Exodus 34:29-35

The skin of his face shone.

Moses transfigured

This was the transfiguration of Moses. Let us consider the narrative as a spiritual parable, and try to read in it some of the conditions and privileges of exalted communion with God. Communion with God is the highest prerogative of spiritual beings. It is the instinctive craving of human souls; it is the supreme privilege and joy of the religious life; it is the inspiration and strength of all great service. God redeems us and saves us by drawing us to Himself. By mysterious voices He solicits us; by irrepressible instincts He impels us; by subtle affinities He holds us; by ineffable satisfactions He makes us feel His nearness and fills us with rest and joy.

I. We are admitted to fellowship with God only through propitiatory sacrifice. Moses builds an altar under the hill, offers sacrifices upon it, and sprinkles the blood thereof before he ascends the holy mount to commune with God. We must seek fellowship with God through the one propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Not only is the sacrifice of Christ the medium through which the forgiving love of God becomes possible; it is the supreme expression of it.

II. We are qualified for our highest intercourse with God by the spiritual grace of our own souls; Moses was qualified for this revelation of the supreme glory of God by his peculiar magnanimity and self-sacrifice. When God admits us to intercourse with Himself, what we see will depend upon our capability of seeing. Only the pure in heart can see God.

III. We are admitted to visions of the higher glory of God only when we seek them for the uses of practical religious duty. If selfishness be a disqualification, so is mere sentiment. A man who seeks God for his own religious gratification merely may see God, but he will not see God’s supreme glory. Our chief reason for desiring to know God must be that we may glorify Him in serving others.

IV. The most spiritual visions of God, the closest communion with God, are to be realized only when we seek Him alone. In our greatest emotions we seek solitude instinctively. Human presence is intolerable to the intensest moods of the soul. No man can be eminent either in holiness or service who does not often ascend to the mountain-top, that he may be alone with God and behold His glory.

V. The supreme revelation of God to which we attain through such fellowship with Him is the revelation of His grace and love. When a man sees this, the glory of God has passed before him.

VI. The revelation of God’s glorious goodness transfigures the man who beholds it. (H. Allon, D. D.)

Unconscious beauty

“He wist not that the skin of his face shone.” Few and simple as these words are, there could be none grander written to the memory of a hero. The noblest and loftiest character is assuredly that of the man who is so absorbed in the Divine nature of his calling, and so conscious of the need of those for whom he labours, that he becomes forgetful of the beauty in his character which others recognize, and almost unconscious that he is himself the worker.

I. There are many unconscious believers and workers in the world still, who may gather helpful thoughts from this fact concerning Moses. Much time and ability has been devoted to discussing the question of “Christian assurance.” To say that if we do not feel that we are saved, we are not saved, is to lose sight of what salvation really means. It is nowhere stated in Scripture that an assurance of that salvation which is a gradual matter, a day-by-day struggle and deliverance, is either universal or necessary. God may think it best that some of us should not have assurance, as on that great day He kept Moses unconscious that the skin of his face shone.

II. Perhaps some of us may feel that there were moments of such bright and hopeful experience once, but they are past now, and that seems to us the saddest thought of all. Still we need not despair. We should go back as Moses did to the mount where God had spoken to him, to the source of the old enthusiasm and the former faith. If we go back and stand face to face with the crucified Christ, our life will glow anew with the radiance of His love, even though we ourselves are unconscious of it.

III. This holds good also regarding our work for God. Many a splendid silent work is done on earth, and the doer is perhaps unconscious of it, and may remain unconscious till the great day of the Lord shall reveal it. (T. T. Shore, M. A.)

Moses’ face shining: a picture of true glory

1. Man has an instinct for glory.

2. Man has sadly perverted this instinct.

3. The Bible rightly directs it.

I. The true glory of man involves fellowship with the Eternal. The human character is formed on the principle of imitation. To get a perfect character implies--

1. The existence of a perfect model.

2. The love of a perfect model.

3. The knowledge of a perfect model.

II. The true glory of man has an external manifestation.

1. True glory will show itself-in the “face” of our person.

2. Language.

3. Life.

III. True glory is never self-conscious. “Moses wist not.” There are several things that necessitate self-obliviousness in a truly great soul.

1. His standard of judgment.

2. His circle of life. He who stands before God feels his nothingness.

3. His spirit of life. Love is a passion that drowns the lover in the loved. “I live, yet not!.”

IV. True glory will command the reverence of society.

1. The law of conscience will ensure universal respect for it.

2. The law of guilt will ensure trembling homage for it. (Homilist.)

The shining face

I. The shining face the result of his long and close communion with God. The heavenly light within will shine out.

II. The shining face was beheld by the people, The good man’s walk and conversation are known of all.

III. The shining face awed all who beheld it. The consciousness of sin makes the wicked fear pious friends, whose presence rebukes them.

IV. Moses knew not that his face shone. The more grace we have the less self-consciousness. The more good others see in us, the less do we see ourselves. Application:

1. If you cannot do anything else for God, you can exhibit a shining face.

2. Do not be discouraged because you are not conscious of any good influence you exert. (J. L. Elderdice.)

Communion with God

I. The distinguishing characteristics of communion with God.

1. It is mediatory.

2. It is individual.

3. It is protracted.

4. It is self-denying.

II. The irradiating power of communion with God.

1. Its manifestation.

2. Its unconsciousness.

3. Its effect.

(1) Awe-inspiring.

(2) Heart-attracting. (T. Baron.)

The Divine glory and its effects

We learn here three things with regard to the beauty of a sanctified character.

I. The nature of this beauty,--it is that which shines.

1. Its self-manifestation may be often a passive thing. It was Moses’ face that was the index of his mood at the time,--not his tongue nor his hands. So with the child of God; the beauty that bathes him is matter that exists independent of any definite words spoken, or any outward deeds done. The beauty of the believer is the beauty of joy; and joy does not always need speech to express itself, or the word to others, “I am glad.”

2. Then, too, we learn that spiritual beauty is often an unwitnessed thing. It is by no means conditioned by the position a man occupies, or the numbers that are there to see. For the glory on Moses’ face was not brought there just that others might watch and, admire. His features would have glowed all the same, had there been no one to watch and to marvel in all the plain; and heaven’s own light would have glanced and flickered from his face among the bare dead sands and unconscious stones where he trod, making the solitude around him luminous. So again with the child of God. His shining does not need the stimulus of spectators.

II. The secret of this beauty. Communion with God,--that is the source it must spring from, lending sanctity to the character, and beauty to the very face. To see God’s face is to, shine; to keep seeing it is to keep shining. It is thus that the marvel of the story is repeated, and God’s praying saints come forth from this privacy with their faces aglow; and the dying grow luminous on their beds, till the watchers wonder. Why, where is there brightness like the brightness of heaven? They are all lustrous there! Uncover yourselves therefore to the light; keep yourselves up where the light is shining. The struggle will be to do that, and will be over when you have done it. So and so only will you shine yourselves. The manner of this shining is reflection and the secret of it is communion with God.

III. The characteristic by which it is marked. That characteristic is unconsciousness. “Moses,” we are told, “wist not that his face shone.” It is always most real when it radiates unawares. Is it not the case that many an act which would otherwise have affected us favourably, attracted our admiration, won our esteem, is shorn of its grace and becomes worthless or worse for us, just because vitiated by self-consciousness? For instance, I may be glad to receive a kindness; but if the man who professes to show it me betrays so plainly that he thinks it a kindness, and imposes a debt on myself while he does it, then I refuse to have the favour at his hands, or I grudge the necessity that compels me. Or I may feel that I stand in need of forgiveness; but if the brother at whose door I am suing for it makes it clear, while he gives me his hand, that he counts his act a magnanimous one, his forgiveness is emptied of its grace. Why, there are books one could point to, as well as people, in whose case the principle holds true. In language and in sentiment they are otherwise unexceptional. They treat of moral and religious truth with a freshness of view and a beauty of utterance which in themselves would arrest and stimulate. But you cannot help feeling throughout them the presence of an evil underflavour the while--the taint of the writer’s self-consciousness in it all, that maims and defiles his message--the traces of a spiritual ostentation through the whole, that makes you recognize while you read that the question is being asked you--not, “What think ye of the truth merely?” but, “What think ye of me who am saying it?” Nor is this unconsciousness without its directer proofs. Two at least will invariably be found with it--appreciation of others, depreciation of self. Nor is the reason of all this far to seek. This unconsciousness of grace that we speak of, issuing not only in appreciation of others, but in depreciation of self, may be accounted for by converse with a high ideal. For the greater an artist’s success, the greater his sense of imperfection. The more that he strives to attain, the further will his standard recede from him, the more unsatisfactory will his attainments appear in the light of it. What, then, must the ease be when the standard is an infinite one, and the mark we reach forth to is the perfection of a God! (W. A. Gray.)

The element of unconsciousness in character

See also Judges 16:20.

I. Let us note, in the first place, that this quality of unconsciousness is invariably connected with a peculiar antecedent history. The facts stated regarding Moses and Samson do not stand out in isolation in their biographies. They are in immediate relation to the preceding incidents in their careers. The new man can form good habits, just as the old man formed evil ones, and in proportion as these habits gain strength, the consciousness of effort after the things which they lead us to do begins to diminish in us. Hence in the details of daily life the character of the believer, as he grows in holiness, shines with a radiance of which he is largely unaware. Now this truth has another side, for it comes in also with fearfully dangerous influence in the continued commission of sin. The more one practises iniquity, the greater facility he acquires in committing it, the stronger becomes the tendency to indulge in it, and the weaker ever is his sense of its enormity. In a manufacturing town in England, some years ago, it became necessary to do some repairs at the top of one of the tallest smoke-stacks in the principal factory, and an expert was engaged for the purpose. He flew his kite over it, and fixed his tackle so that he could hoist himself up. But when he reached the summit, through some accident, the whole tackling fell, and there he stood without any means of coming down again. Every plan was tried to get a rope to him without success. A great crowd collected at the base of the chimney, and among these was the wife of the unfortunate man. A happy thought struck her, in her earnestness for her husband’s safety. She knew that he wore at the moment stockings which her own hands had just knitted. So, at her suggestion, they called him to undo the yarn of which they were composed, and by and by a tiny thread came fluttering down on the breeze. When it reached the earth, they tied it to a piece of twine, which he drew up with the yarn. To the twine again they tied a thicker string, and then to that a cord, and to that again a cable, and so he was saved. That was a work of deliverance. But there is a similar gradation in the cord of evil habit by which a sinner is bound. It is first a brittle yarn, then a tiny twine, with which a child might play.

II. But I advance another step in the prosecution of my theme, and remark, in the second place, that this quality of unconsciousness marks the culmination of character either in good or evil. The highest greatness is that which is unconscious of itself. The very forthputting of an effort to be great in any direction indicates that we lack that greatness. So long as we are conscious of an effort to be something, we are not fully that something, therefore we ought to redouble our exertions. When a venerable minister was called upon once unexpectedly to preach, he delivered extempore a sermon of great power. It seemed to come perfectly natural to him. There was no appearance of effort; and one hearer, amazed at the character of the discourse, asked, “How long did it take you to make that sermon? “Forty years,” was the reply. And there was deep philosophy in the answer, for had “the old man eloquent” not given these forty years to diligent study and laborious effort, he could not then have preached so easily. Now, in the same way, our conscious endeavours after the Christian life will, if faithfully prosecuted, lead up to a time when, in some emergency, we shall meet it with the most perfect ease, and be hardly aware of any exertion. Let this thought stimulate us to perseverance in our great Christian life-work of building character. The longer we labour the less arduous will our labour become, until by and by we shall lose the sense of labour in the joy and liberty of our happy experience. But note again at the other end of the scale that the deepest degradation is that which is unconscious of its dishonour. Hence, however degraded a man may be there is hope of his recovery if he only knows his condition. That is the handle by which yet, through the grace of God, you may raise him, and you will succeed in lifting the fallen from their defilement only by awakening in them that consciousness. Their fall has stunned them into insensibility, and the first thing you have to do with them is to restore them to consciousness. ( W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Communion with God, and its results

I. First, the converse which Moses had with God on the top of the mountain was the cause of that glory which rested on his countenance. There is, no doubt, a great deal of what is miraculous in connection with this transaction; but though we are not to look in our own particular case for anything analogous to it, yet we are to expect something spiritually correspondent with it.

1. The first remark that I offer to your attention is, that on ascending the mountain to hold intercourse with God, Moses observed the rites of the religious dispensation under which he lived. A devotional spirit must be cherished and cultivated; and it is promised, on the part of the Saviour, that what we ask in prayer, believing, that we shall receive. But in addition to this, God must lift the veil from His own throne. He must give utterance to the voice of mercy and love. He must display reasons to the humble waiting spirit, and must manifest Himself in some clear manner, before we can be made conscious of communion with Him.

2. Moses ascended the mountain alone. This opens to us another principle of religion. It is this--that in all respects it is personal. Our devotional exercises are of this nature. It is true, indeed, that we meet in public fellowship; but there is a sense in which the soul sits solitary and alone in the midst of a mighty multitude. Here I stand, and there you sit; but one character, one faith, one love, one hope, one joy. And our several emotions are all personal, and belong to ourselves. You know not my feelings; I know not yours.

3. As Moses drew a pattern from God on the mountain, so must we derive grace to fill it up from the same source. Now as far as we are employed in building the internal temple of Christianity, we must derive grace and strength from intercourse with God for the discharge of this great duty; and as Moses received the law from God, so we must receive grace and power to obey it from the same source. This remark is applicable both to our personal and public duties.

II. The second general observation to be made relates to the nature of that light, and beauty, and glory, which rested on the face of Moses. I should here remark, that there is a great mystery in this, but that it was intended to be symbolical of a better glory. That intercourse with God will make or cause His beauty to rest upon the soul. There may be no external glory, such as beamed on the face of Moses, but a spiritual glory beaming forth, instead, upon the mind.

1. There must be, for instance, rapturous joy. How can it be otherwise? The impulses of religion, when they exist in the mind, as they should do, by constant fellowship with the eternal Trinity, must be transporting and animating in the highest degree.

2. Intercourse with God must have the effect of expanding the capacity and enlarging the soul.

3. I may also add, that intercourse with God will produce, if not external or physical beauty, yet a beauty of character. Internal purity will be corroborated by outward conduct.

III. The final remark which I offer for your attention, relates to the vail which moses put on his face when he descended from the mountain to hold fellowship with the people. There is a mystery in this; but the mystery we shall not attempt to unravel. Allow me here to say generally, that religion in its beauty and glory is often in the present life veiled beneath circumstances which obscure its grandeur. (J. Dixon.)

A transfigured soul

You have heard of the marks on the bodies of Roman Catholic devotees which go by the name of stigmatization. There appear on the hands and feet of the rapt saint wounds similar to those inflicted on the crucified Saviour. It is alleged that the intense brooding of their sympathetic and ravished souls on the Redeemer’s agonies have led to their bearing about, in a literal sense, on their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus. We shall leave physiologists to explain the alleged phenomena, or to expose the possible imposture, and go on to say that this physical stigmatization has a moral counterpart; that though the wounds inflicted on the Saviour’s flesh may not be reproduced on the bodies of His saints, the moral glory of His nature may be republished in their souls, and through their faces may be radiated into the world, as His own glory, usually veiled, once was allowed to burst through the environing flesh on the Mount of Transfiguration. In meditating on this incident in the history of Moses I suggest to you--

1. That the effulgence of his face, was the result of his eighty days’ fellowship with God. I have read somewhere that people who live together through long-wedded years at last grow like each other, not only in their ways of thinking, of looking at things--in their moods and habitudes of mind--but even in their cast of face and feature. Such power, it is said, has long and constant fellowship to make people variously constituted of like temper, and even appearance. I can understand it in the case of the moral and mental dispositions. The stronger nature makes the weaker surrender its own personality and qualities, and borrow from that by which it is swayed. It is, indeed, by the working of this mysterious law of spirit that the Christian believer is renewed into Christ. If, therefore, the face of the sage and seer shone with unwonted lustre, it must have been because of a corresponding purification of his moral nature. It is to this condition alone that a glimpse of the beatific vision and an insight into Divine things are given. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and discern truth.

2. Did the translucency fade away, as the golden glory fades from the hill-tops when the sun has set; or did it last till the day of his death? Had he ever after kept his spirit up to the moral elevation to which it rose on Sinai’s height, the splendour of his visage would have been subject to no eclipse or wane; it would have shone not only with an undiminishing, but with an ever-increasing light.

3. Though the face of Moses shone, he was quite unconscious that there was anything unusual about him; “he wist not that the skin of his face shone when he talked”; he had no knowledge of the marvellous external results which his eighty days’ companionship with God had wrought in his appearance. There is a beautiful unconsciousness about the Christian. All the world is applauding and reverencing him; blessing him for the vision of excellence with which he refreshes it; acknowledging that his very existence fertilizes the field of life; but were you to overhear his own estimate of himself, you would find it other and different. Did you listen to his prayers, you would find them full of heart-breaking confessions of unworthiness. (J. Forfar.)

The law a light

1. First, it was signified that the law proceeded from a higher world of light, of knowledge, and of holiness, since its very gleams were to be seen outwardly on the minister of the law.

2. Since the people could not bear the shining of the light, it represented how fearful, condemnatory, and fatal the law was for a sinful people. (Otto von Gerlach, D. D.)

The highest excellence is that which is least conscious of itself

The greatest achievements made by the sculptor or the painter have been those in the production of which he has been fullest of his conception, and had least thought of himself. I do not mean to say that the noblest artists have not been indefatigable workers; on the contrary, they have laboured with such persevering effort that at last they can produce, almost without the consciousness of exertion, something that will never be forgotten; and their supreme work is that which seems almost to have come to them of itself, so that they were more passive than active in its transmission to their fellows. The best sermons write themselves, and are given to the preacher before they are given by him, so that he cannot think of them as wholly his own. But it is the same in spiritual things. If I am conscious of an effort to be humble, very clearly I have not yet attained to humility; while, on the other hand, the very moment I become conscious that I am humble, I have become proud. And so with every other grace. What a discount you take from a man’s character when, after you have said of him, he is this, or that, or the other thing that is good, you add, “but he knows it.” You might almost as well have taken a sponge and wiped out all that went before. So if you know your excellence, you have not reached the highest excellence; there remaineth yet the loftiest and the hardest peak of the mountain to be climbed by you, and that is humility. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Light through converse with spiritual things

There is one kind of diamond which, after it has been exposed for some minutes to the light of the sun, when taken into a dark room will emit light for some time. The marvellous property of retaining light, and thereby becoming the source of light on a small scale, shows how analogous to light its very nature must be. Those who touched the Saviour became sources of virtue to others. As Moses’ face shone when he came from the mount, so converse with spiritual things makes Christians the light which shines in the dark places of the earth. “Let your light so shine before men.” (Weekly Pulpit.)

Moral illumination

The spaces between the windows of one of the rooms of a famous palace are hung with mirrors, and by this device the walls are made just as luminous as the windows, through which the sunshine streams. Every square inch of surface seems to reflect the light. Let your natures be like that--no point of darkness anywhere, the whole realm of the inward life an unchequered blaze of moral illumination. (T. G. Selby.)

The outshining of a joyful heart

Moses came down from the mount, when, like the bush of Horeb, he had been in the midst of the fire and was not consumed, and as he came, the light of his soul transfigured his face, “the beauty of the Lord our God was upon him,” and the ninetieth Psalm seemed to be shining through it. As the brightly-coloured soil of volcanic Sicily makes flowers of the brightest tints, so there was a garden in the prophet’s face, glorified by the outshining of his joyful heart. (Christian Age.)

The after-glow of devotion

One of the most solemn and delightful privileges of the traveller is to watch the after-glow upon the mountains when the sun has disappeared. This was accorded to us on several occasions, but was never more impressive than in the valley of Chamounix. To see the hoary head of Mont Blanc, and even the pointed aguiles of the locality, too steep to allow the snow to settle on them, all aglow with rosy tints, made us feel as though by some transformation scene we were inhabitants of another world, or as though heaven had come down to earth, and the tabernacle of God had been pitched among men. (G. Kirkham.)

Light reflected from the cross

With much pathos Mr. Varley once told the story of Sybil, a negress slave, whose mistress said to her: “When I heard you singing on the house-top I thought you fanatical, but when I saw your beaming face I could not help feeling how different you were to me.” Sybil answered, “Ah, missus, the light you saw in my face was not from me, it all came ‘fleeted from de cross, and there is heaps more for every poor sinner who will come near enough to catch de rays.”

Exhortation to humility

I charge you, be clothed with humility, or you will yet be a wandering star, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. Let Christ increase, let man decrease. Remember, “Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.” Looking at our own shining face is the bane of the spiritual life, and of the ministry. Oh! for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head and heart, shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of their shining! (R. McCheyne.)

The absence of self-consciousness

Near the close of the summer season, in a pleasant summer retreat, a new-comer found the entire company of the little hotel preparing to give a fete in honour of a young lady who was about to leave them. The young men had hired a band, marquees were erected on the lawn, the house was wreathed with flowers; everybody had some little farewell gift ready for “Miss Betty.” The stranger was curious. “This Miss Betty is very beautiful?” he asked. “No, I think not; it never occurred to me before, but I believe she is homely.” “A great heiress, then?” “On the contrary, a poor artist.” “Brilliant? Witty? Highly intellectual?” “No, indeed; she never said a fine thing in her life. But she is the best listener I ever knew. Neither is she learned or clever or fascinating; but she is the most lovable girl in the world.” “What is the charm, then?” Betty’s friend looked perplexed. “I do not know,” he hesitated, “unless it is that she never thinks of herself.” The charm of this woman was an absolute absence of all self-conscious- ness. She was neither vain nor modest. She simply forgot that there was such a person as Betty Gordon, and with her warm heart and quick sympathies threw herself into the lives of others. It was a peculiar, powerful attraction, and brought the little world about her to her feet.

He put a vail on his face.

The vailed face

It appears to be a law of our being, and the being of all material things, that everything grows like to that with which it is conversant and familiar. It is a law ruling all creation. We find it in the Arctic regions and we find it in the tropics--namely, life assimilates itself to the nature which is around it. Friendship, the intercourse of common friendship, will affect the countenance. When we go to moral life, there is its evil and its blessed application. Those who frequent the good gather the image of their goodness; and those who deal much with God, they grow God-like.

I. What was the glory on Moses’ face? St. Paul gives us a remarkable answer to this question. He says, “They could not look steadfastly to the end of that which is abolished.” “That which is abolished” is the law, and the end of the law is Christ; therefore the glory upon Moses’ face was the Lord Jesus Christ.

II. It was not in compassion for the weakness of the israelites that Moses put a vail upon his face. The jews had lost the power to see the end of that which is abolished, to see the glory of God in Jesus Christ reflected in the law. The vail was judicial, the consequence of sin; it was interposed between them and the beauty, the lustre, of the mighty glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

III. There are vailed hearts among us now; and the reason of the vail is sin. Do you think that like those Israelites you have committed some sins under the mount? It will quite account for the vail, and the vail will be proportioned to that state of life. Every wilful disobedience of conscience, every going against a conviction, will thicken your vail. It will be God’s retribution to you--the intellect dulled, the mind warped, the heart hardened, the Spirit hindered, by the sin. What is the remedy? “When it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.” Then Christ is the remedy. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Moses’ vail

The vail which Moses put on his face, when he perceived that it shone--

1. Teaches us a lesson of modesty and humility: we must be content to have our excellences obscured.

2. It teaches ministers to accommodate themselves to the capacities of the people, and to preach to them as they are able to bear it.

3. The vail signified the darkness of that dispensation in which there were only “shadows of good things to come.” (A. Nevin, D. D.)

The vail on Moses’ face

St. Paul, in the New Testament, makes large use of this narrative of the glory that shone on Moses’ face as he came down with the renewed covenant. Thus he employs it as in a typical sense an emblem of the relative glories of the old legal and the new evangelical dispensation (2 Corinthians 3:10). Even as a rhetorical figure, how beautiful is this application of the narrative of Moses to the purpose of setting before Jewish Christians the relation of the new to the old dispensation. Moses, with his vail, stands as a symbol of his own dispensation, which was, in fact, the gospel under a vail. And the symbol is represented as having a threefold significancy, when contemplated in its different parts. First, the symbol points out the intrinsic excellence and glory of the old dispensation, even though far less glorious than the new. But as the glory of Moses’ face was absorbed and lost when he entered “the tent of meeting,” to commune with God, so the brightness of the old dispensation of Moses is eclipsed in the transcendent brightness of the gospel. Again, the narration of the veiled Moses, in the apostle’s view, symbolizes the comparative obscurity of the old exhibition of the way of salvation. The vail represents the indistinct view which the Israelites had through the ritual teachings of the law; the brightness of the gospel light was covered up by rites that their minds did not penetrate. Nor will many of them now lift the vail, as the new dispensation invites them to do. Hence, again, this vail typified the blindness and ignorance under which the Jewish mind laboured, even in the time of the apostle. They had so long looked at Moses vailed that they now seemed to think the very vail an essential part of the system of salvation. (S. Robinson, D. D.)