What does that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange
shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no
sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we
should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.'
Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest,
but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of
Him that dwelt in the bush' may dwell in you and me. Never mind how
small, never mind how sapless, never mind how lightly esteemed among
men, never mind though we make a very poor show by the side of the
'oaks of Bashan' or the 'cedars of Lebanon.' It is all right; the Fire
does not dwell in them. 'Unto this man will I look, and with him will I
dwell, who is of a humble and a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My
word.' Let no sense of poverty, weakness, unworthiness, ever draw the
faintest film of fear across our confidence, for even with us He will
sojourn. For it is 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' that we
evoke for ours.

Again, what more does that name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' filled
it with fire, and it 'burned and was not consumed.' Now there is good
ground to object to the ordinary interpretation, as if the burning of
the bush which yet remains unconsumed was meant to symbolise Israel,
or, in the New Testament application, the Church which, notwithstanding
all persecution, still remains undestroyed. Our brethren of the
Presbyterian churches have taken the Latin form of the words in the
context for their motto--_Nec Tamen Consumebatur_. But I venture
to think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol
is just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied
it, and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM.' The fire that did not burn out
is the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because