reposing in una'ccuetomed and grateful quietude, with the promised Canaan juet over againet them, it is being impreHeed upon them in many waye that they must win it by conquest. The children, while inheriting the promises given to their fathers, in- .berit at the same time the services which the fathers had been found incompetent and unworthy to render. We may gather from this repeaU>d ceneus that God would hava hie people in every generation to count up their strength for conflict. It is only too easy to depreciate and forget our spiritual resources, and think them Jess than they are. Even a man like Elijah professed himself left alone, when the Lord knew there were etill in Israel seven thousand who bad not bowed to Baal. Those going forward into life must be mode ready, so far as the advice and arrangements of others can make them ready, both for the certain conflict peculiar to each person, and for a part in the great battle against darkness and wrong which goee on through every age, under the leadership of Christ himeelf. 2. PoB&essum of the land had to be prepared for (vers. 52-56). The conflict will be a great, an arduous, and a tax- ing one, but it will assuredly end in victory. God'e command to prepare for war bringe as its logical and cheering sequence the command to prepare for poseession. God is able to make regulations for the future, which, if men were spontaneously to make them for themselves, would eavour of braggadocio (eh. in-. 2). II. THE EXACT TIME AT WHICH IT WAB MADE. It was after the pla.~ We may presume that Israel had been to some extent purified by this visitation, although the plague was doubtless no respecter of persona, but involved innocent and guilty in one common temporal suffering, according to the fixed law of our fallen nature that the eine of the fathers are visited on the children. The dreadful reeult which the infecting idolatries of Moab had brought upon Israel was indeed a very impressive intimation that the full strength of the people was required. Those numbered in the army by reaeon of fit age were to see to it, and examine their hearts, and become as fit as poeeible in all other reepecte. III. THE METHOD. Still the same aa before, by tribe8. There had been many changes, loseee, and sad disturbnnces during this time of wandering and severity, but each tribe had kept itself distinct. They were still ranged in the same order round the tabernacle, and regarding it from the same point of view. So if we take a period, 8ay of forty years, in the course of Christ's Church, we shall find the sects at the beginning of the period still existent at the end of it. The men who looked at truth from a certain point of view nt the beginning have their spiritual successors who look at truth from the same point of view. The differences, the marked, emphasised, and pertinacious differences, found amongst believers are not so much between truth and error as between different aspects of the same external object. IV. THE RESULT. It must have been anxiously waited for, not only to see the grand total, but the relative position of each tribe. The result shows somewhat fewer in number, but, as we bo.ve suggested, they were possibly purer in quality. Some tribes have increased, others decreased. In Simeon there is e. most extraordin- ary falling away, but still it was quite within truth to so.y that for practical purposes .the number had not diminished. Yes; but if Israel had not Eieen passing through a temporary curse there ought to ho.ve been, and probably would have been, a mo.rked and exhilarating increase. But instead of increase there is a slight decrease. Things bad not bee~ going lately as they did in Egypt, when "the children of Israel were fruitful, and mcreased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; ond the land was filled with them " (Exod. i. 7). Certainly if one goes by the actuo.l state of the people, there is but little room for Balaam's cheering words concerning the duet of Jacob and the fourth part of Israel (eh. xxiii. 10). In the light of this second census the whole narrative is seen to harmonise in a most subtle way. If Israel we,e under a curse these forty years, if there were a real suspending of God's fu.vour ard of the previous communications of his energy, it is just what might be expected that at the end of the period the people would be found no further forward than at the begiuning-600,000 when they left Sino.i, 600,000 still when they reach Jordon.-Y.
Vere, 64, 65.-.A generation gone. Certain things strike us in examining this tiecond census and coo1pa.ring it with the former one 11t Sinai: e. g. the differeuco 362 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [cu. XXVI. 1-'-65-..