3. There is one other lesson to link with the ceasing of the manna. It is that God, as we advance in life, brings us back to
*G. H. Morrison.
132 EXCELLENCE OF THINGS ORDINARY
the food of long ago. Had there been any manna down in Egypt ? Had manna been Israel's food before the Exodus ? There were few now who could recall these days ; yet corn, not manna, had been the food of Egypt. And now the wanderers come back to corn, to the old nurture of the storied past, yet all so radiant now with love and mercy that the old has become new for evermore. That was the path by which God led His people. He brought them back to the old, and it was new. That is the path by which God leads us all, if we are in earnest to know and do His will. "We toil and we suffer and we play our part, and we feast on dew-touched manna for a season ; but the truths that we need to live by and to die by are the commonplaces of long ago. We have all had our manna days, and we thank God for them, they were so full of wonder and delight. But life is stern, and sin is very terrible, and the manna has ceased and we are back to corn — back to our fathers' need of a Eedeemer, back to the feet of an all-sufl&cient Christ.
There is a childhood into which we grow,
A heart-simplicity whereby we hold
Love's sunshine fairer than the glint of gold. As that we hope for passeth that we know : Warm memories from the tender long ago
Whisper their tale, and we can ne'er grow old
If now and then life's shadows grey and cold Are flooded with our childhood's after-glow. We are not old till we forget the way
That leads us from the tumult of the street
To Memory's dimly-lighted, still retreat, Where Youth comes back to those who have grown grey. Where all may find a benison, save they
Whom long forgetfulness hath made unmeet.^
* P. C. Ainaworth, Poems and Sonnets, 63.
The Choice of a Master.
133
Literature.
Girdlestone (A. G.), The Way, the Truth, the Life, No. 6.
Hughes (H. P.), The Philanthropy of God, 45.
Jowett (J. H.), The Transfigured Church, 253.
Moore (A. L.), The Message of the Gospel, 143.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, xi. 193.
Salmond (C. A.), For Days of Youth, 189.
Selby (T. G.), The God of the Patriarchs, 273.
Stewart (J.), Outlines of Discourses, 153.
British Congregationalist, June 11, 1908 (Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 309 (Anderson) ; xviii. 219 (Vaughan) ;
xliv. 104 (Bradford). Church of England Pulpit, xvii. 88 (Coleman). Church Pulpit Year Booh, iv. (1907) 128. Churchman's Pulpit : First Sunday after Trinity, ix. 447 (Alford);
Sermons to the Young, xvi. 289 (Soans). Homiletic Review, xvii. 343 (Hoyt). Preacher's Magazine, xiv. (1903) 86 (Smith).
S34
/
The Choice of a Master.
Choose you this day whom ye will serve. — Josh. xxiv. 15.
1. This was the farewell charge of the veteran chieftain Joshua to the tribes of Israel gathered together at Shechem.j^ He had watched the childhood of the nation. He had seen a band of fugitives organized into an army, disciplined by adversity, entering at last as a victorious nation on the promised possession. He had watched their religious history, the triumph of the great truth of the One God which they were to hold as a sacred deposit, and hand down to after ages. It was their greatness that to them were committed " the oracles of God." Yet he had seen them rJready false to their high mission. He had noted the reappear- ance of polytheistic ideas, he had seen the return to the Apis- worship of Egypt, he had mourned over the importation of more than one foreign cult. He knew that he was the leader of a chosen people, but of a people chosen not for their own greatness, but for a special duty or vocation in God's world. And he saw that they had not realized their vocation. In the new phase of their history on which they were entering, everything now turned upon a choice. They were at a solemn crisis. God had chosen them for His work ; but God's choice is never absolute, never a mere selection for pre-eminence, never a mere display of power, but part of a great purpose which runs through time. To fail to do that work to which God calls is, by that failure, to nullify the choice. It was, then, a matter of life and death for Israel. How would they decide ?
2. The place in which that question was asked and answered t^ was full of memories. It was there, tradition said, that the first promise had been made to Abraham : " Unto thy seed will I give this land " (Gen. xii. 7). It was there, in the valley between Ebal
136 THE CHOICE OF A MASTER
and Gerizim, the mount of cursing and the mount of blessing, that, in obedience to the word of Moses, the Law had been rehearsed. It was there that the embalmed body of Joseph, which they had brought up from Egypt, was to find its final resting-place.