profession of submission to the will of God. Tlie will of God would sooner be com- plied with in this ignorant, purblind world if Christians, who pray that God's will may be·done on: earth as·in heaven, would only set themselves to discover what the- will of God really is. Surely it is a strange and horrible thing that, without some plain reason such as we find in 2 Sam. xii. 14, many infants should breathe their little lives so quickly' away; and it is all the more horrible when they thus die in spite of· the solicitude and patient care of a loving mother. Where love abounds, wisdom may yet be lacking. A world wiser to consider the laws of nature and self-denyingly to obey them would be a less anguished and sorrowing world. Mothers would not so often be sharing Rachel's bitter lot, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. IV. THE EXTENSION 01' Goo's WRATH OVER THIS LONG PERIOD ESPECIALLY MARKS IT OUT AS WRATH AGAINST UNBIOHTEOUSNESS (Rom. i. 18). God is not a man, that be should be carried away in sudden bursts of passion, and need the exhortation, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." For forty years he went patiently through the vineyard, cutting down the cumberers of the ground. Sudden as were the :flamings out of the Divine wrath on Israel, it was because Israel was as dry, susceptible fuel to the :flame. Wherever there is unrighteousness of men there must be wrath of God. In the deliberate, steady fulfiJiing of God's wrnth on the doomed generation we see a most sublime contrast with the caprice, uncertainty, and partiality of human passion. v. THERE 18 A VERY EMPHATIC ASSURANCE 01' Goo's INTEREST IN lsRAEL INDI- VIDUALLY. Each man who thus died had the eye of the Lord on him as an individual. And though he suffered temporal death as a necessary consequence of belonging to the doomed generation, yet the very same watchful care of God which acted with severity in one way was equally available to act with mercy in another. The doom which fell upon the Israelite as Israelite was quite compatible with mercy to the Israelite as a man. Let us in the midst of our need, in the midst of our difficulties in finding a way to God, lay hold of every assurance we can get, and especially in the Scriptures, as to the reality of God's dealings with individuals. There is special record in the Scriptures of his dealings with some, but of many there is of necessity no such record. Here there is clear evidence of God's dealings, individually, with more than 600,000 men in forty years. That period was given for every one of them to pass from the earth, so that at the end of it there was not a survivor to enter the promised land, eave the two men who had been singled out for preservation. .And God is·dealing urith tve:ry individual now, and by his goodness would lead him to repentance. What is wanted in return is tho.t every individual thus o.ppealed to, when he meets the angel of repentance in the wo.y, should ho.ve dealings with God such as may end in the full reception of eternal life and increased glory to the fulness of the Divine Trinity.-Y,
EXPOSITION.
CHAPTER XXVII. engaged upon the ceDSus) and the represent- 11tives of the congregation assembled for the- THE DAUGHTERS 01' ZELOPHEHAD (vers. transo.ction of business and for the hearing of 1-11). Ver. 1.-The daughter■ of Zelophe- any matters th11t were brought before them. had. The genealogy here given agrees with Yer. 3.-:e:e was not in the company of those in eh. xxvi 29-33 and in Josh. xvii. them that gathered themaelvea together 3. These women would appear to have been against the Lord. He had not been ruuongst in the eighth generation from Jacob, which the two hundred and fifty who gathered hardly accords with the 470 years required themselves together in support of Korah's by the narrative ; some links, however, may pretensions. It does not nppear why they have been dropped. should have thought it necessary to mnke Ver. 2.-By the door of the tabernaole this statement, unless they felt that the fact of the oongregation, i. e. evidently by the of his having died without sons might raise entrance of the sacred enclosure. Here, in suspicion against him as one who had greatly the void space, in the midst of tl e camp, provoked the wrath of God. But died in hi& and close to the presence-chamber of God, own sin. This cannot mean that Zclophe- the princes (i. ,. the tribe princes who were h11d was one of those who died in the wilder• THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [CB. XXVU. 1-11.