The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 390

worse still, in the brick-yards of Egypt. Moses had brought them with him or rnther God bad brought him and them together. All humble, unselfish, and God-;especting hearts, who work through evil report and good report to make the world better will assuredly have something of the reward of Moses from the top of .Abarim. .As' con- cerns the greatest treasures of the kill&'dom of God, it matters not in what generation we live. It was better to be a believing Israelite in the wilderness, even though he died there, than an unbelieving one in Canaan, It will be better in the judgment for the man of two thousand years ago who looked forward longingly for the Messiah than for the man of to-day who looks back carelessly on the cross, The resources and revela.tions of eternity will equalise the dispa.rities of time. All the same it will be no small matter if those who have tAken part in guiding a generation through the wilderness see the earthly Canaan on which it is entering before they are gathered to their people. Each generation should lea.ve to the neJtt more of Canaan and lees of the wilderness. Each generation, though it enters in some sort upon a Canaan, should leave it as only a wilderness compared with the brighter Canaan that is to follow. Let our confident, determined cry ever be, Out of Christ there is 11c hope for the world,. Out of Christ the generations of men must become more and more corrupt, and give more hold for the pessimist with his dismal creed. But equally onr cry must be, In Christ there is M room even.for desp<Yn,den,cv, let alone despair. Black as the outlook remains on a world's sins and sorrows, the God who showed Cana.an to J14~ses fro~ Abarim holds his resources undiminished s!,ill (Matt. x.xviil. 20; Rom. 'VllL 28 ; :n. 33-86; xv. 19, 29; 1 Cor. xv. 58; 2 Cor. 1. 20).-Y. Vers. 15-17.-The solicu?UU of Moses for the helpl_ess flock. L THE FrGunm tl'NDE.ll WHICH MOSES [NDICATES lsliEL. He speaks of them as a flock of 11heep, thll.ll venturing on a. meek reference to the quality of his own past services. He speaks like a man who had been long prepa.nng, even before Meribah, for an emer• gency such as this. He knew he could not live always, and he saw no sufficiently hopeful change in Israel. He had to deal with the sheep-nature in them from the first, and that nature was in them still in undiminished vitality. They would, he implies, be as helpless in Canaan as in the wilderness. He had not yet got the view from A.ha.rim, but that view would only deepen his thankfulness that God had given the people a shepherd. For the more impressive the view, and the more there was revealed of rich and abundant pasture, the more evident it would become that the sheep needed guidance in order to make full use of the pasture. Passing from the wilderness into Canaan, while it vastly enlarges the sheep-privileges, does not in itself change the sheep - nature. The need remains in, equal force both for gu,ida:nu a,ni/, prof,ectwn. Where the privileges a.re greater, there, consequently, the possessions will be greater ; there also there will be more to attack, more danger of a.ttack, and more need of defence. .And in like manner how helpless we are of otl1118lves among the vast resources and promises which belong to God's grace in Christ Jesus. Unless we have some one to guide and strengthen, and show us the meaning and power of Divine truth, we are as helpless as an infant would be with a steam-engine. Weak and strong are relative terms. Bh&ep are strong enough in certain ways-strong to rebel against wholesome restraints and break through them, but not strong enough to repel the dangers which come when the restraints are broken through. Moses had only too often seen Israel hanging together like sheep_ going in troops after some headstrong Korab, while men of the Caleb aud Joshua order were almost to be counted on one's fingers. II. THE PEOPLE BEmG SUCH, A SHEPHERD WAS A HANIFEST NECESSITY, Gh•en Eheep, it does not tAke much reasoning to infer a shepherd, Moses had been a shepherd himself, both literally and figuratively, and his eltperience of the sheep in Midian doubtless sharpened his sense of the analogy as he gazed on the human sheep whom he had led for forty years. .A man unfamiliar with pastoral life might indeed talk in a genera.I way of the fallen children of men as sheep; but it needed a Moses to speak of the shepherd's work with such minuteness and sympathetic interest as he shows here. The shepherd is to go out before the sheep. With him rests the rdspunsibility of choosing the place of pasture. And he must lead the sheep. He must go before them, and not too fa.r before them, or he cannot truly lead. .. He le11da <JB. XXVII. 12-23.] THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. 377