When Ancient Modernists Duped the Orthodox.

Satan’s subtlety in the tribes of Israel. 
The cattle raising tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, after aiding the other tribes to conquer Palestine (Num. 32) returned to the rich grazing lands east of Jordan, as described in Joshua 22. Just before crossing the river, they built a great altar (v. 10). Israel, displeased at the innovation, decided upon war, but first sent a deputation to remonstrate (vs. 12-20), but were completely duped by the plausible and sincere reason given by their trans-Jordan brethren (vs. 22-34). 
THIS quaint chronicle of the first ecclesiastical innovation on record seems a clear case of “the thin edge.” Look at what they did. Stabbing straight for the heart of their Mosaic economy, Reuben and Gad singled out God’s one altar of Sacrifice and dared to innovate an imitation one, “a great altar to look at.” 
They did it all sincerely. They did it all exactly. They did it all unselfishly. They even did it with an eye on posterity. And yet oh! yet they thereby did—what? Yes, they did the deed that drove in the thin edge of Jeroboam’s great coming wedge. 
Take it or leave it, those pampered children of theirs were the future revoltees, and they learned their A B C of revolt there by the Jordan, in that innocent imitation altar long ago. Thus, the very thing their fathers tried to obviate, they did indeed create. Do not let us be too hard on those simple souls. They were so sincere in making this bloodless altar. They so reverently innovated what God reprobated that they easily duped the deputation! Duped, I mean, Phinehas (“the Oracle”) and his ten princes who had been sent down hot haste on a heresy hunt. 
Deceived by a Gush of Sincerity. 
Not that Reuben and the rest even dreamed of duplicity, let alone dared it. They never do so—at the first. Read their reply (vs. 21-29) and you see how the very gush of it—gush of soul sincerity!—swept the stern deputation off their feet. Contrast this Phinehas of the Javelin’s opening outburst of indignation with his utter climb down in the weak words: “When Phinehas and the princes . . . heard the words of Reuben,” so sincerely explanatory of their action, “it pleased them.” Yes, and to the end of time, it will always be a pleasant thing to listen to sincere speech. So pleasant that we forget to challenge our conscience, and to face the fact that it is the sincere heretics who sow all the seeds of schism. 
Ah, I wonder if Joshua like Paul, saw that oncoming trouble. Certainly, he gave Reuben and Gad a solemn enough farewell meeting. Listen to his eagle-eyed words of prophecy:  
“Then Joshua called the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and said unto them, ‘Ye have kept all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, and have obeyed my voice, in all that I commanded you. Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God. And now, the Lord your God hath given rest unto your brethren, as he promised them; therefore now return ye, and get you unto your tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave you on the other side of the Jordan. But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.’ So, Joshua blessed them, and sent them away, and they went unto their tents” (vs. 1-7). 
Alas, like too many who go off to other lands, this godly good-bye meant “change of climate means change of character.” Also, how often change of geographical latitude means a wider latitude in morals. 
Therefore, this twenty-second chapter of Joshua, I suggest, should be entitled, “The Duping of a Deputation.” It was really a great hot war-camp that had sent them off, for the record runs, “The whole congregation of Israel gathered themselves together at Shiloh to go up to war” against these imitation altar builders. Hearts were hot for God’s honor and for “the pattern shewn in the mount.” Alas, how could they guess that their own “cream of earth’s sons” committee were coming back converted to the new idea? A majority report, white-washing the whole black business. 
Worse still, how could they at Shiloh go back on their own nominations? If the deputation turns its coat, why not those at headquarters? So, bad begets worse, then worse the worst. And the worst, as I have indicated, is hidden on the off-bank of Jordan where it all began. Alas, how could poor old Reuben, sincere and sentimental Reuben, foresee that in so inserting the thin edge of innovation that day, yes, those very children of theirs for whom they did it all would one day raise the flag of revolt and join the rebels in the North? 
True, that came later. But it all began there by the Jordan when out of their own silly skulls they painted the lily, out-Mosesed Moses, and made a fake altar! 
It is the old story; all such innovations of God’s order have some secret explanatory history. When long prior to its appearance in the present, there was the hidden initial germ, rebel germ, in the past. Then and there was this lurking thing now patent once latent. The thin edge of the great coming wedge was so thin that there was no evident edge at all. 
Put it at this: their sincerity was real about an imitation altar that was not real. This indeed was their defense; it was merely “a great altar to look at” they wanted. Fond memory wanted a souvenir; the real altar with real sacrifice was far up country, therefore, why not this little bit of make-believe? The very thing a Romanist says of his crucifix, “a bloodless imitation of the Cross.” For does not “altar” equate “cross”? 
Dean Stanley once gave Spurgeon’s long string of citations from “The Fathers.” Spurgeon took it all quite meekly, but, preferring higher up stream where the water is clearer because nearer the Source, he yawned. “The Fathers?” said he, “oh give me the grandfathers, the blessed Paul and all such!” Yes, the Fathers did what “the grandfathers” never dared to do; innovated the crucifix as a “crutch to memory.” 
Do it sleekly or do it with effrontery, here at the Jordan was high-handed lawlessness even although they thought they had caught up Moses on a technicality. Yet all the while booming in on their souls came the old warning words: 
“Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest: But in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.”  
The lurking incipiency of it all was its most dangerous factor. The very fact that the whole enterprise was smeared over with sanctimonious speech, only made this devil’s job more sure. This is where the subtlety of the snake came in. It was to be a “witness”—note the word—of their fidelity to God. The very name God gave his Tabernacle, “the tabernacle of Witness” where the real altar was, yes, an altar as reliable as real. 
It was deprecated as merely a geographic expedient for the help of their young folks. With an unctuous “God forbid that we should rebel against the Lord” disclaimer. Oh! Sons of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, for it is out at last, and ye have rebelled openly and joined Ephraim.  
Alas, too often children are blamed for changes in the old ways of the old home. “Lest your children,” said fond yet foolish old Reuben, “lest your children should one day point the finger at our children and say they were not properly brought up!” How often this outspoken word is imagined, if not uttered, by doting parents. The Smiths and the Joneses have often cited each other’s young folks at the secret family confab. 
Innocent Jones, Jr., never dreams that his parents are stretching a point in his favor that grandfather never dared do for father. And so, the dance displaces the family prayers, and the game of cards, the Bible reading, yet all is glossed with the hackneyed hypocritical apology: “In time to come, your children might speak slightingly unto our children, saying, ‘What have ye to do with us, there is a barrier between us.” 
Ah! yes, poor Reuben, “in time to come” your very own words are coming home to roost. “In time to come” because of this very innovation, the thing, yes, the very thing you are trying to obviate is the identic thing you do create. Your children will rebel and Jordan will one day justly point the very finger you feared, saying these self-same words of yours: “Ye have no part in the Lord.”
Finally, to modernize all this is too sadly easy a matter. Distance, mere geographical distance, is the key. Get away from the central spot and at once, the modifications begin a la Reuben. Go to the continent, go to the colonies, get away to America, get away anywhere out of range of the old faithful eyes and voices and what then—? Ah, it is too terribly easy to forget “the pattern shown in the mount.” Paul called it by that uncompromising, because cast-iron name, “the mould of doctrine.” And so, a la Reuben, bit by bit, away goes the divine pattern. The thing of which God claims all or nothing, “all things according to the pattern shown in the mount.” Which, of course means that we must get up to the mount to see the pattern.” 
The Tragedy of a Bloodless Altar. 
It was a bloodless altar, only “an altar to look at.” But for the Hebrew, the blood was the only thing worth looking at on any altar. It was when God saw the blood, that He passed over. No blood means no life in far more senses than one. 
It was that distance they were carping about, distance from central Judah when others were so near!” The same, very same excuse Jeroboam had, long later, to start his schism with its rival altar to the north. How different from the stout old pioneers of New England long ago. They were far farther off than Reuben. The great Atlantic cut them off from their brethren in Britain. Yet did they not whine hypocritically and claim distance as extenuating apostasy. “No,” wrote these stout old saints, “this colony will be governed by the laws of God [oh! the sarcasm] until we can find time to make better ones!” 
Small wonder. “the book with a million eyes” anticipates all this in its very last lines. The two maledictions to “the adder to” and “the taker from,” the Ritualists and the Atheists. If you go too far east, you wind up at the west. And the Atheist, who takes from, with the Ritualist, who adds to, both are bracketed under this final ban of the Bible. 
This is the thin edge of the wedge, aye, so treacherously thin that there seems neither edge or wedge. Such surely was Tennyson’s idea when he wrote about:
The little rift within the lute 
That bye and bye will make the music mute. 
And ever widening 
Slowly silence all. 
As though God could forget those children of theirs. This mention of them—“have we not rather done it for fear of this thing, saying, In time to come, your children might speak unto our children, saying”—is the very thing that recalls God’s own official provision for all such. He had foreseen the children’s need, just as He had foreseen the children before their need. Must there not be the need of children before the said children can have need? Yes, God who made their mind has anticipated the rising generations’ inquiring state of mind. Hence, the Passover words run: 
“And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.” 
But “the blood”—not the rectangular altar—was to centralize all their juvenile thoughts. The blood was presumably so startling, so repugnant, that it itself was warranted by God Himself to draw out the nonplused question, “What meaneth this?”  “This” blood so red yet so requisite to all living creatures? Why this blood shed? Mark you: it was the infantile initiative. These juniors must not be prompted. First: they are on-lookers, and so, looking on the heart of these young folk, faces its own private problem of “the blood.” 
Luanza, Africa.
(A note from one who has been Bible translating in Hebrew and Greek for thirty years. Luanza. Mission, ELIZABETHVILLE, via CAPE TOWN, CONGO BELGE.)
August 22, 1923. 
Seeing the abounding apostasy all around, Mr. Dan Crawford asks his friend in God, Mr. Ernest Gordon, to kindly see to the insertion of enclosed article in The Sunday School Times. We may never meet again on earth, so let us be co-helpers in such testimony against the inroads of rationalism. With love abounding, D. CRAWFORD. 
“I Tertius who wrote [who typed] this epistle salute you in the Lord.’’ 
G. H. Mumba, (Mr. Crawford's Native Secretary.)
“The Sunday School Times” Feb. 2, 1924