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1. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Then it does now seem likely that the good Lord expects to give us one more chance. We are always entering upon new periods of time. Anniversary days mark the recurrence of events and afford opportunities for reflection. Birthdays and death days are full of meaning. What we ought to remember is the undoubted fact that in this twelvemonth to come we shall find ourselves travelling over pretty much the same route we went last year. There will not be anything extraordinarily surprising. Differences will be in the details.

2. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Then, in the fresh chance God is giving, He offers Himself to be our helper and friend. Time, time — unused, unexhausted, and unknown — sweeps about our poor little seven decades of living, and will keep its course resistlessly on after the end is reached, just as it ran its course before we were born into its beginning. Thus all the songs we sing, the wails we utter, and the prayers we make must choose expression somewhere among the combinations of seventy years allotted to each creature, and they have but one chance at a time. We are marched up according to programme, and play our tune, like so many performers in a concert given in the presence of God. During this year the concert will be repeated. The programme remains in good measure unchanged. We failed last year. The chances of life are open again. God offers to help us along. Our parts are to be played over. Will we accept a teacher this time, or not?

3. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Then, surely, the gifts of God's love on ahead of us have not been appropriated by others nor exhausted by ourselves. There comes a day in which any one can afford to be honestly simple and unaffected in all his surroundings, and relinquish this folly of labouring to keep up appearances for mere show. More pitiful folly still is that which jealousy engenders; for the man has ingeniously wasted his time in distancing others, who, when distanced, are dead. He has triumphed, but nobody is in the grand procession which he had imagined would immediately be formed in his honour. It makes a poor show to have no king dragging on behind the chariot.

4. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore," but it is well to remember that the ark has not passed this way heretofore either. It is significant here to notice that these people were told to accept God's guidance implicitly. The first time they had essayed to enter Canaan, their own folly had hindered. Now they were to be led by the sign of God's unfailing love. Herein is instruction for wise men along the ages. It makes life a new thing to put the ark on before it. God's purpose, infolded in a human life, renders the life immortal. "The Christian cannot die before his time"; that time God fixes.

5. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Now, with the ark on ahead, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Once, I remember, I picked up a small bird which had fallen on the pavement by my feet. I sought to reinstate it among the branches overhead; but the creature could not appreciate my generosity, and with passionate eagerness struggled to escape. I began unconsciously to talk aloud to it, "Poor, silly thing; why do you not trust your best friend? All I want is to get you up again in the fork of the tree. You are making it harder for me by dashing so against my fingers; for I am obliged to hold you firmly, and you do all the hurting yourself." Why is it we all struggle so, when the Lord is giving us help? We enter upon untrodden paths, but the skies are bright, and heaven is nearer, and the good God is overhead. It is likely most of us will recall the story of Longfellow in his romance. Paul Fleming entered that little chapel of Saint Gilgen. On the tomb above his head was the inscription, "Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart." It was as if a voice came into his ear from the dead, and the anguish of his thoughts was still.

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

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KJV: And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the host;

WEB: It happened after three days, that the officers went through the midst of the camp;