If we should select those who were of all others most incapable of undertaking a journey of many hundred miles through a trackless desert, we should certainly fix on those mentioned in the text : yet those are the persons specified by God as chosen by him for that very purpose. We cannot doubt but that something peculiarly important is intended to be conveyed under this striking representation. It im- plies then, we apprehend,
1. That there are no discouragements which God will not enable us to surmount —
[Persons, when exhorted to begin their journey heaven- ward, are ready to urge the peculiarity of their situation and circumstances, either as an excuse for their not attempting the tvork, or as a reason for procrastination. But however specious their pleas may be (and certainly none can appear stronger than those which the persons referred to in the text might offer), God would have them to know, that, under his auspices, the feeblest person in the universe may undertake the hardest services, assured that " through Christ strengthening him he shall be able to do all things3." " The blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darknessb;" " the lame man shall leap as an hartc;" " the travailing woman shall be delivered without pain" or consequent weakness d; the very dead shall arise out of their graves, to perform the functions of life e; nor shall any thing be impossible to them that believe f.
Let none then excuse themselves on account of ignorance or weakness, or wait for a more convenient season; but rather let all with one heart obey the call of God, and go forth " strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." As on the departure of Israel from Egypt " there was not one feeble person among then* tribes g," so neither shall there be one at this time whose " strength shall not be according to his day11."]
2. That God has chosen those who are in the most discouraging circumstances, on purpose that his own power may be the more displayed and glorified —
[If none but the strong and active were to enter on the Christian course, or none but the moral and the wise were to embrace the truth, we should be ready to ascribe the glory to man. But God has reserved all the glory to himself, by taking
a Phil. iv. 13. b Isai. xxix. 18. c Isai. xxxv. 5, 6.
'• Tsai. Levi. 7 — 9. e Ezek.xxxvii. 1— 12. f Mark ix. 23. g Ps. cv. 37. h Deut. xxxiii. 25.