who was expressly sent of God.-A similar glory was exhibited upon another mount, many ages after, in one yet greater than Moses, even in that transfiguration of our blessed Lord, when in company with his three favoured disciples, he held converse with Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory. Then "his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." But the divine Jesus put aside this splendour of his as soon as he descended, even as when he came down from heaven he laid aside the glory which he had with the Father before the worlds were, and appeared in fashion not only as a man, but even as a

poor man and a servant. Yet were there several other glorious attestations to his divine mission as well as this, so that while St. John says of him, “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” he adds, “ And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.”

The Spirit of God has directed the Apostle Paul to make a very peculiar use of this circumstance, as we shall find by turning to the third and fourth chapters of his second Epistle to the Corinthians.

1. In the first place we find that he uses it as a proof of the glory of the old dispensation, even while he is shewing the superior glory of the gospel. Thus he writes, "If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away : how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in

glory: for even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory which excelleth." How great are our privileges! Doubtless we should think ourselves highly favoured, if we had a minister of God's word, in whose very face we could see a miraculous and divine light shining continually to prove him a man of God; but we have in fact a far greater privilege than that; for we have the glorious gospel of the blessed God, constantly shedding forth its own divine light in the world, and irradiating men's minds with its spiritual brightness. The Law which was delivered by him whose face so shone, and by which it was itself made glorious, was but a temporary dispensation, and has been done away; but the gospel is the everlasting gospel, and will continue henceforward the instruction and salvation of all who believe it to the end of the world. The Law, thus honoured, was the ministration of condemnation and death, because it denounced its curse upon every one who should transgress it even in one point; but the gospel is the ministration of righteousness by