OUTSIDE THE CAMP. ILLUMINED FACES.
A principle of the highest practical importance is shown us when, after the idolatry of Israel, “Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp.... and every one which sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation which was without the camp". We see thus that a time may come when an institution which has undoubtedly been set up by God Himself must be abandoned, because of its present corruption and apostasy. A time may come when it is as clear a duty to forsake it as till then it had been clearly a duty to support it. The drummer boy told his captors that he could not play the signal for retreat” they didn't use it in the English army “; and the brave French officer, who liked courage and loved epigram, smiled and sent him back free to his own company. But the boy's statement, though well invented, was not true. The greatest general of that age had said that the most important quality in a commander was to see when it was necessary to retreat, and to dare to do it.
This principle is sometimes misapplied, and then, like all else that is valuable when misused, it is apt to be dangerous—even disastrous. Obviously, if we can follow our own inclinations in such matters, there is no obligation to unity and cooperation in a divine testimony at all. Every great little man that can find a few followers can seize a few boards of the tabernacle and trot outside to make a new camp whenever he cannot get his own way in everything. It is nothing to the purpose to say that the seceders will march and fight in the same direction as the others. What commander could admit of that kind of thing—a substitution of guerilla strife for organized and united battle? It is not “magnificent,” and it certainly “is not war”.
And yet there is a time when withdrawal is commanded. Before that time to withdraw is cowardice: after that time to remain is treason. 1—As to when the hour is, we are not left to our own capricious judgment. No private voice, no merely human chief, however influential, is authorized to initiate such a movement. When on one of the Spanish galleons, at the battle of Gravelines, a man was hauling down the flag, the commander stabbed him on the spot. Who gave the man any authority to pull down the flag? Surely that is a matter for the leader. In the case before us it is when Moses (typical of Christ as Leader) removes the tabernacle containing the ark (typical of Christ as the Center of worship and testimony) that the time has come. When such an institution is found neither to possess Christ as Leader or Center, it is no longer treason to leave it: it is treason to remain.
But we have much evidence that the forbearance of the Lord is so great that, so far from forsaking for a light cause anything which He has set up, He will linger till the last instant that there is the slightest possibility of any reformation. In the ancient days the Shekinah lingered near Jerusalem for a long time before finally departing. In the Gospels Jesus visited the temple to the last and purged it judicially until their infamous bargain with Judas was concluded; then He leads the disciples to Olivet. In the church history of Revelation, even after the Laodiceans have excluded Him from their assemblies, He lingers at the door and knocks. And the disciple is not above his Master: so long as the Master can bear with a disorderly and inconsistent condition of things, the disciple should be able to do so likewise. We should not leave the sinking ship before the captain has decided that the time has come. To do so before that is to act as the rats do: hence the verb “to rat” —a vile verb truly, and though it goes smoothly enough in the first persons singular and plural, a horribly irregular one.
Let those who are easily offended by the inconsistencies of their fellow-servants consider however what an extremity of patience their Master exercises before He gives such cases up. In this case before us there was no removal of the tabernacle until the mass of the people in their idolatrous apostasy had treasonably elected a calf to Jehovah's throne. In the Epistles we see frequently indications of the gravest inconsistencies and disorders in the churches—as at Corinth and Galatia—but no directions given for any to withdraw and commence afresh. All efforts and exhortations are directed towards reform, except where conditions of general apostasy and idolatry render all such attempts hopeless. Then the apostle says, “From such turn away”. “Come out from among them and be ye separate.”
“ And I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty:” thus the passage proceeds. When such a step has to be taken, with all that it involves of obloquy and renunciation, there is granted—always provided that the step is taken in obedience to the expressed will of God—a special revelation of divine favor and countenance. Moses then asks, “If I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now Thy way, [for what?] that I may know Thee: and consider that this nation is Thy people”. Jehovah replies by granting him a special revelation of Himself, and by saying, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest!”
And thereafter the man's face became so illumined with an unutterable, celestial glory, that the people were filled with awe and wonder. In this there was a type of that “light of the knowledge of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. Only, as Paul tells us concerning it, the light from the face of Moses, being symbolic of the legal covenant, was so powerful that it repelled the unregenerate beholders: the light of the gospel, however, shining in the face of Jesus Christ, carries a peculiar power with it which enables the beholders to draw nigh and gaze unharmed.
In any case the face of a man who communes thus with God becomes thereby illumined with a divine glory and beauty, which (though he may be all unconscious thereof himself), when turned upon his fellow-men, yields them a celestial light. This is indeed a beauty “which age cannot wither nor custom stale”. It is independent of all external form. Paul is traditionally held to have been infirm and mean in outward appearance; yet always in all our minds, when we think of him, we think of “a light that ne'er was seen on land or sea” resting on his face, a light of spiritual and intellectual beauty. Plato speaks of the beauty of Socrates, and Phavorinus, comparing him (about the ugliest man in Greece) with his friend Alcibiades (who was about the handsomest), says that the beauty of Socrates will endure undimmed when that of Alcibiades was withering—ay, and when it shall rot in corruption.
And in no way can the French proverb apply more truly than in this. “To be beautiful one must suffer.” That is what Paul proved and what Moses proved. It is what the smith cries to the iron as he burns and smiths it: it is what the lapidary mutters to the stone as he cuts and grinds it—"Il faut souffrir pour etre belle.”