THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE 257 



and cannot tell whether what he sees be cloud or 

 mountain. And until they could make up their minds 

 that there was some substance in the vision, they did 

 not embrace it. They were not credulous. Neither 

 were they carelessly or heedlessly sure that there was 

 and could be nothing in the vision but mist and fancy. 

 They recognized that on their decision of the question 

 hung the life of which they meant to make the very 

 most. They looked again and again, and kept think- 

 ing about it. Thus they became and were " persuaded 

 of them." And most people stop here with a merely 

 intellectual faith in their heads, and very little in their 

 hearts and lives. Not so these old heroes ; they were 

 not so purely and coldly intellectual that they could 

 not do anything. They "embraced them." They 

 said, that is exactly what I want and need, and I'll 

 have it, if it costs me my life. 



Now a promise is always conditional ; if you want 

 one thing, you must give up something else. It in- 

 volves a choice between alternatives ; you can have 

 either one freely, you cannot have both. It was to 

 them as to Christ on the " exceeding high mountain," 

 God or the world ; God with the cross, or the world 

 with Satan thrown in. And the same alternative con- 

 fronts us. 



Moses could be a good Jew or a good Egyptian. 

 Most of us, while resolved to be excellent Jews at 

 heart, would have said nothing about it, but remained 

 sons of Pharaoh's daughter in order to benefit the 

 Jews by our influence in our lofty station. We should 

 have become miserable hybrids with all the vices and 

 weaknesses of both races, but with none of the virtues 

 of either. And for all that we should ever have done 

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