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 thinking 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 involves 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 confronts 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.
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