Numbers 10:1-10 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,… The sacred trumpets are still sounded; they still call men to worship, to festival, to battle. If we have lost the literal instrument, we are still, if right-minded, within sound of the trumpets of Providence. We do not now go out at our own bidding; we are, if wise, responding to a Voice, wherever we may be found. Look at the men who are pouring forth in all directions every morning; stand, in imagination, at a point from which you can see all the stations at which men alight; so present the scene to the fancy that you can see every little procession hastening to its given point of departure; then bring on all the processions to the various points of arrival; read the faces of the men; take in the whole scene. What action; what colour; what expression of countenance! And if we had ears acute enough to hear, what various voices are being sounded by every life; what tumult; what desire; what intersection of paths; what imminent collisions! — and yet the whole scene moves on with a kind of rough order all its own. What has called these men together — and yet not together? — the trumpet! Some have heard the trumpet calling to controversy. Many of these men carry bloodless swords; they are well equipped with argument; they are about to state the ease, to defend the position, to repel, to assert, to vindicate righteousness, and to claim compensation for virtue outraged; they are soldiers; they have mapped out the battlefield in private; all their forces have been disposed within the sanctuary of the night, and presently the voice of genius and of eloquence will be heard in high wrangling, in noble contention, that so the wicked may claim nothing that is not his own, and the righteous have the full reward of his purity. They are going to the political arena to adjust the competing claims of nations, or causes; war is in their eyes; should they speak, they would speak stridently, with clear, cutting tone, with military precision and emphasis; they would hold no long parley with men, for they mean the issue to end in victory. Others have heard no such trumpet: they have heard another call — to peaceful business, to daily routine, to duty, made heavy alien by monotony, but duty still, which must be done according to the paces and beatings of the daily clock. They cannot resist that voice without resisting themselves. And other men, in smaller bands — more aged men — men who have seen service in the market field, in the political field, in the field of literature — how go they? Away towards sunny scenes, quiet meadows, lakes of silver, gardens trimmed with the patience and skill of love. They are men of leisure, men in life's afternoon. The sunbeam has been a trumpet to them; hearing it, they said, Who would remain at home to-day? All heaven calls us out, the great blue arch invites us to hospitality in the fields and woods, and by the riverside. All men are obeying a trumpet; the call is addressed from heaven to earth every morning. We may have outlived the little, straight, silver trumpet, turned up at the ends; but the trumpet invisible, the trumpet of Providence, the call of Heaven, the awakening strain of the skies — this we cannot outlive: for the Lord is a Man of war, and must have the battle continued: the Lord is a Father, and must have the family constituted in order; the Lord is a Shepherd, and must have the flocks led forth that they may lie down in the shadow of noonday. The trumpets were to be sounded by the priests. The pulpit should be a tower of strength to every weak cause. Were every Sabbath day devoted to the tearing down of some monster evil — were the sanctuary dedicated to the denunciation, not of the vulgar crimes which everybody condemns, but the subtle and unnamed crimes which everybody practises, the blast of the trumpet would tear the temple walls in twain! There are trumpets which call us in spiritual directions. They are heard by the heart. They are full of the tone of persuasion — that highest of all the commandments. The heart hears the trumpet on the Sabbath day. The trumpet that could sound an alarm is softened in its tone into a tender entreaty, or a cheerful persuasion, or a promise of enlarged liberty. Everything depends upon the tone. The trumpet may be the same, but the tone is different. We cannot take up the trumpet of the great player and make it sound as he made it. What is it, then, that plays the trumpet? It is the soul. If we knew things as we ought to know them, we should know that it is the soul that plays every instrument, that sings every hymn, that preaches every discourse that has in it the meaning of God and the behest of Heaven. The same trumpet called to festival and to war; so the gospel has two tones: it calls lovingly, sweetly, tenderly; and it sounds an alarm, making the night tremble through all its temple of darkness, and sending into men's hearts pangs of apprehension and unutterable fear. There is another trumpet yet to sound (1 Corinthians 15:52). The trumpet is not lost, then; it is in heaven, where the Ark of the Testimony is, where the Shekinah is, where the Tabernacle of God is. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, |
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