^ Is not this the manner in which all saints die? Their death
is precious to the Lord, and after the troubled day of life — agitated
in its early morning by the trumpet calling to battle; fretted
through an overcast noon by the pressure of its responsibilities
» A. Scott. 'Bishop Woodford.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 11 1
and cares; lit in the evening by the rays of a stormy sunset, piercing through the cloud-drift, the tired spirit sinks down upon the couch, which the hands of God had spread, and He bends over it to give it its good-night kiss, as in earliest days the mother had done to the wearied child. That embrace, however, is the thres- hold, not of a long night of insensibility, but of an awakening in the supernal light of the everlasting morning.^
When all my lessons have been learned, And the last year at school is done,
I shall put up my books and games: " Good-bye, my fellows, every one ! "
The dusty road will not seem long,
Nor twilight lonely, nor forlorn The everlasting whip-poor-wills
That lead me back where I was born.
And there beside the open door.
In a large country dim and cool, Her waiting smile shall hear at last,
"Mother, I am come home from school."
» F. B. Meyer.
The Excellence op Things Okdinary.
DEUT.-ESTH. — 8
LITERATURE.
Evans (E. H.), True and False Aivis, 28, Macmillan (H.), Two Worlds are Ours, 177. Meyer (F. B.), Joshua and the Land of Promise, 50. Morrison (G. H.), The Wings of the Morning, 44. Spurgeon (C. H.), Morning by Morning, 1. Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, v. 215. Christian World Pulpit, lii. 113 (Carpenter).
The Excellence of Things Ordinary.
And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. — Josh. v. 12.
1. The giving of the manna to the Israelites was one of the most notable providences of the Exodus. It happened when the pilgrims had struck inland, and were faced with the starvation of the desert. The desert was probably more fertile then than it is now, but even then it was utterly inadequate to provide for that mighty and marching company. Faced by certain starvation, as they thought, we can hardly wonder that Israel began to murmur. " Would to God," they cried, " we had been left to die in Egypt, where at least we had food to satisfy our hunger." And it was then, in the hour of their extremity, when faced by the gaunt spectre of starvation, that God wrought the miracle of manna. From that day onward it had never failed, in spite of all murmuring and all rebellion. If the gifts of God depended on man's faith, the manna would have vanished very quickly. But day after day, through fret and sin and cowardice, God held to His purpose, as He always does ; for the long-suffering of God is our salvation.
2. But now the forty years' journeying was over. The need was gone, and so the manna ceased. Israel awoke one morning, and the ground was no longer white ; it was all golden with the ripened corn. We can picture the look of wild astonishment which would flash in an instant into a thousand eyes on that morning of the ceasing of the manna. There was deep doctrine in the giving of the manna. There was doctrine not less deep in its withdrawal. God had His lessons to teach Israel then, and through Israel to teach us all.
^ Various conjectures have been formed regarding the nature of the manna, which every morning whitened like hoar-frost the
ii6 EXCELLENCE OF THINGS ORDINARY
ground around the encampment of the Israelites in the wilderness. It was indeed a mu-aculous substance in the sense of its having been provided at the very time when, and in the very circum- stances where, it was required. We can see most conspicuously God's hand put forth from behind the veil of His ordinary provi- dence, in the abundance and unfailing regularity of the supply, and in the exceptional feature of its corruption if kept over an ordinary day, and its preservation when reserved for the Sabbath. But we have no reason to believe that it was in itself a miracul- ous substance, a material previously unknown, created specially for the purpose and coming down straight from heaven. God economises the supernatural element in His working, and makes use of ordinary means as far as they will go. He did not create abnormal loaves and fishes in the miracle at Capernaum ; He only increased the fisherman's scanty meal into a feast for thousands ; and the extended loaves and fishes were in all respects the same as those which formed the starting-point of the miracle. He who used the ordinary thorny growth of the desert as the medium of His transcendent revelation when He appeared in the burning bush, and converted the simple shepherd's rod in the hand of Moses into a serpent, and made it the instrument of compassing the deliverance of Israel by signs and wonders, would in all like- lihood employ on this occasion a substance indigenous to the desert, as the basis of the great miracle which He wrought for the supply of the daily bread of His people. Such a substance might well have been the white hard exudation that drops from the thorns of the tamarisk shrub, and frequently covers the ground to a considerable extent, which is used for food at the present day by the Arabs, and to which they give the name of manna. We cannot expect to trace an exact correspondence, for some of the qualities and conditions of the manna of Scripture were unmistakably supernatural. It is sufficient if the natural object could serve as a mere fulcrum for the miracle.^