There are three ambassadors from God, bearing different messages to the world, who stand out from all else, like the pole-star and the “pointers” of Ursa Major in the northern skies. As the pole-star looks down on the earth with unsleeping care day and night, so Christ, the greatest of these ambassadors, remains ever the central pivot, round which the creation progresses, and in which it centers. And as the two “pointers” circle round that central star from eternity to eternity, nearer to one another than to it, as though placed at a reverential distance from it, yet always in a direct line pointing to it, the well-known and unfailing guides of way-worn travelers and storm-tossed mariners, so the other two ambassadors, Moses and Elias, always, whether consciously or unconsciously, visibly or invisibly, stand out as burning and shining lights circling round and pointing to Christ, the pole-star and pivot of the vast realm of all the gleaming constellations of God's desires and decrees.
Though such immeasurable distance separates the two subordinate ambassadors from their chief, yet there is much in common to the three. Each is tested by the forty days' fasting, and attested by miraculous works. Characteristically, the miracles of Moses (the dispensation of law) are nearly all works of judgment and punishment. The miracles of Elijah (the prophet) of a mingled character—he calls down fire, but rain also. The miracles of Christ are (as becomes the gospel) entirely of a healing, beneficent, saving nature. These three ambassadors met eventually, on the holy mountain, in the hour that joined and separated two eternities, as the Isthmus of Panama connects and severs the two oceans; and they spoke together of that which they had in their different spheres of testimony always spoken of—whether by word or action—the event to which all the eternal histories converge and focus— “His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” When that final combined testimony is effected, the mysterious cloud envelopes them and removes the ambassadors of law and prophecy, leaving only Him of the gospel, whilst the Voice from the excellent glory pronounces, “This is My beloved Son, Hear HIM.”
There was especially one feature in common in the lives of these three ambassadors. It was—contrary to what might be expected—outward defeat. We are apt to think that the great benefactors of the earth live in a continual whirl of victory. Certain the truth is that the greatest of them have lived in a vortex of disasters. They may go from strength to strength, but outwardly it seems to be from weakness to weakness. And this reveals the quality of their natures. For it is not difficult to be virtuous and venturesome when every effort is crowned with success. It is infinitely nobler to adhere to a right purpose when every effort is mocked with failure. It is perhaps the noblest of all qualities in a created being to cling to a right cause when providential circumstances are perpetually adverse. To Christ by every outward test God Himself seemed so; as in that hour when the Voice of agony cried in the darkness, “My God! why hast THOU forsaken Me?” Yet He who thus suffered from God and man knew that what He was accomplishing was according to the will of God, and endured to the end.
It was this quality—God-given—in Moses that makes him so pre-eminently a type of Christ, and fitly one of the three great plenipotentiaries. In very many ways he was typical, but in this above all, that his life and work was a prolonged series of defeats and retreats, and without one tangible result of benefit at its close. Yet for all this he adheres to the revealed will of God to the disastrous end, and achieves vastly more than any other human being that ever lived.
But consider this element of undaunted devotion to a right course through defeat: how infinitely it is above that useful but common-place virtue of doing right in the expectation that virtue will always be rewarded and vice punished. Seneca's pilot has far higher thoughts than that when in the tempest he cries to the God of the seas, “You may save me if You will; you may sink me if You will; but what ever happens I shall keep my rudder true!” The truth is that there is no possibility of our seeing the highest moral qualities—nor perhaps of their existing at all in a created being—apart from defeat. The noble nature will survive and qualify defeat, and often by “heavenly alchemy” transmute it into victory. Caesar falls on the shore while landing: the soldiers are dismayed at the ill-omen; but he grasps the ground with his hands, saying, “Thus I take possession of thee, Africa!” Thus also he of Normandy, falling down at Bulverbythe, said, “I have taken seizin of this land with both mine hands.” There have been some very great men who have done strange things with defeats. The august Washington constructed a new continent with them; and the illustrious William the Silent, into whose labors Washington entered, not only hardly ever ever gained a battle, but lost continually under all kinds of untoward, unexpected, disastrous circumstances, yet to no one man, since Luther, does the world owe more for deliverance from religious and political tyranny. This quality seemed to characterize this man's family too: his kinsman, “Admiral Coligni, said, ‘I have lost four battles; yet I show to the enemy a more formidable front than ever.' The blood of Coligni ran in the veins of William (III. of England), and with the blood had descended the unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure as much glory as happier commanders owed to suecess."
The ancient Scandinavians said that Thor smote the sleeping earth-demon, Skrymir, three colossal blows with his hammer on the face; but Skrymir merely woke up and brushed his cheek, saying that a leaf must have fallen. Thor seemed to have quite failed, and left the Utgard much discouraged. But afterward he found that the three blows had dented three great valleys into the earth. Time often reveals that what had been derided as a falling leaf was really a giant's blow.
But for the present there is but apparent failure; and we do well to avoid the vulgar error of judging of causes by their outward success, or being influenced by the desire of popularity or the fear of defeat. “'Tie not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." Outwardly the life of Moses was one long retreat from foe and assault from friend; and when at last he stands, after a century of hard endurance, labor, strife, and self-sacrifice, with undimmed view and undaunted heart, within sight of the goal, “Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.” Alas, for hope, “if thou wert all, And naught beyond, O earth!”