Deuteronomy, or the repetition of the law, is a book extending to thirty-four chapters. In the beginning of the book Moses is in the fortieth year of his leadership, and at the close of the book he is succeeded by Joshua. Moses speaks clearly of God's promise, and strengthens himself by its quotation in view of the great work which was yet to be accomplished. He then proceeds to instruct the people in the appointment of officers, and directs the sending of the spies, pointing out with his accustomed severity God's anger at unbelief and disobedience, and restrains the people from meddling with the Edomites, the Moabites, and the Amorites. The venerable leader desires to enter the Land of Promise, and is permitted but a prospect of it from a distance. His memory dwells with grateful delight upon all the wonderful disclosures of the divine presence and government as beheld within the compass of his personal leadership. The old story of Horeb and the ten commandments is told with a glow of thankfulness. Moses still persists in the recital of all details connected with foreign alliances and the taint of idolatry, assuring the people all the while that their enemies will be conquered, yet mingling the glad recital with recollections of Israel's rebellion; thus chastening an expectation which might grow into an unholy presumption. As Moses becomes older he seems to become even graver in his moral tone, constantly recommending obedience, showing how God is worthy of it because of his work amongst the children of Israel and because of the promise of blessing which he has attached to all willing service, not forgetting that threatenings are associated with disobedience: thus the great exhortation of Moses may be taken as the pattern of a truly evangelical sermon; knowing the fear of the Lord, he endeavours to persuade Israel: when persuasion would seem to be carried to a point tempting almost to laxity of discipline, Moses suddenly turns round and reminds his hearers that God presides over the tabernacles of lightning and thunder and storm, and that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Singularly, with an evident intent towards broader issues, comparatively little things are forbidden along with things that are manifestly important; as, for example, the use of blood is forbidden in food, and holy things must be eaten in the holy place; these would seem to be but matters of detail, yet along with them idolatry is not so much as to be inquired after, and enticers to idolatry are to be avoided and destroyed by stoning, however near and dear they may be. Then again there is an elaborate statement of what may be eaten of beasts, of fishes, and of fowls. Yet these comparative trifles are also associated with distinct instructions to destroy cities which are given to idolatry. Special attention is devoted to the question of tithes in the fourteenth chapter, and instructions so minute are given that there can be no possible misconception as to their range and purpose; yet amidst all this rule and enactment the sabbatical year of release dawns like a summer above the snows of winter, and sounds of jubilee are heard throughout the ranks of Israel. We even hear of the voluntary slave in the fifteenth chapter—a name which would seem to involve a contradiction of terms, yet the gracious anomaly is reconciled by the very spirit which conceived it. It is most instructive to notice the alternation of subjects which are indicated as from the seventeenth chapter onward: thus things that were sacrificed were to be sound, and yet idolaters were to be slain,—where is the line of connection between points so remote? Then the election and duty of a king are set forth specifically, and whilst the local sovereign is to be respected and honoured a mysterious prophecy is announced concerning a Great Prophet who is to be heard and obeyed as the representative of God (Deuteronomy 18:15-19). In the nineteenth chapter the matter of detailed obedience is kept up in all its vigour: the landmark is not to be removed; two witnesses at the least must testify in a disputed case: the false witness is to be punished; and then, quickly following these instructions, it is shown that "trees for meat" are to be preserved in siege; the sex is to be distinguished by apparel; the dam is not to be taken with her young ones; the house must be built with battlements; and attention must be paid to the fringes upon the vesture. Rapidly succeeding these comparatively trivial matters are found instructions regarding physical uncleanness and moral perversion of the most loathsome kind; then suddenly attention is directed towards usury, and vows, and the exemption of a newly-married man from war; stripes are not to exceed forty; the ox is not to be muzzled; and every weight is to be just. What a system of law was that in which Israel was trained! On every side was to be found prescription, authority, limitation, and all the apparatus of personal and social drill! Now and again we hear of the sabbatical year of release, and of the treatment of slaves at given periods, and in the twenty-fourth chapter we even read of charity; but the general tone of the book is that of legal restriction, criticism, and penalty. Hastily reading the whole book, it may be described as a book of law and little else; yet reading it more attentively, it will be found that even in Deuteronomy there are evangelical lines full of the very love and tenderness of God. The cities of refuge may be described as gospel cities; the protection of the birthright is an interposition of mercy; the very battlement upon the house is the law respecting the neighbour exemplified rather than merely uttered in words; the protection of the dam (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) is full of evangelical suggestion; and the measuring of stripes so as not to exceed forty shows that the law itself was restrained by wisdom and mercy. Unquestionably the curses pronounced upon disobedience in the twenty-eighth chapter are like a very storm poured down from the heights of heaven; but in the same chapter the blessings pronounced upon obedience show that high above all law there reigns the spirit of love and pity. In the thirty-first and following chapters Moses prepares to give up his leadership, and in doing so he tenderly encourages the people to persevere, and in paternal tones cheers the heart of Joshua in view of the tremendous task about to be assigned to him. Then Moses begins to sing, and soon after is sent up to Mount Nebo, whence he views the land. There Moses died and was buried, and no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. This is a bird's-eye outline of the marvellous book of Deuteronomy. Let us now turn and consider the whole book chapter by chapter.

Selected Note

"We find that in the guidance of the human race, from the earliest ages downwards, more especially in the lives of the three patriarchs, God prepared the way by revelations for the covenant which he made at Sinai with the people of Israel. But in these preparations we can discover no sign of any legendary and unhistorical transference of later circumstances and institutions, either Mosaic or post-Mosaic, to the patriarchal age; and they are sufficiently justified by the facts themselves, since the Mosaic economy cannot possibly have been brought into the world, like a deus ex machina, without the slightest previous preparation. The natural simplicity of the patriarchal life, which shines out in every narrative, is another thing that produces on every unprejudiced reader the impression of a genuine historical tradition, This tradition, therefore, even though for the most part transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth alone, has every title to credibility, since it was perpetuated within the patriarchal family, "in which, according to divine command (Genesis 18:19), the manifestations of God in the lives of our fathers were handed down as an heirloom, and that with all the greater ease, in proportion to the longevity of the patriarchs, the simplicity of their life, and the closeness of their seclusion from foreign and discordant influences. Such a tradition would undoubtedly be guarded with the greatest care. It was the foundation of the very existence of the chosen family, the bond of its unity, the mirror of its duties, the pledge of its future history, and therefore its dearest inheritance" (Delitzsch). But we are by no means to suppose that all the accounts and incidents in the book of Genesis were dependent upon oral tradition; on the contrary, there is much which was simply copied from written documents handed down from the earliest times. Not only the ancient genealogies, which may be distinguished at once from the historical narratives by their antique style, with its repetitions of almost stereotyped formularies, and by the peculiar forms of the names which they contain, but certain historical sections—such, for example, as the account of the war in Gen. xiv., with its superabundance of genuine and exact accounts of a primitive age, both historical and geographical, and its old words, which had disappeared from the living language before the time of Moses, as well as many others—were unquestionably copied by Moses from ancient documents."

Deuteronomy 1:6

This is the first remarkable thing in the opening chapter of the fifth book of Moses. God knows, then, how long we have been here or there. Our downsitting and our uprising, our going out and our coming in, are of consequence to him who made us. He keeps the time: he knows when we have been "long enough" in one place. He does not always consult us, saying, in terms of affectionate inquiry,—Would you desire to tarry longer here?—would it suit you to remain another year? Sometimes God seems to come down upon our life with a precision and an imperativeness which make us feel how little, after all, we have to do with what we call our own concerns. A blessed life, surely, and most sweet, and altogether tender and restful, is it when we wait patiently upon God and tarry until we receive his reply, and then go out and do his bidding with both hands and with the unbroken consent of the entire mind. From the way in which he speaks to us, God seems to take it for granted that no question will arise upon his instructions. Surely in the very method of approaching us, a tribute is paid to our noblest qualities. The Lord comes with an instruction as if we had been waiting for it; he tells us when to move and when to rest, as if our eyes were continually directed unto him in attitude of attention and expectation; his speeches are answers, not to questions but to prayers; his commands are not merely edicts, but translations of the spirit which he assumes to be in us. Infinite is the wisdom of God.

"Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount." We may get tired even of mountains. Wherever we live, we need change. The first happy impulse often commits itself to the doctrine that we could live here or there alway. God does not take us at our word, because he knows that our word is but a speech of ignorance or of impulse: it does but give utterance to the emotion of the moment; so, he allows our little speech to plash round about our life as if it were a river of his own creating; but we soon see how it is dried up by the sun, and we are left in a thirsty and barren place. Expect the answer from Heaven when you are in wonder as to your residence and pilgrimage, or action of any kind. There need not be any communication of audible speech between your soul and God: the communication will be in the spirit—in its profound and loving obedience, and in its positive readiness to give up mountain and castle, and palace and crown, without one moment's querulousness, or suggestion that another day would be another day of good fortune. That is the attitude of the pious spirit—the heart that is really healthy towards God, the soul that has in it constancy and loyalty without speck or flaw.

We are ordered down off the mountain. Soon after we have said, It is good to be here, the Leader proposes that we should go down again. He will not have any heaven built upon earth; he will never allow us to build permanently upon foundations that are themselves transitory. Who can build straightly upon a crooked foundation? Who can build for ever upon a basis that may succumb in a moment? Who would rear a supposedly eternal palace upon foundations that are doomed to be burned? So, we are told to descend the mountain, though the sky be at its bluest, and though the air be full of health, and though our vision and our general senses be so quickened that we can almost detect the presence of spirits and angels. There are many mountains to come down—mountains of supposed strength, when the very robustest man must lie down and say: I am very weary, tired to exhaustion; mountains of prosperity, when Crœsus himself must come down saying: I am a poor man; let the meanest slave serve me, for I cannot longer serve myself. Then there is the coming down that is inevitable—the time when God says to every one of us: You have been long enough on the mountain of time: pass through the grave to the hills of heaven, the great mountains of eternity. Sometimes, we think we have been too long on the mountain, and wonder when he will come, whose right it is to bring the sheep into the fold; we say in our peevishness—not always impious, but rather an expression of weakness: Surely we have been forgotten: by this time we ought to have been with the blessed ones; the night is coming on quickly, and we shall be drenched with dews.—So long are some men kept outside, on the very top of the hill, where very little grass grows,—bare, rocky places. But God cannot forget: we must rest in his memory; he puts himself even before a mother who may forget her sucking child, but he has pledged himself never to forget his redeemed Church.

But, having ordered his people away from the mountain, where can they take up their abode? We find the answer in the seventh verse. God has many localities at his command, so he disperses the people, setting them "in the plain," "in the hills," "in the vale," "by the sea side," and "unto the great river, the river Euphrates." What space God has! "In my Father's house are many mansions,"—in my Father's house are many localities. Do not say God has done with you because he has driven you from one pulpit, one church, one business, one very happy engagement in life, where you were making honest bread, and where you could sleep the night through untroubled by a single bitter memory. God has places enough for us all. We did think it hard when that last door was shut as if in our very face: when we turned away that day our faces were pictured all over with sorrow and grief and disappointment: agony was written upon the countenance; we went home saying: The end has come, the cloud has gathered: there is no more hope;—and, behold, whilst we talked thus atheistically and foolishly, the cloud opened, and we caught such glimpses of morning as our weary eyes had never caught before. The old mount had become a kind of home to us: we knew the short ways up the mountain: we knew the long, grassy slopes that led to the summit; we had some little property on the very top; we had begun, before getting full orders about anything, to lay just two or three courses which we meant to raise into a tabernacle; we did stand upon the mount, and, looking upon those who dwelt in the plain, said we would not live down there: we would always live up among the blue skies, the white clouds, and at the very gate of morning. So, it was hard to leave the old homestead: that morning we drained the cup of bitterness, and, when half-way down the hill, oh what a look we gave at the summit we should never re-ascend!—the old business, the old pulpit, the old happy relations in life, the mountain that had become a sweet home to us, and on whose steeps there was not one weary league. It did cost us much to leave the sweet place, haunted by ten thousand tender memories, and blessed by the recollection of many an answered prayer. But God has more places: instead of mountains, hills—little mountains; not the great bulging mountains that seem to vie with heaven itself in majesty: still, little mountains—undulating mounds having green valleys on their tops which are still valleys in highlands, then plains, vales, sea-side, rivers. Who would not see all God's places? Is it not wiser to take the longer lines, and to say to the heavenly One: Show us all the inheritance of thy power, and lead us hither and thither as thou wilt: it is thy world,—how green in the springtime! how rich in blossom! how richer still in fruits!—If thou wilt lead us, the vale shall be as the mountain, and the mountain shall be as the plain; and the sea shall be without a storm, and the river shall flow like a gospel of refreshment and hospitality. Why do we choose our own places? Did ever man dispute the divine sovereignty without regretting his encounter with the Eternal will? Why have any will? Were we serving wooden gods, mechanical deities, divinities of our own creation or invention, we might dispute with them, point out what possibly they may have overlooked, suggest happier expressions, and draw bolder programmes; but if God is the only-wise, if God is love, if God is light, if God died for us in the person of his Son, why not say: Not my will, but thine, be done: take me to the mountain or the plain, the hills or the vale, the sea-side or the river; the taking itself shall be as a vision of heaven?

Happy days were those of Deuteronomy!—God the Lawgiver, Instructor, Guide; Israel receiving the speeches of heaven, and instantly striking the tent, and marching gladly, with hymns of thankfulness, to the music of the divine movement. Was this the case? We find the exact contrary was the reality. When men brought back "the fruit of the land," which they had been sent to search out, "and brought it down unto us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God doth give us. Notwithstanding—" These are the words we read in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses. What is their meaning? Evidently, that eye-witnesses were disbelieved. Caleb's word went for nothing; Joshua's testimony was ignored. That is precisely what we are doing today; that is literally what is being done with regard to Christian testimony in our own generation. What are Christian speakers saying? They are saying that they themselves have tasted, and handled, and felt the good word of life; and we give them the lie. Do not be hard upon ancient Israel, for, if inclined to a temper of severity, we may well inflict upon ourselves the severest chastisement. Do Christian speakers draw pictures, and appeal to the imagination, and suggest material for happy dreams? If so, then we commit no breach of decency or courtesy in subjecting their testimony to close cross-examination; but when men say, each for himself,—I was blind, but now I see; I was cruel, but now I am kind; I was a devotee of all evil and wrong, of every form of corruption and mischief, but, by the grace of God, I love truth and light, and grace and beauty;—if the living men themselves are there—not the words, not the logic, not the argument, not the rhetoric, but the men—we must first destroy their character before we can touch their testimony. This, then, puts the whole controversy in a very serious light. Christianity has not only sent messages to us, but messengers—not messengers who can repeat sentences, but messengers who incarnate the doctrine they preach,—or they have forced themselves into a service for which they have no qualification. Let the life speak: let the sweet temper be its own argument; let the invincible charity bear down with celestial strength the bitter opposition. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind;" it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth." Were this controversy an antagonism between two hostile camps of words, then let his be the palm who wins it: let cleverness enjoy the prize, and let the wordiest speaker have the triumph due to his efforts. But it is not so: this is a matter of life and death, of reality or of unreality. The Christian speaker is not an argument only, but an incarnation; and before we can impugn his message, we must assail the character which he declares that message to have wrought in his own case. Good Christians would be good servants: splendid lives would be splendid works; yet Caleb and Joshua were disbelieved. Eye-witnesses go for nothing in the pressure of an inveterate and unreasoning prejudice. Christ himself was disbelieved: he was "despised and rejected of men." Purity is a noble argument, but not one that inevitably secures victory and triumph: otherwise, the Son of God himself would but have required to show his life in order to win and subdue the ages.

What did Israel say? Notwithstanding the beautiful messages and the cordial welcomes, they went into their "tents, and said, Because the Lord hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 1:27). That is human nature. Do not suppose that human nature is incapable of baseness so complete. Whatever can be imagined can be done. The fiction is often the larger truth. We say, on reading sundry books,—These are inventions. So they are; but inventions are possibilities: inventions may be the larger facts. We must see in others where we are ourselves. We cannot separate ourselves from others, saying,—We should not have done so. Said a lady in the hearing of Thomas Carlyle,—"Do you think, sir, that we should now act towards Jesus Christ as the Jews acted in their day? We should receive him with love and enthusiasm." "No, madam," was the answer, "if he came a rich man, without touching any of our prejudices or habits or customs, I might receive a card from you to be at your house at a given hour, and on the back of it might be written, 'To meet the Saviour;' but if he came back as he first came—the same poor man, the denouncer of all Pharisaism and evil,—you would say, 'Send him to Newgate, and hang him!'" Certainly. It was human nature that did it—not the Jews. The Jews acted but incidentally: the Jews happened to furnish the historical point which gave vividness to the tragedy; but when the Cross was set up, it was human nature that crushed it into the rock: when Christ was jeered, it was the civillest of genteel persons that mocked him to his face: when he was in agony, it was the purest unchristian civilisation that added bitterness to his cup. We must not allow ourselves to imagine that the Jews disbelieved Jesus, and that if he came now we should welcome him. No: the human heart can never welcome Christ:—'No man an come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." It is a mystery: we cannot explain the profound enigma; but the human heart never had anything for Christ but a Cross; and from the Cross the miracle must be wrought which constrains human nature to crown him with many crowns. We may disbelieve Caleb and Joshua, we may turn our back upon Moses and Aaron, we may even bring ourselves under the awful denunciation of the thirty-second verse, in which we read—"Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God." Now, seeing that we must live by belief, who are we going to believe? We cannot get away from this faith-life. Who is to be leader? Say some,—"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord;"—others,—"The God that answereth by fire, let him be God." Set up what standard you will, fix the terms of your own appeal; but Christian men will never hesitate to stand forward and say: Christ is my Lord and my God; I cannot reach the sublimity of his holiness, but I can aim in that direction; I cannot overtake my own prayers, but I can hold my face towards the rising of the sun; I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do—I press—I press! The attitude is Christian, the attitude is an argument, the attitude imposes a solemn and incommunicable responsibility.

Memorable Experiences

Deuteronomy 1:19

There are some things that are never to be forgotten in life. There are troubles whose shadow is as long as life's whole day. The troubles are past, but the shadow is still there; the victory is won, but the battle seems still to be booming in the ear. We are miles and miles away from the desert—yea, half a continent and more—but who can ever forget "all that great and terrible wilderness"? Yet life would be poor without it. The memory of that wilderness chastens our joy, touches our prayer into a more solemn and tender music, and makes us more valiant, because more hopeful, in reference to all the future. There cannot be two such wildernesses in the whole universe. If there were another like it, it would not be equal to it, because our experience in the first would enable us to go through the second with a firmer step and a more cheerful courage. We are the better for the wildernesses of life, and we cannot escape them. No evasion is possible here. Apparent evasions have been accomplished, but they have been apparent only. You cannot get your children through life without passing through the wilderness at some time and in some way; and you are foolish when you think you can pay for their passage by some other and happier road. There is only one road—rough, cavernous, uphill, where the wind has full scope for its roar and cold assault; and we are the better for passing through it patiently, steadily, and religiously. I know it may seem hard to you that that dear little boy should have to go through the wilderness; but he must go. I know how you take him into your arms and say that you have had to suffer and he shall not but you cannot help it; and if you postpone his suffering too long, he will suffer the more for the postponement. There is a chronology of discipline; there is a time-bill written in heaven, and hung down from the skies, by which all chastisement is administered, all discipline is undergone, all burdens are imposed, and all strength is given. It is folly, it is cruelty, to suppose that you can find out some road in which there is no wilderness—some method of education in which there is no chastisement. Oh, that great and terrible wilderness! It comes after us now like a ghost; it darkens upon our vision in the dream-time; we repeat the journey in the night season, and feel all the sleet and cold, all the dreariness and helplessness of the old experience. How many a joy we have forgotten, how many a glad laugh has left no memory behind it, how many a salutation has been but a beating of the air and an instant descent into oblivion; but we cannot play with "that great and terrible wilderness." The very pronouncement of the words makes us cold. It was "great," it was "terrible," it was a "wilderness." But, rightly trodden, its barren sand made us men; taken in the right spirit, we thought we saw in it the beginning of the garden of God.

Every man does not pass through exactly the same wilderness; it is not needful that he should do so in order to confirm this doctrine—viz., that in all lives there are great dreary spaces that we would gladly jump—great and terrible wildernesses that we approach with fear and traverse almost with despair.

There was that great business wilderness that you passed through—when all was loss and no profit; when your friends forgot you, or when their smile was not followed by any substantial blessing; when you dare not tell the tale to your wife at night, because you had no wish to make her cry and bear a heavier burden. You were not dishonest, nor deceptive; you were not guilty of a culpable secretiveness in keeping the state of affairs from her; you wanted to tread the winepress alone. You said it would be better to-morrow, and then you would tell her all about it. You listened to her laugh and said, "Poor thing! did she but know how near the bankruptcy court is that laugh would be choked in her young throat." But you would not tell you were passing through a great and terrible wilderness. I am not prepared to blame men who wish to keep the length and the terribleness of the desert as secrets in their own hearts; that secretiveness may be born of love and tender sympathy and real manliness. You remember the time when you had no night, if night be time for sleep; when you had no day, if day be time for joy and triumph. You remember the time when you dare hardly look into your own books, they were such blanks. You have not forgotten your old companions—Poverty that walked on the right hand, and Friendlessness that walked on the left. It was a great and terrible wilderness. If you could have talked of it as a wilderness, you might have found some garden patches in it, but you dare not tell exactly where you were—everything was so dark, so hard, so sterile; no hint of green thing, no sound of bird-music, no glint of subtle and unexpected light. The wilderness was great and terrible; but it is past. You are in fairer lands now; your property is accumulating, your speculations are paying, your adventures are crowned with success. Do not forget the wilderness: other men are in it. The man sitting next to you now, with an apparently jocund face and bright eye, is in the very middle of the wilderness which you have escaped. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ;" bear them prayerfully, sympathetically. It is not needful that you should know them in name and detail, in date and actual locality; you must fall back on the solemn and perpetual facts of human history, and always consider that your comrades, friends, companions, neighbours, are undergoing chastisements and bearing burdens the very memory of which is no small part of your own individual training and spiritual education. Let prayer be made for all men. Never offer a prayer without thinking of the heavy-laden, the broken-hearted, the wounded spirit, the tired wayfarer.

Yours, on the other hand, was no business trouble, it was a long and painful affliction—the more painful because of a conscious strength that could not assert itself. Oh, that is pain! to know that you have great strength and yet to be pinned down, as it were, at one point. It is humiliating, it makes one impatient. We could sometimes almost tear the pinned filament away and claim opportunity for the exercise of our conscious power. To stop there and to say: "It is right that I should so suffer, be so mocked; Father in heaven, not my will, but thine be done"—that is the last accomplishment of our spiritual culture. When we can say so, we are on the very last page of Heaven's first lesson-book, and will soon be ready to begin the second volume in the ampler and clearer light. You remember the affliction—when everybody in the house was quiet; when no one could commence anything new, when to-morrow was to be a revelation of some sorer trouble, some deeper darkness, some heavier burden; when you thought about yourself as about a life that was run out; when you said—by that curious euphemy by which we deceive ourselves—"If anything should happen to me." It is so that men speak about their own mortality; you remember the time when there were no joyful words in the speech of the house, when the morning was as night, and the night was sevenfold in darkness—that was "a great and terrible wilderness." The poor reason was reeling, the light was going out, the burden was increasing, because the spirit was chastened. It was a "great and terrible wilderness."

But yours was neither business nor affliction, it was a wilderness of temptation. You fought with beasts at Ephesus, you fought with yourself seven days a week, it was the hour and power of darkness, the hours were crowded and huddled into one rough midnight. You were without strength; it was the day of helplessness. You were mocked and haunted by invisible and impalpable powers. If they had been flesh and blood you could have struck them, and that would have been some relief; but we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Oh! could we but see our enemies, we might take measure of them; we could fasten our eye upon their eye, and anticipate their purpose by a steady glance studious of their intentions. But we do not see the enemy—he is on the right hand and on the left, behind, in front, and everywhere—a ubiquitous foe. Like the wind we cannot seize him, like the darkness we cannot measure him, like our own life, feeling it everywhere, but unable to place it in any one exclusive locality. We cannot corner those spiritual foes, they never sleep, they give no notice of their approach, they have no Sabbath day in their long week, when they say—"We must give the hunted foe or prey a rest." Just now it is a "great and terrible wilderness." Recognise it as such, lay your account with it, and study the divine intention in its presence, and in its awful shadow.

What are the thoughts that such a review should excite? Can we look back upon that way, through all the great and terrible wilderness, without remembering the divine help which we received? God was God in the wilderness; God came walking upon the wings of the wind, and flying upon the pinions of the storm; God looked at us through the darkness, and there was no blaze of anger in his eye. Who can forget the touch that came upon our burning brow in the night-time? Who can forget the ever-branching tree, just by the side of the bitter pool? Who can forget the clump of palm trees where no palm trees were expected? Who can cease to remember the voice of leadership—the strong, authoritative man who came amongst us like a revelation from God, and spoke broad words in broad tones, and was a tower of strength to us in the time of our weakness, and wonder, and fear—the sympathetic pastor, the mighty preacher, the kind friend, the one who understood us wholly through and through? I know of no wilderness in which there were not mitigations of its dreariness and solitude; yet we could not map these out and say they will never occur today, and to-morrow, and a week hence, and in a year's time. Our blessings also come suddenly, unexpectedly, and, it may be, according to our reckoning, irregularly. But the "great and terrible wilderness" was the place where our great prayers were prayed. The darkness inspires an eloquence of its own; sense of loneliness makes a dumb man eloquent in intercession. You do not know what you said in that long night of wilderness and solitude; the words were taken down; if you could read them now, you would be surprised at their depth, richness, and unction. You owe your very life to the darkness which made you afraid.

Then, is there no divine purpose, the recollection of which may sustain us in traversing wildernesses and lonely deserts? Who made the world? Is the world a fatherless thing, an unmade world, a self-rounded thing that may split up at any moment, or is there method in it? Is there a God above it? Is there a throne anywhere? And the King, is he but a name or an echo? I see purpose in my life; I see it now—"Thou hast done all things well." I did not think so at the time; I should have made the wilderness a mile shorter, but it was on the last mile that I saw the brightest angel. I would have come to honour and renown sooner; but I see now that the very movements were ticked off, and that a moment earlier would have been a mistake. "I would have come," says another Christian man, "to a sense of competency, and comfort, and household security ten years ago; but in my soul I see that ten years ago I could not have borne what I now carry gracefully." Thou hast done all things well. I would not have had seven graves in the cemetery, nor two, nor one; but I see now that I am the richer for the seven; I would not now have it otherwise. They are my best estate; I have property in them; I grow my choicest flowers there; there I meet with the angels that understand me. There is a method in all this: I will accept it; I will bow down before it; I will kiss the rod that lacerated me to the bone: it was in my Father's hand.

Then, is there to be no human gratitude springing out of all this? Is ours to be a false life—an unsympathetic existence? Ought there not to be a new power in the hand-grip? Ought not my hand to get round yours with a more cunning and expressive masonry, because of the wilderness through which I have passed and the sorrows which I have undergone, and which are now just beginning to fall upon you? You can never be wrong in regarding human life as having in it great gaps, great deserts, great and terrible wounds. The preacher should never forget this. When an assembly comes together, it does not convene as an assembly of philosophers and high thinkers and men who are thirsting for some special intellectual gratification. I care not where the assembly is, it is an assembly of broken hearts, burdened lives, blinded eyes, sorrow-laden souls. I will undertake, that he who speaks of God's infinity, eternity, spiritual majesty, deific magnificence and grandeur shall not touch one heart as compared with the man who speaks of fatherhood, pity, condescension, need of help, need of grace. He who so speaks to Heaven will take up a thousand hearts with him, and in his one voice there will throb the necessity of a multitude of souls. As we have received help of God, let us give help to others. If our help sometimes be imposed upon, no matter. I do not want the sagacity which never makes a mistake; I want the sympathy, the great motherly love that tells a prodigal that he is almost an angel. That will do more good in the world than your sharp criticism, your discriminating and penetrating judgment, that knows exactly who is good and who is bad. That is not my business; I have but one hand in this matter, and that is the right hand—the giving hand, the writing hand, the helping hand, the working hand, the sheltering and protecting hand. He only must have two hands who can discriminate with infinite penetration and justness between the good and the bad. We do not all come through the wilderness with equal strength. Some are far behind, they were very weak; they got sore tired; they said, "Comrade, how far is it now?" And all we could say was, "It is not so far today as it was yesterday." Do not count the miles, take the steps; do not say you have to travel fifty miles, but say you have to take the next step, and grace shall be equal to thy day. "My grace is sufficient for thee." And at the last he will say, "Thy shoes were iron and brass; and as thy day, so thy strength was." And we shall reply, "Even so, my garments were not worn, my shoes bore no travel stains, the mystery of endurance was equal to the mystery of trial; so, God be thanked for the great and terrible wilderness!"