September 7

"He went forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God."—I KINGS xix. 8.

Is it not wonderful that, both to Moses and to Elijah, Sinai, the mount of blackness and darkness and tempest, should be the scene where God's tenderness and love are most graciously revealed?

Moses is placed in a cleft of the rock, and the Lord passes by, and proclaims His goodness—there on the very hillside which had blazed with His lightnings and echoed and reverberated with His thunders. Elijah makes his way to the weird and gloomy spot, expecting—wishing too, for he would fain see a sudden judgment sweep the transgressors from the land—that God will speak to him in the strong wind and the earthquake and the fire; and, instead, God speaks in the voice, very still and very small, of His gentleness and His mercy.

Thus it may be in my own spiritual history. It may be at Sinai that I am reminded of Calvary and the saving love of God in Christ. Often it is when it is trembling before the Mount which burns with fire, that the soul catches its first sight of the Mount that is stained with ruddy blood—the precious blood shed for its redemption. The stern, inexorable, angry law, with its threatenings and alarms, has been in numberless instances a tutor to lead the heart to Jesus. I look for the storm-cloud, and I see the rainbow. I anticipate the word of doom, and I hear the word of love—Go in peace; thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee. When the night is darkest, the day is born. When things are at their worst with me, behold, God is my Salvation.

And thus hiems abiit moestaque crux—the winter is past; the sorrow and sighing flee away.