BAMIDBAR

IN THE WILDERNESS

8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of Yahweh shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

"The Scriptures plainly teach that the Father is a tangible person ... We will not say that the Being with Whom he (Moses) had this intercourse was actually THE ETERNAL ONE, because it is evident from what Stephen and Paul teach that it was an angelic manifestation ... Yet it is affirmed that to Moses it was a similitude of Yahweh (Num. 12:8). It was therefore a manifestation of the Deity."

Christendom Astray

Dark speeches

They have a meaning, but the meaning is not on the surface, and it has to be sought for. It is not wise to quarrel with this fact or to ignore it. We must recognise it and adapt ourselves humbly to it - taking care at the same time not to push it beyond its own strict boundaries, as those do who claim a veiled meaning for everything, like the Swedenborgians, or a spiritual significance for literal statements, like the common run of popular religionists.

If we surmise the divine object in cloaking meanings in figure and symbol, we may glean it from two features abundantly manifest in the Scriptures and in experience; first, the unutterable majesty of God, the Eternal Self-Subsisting Creator, and the unutterable insignificance, and weakness, and meanness, of the perishing race of groundlings to whom these communications are made.

It is a marvel that God should condescend to speak to man at all. That when He does so, He does it in a veiled manner, is manifest from the form of the first communication in Eden, concerning redemption, and the first appointment of a form for fallen worship, in the offering of slain animals.

That it is fit it should be so we are made to feel in all our experience of the impossibility of wisdom and folly dwelling together, and the unsuitability of open and friendly intimacies between greatness of any kind and the common shallow run of insignificant men.

That it is advantageous to "conceal a thing," while revealing it is also manifest from experience. A riddle is proverbially more interesting than an aphorism. A parable stimulates discernment. A thing seen after the search provoked by obscurity is seen much more clearly than if exhibited in a plain and direct manner in the first instance.

This at least is the case with the turbid human intellect. It may be that all created mentality requires thus to be brought to a focus. At all events it is certain that concealment whets curiosity everywhere. Say even to a child, "You mustn't look in this box," that is the one box it wants to see the inside of.

On the whole, then, it is not strange, though at first it might appear so, that there should be dark similitudes in the communications of the prophets. If the darkness were complete-if the riddle were absolutely insoluble-there could be no advantage in it. But it is never so in divine communications. There is always an inkling of the meaning somewhere-a clue by which the secret can be unlocked, which those may find who are humbly anxious to find.

Seasons 2.85