will pass before thee
in my glory, and will call upon the name of the Lord." And when He has so
said, Scripture goes on in narrative form: "And the Lord descended in a
cloud, and stood beside him there, and called on the name of the Lord."
Thus the Lord Himself in
fulfilment of His promise descends and passes before the face of Moses. And the
Lord Himself calls and says: "O Lord, the God of pity and mercy," and
that which follows, clearly teaching His servant Who He was, and teaching
mystically the knowledge of a Lord greater than Himself. And Moses implies
this, when in his prayer for the people he records the words of the Lord before
us, that the Lord spoke them, and not he himself, when he says:
"And now let the
hand of the Lord be exalted, as thou saidst, The Lord is long-suffering and
very pitiful and true, taking away sins and injustice, and iniquity, and will
not clear the guilty with purification, avenging the sins of fathers upon their
children to the third and fourth generation."
Notice the way in which
the Lord Himself addressing the Father in these words as "long-suffering
and of tender mercy," calls Him also "true," agreeing with the
words: "That they may know thee the only true God," spoken in the
Gospels by the same Being, our Saviour. Yea, with exceeding reverence He calls
the Father the only true God, given meet honour to the Unbegotten Nature, of
which Holy Scripture teaches us He is Himself the Image and the Offspring.