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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.)

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KJV: And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.

WEB: It happened, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mountain, that Moses didn't know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.