was I grieved with this generation, and said, ‘It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.' For indeed, brethren, these things were written for our learning. We often hear the earth compared to a wilderness. In some moods of our minds, more especially in advanced life, that appears to us a sadly true comparison; we are ready to cry out that we meet with little but barrenness and hopeless labour and suffering. In other moods, and at a younger age, we are angry when a world so full of brightness and enjoyment appears to be condemned in this kind of language. In either case let us at least remember that the true sense of the word comes to us from those wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness, about which we have been hearing to-day. For our life here is truly a passage, a journey. We have left Egypt behind. God has called us as His children out of the darkness of nature. We are not, we cannot be, as those who have never heard His name or Christ's name. We may hanker back after the thoughtless fleshy self-indulgence natural to those who have never learned that there is a God in heaven, and a law of God to be obeyed on earth; but we never can satisfy ourselves with such things. They too often after a while turn to ashes in the mouth. Before us lies the land of rest, the state in which the peace of God so rules our hearts that we carry with us a perpetual heaven. Between our Egypt behind and our Land of Promise before we are ever moving, sometimes backwards, sometimes forwards. But God calls on us to press ever forwards, holding the beginning of our confidence steadfast

unto the end. The hardening of heart through the deceitfulness of sin, which makes us, like dead stones, unable to feel the presence of the living God, the evil heart of unbelief and mistrust which cannot enter into His rest, these are the things which mix thorns with the flowers of life and bitterness with its fruits, which prevent refreshment. We are on our way to God.

Let us enjoy thankfully what He sends us by the way; but let us never forget whither we are bound, or allow ourselves to rest satisfied with anything short of Him who alone is our eternal home.

XVII

THE BIBLE. (v.) JOSHUA TO DAVID

"AND David perceived that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel's sake."-2 Samuel v. 12.

WE have now gone over the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, as they are called, or the Law. We have watched the Jews passing through the first stages of their growth into a people. Two great names have stood out above the rest, worthy to stand for ever among the chief of those which ought to be remembered and honoured to the end of time, the names of Abraham and Moses. All mankind, and we all among the rest, have every reason for gratitude to those two ancient men, for the services which they rendered to their own people were rendered to a seed in whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed and have been blessed.

In Abraham, the best-marked figure of the book of Genesis, the first forefather of the Jewish people, we saw the Friend of God, the lonely man going

forth into the unknown world in simple and sheer reliance on a Lord whom he could not see. In Moses, whose words and deeds fill the four later books, the lawgiver and leader of the Jewish people, we saw the Prophet of God, the receiver of a message not for himself only but for his whole nation.

These were the leading men. What about the great unnamed, almost unnumbered people? We saw their early beginnings in Isaac and Jacob and Jacob's twelve sons, their passage into the rich and civilized old land of Egypt. We lost sight of them there four hundred years while they were undergoing a discipline which should fit them for growing on to more and more in the years to come. At the end of the time we saw them toiling and groaning under the yoke of cruel Egyptian masters, their delivery in the name of the Lord their God by the hand of Moses, their march forth into the wilderness, their receiving from God, on the holy mount of Sinai, a Law which was to rule them and restrain them and make them into a people indeed by teaching them how to obey, their wandering on still in the wilderness for forty years as a punishment for their rebellious wanderings, and at last their second arrival at the edge of the Promised Land. Then the first stage was done. The wandering in strange lands was over, the settled life in a home of their own was to begin.

Thus far Moses had brought them. He was to go no further. He too had sinned in the wilderness and was not allowed to enter himself into the land of so many expectations. He went up into a

mountain and looked far and wide over the new world on which they were to enter without him, and there he died. His work was done. When his wandering was ended, his life was ended too, and he entered into a different rest. Another took his place. That other was Joshua the son of Nun. From him the sixth book of the Bible, the book of Joshua, takes its name. The story of that book is the story of the taking possession of the Promised Land under the guidance of Joshua. He, we are told, “was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel hearkened unto him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses." They crossed the river Jordan, that sacred river of which we hear so often in the Bible, and then began the advance by which one part of the land after the other was occupied. For we must not suppose that the country given to the Jews was empty, or filled only with wild beasts. One of its names is the land of Canaan, and various tribes of heathen called Canaanites were already in possession of it. These heathen had to be driven out before a resting-place could be found for the Jews; and so we hear much of the taking of strong cities and battles with mighty armies. This was the time spoken of in the wellknown words, "We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what thou hast done in their time of old: how thou hast driven out the heathen with thy hand and planted them (that is, Thy people) in; how thou hast destroyed the nations, and spread them wide abroad. For they gat not the land in possession through their own sword, neither