And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone:
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.
While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.^
^ As we advance in Christian experience, we think less of the coming down from heaven in the incarnation, and more of the going back in the ascension. The Babe Jesus is less to us than the ascended Christ. We look, not so much towards the cradle of the manger-bed, as upward to the throne and forward to the second advent. It mikes a great difference to us whether we occupy the standpoint of the birth or of the ascension ; and many a system of theology, when weighed in the balance, is found wanting, because it fails to understand that the manna ceases when the Jordan is crossed and Canaan entered.^
How to labour and find it sweet: How to get the good red gold That veined hides in the granite fold
Under our feet — The good red gold that is bought and sold,
Eaiment to man, and house, and meat !
And how, while delving, to lift the eye To the far-off mountains of amethyst, The rounded hills, and the intertwist
Of waters that lie Calm in the valleys, or that white mist
Sailing across a soundless sky.^
III.
There aee Other, if Minor, Lessons to be learned from THIS Incident.
1. The ceasing of the manna should teach us that there is inevitable loss in all our gains. It was a great thing for Israel to gain the plains of Jericho, but, when they had done so, they lost
^ James Russell Lowell. 2 -p. B. Meyer.
' James Herbert Morse. DEUT.-ESTH. — Q
I30 EXCELLENCE OF THINGS ORDINARY
the bread of angels. For forty years they had been struggling forward to win the land of their hopes and of their dreams. Now it was theirs — they stood upon its soil ; all they had battled and toiled for had been crowned. But now that it was theirs the manna ceased ; the miracle of every morning was no more ; and dimly this stubborn people would perceive that something is lost with everything gained.
At every step we take, something must go — something, per- haps, which we reckoned precious yesterday. And he alone is wise and brave and cheerful who recognizes that inevitable law, and presses forward undaunted to the best, with the courage to forget what is behind. We gain the promised land, and lose the manna. We gain experience, and lose the morning dew. We gain the strength and energy of manhood, and lose the freshness and wonder of the child. We gain the peace and the beauty of old age, and lose the strength and energy of manhood.
Now these are facts, and a wise man faces facts. He does not murmur or cry for the impossible. He sets his face steadfastly towards Jerusalem and turns his back upon his boyhood's Galilee. For he knows that though the manna be withdrawn there will still be the ingathering of the autumn, and he lifts up his eyes, and the fields are white to harvest, " some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundredfold."
Farewell ! since never more for thee The sun comes up our eastern skies.
Less bright henceforth shall sunshine be To some fond heart, and saddened eyes.
There are who for thy last long sleep Shall sleep as sweetly never more,
Shall weep because thou can'st not weep, And grieve that all thy griefs are o'er.
Sad thrift of love ! the loving breast, On which the aching head was thrown,
Gave up the weary head to rest. But kept the aching for its own.
2. The ceasing of the manna teaches us to be cautious in asserting that anything is indispensable. If there was one thing graven upon the heart of Israel it was that without the manna
JOSHUA V. 12 131
they could not live at all. Eemember that of those who had left Egypt, only Caleb and Joshua now survived. All the others had been born out in the wilderness, and were children of desert air and desert nurture. The first thing that had caught their eye had been the manna. The first food they had tasted had been manna. As children, as boys, as men in the prime of manhood, it was manna that had stood between them and death ; until at last, after these years of nurture, of daily and unvarying dependence, there was not a man in Israel but would think that manna was indispensable to him. Then in the plain of Jericho the manna ceased. The morning dawned when the manna was not there. For the first time in nine-and-thirty years the ground was not white with sustenance from heaven. And did they perish then, or did God let them starve ?
^ There is no worse service that any man can render than calling that indispensable which is not really so. Some things are vital to life and salvation, and to these we must hold in the teeth of all defiance ; but apart from these let us be cautious in saying that this or that is indispensable. We have all been fed on certain views of the truth, just as the Israelites were fed on manna. We have looked at the Bible in a certain way since we were children at our mother's knee. And so wedded were we to that precious nurture, and to the tender memories with which it is inwoven, that to some of us it seemed that we must starve if we were bereft of the manna of our youth. Then came the morn- ing when the manna ceased. Our intellect awoke and it was gone. New truths arrested us — new thoughts of revelation — fresh insight into the ways of God in nature; and the strange thing is that then we did not starve, but were fed upon the finest of the wheat. Christ became real to us, His love became more wonderful ; the purposes of God became more magnificent. The manna of our unthinking childhood ceased only to lead us to the harvest field. And so we have learned in the conflict of to-day, when the faith of Jesus is fighting for its life, to be very cautious lest we harm the cause by saying that this or that is indis- pensable. The one thing vital is that Jesus came, and lived, and died as a sacrifice, and rose. Fix the one point of the compass fast in that, and let the other swing as widely as you please.^