266 A GOODLY HERITAGE
out, where thou sowedest thy seed, and wateredest it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs : but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven : a land which the Lord thy God careth for ; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."
The country was small, compact, infinitely broken and varied in outline, full of features, crowded with nooks of beauty, where a man might easily learn to nestle as in a home, and which he might come to love with a passion which would make him a patriot of the Greek, Eoman, or German type ; in striking contrast to the prevalent tone of Asiatic political life. His home by the spring with the terebinth grown to shadow it, the rich grass in the hollow where the brook was purling by, and gleaned through the verdure; the hills sweeping up behind in a wide amphi- theatre of beauty, terraced with vineyards, whose grapes glowed ruddy in the westering sun ; broad belts of yellow corn-land on the slopes, and the barns bursting with the garnered spoils of the year; such a home, I say — and there were myriads of such in Palestine in its palmy days — would make the land seem fair and lovely as it seemed to Moses when he surveyed it from the borders of the waste ; a land to love, to fight for, to die for, before it should be pressed by the footsteps of the insolent foe.
It was a land, too, of noble agriculture, tasking men's loftier faculties and powers. Moses speaks with a kind of contempt of the agriculture of Egypt, where the land was watered with the foot, " as the garden of herbs." The thing to be chiefly desired in Egypt was that the land should become one vast plain of fertile mud. The country, as it were, tilled itself. The Nile manured it ; the husbandman had but to drop his seed into the ooze and was sure of his fruit. But Palestine demanded strenuous labour, test of brain as well as hand, patience, courage, faith. Like the Khineland or Switzerland, it was matter of constant care and toil to till it ; it strained all the faculties, but it repaid the culture with glorious fruit. But the chief point, after all, was the fulness of feature, of points of beauty and interest to which the heart could turn and the memory could cling. It was a land of rich, prodigal variety, of forms around which imagination could play. To live in it, as compared with Egypt or Babylonia, was an educa- tion ; of all the lands of the East incomparably the fittest to be the home and the training school of a race of hardy, brave, free, and cultivated men. " Out of Egypt have I called my son." Palestine, not Egypt, was their goodly home.^
^ J. Baldwin Bro\vn.
PSALM XVI. 5, 6 267
3. In the division of the Land of Canaan among the tribes, no part was assigned to the tribe of Levi, because, as was expressly declared, Jehovah would be their portion or share (Num. xviii. '20, the same word which occurs here), and the gifts consecrated to Jehovah the provision for their support (Deut. x. 9, xviii. 1, etc.). That which was true nationally of Levi, was true in its deepest spiritual import of every believing Israelite. "What must not he possess," says Savonarola, " who possesses the possessor of all ? " In the words of St. Paul, "All things are yours, for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."
^ To have a portion in God is to possess that which includes in itself all created good. The man who is in possession of some great masterpiece in painting or sculpture need not envy others who have only casts or copies of it. The original plate or stereo- type is more valuable than any impressions or engravings thrown off from it; and he who owns the former owns that which includes, is capable of producing, all the latter. So, if it be given to any human spirit to know and enjoy God, to be admitted to the fellowship, and have a portion in the very being of the Infinite, then is that spirit possessor of that whereof " Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or ' the World ' " — all material and all mental excellence — is but the faint copy, the weak and blurred transcript. Surveying the wonders of creation, or even with the Word of inspiration in his hand, the Christian can say, " Glorious though these things be, to me belongs that which is more glorious far. The streams are precious, but I have the Fountain ; the vesture is beautiful, but the Wearer is mine ; the portrait in its every lineament is lovely, but that Great Original v/hose beauty it but feebly depicts is my own. * God is my portion, the Lord is mine inheritance.' To me belongs all actual and all possible good, all created and uncreated beauty, all that eye hath seen or imagination conceived ; and more than that, for ' eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to coruceive what God hath prepared for them that love him ' — all things and beings, all that life reveals or death conceals, every- thing within the boundless possibilities of creating wisdom and power, is mine; for God, the Creator and Fountain of all, is mine." ^