CHAPTER XII.

THE BOOK OF EXODUS—ITS PRACTICAL AND ESOTERIC TEACHING.

When rapidly running through some of the contents of Genesis, we dwelt particularly upon those wonderful Type Men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (transformed into Israel), and then Joseph,—a character of such rare beauty and comprehensive excellence that words fail utterly to do full justice to the magnificent ideal thus set before us. Turning now to Exodus, we find one majestic solitary figure towering in sublime moral magnificence far above all the rest, even Moses, the unrivaled prophet who to this day remains the grandest law-enforcer of whom we have any distinct record. In Genesis we are made acquainted with Egypt in the days of its ancient splendor, when the Pharaohs (Native Rulers) were just and honorable men and extended to Joseph, the representative Israelite, not only a cordial welcome but also assigned him the exalted station to which his extraordinary capabilities entirely entitled him. Then were the happy days when Egyptian and Israelite dwelt side by side in harmony, wisely co-operating for the general good. In those remote days it appears that Egypt had well-nigh perfectly solved some of those intricate industrial problems which are greatly vexing the world to-day. The Hebrews were originally a pastoral and agricultural people, while the Egyptians were given to arts and crafts; they were also navigators and chemists of a high degree of proficiency. Racial differences have always existed, and it is perfectly right that we should recognize them still, but difference rightly understood never implies discord; on the contrary, it constitutes the only basis for exquisite harmony. There could be unison but not harmony in song if all voices were of the same pitch and all singers sounded the same note; so is it with the great human chorus composed of the various races of humanity; they are properly distinct, but they never ought to appear discordant.

The Book of Exodus introduces us to a very different state of affairs, when it informs us that “another king arose who knew not Joseph”; a brief, comprehensive sentence containing in germ the entire history of the fatal progress of Egyptian degeneracy, resulting finally in that abject decadence which brought about the complete overthrow of the Pharoic dynasty, tragically described in the graphic account of the destruction of the Egyptian host in the Red Sea, while those who had been cruelly enslaved and maltreated by Egypt's degenerate rulers were making their escape from bondage and taking their first vigorous steps on the road to complete enfranchisement. It is in the midst of a degraded Egypt that the sublime figure of Moses rises into a position of conspicuous leadership. We know quite well that the character of Moses is far from perfect, but perfect characters are never discoverable among us; we all, even the greatest of us, have certain very definite moral and mental limitations, and were we to refuse to accord honor to a great leader because he exhibited some failings and frailties, we should be compelled to entirely abandon all that useful, because temperate and sagacious, hero-worship which, when kept within reasonable limits, is unquestionably a highly elevating factor in human development. The beautiful Bible story of Moses is full of picturesque detail, commencing with the Ark of Bulrushes in which he is found when an infant by an Egyptian princess, who takes the little Hebrew boy into her kindly charge and secures for him all the advantages which the highest culture of the day could afford. The Hebrew name Moshe means literally drawn up out of the water, and has no exclusive reference to the mere incident of a literal rescue from physical drowning at a time when the curse of anti-Semitism had invaded Egypt, to such an extent that drastic measures were employed for killing off in infancy multitudes of male Hebrews. The spiritual significance of the name Moshe denotes one whose consciousness has become elevated to a higher than the simply intellectual level; water signifying intellect esoterically. The life of Moses, which extended to 120 years, is divided into three periods of forty years each. The First Period is devoted to education; the Second to civil employment; the Third to seership. We are told in Exodus that Moses was fully eighty years of age when he turned aside at Horeb to behold that great sight, the bush burning with fire which, however, remained unconsumed. Though very beautiful poetic allusions have been made to this bush, as though it were a vegetable, by John Greenleaf Whittier, Theodore Parker, and other excellent modern writers, and their references are thoroughly well justified, we know that the original meaning of the bush is human nature itself. Moses was a veritable prince among anthropologists, and because of his intimate and profound acquaintance with human nature essentially, it is truly said that he beheld the Divine Similitude. In the thirteen articles of Jewish faith, compiled in the twelfth century of the present era by Moses Maimonides, we find the following saying: “There hath never risen yet in Israel a prophet like unto Moses; one who hath beheld his similitude.” Taking these words in connection with the sublime sentences which precede and follow them, we are fully justified in connecting this statement with the declaration in the first chapter of Genesis that humanity is created in the Divine likeness, therefore those truly great prophets who have revealed Divine Law to humanity with special fulness and clearness, are simply those who have attained to a higher degree of spiritual development than the majority. Reverence for great men may be carried to an extreme, but there is surely no just reason for denying the self-evident fact that once in a while some especially illumined teacher does appear among us, never, properly, as an object of worship, but as a true and faithful guide to some fuller comprehension of the one living and true God whom all the prophets in Israel have most emphatically declared to be the only proper object of human adoration. Let “higher criticism” dispute over historical occurrences as it may, the sublimity of the moral law contained in the Book of Exodus can never suffer in the slightest degree by reason of anyone's alleged ignorance of the time and place of its original enunciation. The intrinsic value of the Ten Commandments is in no sense affected by any surrounding circumstances in ancient or modern days, and it is surely to the Mosaic type of man that the world is indebted for such clear and wonderful deliverances concerning courses of thought as well as action, necessary not only to the preservation of human society but to its continual elevation to ever higher and higher levels of attainment. Were the other nine commandments to be treated only as pertaining to outward conduct, the Tenth would always remain so thoroughly related to our most interior life of thought and feeling that its pure spirituality would ever constitute it a beacon light for human guidance, until the blessed time arrives when no commandments will be longer necessary, because a perfect love for goodness and truth will be so fully developed within us that we shall no longer need any external prohibition or exhortation. Moses may well be regarded as a truly great Adept and Initiate into those universal Mysteries which Theosophists and many others are now endeavoring to unveil and practically apply to existing human necessities. A people in bondage like Israel in Egypt may well be looked upon as representing a stage in human evolution prior to the awakening of spiritual consciousness. The Bible seems to tell us that people are very comfortable in servitude until a new love of liberty awakens within them; then they become restless and restive, and in the endeavor to shake off their bonds they always encounter trial from within and persecution from without. Such has ever been the history alike of individuals and of nations; thus the story of Exodus applies not only to deliverance from physical slavery, but, in a much higher sense, to spiritual emancipation. Whenever a great crisis is reached in the progress of a nation, some great deliverer arises wonderfully equipped to lead a multitude which could not lead itself; likewise whenever an individual reaches a similar crisis in interior development, some hitherto unknown intuition causes, at one and the same time, discontent with prevailing modes of life and a more or less distinct vision of some higher state attainable. We observe that Moses is the younger and Aaron the elder brother, but the Divine voice speaks to Moses and through Moses to Aaron, then through Aaron to the multitude. This statement agrees exactly with the pre-eminence of the younger Jacob over the elder Esau, and gives significance to a famous modern phrase, “That which is latest born is highest born.” Here we can readily trace the complete foundation of the universal truth of involution and evolution, for no matter in what direction we turn for example and illustration, we find it invariably stated, in the most widely divergent treatises, that the lowest forms of existence appear earliest and the highest class come last of all. We talk very curiously about “olden times” when we mean earlier days; but just as we grow older from year to year, so must time grow older; this year is therefore the oldest year the earth has known, and as human beings are justly supposed to have been gathering experience through all the years which have passed, and to be therefore far maturer in judgment at seventy than at seventeen, so as the earth advances we have the right to expect that knowledge will continually increase, therefore the newest generation and the youngest individuals may be in very truth the oldest. Moses represents the intuitive man who sees everything through spiritual perception; he is therefore purely a prophet, while his elder brother Aaron has only that intellectual understanding which enables him to deal with those external matters which always pertain to the priestly office. As we follow the Book of Exodus from stage to stage, we find how naturally the author tells us that there comes a time when Aaron can be made to yield to the idolatrous wishes of the people while Moses is absent, but Moses remains relentless in his refusal to yield to any popular demand which his conviction cannot sanction. This has always been the great historical difference between prophet and priest, and it certainly exists manifestly at the present day. It is the superb courage, the dauntless moral bravery of Moses, which singles him out as a type of very much that is abidingly noblest in our common human nature, and it is not too much to claim that every true leader of a multitude must possess and exhibit, in unusually large degree, those prophetic qualities which cause their possessor to brave every possible danger and difficulty for the purpose of arriving at truth and emancipating, as far as possible, enslaved humanity. That very noble and intensely conscientious political economist, Henry George, whose writings deserve the deepest study, gave many a truly inspiring lecture on Moses, taking that heroic ancient prophet as a type of what a valiant leader in any age and anywhere should be. There must be no temporizing, no pandering to injustice, no seeking to curry favor with unrighteous monopolies for selfish ends, or through timidity, but firm, uncompromising adhesion to one’s uttermost convictions of right, no matter at what cost to one’s self or whether the very people in whose interest one is specially working recognize the good intentions of the one who seeks to deliver them or not. Without these qualities and qualifications there can be no such prophet as Moses in the modern, any more than there could have been in the ancient world.

The real prophet is so much more than one who simply foretells coming events that, though there may be some element of forecasting in a prophet’s ministry, he is before all else a champion of liberty and an exhorter to righteousness.

The curious story of the plagues of Egypt offers food for thought along several distinctive lines, one of which is the nature of magic and the part it played in ancient Egypt and Israel. Nowhere do we find a clearer line of demarcation drawn between white magic and black, than in the trial of strength between Moses and Aaron on one hand and Pharaoh’s court magicians on the other. Up to a certain point whatever Moses and Aaron could do, and did, the soothsayers readily duplicated, therefore there could be no victory for either side until the crucial test was made at the time when men and animals were alike suffering from painful and fatal diseases. The power to heal by magical means has been claimed for true prophets and their disciples in all lands and through all ages, and it has been quite reasonably maintained that no healing efficacy can possibly reside in the black magician’s art, because he never works with a desire to benefit humanity, but, on the contrary, to unduly exalt himself and enslave others. We are quite ready to credit the statement in Exodus that while Moses and Aaron could and did perform beneficent works of healing, when the sorcerers attempted to do the same they only succeeded in enlarging the area of misery they were thus vainly attempting to reduce. Reason certainly compels us to decide that in order to accomplish any really beneficent work in the world, no matter by what means, we must have the love of humanity at heart; therefore it has always been justly claimed that power to heal resides only among holy prophets, never among those who, though genuine wonder-workers, producing marvellous phenomena through the performance of magical rites, are in no way actuated by any sincere desire to confer blessings on their neighbors.

The plagues of Egypt were of a startling nature, but they were not in themselves edifying, nor could they throw any light on the divine commission of Moses. They were doubtless due, in large measure, to the exercise of that strange hypnotic power about which we hear so much at present and which always greatly mystifies those who endeavor to rationally explain the wonders often performed in India in sight of European travelers by Hindu magicians. Turning a staff into a snake and a snake back into a staff may be altogether an illusory phenomenon, the spectators being temporarily affected by the mental power of the magician, and it may also be, as many Theosophists distinctly claim, that these wonder-workers have acquired through rigid self-training a control over Nature-Spirits which can be made to do their bidding. Causing the waters of the Nile to assume the semblance of blood, and also the mysterious production of quantities of locusts and other pests, would be well within the province of any sort of magician according to universal testimony regarding magic, but there would be nothing in all this to suggest any divine activity. When we come to the affliction of the beasts, many Jewish commentators have suggested that as certain animals were accounted sacred and unduly venerated in Egypt, the power exerted by Moses and Aaron to subject these creatures to affliction was intended as a convincing rebuke to prevailing idolatry, showing that the bull and other idolised animals were not able to protect themselves against attacks which might be made by men upon them; thereby proving that they were neither divinities nor under the special protection of divinities. Whatever we may think of that interpretation—and there is something to be said in favor of it—a clear moral issue is at stake only when we reach the point where the great prophets in Israel relieve the suffering alike of men and animals while their opponents can only increase distress. This is a very old and also a very new lesson, quite as much needed at the present moment as in any time of old, for we are witnessing to-day an almost overwhelming recrudescence of interest in everything avowedly magical, and especially in everything Egyptian, so much so that the weirdest and most fantastic tales have been very recently circulated concerning the dire catastrophes which have befallen impertinent persons who have behaved rudely to a painted mummy case, representing an Egyptian princess, in the British Museum.

We have no right ever to positively deny what we cannot definitely disprove, either on ethical or intellectual grounds; but we have a right to refrain from blindly endorsing almost incredible narratives, and particularly are we justified in discountenancing alarming beliefs concerning the powers of sorcery which, wherever entertained, can have no other effect than to weaken the nervous system and cloud the mind with dim forebodings of disaster. The plagues of Egypt must have had a highly salutary effect in two directions: First, they served to show exactly where a line can and must be drawn between beneficent and maleficent wonder-working; Second, they were instrumental in leading to the dethronement of tyranny and the gradual emancipation of an enslaved multitude.

Turning from an outer to an inner view of these strange records, a mystic commentary thereon will lead us to see in the Egyptians of the Book of Exodus all those, even at the present day, who, because dwelling in the night of ignorance and enslaving superstition themselves, are bent on doing all they can to hold others in captivity.

In the great mass of the Hebrews we may imagine those who, though by no means as yet fully enlightened, are nevertheless awakening to a sense of their captivity and becoming filled with what we now often call divine discontent, are struggling to break their bonds. In Moses and Aaron (Moses especially) we behold the picture of those few who are so thoroughly consecrated to high ideals and so completely bent, no matter at what hazard to themselves, on carrying forward the glorious work of liberating the enslaved, that they do all and dare all to the utmost extent of their ability to accomplish the noble end to which they feel they have been called by the divine voice within them. The two great and serious problems of moral and industrial slavery need solution in modern Europe and America even as they needed solving in ancient Egypt, and we may well hope that there is to be found a modern as well as an ancient Horeb and Moses. The tragic overthrow of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, presents in glowing imagery the inevitable disaster which must finally overtake all governments and monopolies which fight to maintain themselves at the expense of every humane consideration. We must not gloat over the sufferings of individuals, who physically perish in the days of some great revolution which results in the upward progress of humanity, but we may well triumph in the thought that cruelty and injustice invariably play a losing game, for, as Robert Browning beautifully expresses it, “God's in His heaven; all's right with the world.” This magnificent truth so sublimely uttered and so constantly reiterated by all the world's greatest prophets and poets, should prove an anchor of refuge in every time of trial, no matter how severe our trials may be, by nerving us with that true optimism which can alone sustain us in times of affliction by enabling us to cling with unflinching faith to a doctrine of the universe which places Divinity at its center and destroys all belief in the ultimate triumph of inequity in any portion of it. There are two texts in the Book of Exodus, equally sublime, but adapted to diametrically opposite human conditions, which we do well to so lay to heart that we may receive inspiration from them both in times of needed repose and in periods which call for instant and vigorous action. The first of these is, “Stand still and thou shalt see the salvation of God"; the second is, “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” To understand the import of these two mighty sayings, we must take well into account the circumstances in which they both were uttered. The first came at a time when, if the people had stepped forward, they would have been instantly drowned, and had they gone backward they would have run into the swords of their pursuing enemies. The second applied to taking decisive action at such a period as we often call “the psychological moment.” One lesson for us to learn is that sometimes there is nothing for us to do, and then it is that we require to summon all our energy to do nothing. No course to pursue is more difficult and no act is more heroic than to remain quite quiet in a time of panic, when people all around us are frenzied with excitement; and nothing again evinces more thoroughly developed intuition than to make a necessary move at exactly the right moment, and in exactly the way which will prove most permanently effective.

When the people went out of Egypt they carried with them all that was worth conveying away of the religious ideas and ceremonies and also of the social usages of the Egyptians. This is symbolically stated in the statement that they borrowed jewels of gold and silver and “spoiled” the Egyptian. In this single sentence we have a distinct clue to the influence of Egyptian upon Hebrew culture, and we have also a plain intimation that when the old Egyptian civilization came to an end all that was really valuable in it was carried forward to other lands and eventually became incorporated in the institutions of other countries. Figuratively speaking, again applying the story of Exodus to universal human development, we may well decide that nothing worthy of preservation can ever be really lost, though it may often change its outward form, and sometimes remain to a large extent buried (but never dead), to come to active life again when some new age begins to dawn in human history, and some new race is evolving to embody the excellences of the past coupled with new developments unknown in ancient epochs.