Evil; Not Forever

"AND the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord."

The text is found in so many places that it is needless to select any one in particular, and too great a task to count the number. The significance is sad and woeful; and but for the fact that there is a brighter, more hopeful side of the subject, it would be truly disheartening.

What a blind and rebellious people were the children of Israel! After God had shown them mighty signs and wonders in Egypt, and had so evidently come for their deliverance from bondage, as he had promised to Abraham, shielding them from evil while he plagued their enemies, the Egyptians, instead of trusting in God in the time of apparent danger, they were ready to reproach the servant of God through whom their wondrous deliverance had been wrought, with the question, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?" Nevertheless, God opened a passage for them through the sea. They sung his praise but soon forgot his works.

The next thing we hear from them, they are murmuring against Moses and Aaron, and wishing they had died in Egypt "by the hand of the Lord," as if he were their enemy, and seeking to take away their life; but their kind and long-suffering God mercifully provides for their wants, giving them manna, a wholesome and nutritious food, and also sends them flesh food for their lust, and to cure them of their longing for the flesh-pots they had left in Egypt. Thus he taught them it good lesson, which they ought to have remembered.

How long do they remember it? In a very short time they are chiding with Moses, accusing him of bringing them out into the wilderness to die of thirst. God gives them another evidence of his power and love, by giving them a fountain of water from a desert rock.

And when he had brought them to Sinai, and they had made a solemn covenant with the Lord to obey his voice, and had heard that voice from the mount proclaiming the commandments of the moral law, and after pledging themselves again to keep these commandments, in a few days they are saying, "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." And they make the similitude of an ox, that eateth grass, and worship that which their own fingers have made!

But we will not trace them in their marches and countermarches in the desert and through the land of Gilead and Bashan, on the east side of Jordan, but come to their history after they are settled in their promised inheritance.

God had specially warned them against mingling with the nations of Canaan and worshiping their gods, denouncing curses against them should they do so. But said he, "Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree; and ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place."

Did they heed these instructions? They did not. At various times good beginnings were made. Judges and rulers would arise that were reformers, and would work in the right direction, but they would fail to make a clean breast of it. The fashions of heathen neighbors would prevail; the people were found worshiping Baal, Ashtoreth, Milcom, or Chemosh, or the golden calves, or some other abomination; and the groves were replanted and the images set up, and the high places were thronged by a mongrel host of worshipers.

This is the general character of the progress of that highly favored people. Were God's chosen people the worst of any on earth? No; they were the best. But their picture is the picture of fallen humanity. How much better we would have done in their circumstances! Would we? Where are the people who are doing better, in view of their circumstances and surroundings? You admit that their portrait fits to the wicked world in our days. Is it not the picture of the churches? Are not they conformed to, and following the fashions of, the world? Not only other churches, but our church too. Reader, you and I are of this sinful, backsliding race.

But there are those now, as anciently, that are reformers. They lead out in some good work of reform. Hope is indulged. There are favorable indications; but soon it is found that their reform is going stern foremost toward perdition. This is the case every time. There are no exceptions. There is no confidence to be placed in human nature. The fashions of an ungodly world carry the people now as much as in the days of Israel. It is as true now that "the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord," as it was then. People now would have their groves and high places and images, if it were only the fashion. This is evident from the following of the foolish and disgusting fashions which prevail.

Well, what is the use of working for reform? Some will be gathered out and saved. Some will hold on to reform, while others slide back. Some of Israel were saved by God's merciful dealing with them. Some will be now. The faithful and enduring have gone safely through. So it will be. There is the same motive to labor in behalf of humanity that induced the Son of God to come into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. Let all who have the good of humanity at heart labor on. Your labor will not be in vain in the Lord. Soon the fruit of all this toil will be seen in the immortal kingdom of God.