I. THE AGENT OF THIS DISCIPLINE. "The Lord thy God." Think of the multitude of influences to which these Israelites were exposed in their great migration. Moses to lead them, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram to mislead them, Aaron to do sometimes the one and sometimes the other; the Red Sea to bar their way at the beginning of their journey, and the Jordan at the end; famine and pestilence, quails and manna; Caleb and Joshua to encourage, the unfaithful spies to discourage, the Egyptians to drive them, Moabites, Amorites, and the rest to harass and hinder them. Yet as they look back they are taught to see One Hand at work, and that the hand of the Lord their God. The great lesson which this old Hebrew history has to teach us is the clear recognition of God in everything. There is no lesson, surely, which our strained and worried modern life more urgently requires than this. If our lives, and lives dearer to us than our own, are to be the sport of every malign influence, and every wilful or foolish person; if we are at the mercy of all those varied calamities and deaths which ride upon the breeze and lurk in the dust and lie in wait at every point, we may well be driven to distraction.

II. THE SPHERE OF THIS DISCIPLINE. "In the wilderness." The place in which the discipline was conducted was not without its bearing on the result. It was a place in which the influence of things seen was as weak almost as it could be upon the earth. If you wish to teach a child a specially important lesson you will take him into some quiet room, where he shall not be interrupted, and where in the room itself there shall be as little as possible to distract attention. Such a school room was this desert place, where God took the nation to Himself, and taught them the great lessons in regard to His nature and character which, through them, in after ages have been taught to the world. Our life, as a whole, is not a wilderness; it is rather a garden, which ever tends to become richer and more fruitful as generation after generation toils upon it. Yet there is in many of our lives what may be termed a wilderness experience — a time of affliction, bereavement, disappointment, perplexity; in which God is doing for us in a briefer period what He did for the Israelites during this long forty years. If God does give us a taste of the wilderness life, let us remember that He is not doing it without a purpose.

III. THE DEFINITE TERM OF THIS DISCIPLINE. "These forty years." The Israelites were not to be on trial forever. At the end of forty years a result had been arrived at and ascertained which would not now be materially altered. There is a loose idea, only too common nowadays, that probation is to be extended indefinitely into the future. People allow themselves to think that if a man does not come right at first he is to be kept on with till he does come right, so that the drunkard, the Pharisee, and the miser, though they grow worse and worse, and pass out of this life drunken, pharisaic, or miserly, are yet by some unexplained process in the indefinite future to become saints. Now, such an idea not only sets itself squarely against the main body of Scripture teaching, but altogether fails to commend itself to common sense. Indeed, a wide observation will lead us to this, that even within this life character tends to final permanence, so that forty years, for example, do not pass without leaving a mark, and setting character into a form. Professor Drummond has said that a man cannot alter his collar after he is forty, much less his character.

IV. THE PURPOSE OF THIS DISCIPLINE "To humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no." It was to humble them, that is, to bring them by means of privation and distress to feel their need of His help, and their dependence upon Him. To prove them, to put them, that is, in such positions as would drive them to show what was in them. Times come to us also when we are obliged to speak out, and to take our stand, and to do distinctly either right or wrong. Young people at the beginning commonly regard life mainly or chiefly as a sphere or opportunity of enjoyment. And we must not be unsympathetic. It is natural, and perhaps unavoidable, that they should take this view at first. This aspect of life, however, very soon turns out to be utterly unsatisfactory. Then, after the thought of enjoyment there often comes with earnest young people the higher and better thought of achievement. They say: I will accomplish something; I will make a mark; I will get to the top of the tree. But the top of the tree is so hard to reach, so few can reach it, those who do reach it have to pay such a heavy price, and find it, after all, such a barren and comfortless elevation, that this view of life frequently ends in disappointment too. Then it is that the Divine view of life comes to our rescue. Enjoyment is not left out of the account. It comes in, not as the object of life, but as the divinely given accompaniment of service. Achievement also finds its proper place. The faithful servant shall have the "Well done." But above the thought either of enjoyment or achievement there rises the thought of discipline. In forming our estimate of a man we ask, What has he done? God asks, What has he become? There is no subject on which greater mistakes are made than in the matter of getting on in the world. We all want to get on, and for our children to get on, but few have the right idea of what getting on really is. A man thinks he is getting on when his business prospers, and everything turns to gold in his hands. Not necessarily. He may be losing ground all that time. No! When he can stand in the presence of temptation without yielding to it; when he can bear humiliation and disappointment without murmuring; when he can see the unscrupulous competitor go in front of him, and yet refuse to be unscrupulous himself, and let the best bargain he ever saw in his life go past him, rather than secure it by doing or saying that which is unworthy; when he can toil all day and accomplish very little, and go home at night and neither scold the wife nor be angry with the children, that's when he is getting on. When we get into such a position that our word is always listened to with respect and deference, and "when we ope our lips no dog durst bark," we think we are getting on. No! When we can bear hard and cruel speech, and not resent or retaliate; when we can give the soft answer that turneth away wrath, or even be reviled and not revile again, that's when we are getting on. A woman thinks she is getting on when she is moving into a bigger house, when her drawing room is splendid and crowded, and she a gay and brilliant queen in the midst of it. But it is quite possible that she may be suffering loss at such a time as that. No! When she can move into a smaller house, and make every corner of it radiant with her smile; when she can work in narrowed circumstances without becoming soured, or meet affliction and distress and bear it like a heroine, that is when she's getting on.

(Sidney Pitt.)

1. Among the faculties with which God has beneficently endowed man, memory ranks with the most important. It is a gallery lined with the pictures of past events, and with scenes on which we have gazed — a gallery sometimes vocal with sounds that fill the heart with gladness, or pierce it with keenest pain. It is memory that makes the record to which conscience points when it speaks in tones of menace. It is in memory that there is stored up the treasures knowledge has patiently amassed, and it is with memory we take counsel when we would investigate, or must decide.(1) If the record is so perfect, how necessary to avoid sin! One of the greatest blessings a man can possess is an unspotted memory. How many of us are humbled at the record of our memory!(2) The indestructibility suggests one pain of perdition. He who passes into hell with a record of sin, and of opportunities wasted, will carry with him his own chamber of torture. There is an attendant faculty called recollection. The curator at a museum or library searches for the object you want. So recollection.

2. Illustrate the influence on spiritual work. These are not merely intellectual faculties. These have a moral work to do. It may be illustrated in the aid given to convince Joseph's brethren (Genesis 42:21). It ever presents to us the teachings of God's dealings with us. To lead to avoid past errors, and to show that the purpose was to do us good at our latter end.

II. THE ISRAELITE WHO THUS REMEMBERED WOULD PERCEIVE THAT GOD'S PURPOSE HAD BEEN TO HUMBLE.

III. TO PROVE THEE, TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN THINE HEART. Not to show God, but to show us our faults. The great gun is taken to a proof house, and tried with the great charge, and if some crack is revealed men say it was well it did not burst and spread dismay at some crisis of the fight. The anchor and chain is tested link by link, to see if any flaw should be revealed. If it had gone untested, how great the peril!

(J. R. Hargreaves.)

I. EXPLAIN THE SOLEMN CHARGE.

1. The object of remembrance is extensive: the way — all the way which the Lord our God has led us; that is, the whole tenor of the Divine dispensations toward us — their nature, means, seasons, relatives, tendencies, and actual effects.

2. It supposes that this exercise, interesting and beneficial as it is, we are prone to neglect

II. ENFORCE OBEDIENCE TO THE CHARGE.

1. An enlightened and devout retrospect of the dispensations of God to you will present you with many impressive displays of His glory.

2. This devout retrospection will supply us with many affecting displays of our own corruption.

3. This remembrance will supply the saints with pleasing discoveries of the sanctified tendencies of their souls.

4. This remembrance will confirm our faith in the Scriptures as the Word of God, and improve all our practical views both of things seen and unseen.

(James Stark.)

II. THE MEANS TO BE ADOPTED IN ORDER TO REMEMBER THE DIVINE DEALINGS TOWARDS US. We are prone to forget the God of our mercies, to lose sight of His dispensations, to sink into carelessness and neglect, to regard passing events as matters of course, not calling for any special recollection or acknowledgment. Now, to guard against this forgetful disposition it becomes us ofttimes to stir up ourselves, and all with whom we are connected, to record and remember God's mercies; and especially to improve those times and seasons which He hath set apart for this purpose. And while we carefully observe seasons which are especially set apart in commemoration of the Divine dispensations, we should also diligently improve the ordinances which are appointed for the same important end.

III. THE END WHICH THIS REMEMBRANCE OF THE DIVINE DISPENSATIONS IS CALCULATED TO PRODUCE: — Namely, "to humble us, to prove us, to show what is in our hearts." When we observe the conduct of Israel in the wilderness we are compelled to feel how foolish, perverse, and ungrateful that people were; but when we review our own conduct, must we not too often pronounce the same sentence upon ourselves? The remembrance, therefore, of the dealings of God with us should deeply humble us under a sense of our unprofitableness and ingratitude. When duly considered, it will show us what has been in our hearts, how foolish, how vain, how deceitful they are, and how often our own conduct has been inconsistent with our profession, and what need we therefore have of pardon. It will teach us the fallacy of many of those excuses which we have made for the neglect of duty, and evince that God has been merciful and gracious to us all our journey through. This remembrance of God's dealings with us is especially calculated to bring us afresh, as sinners, to our gracious and merciful Saviour.

(T. Webster, B. D.)

I. In helping you in the performance of this duty, I would first ask you TO REFLECT ON THE AMOUNT OF HAPPINESS WHICH YOU AS AN ASSEMBLY REPRESENT. There is probably not one of you to whom, in the sight of God, this is not a happy day; not one whose glad do not outnumber his regretful thoughts. How many sources of happiness flow for us! In a thousand ways must an incessant providence watch, guard, and guide, avert peril, and bestow aid, in each of our households, with every new day, to make health the rule, disease and death the rare exception, — joy the current, grief the transient ripple on its surface. I have spoken of common blessings. Have we not each special mercies which we would own with devout gratitude, — mercies adapted to our peculiar wants, as distinctly marked, so to speak, with our names, as keepsakes from a friend might be? How often have we received the very favours which we most needed, and dared not anticipate, sent in at the only moment and in the only mode in which they could have been availing! In this connection it is well for us to consider how little we can do for ourselves. We are too prone to feel as if our own industry, energy, and forethought could accomplish much. But think how many sources of joy must all flow together, how many departments of nature and of being must all be brought into harmony, in order for us to pass a single hour in comfort.

II. WHAT ARE THE DUTIES TO WHICH THIS REVIEW CALLS US? Does it not make the gratitude of the most thankful seem cold? What but unceasing praise can worthily respond to this incessant flow of mercy? And yet, do not some of us live without thanksgiving? Oh, that every soul might feel the love in which it is embosomed, and might send heavenward the blended anthem of all its powers and affections, "Bless the Lord, and forget not all His benefits!" In these mercies, hear we not also the voice of religious exhortation, "My son, give Me thy heart"?

(A. P. Peabody.)

I. THE REASON OF "THE WANDERINGS." Why is so large a portion of our years spent under the yoke of undistinguished duties, leaving no record but "the wanderings" behind? Briefly, because a few critical experiences do not make a character; a few impassioned, enthusiastic moments do not make a life. The inevitable falling off of the common hours and experiences seems to me to be the great teaching of this passage of Israel's history. It is a broad fact in the history of every life; in a measure, of every day's life, for the great cycles repeat themselves in little, as the organs of the body are present potentially in every part. But these narratives gather up the scattered incidents of our moral life into one grand incident, and show us with a large dramatic point and emphasis what we are daily doing under the eye of the great Leader, which makes these long, dry, unnoted wanderings inevitable; what it is which compels Him to impose what I have called the yoke of undistinguished duty, and to lead us up and down in the wilderness, that we may, if we will yield ourselves to His hand, work the sublime lessons, which we cannot learn and practise in a moment, into the common daily texture of life, that is, of eternity.

II. THE PURPOSE OF THE WANDERINGS. Briefly, again, to work godly principles of action into the common texture of our daily lives. To make it a matter of perpetual, quiet choice and habit to square every action by the rule of the mind of God.

III. THE "WANDERINGS," IN VIEW OF THEIR ETERNAL RESULTS. They, obscure and unprofitable as they may seem are the builders for eternity. The quiet, undistinguished years decide the matter for the moments when the election is finally and openly made. It takes years to give a form and bent to a character. Temperament we are born with, character we have to make; and that not in the grand moments, when the eyes of men or of angels are visibly upon us, but in the daily quiet paths of pilgrimage, when the work is being done within in secret, which will be revealed in the daylight of eternity. Habits, like paths, are the result of constant actions. It is the multitude of daily footsteps which go to and fro which shapes them. Let it light up your daily wanderings to know that there — in the quiet bracing of the soul to uncongenial duty, the patient bearing of unwelcome burdens, the loving acceptance of unlovely companionship — and not on the grand occasions, you are making your eternal future.

(J. B. Brown, B. A.)

1. Intricate. Perplexities and difficulties in every stage and turn.

2. Eventful. Changes in every step. All is shifting.

3. Unretraceable.

4. Perilous. Poisonous streams, noxious herbs, venomous serpents.

5. Solemn. Leads body to grave and spirit to heaven or hell.

II. LIFE'S JOURNEY HAS A GUIDE. "The Lord thy God led thee."

1. The guide thoroughly understands the way.

2. The guide has resources equal to all possible emergencies.

III. LIFE'S JOURNEY CAN NEVER BE FORGOTTEN. "Thou shalt remember."

1. Some memory of it is a matter of necessity.

2. A right memory is a matter of obligation.Remember it so as to awaken contrition for past sins, gratitude for past mercies, resolutions for improved conduct.

(Homilist.)

1. The fact of this superintendence. "The way of man is not in himself."

2. The purpose of this superintendence. Moral discipline.

II. A SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION of human life. Morally, we are all in a wilderness, intricate, perilous, privational. It is only as we get the true manna from heaven that we can live spiritually in the wilderness of our present life.

III. A SOLEMN OBLIGATION of human life. "Remember."

1. Man does remember the past. Cannot help it; linked to it by a necessity of his nature.

2. Man does not always remember God in the past. This is the duty here commanded — to see God in the past, to see Him in all, in the tempest and the calm, the darkness and the sunshine.

IV. AN ETERNAL NECESSITY of human life. Bread is not more necessary to support material life than the Word of God to sustain spiritual. The soul can only live as it receives communications from the Great Father of spirits.

(Homilist.)

1. The way of providence.

2. The way of grace.

II. THE END FOR WHICH WE ARE LED IN THIS WAY.

1. "To humble thee." Consider the vast importance of this in order to our obtaining, retaining, and increasing in grace (Matthew 5:3, 4; Isaiah 57:15; 1 Peter 5:5, 6; James 4:6, 10).

2. "To prove thee." God tries the genuineness of our repentance when He permits temptations to assault us, and suffers sin to wear a pleasing dress. Of our faith, when difficulties seem to arise in the way of His fulfilling His declarations and promises. Of our trust in Him when dangers, wants, enemies, distresses, assault us. Of our resignation to His will, in reproach and affliction, and in the death of those we love. Of our patience, in long-continued pain, or in a succession of calamities. Of our contentment with our lot in poverty. Of our meekness, gentleness, and forgiving spirit amidst provocations and injuries. Of our long suffering amidst the follies and sins of those round about us. Of our love to mankind, and to our enemies, amidst the hatred and ill-will of others. Of our love to God, when the world courts us, and we must of necessity abandon one or the other. Of our obedience when difficult duties are enjoined, and we are called to deny ourselves and take up our cross. Of our hope of everlasting life, when both the wind of temptation and the tide of our corruption are strongly against us.

3. "To know what was in thy heart." God, who searches the heart and knows what is in man, infallibly knows what is in thine heart; but thou must know thyself, and discover to others what is in the heart.

4. "Whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no." Whether thou wouldest be brought to love Him with all thy heart, as thou art commanded; to serve Him with all thy strength; to make His will thy rule in all thy actions; to make His glory thy end, and not thy own honour, or interest, or pleasure.

(J. Benson.)

1. This we have experienced nationally.

2. Socially.

3. Personally.

II. THE WAY OF PRIVILEGE.

1. We have possessed the Word of God.

2. All have been welcome to the house of God.

3. As Christians we have enjoyed fellowship with the people of God.

III. THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE.

1. Each of us has had his share of conflict.

2. To each has come deliverance in times of perplexity.

3. Even in the midst of trial we have, through faith in Christ, realised a measure of peace.

4. To every believer there has been vouchsafed spiritual joy.Application: The past should thus be remembered

(1)with humility;

(2)with gratitude;

(3)with confidence.

(Lay Preacher.)

II. THE PROFIT TO BE DERIVED. Our past lives have been directed for two ends —

1. To humble us. How insignificant we appear to ourselves in the light of the past! How our plans have. been thwarted, our. ambition damped, our desires crushed! Where is our pride at the end of the journey of life?

2. To prove us. There is much alloy in the best of our services, much sin even in holy things.

III. THE COMFORT TO BE IMPARTED. At first sight it seems that no affliction for the present seemeth light. It is always painful. Nevertheless it worketh out an abundant weight of glory. Persecutors mean evil, but God causes it to be good. Consider —

1. The future good more than counterbalances the present evil. When the rod is removed the purified soul will rejoice in the eternal presence of God.

2. Trials by the way are proofs of Divine love. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. God sees better and further than we do.

(Preacher's Analyst.)

1. What is the first thing that we shall call the beginning? That which the people of God as a general rule come to last, and that which is almost everywhere despised. The beginning was a manifestation of the pure sovereignty of God. In Exodus 11, the Lord said that He would put a difference — as the margin reads it, a redemption — between the Egyptians and Israel; referring to the paschal lamb. Now, how did the Lord begin with you? Why, by making a difference, not only between you and others, but by making us something very different from what we had been before.

2. Then the second thing in the beginning was that beautiful circumstance as a type of the Saviour. "When I see the blood I will pass by the house, and the sword shall not come near to hurt you. Oh, let us remember that the original way of escape was by Jesus Christ; if we were left of the sword, it was by the blood of the Lamb.

3. Then the third thing in the beginning was the victory which was wrought. Look at the victory the Lord gave to the Israelites; see how He divided the sea. God did in that case what none but God could do. Now apply this closer home. Who but the God-man Mediator could have divided a greater sea? Who but the God-man Mediator could bring in such a victory as Jesus Christ hath brought in? Who but Jesus Christ could penally bear our sins?

II. WHY WE ARE TO REMEMBER THE PRESENT. How much wilderness experience the people of God have! what solitude! "Like an owl of the desert," "like a sparrow alone upon the house top"; and "that He will hear the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer"; and "they wandered in a solitary way, and found no city to dwell in." I dare say some good Christians think that ministers have not much of this wilderness experience; but I can tell you this, if they have not, they will not be of much use to the people. They may pretend to weep with the people, but they cannot feel as they would if they had these experiences. The doctor may be very sympathising over the dying patient, but the doctor cannot feel what the parent feels, the doctor cannot feel what near and dear relatives feel. The apostle saith, "We have ten thousand instructors, but not many fathers." For a minister, therefore, to be of that sympathising nature that he shall strengthen file diseased, heal the sick, bring again that which is driven away, he must from time to time know what this wilderness experience is; and then he will think when he comes into the pulpit, and say to himself, I am a poor, dark, helpless creature, no more fit to preach the Gospel than to create a world; and thus the man is humbled down like a little child, and the Lord knows that is just the time for Him to come; so in the Lord steps, the man's heart is warmed, his soul is enlarged, Satan flies off, and the man is astounded how it is he is so strong; and one thought comes, and another; and the man that one half his time perhaps is little more than a stammerer, all at once becomes eloquent, and pours forth torrents of thoughts, and blessing after blessing, until the people lose their troubles and their sorrows, and he loses his.

III. HOW WE ARE TO LOOK AT THE FUTURE. With confidence in Him who has been so gracious to us up to the present.

(J. Wells.)

II. THE SUBJECT TO BE REVIEWED.

1. The place — "the wilderness."

2. Their conductor — "the Lord thy God." God guides the people with His eye, He leads them by His word and His Spirit and His providence. He is a very present help to them in every time of trouble, and He will never leave them nor forsake them till they have entered the promised land.

3. The passages — "all the way." Not that everything in their journey was equally important and interesting; this could not be; but all had been under the appointment and discipline of God, and all would be rendered profitable.

4. The period — "these forty years."

(W. Jay.)

1. And among these the means by which we were first brought into this way should hold a chief place.

2. We are called on to remember also the afflictions with which we have been visited since we have been walking in the path of life.

3. Neither must our mercies be forgotten in the retrospect of our lives.

4. The sins we have committed in the midst of our afflictions and blessings must also be often retraced; not merely viewed in a mass, but, like our mercies, contemplated one by one with all their aggravations.

II. The remembrance of these things, however, in order to be beneficial to us, MUST BE ACCOMPANIED WITH A LIVELY CONVICTION OF THE OVERRULING PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED TO US, and as lively a sense of His close connection with us. The text points out to us the ends which God had in view in afflicting the Jews, and it consequently affords us the means of ascertaining the reasons of His diversified dispensations towards ourselves.

1. They are intended to humble us. All is humility in that kingdom where God dwells. Here, in this fallen world, the meanest sinner lifts up himself against Him; but there the loftiest archangels cast down their crowns before His footstool. Before we can enter that glorious world we also must learn to abase ourselves.

2. The various changes in our condition have been designed also to prove us.

3. They have a tendency to teach us the insufficiency of all worldly things to make us happy, and the all-sufficiency of God to bless us.

III. These, then, are the immediate purposes for which the Lord has led us through so many trials and mercies in our way to heaven. There are, however, other ends which they have been designed to answer; and that these may be accomplished He commands us to look back on the course in which we have walked, and has CONNECTED WITH THE RETROSPECT MANY SPIRITUAL BENEFITS.

1. A review of the past is calculated to confirm our faith in the Bible. Our lives are practical illustrations of this blessed book. Indeed the whole world and all that is passing therein is one continued commentary on it, and confirmation of its truth.

2. A retrospect of the past has a tendency also to increase our knowledge of ourselves.

3. The remembrance enjoined in the text is calculated also to strengthen our confidence in God. It brings before our mind the help we have received in our difficulties, the supplies in our wants, the consolations in our troubles; and reasoning from the past to the future, we are naturally led to infer that He who never has forsaken us never will forsake us; that the goodness and mercy which have followed us all the days of our life will follow us still; that no vicissitudes in our condition, no tribulation, no distress, no persecution, no peril, "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make remembrance a good, namely, THE ISSUES TO WHICH OUR RETROSPECT MUST TEND IF IT IS TO BE ANYTHING MORE THAN SENTIMENTAL RECOLLECTIONS.

1. Remember and be thankful. If it be the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould persons and to make character, then there follows, very dearly, that all things, that come within the sweep of our memory may equally attribute to our highest good.

2. Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition.

3. Let us remember in order that from the retrospect we may get practical wisdom.

4. The last thing that I would say is, Let us remember that we may hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory does not always imply hope; we remember sometimes because we do not hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we know it never can be a present or a future. But when we are occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say, "It has been, therefore it shall be."

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

I. MARK THE STAGES OF ISRAEL'S JOURNEY.

1. Border of Red Sea.

2. March.

3. Elim.

4. Wilderness of sin.

5. Rephidim.

6. At foot of Mount Sinai.

II. MARK THE SUGGESTIVENESS OF THAT JOURNEY TO US. It is a parable of the journey taken by God's children by faith in Jesus Christ.

1. They also leave the slavery and sin of Egypt.

2. They too must go forward in the way of repentance and faith, in discharge of Christian duty, in cultivation of Christian graces, and in the path Providence and grace has ordained.

3. They often drink the bitter waters of sorrow and trial; but these waters are sweetened by Christ.

4. They drink of the waters of Elim, where they find joy and refreshment.

5. They also have to learn lessons of Divine care and Divine trust.

6. What rich supplies of the water of life flow around the camp of the spiritual Israel.

7. Where Israel encamps before Sinai, it reminds us that the law written on tables of stone is by the covenant of grace written on the tables of our hearts, and we are to remember those commandments of Jehovah that are a rule of life for all time, even the Ten Commandments.

III. GREAT FACTS ISRAEL WOULD REMEMBER.

1. Surely Israel remembered they had a glorious Guide.

2. Surely they would remember their full supplies. No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly.

3. Israel would remember with sorrow their sins, and so must we.

4. They were to remember their rebukes and chastisements.

5. They were to remember their conflicts.

6. Surely they would remember the devious way they took.

7. Surely Israel might say, Mercy has ever been mingled with judgment.

8. Would not Israel remember all the way in the light of the glorious end then in view?

IV. THE PURPOSE TO BE SERVED by the way that Israel journeyed.

1. To humble the people.

2. To prove the heart.

3. To lead to God and heaven.

(F. A. Warmington.)

1. A way not chosen by themselves. Grace — freely bestowed (John 5:16).

2. A trying way. Walking by faith, not sight (1 Peter 1:7).

3. A mysterious way.

(1)To the unregenerate world, who know nothing of the secret dealings of God with the quickened soul.

(2)To the Christian. How dark sometimes!

4. A discouraging way (Numbers 21:4, 5). So the Christian is often discouraged. He wants to feel that he is going on spiritually; but he feels, more and more, his own helplessness. Some days he has most cheering and delightful thoughts of God; on others he feels bereft of faith, love, joy, hope, comfort, and every spiritual gift.

5. A way of tribulation (John 16:33).

6. A way in which God went before them (Exodus 13:21, 22). He is with every one of His people every moment, to keep them by His Almighty power, in the way of grace.

II. THE PLACE in which the Lord led His people His people into the wilderness.

1. To humble. In order that He may magnify Christ in them.

2. To prove. That He may convince them of their own weakness.

3. That He may know what is in his heart — its secret corruptions, etc.

(J. J. Eastmead.)

1. The passage of the Israelites through the wilderness was a very unsettled state; so is ours through this world. If we do not continually wander about from place to place as the Israelites did, yet we are far from having any fixed and constant abode. The perpetual alterations we see about us, either in our friends, our neighbours, or ourselves, our persons, tempers, estates, families, or circumstances, and in short, the vast change which the compass of a few years makes in almost everything around us, is sufficient to convince us that we are in no settled condition here.

2. The travel of the Israelites through the wilderness was a troublesome and dangerous state. Now, here is another fit emblem of a Christian's pilgrimage through this world which to him is not only a barren but a hostile land. From the very nature of things, and the circumstances of his present state, he meets with many inconveniences and sufferings, and from the malice of his enemies more. Setting aside the natural evils which he bears in common with others, sickness, pains, crosses, disappointments, personal and family afflictions, he is exposed to many spiritual evils and dangers as a Christian which create him no small concern; particularly frequent instigations to sin, from a depraved nature, from an ensnaring and delusive world, and from a wily and watchful enemy going about indefatigably seeking whom he may devour.

3. In the wilderness through which the Israelites travelled to Canaan, there were many by-paths or devious tracts by which they might be in danger of going astray. And how much this resembles a Christian's walk through this world is very apparent.

4. Notwithstanding all the by-paths and windings in the wilderness, the Israelites had an infallible Guide to lead them in the way they should go.

5. Though the Israelites travelled forty years in the wilderness, yet they were all that while not far from the promised land. We have here another circumstance of similitude to a Christian's state in this world. If he be in the right way to heaven, he is never far from it; he lives on the borders of it. A very little and unexpected incident may let him suddenly into the eternal world, which should every day therefore be in his thoughts.

6. The reason why the children of Israel wandered so long in the wilderness before they reached the promised land is given us in the text. Now, whether it be not sometimes by way of punishment that God is pleased to detain some of his people from their state of rest and happiness for a long time, as He did the Israelites from the land of Canaan, I will not take upon me to say. But without all doubt, this world is a state of trial and temptation to them all; in which they are detained the longer that they may be more fit for and more ardently desirous of the heavenly Canaan when they are well wearied with the labours and difficulties of this their earthly pilgrimage. And there are three graces which the trials of life are very proper to cultivate, and to the exercise of which the Israelites were more especially called during their passage through the wilderness. And they are faith, hope, and patience: all proper to a state of suffering and mutually subservient to each other. Faith keeps its eye on God in all we suffer; looks beyond the agency of second causes; views the direction of the Divine band and adores it. Patience, under the influence of faith, submits to the hand of God in all. And hope, enlivened by faith and confirmed by patience, looks beyond all to that future and better state of things where we shall meet with an unspeakable recompence for all we can go through to obtain it.

7. In order to keep up the faith, patience, and hope of the Israelites, full and frequent descriptions were given them of the goodness of that land to which they were travelling. Nor are our faith and patience and hope without the like supports in respect to the heavenly Canaan. Oh, what great and glorious things are told us of the city of the living God, the metropolis of the universal King!

8. When the Israelites were come to the end of their pilgrimage, before they could enter the promised land, they were obliged to pass over the river Jordan which separated the wilderness from Canaan. Here lay their greatest difficulty at the very end of their journey. Now to apply this part of the history to the Christian's life and pilgrimage. The last enemy he is to overcome is death. And as it is the last, so to some Christians it is the most terrible of all their trials; and all their faith and hope and patience is little enough to support them under it. But there is no arriving at the heavenly Canaan without first passing through the fatal Jordan. And as the Israelites by the long and frequent exercise of their faith and hope and trust in God were better prepared for this last difficulty of passing over Jordan, so the more these graces are wrought into a lively habit, the more composed will the soul be under the apprehensions of approaching death.I shall now conclude this with a few reflections:

1. Let these thoughts, then, be improved to abate our desires after the pleasures of the present life and excite them after those of a better.

2. What reason have we to be thankful that we have so sure a Guide through this dangerous desert! The Israelites themselves had not one more safe.

3. Though our state and condition in this world be much the same as that of the Israelites was in the wilderness, let us however take care that our temper and disposition be not the same. They are set up as our warning, not as our pattern.

4. Whilst we are in this wilderness let us keep the heavenly Canaan always in our eye. The frequent thoughts of it will speed our progress towards it, quicken our preparations for it, and be a sovereign support under all the trials we may meet with in our way to it; will soften our sorrows, and reconcile us to all our earthly disappointments. And indeed, what is there which a man need call a disappointment whose heaven is secure?

(John Mason, M. A.)

2. We should likewise remember the merciful providences of God towards us. For instance, our temporal mercies should be frequently remembered — the health, the peace, the prosperity, and the worldly advantages we enjoy above so many others. Again, our spiritual mercies and religious advantages should be thankfully recorded by us, and especially that invaluable one of a good and pious education. Again, family mercies should be often remembered by us — family health, peace and prosperity, the comfort of relations, the blessing of children, especially if they be found walking in the way of truth. And so should public mercies; especially the signal interpositions of Providence in preserving us from our enemies and restoring to us the blessings of national prosperity and peace.

II. Let us now consider IN WHAT MANNER THE PAST PROVIDENCES OF GOD ARE TO BE RECOLLECTED AND CONSIDERED BY US.

1. We should review them very intently and seriously, call to mind as many particulars as we can, reflect upon them, dwell upon the reflection till the heart be deeply impressed with it.

2. We should review past providences with thankfulness (Ephesians 5:20). What! are we to give thanks for afflictions, pains, and crosses; for those humbling providences under which we mourn? Yes; there is no providence, though ever so adverse, in which a Christian may not see much of the Divine goodness, and for which, upon the whole, he will not see abundant cause to be thankful. He hath reason to be thankful that his afflictions are not greater; that when some of his comforts are gone he hath so many others left; that some honey is thrown into his bitter cup; that there is such a mixture of mercy with judgment; that his supports are so seasonable and effectual; that under these strokes he can eye the Father's hand and look upon them as the effect of His love, for He chasteneth every son He loves. But especially are kind favourable providences to be gratefully recorded. It is not to be supposed but that every one of us may call to mind many a merciful providence which has contributed greatly to the comfort of our lives, and laid the foundation of our present happiness and future hopes.

3. Our remembrance of the past providences of God should be improved for the confirmation of our hope and trust in Him. By what God hath done for us we see what He is able to do. Our experience, then, should support our hope, and past mercies establish our trust in God for future.

4. When we call to mind the past ways of God towards us, we should seriously reconsider in what manner we behaved under them and what good we have gained from them. Every providence hath a voice, some a very loud one calling us in a more especial manner to practise some particular duty, or forsake some particular sin. Have merciful providences made us more active, diligent, and steadfast in the service of God? and together with greater power given us a better heart to do good? Again, what effect have providential afflictions had upon us? And all afflictions are to be deemed such excepting those that are the genuine effects of our own sin and folly. Have they humbled us? mortified our worldly-mindedness? checked our false ambition? or subdued any secret lust that before too much prevailed? Have they fixed our hope and dependence on God? and made us think more seriously of death and another world? and, in a word, been the means of making us more circumspect and better Christians?

III. I am now to lay before you SOME OF THOSE CONSIDERATIONS THAT ARE MOST PROPER TO INDUCE US HEREUNTO.

1. The express command of God should be a sovereign motive to this duty.

2. The duty recommended in the text is necessary as subservient to the great end for which such providences are intended — namely, to do us good in the latter end. So that if we seldom or superficially reflect upon them, we frustrate the chief design of them, and lose the benefit intended thereby.

3. This is a very pleasant as well as useful employment of the mind; and a very happy way of filling up those leisure minutes which, through the vagrancy and dissipation of thought, do so frequently run to waste.

4. Such a serious reflection on past providences may be of use to direct us in our future conduct.

5. The shortness and uncertainty of life makes this duty more especially necessary. What is past we know, what is to come we know not. For anything that we know, by far the most important periods and occurrences of life may be past with us. If the hand of Providence therein hath not yet been properly attended to and improved by us, it is high time it were.

(John Mason, M. A.)

1. God kept the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness ten times longer than would be necessary for a man's passing through it. We hasten because we are impatient, distrustful, and uncertain. "He that believeth shall not make haste." We do not believe, and therefore we are in a hurry. We see only brief time before us as our day in which to work. God does not hasten, for eternity is before Him as His working day, and He has no misgiving about accomplishing His purposes: for He saith to Himself and of Himself continually, "I am that I am" — "I am the Almighty God." The great question with our God is not our getting through so much of our course as quickly as possible, but our so passing through it as that all things shall work together for our good. A man is in a hurry to secure a certain object and to get to a certain position; and God hedges his way with thorns and there he stops, and a voice from heaven saith to him, "Be still," and he is obliged to "be still."

2. God exposed the people to much difficulty and hardship, but He did not suffer them to sink under their troubles. They were long kept back from Canaan, but God did not forsake His people. The glory, the pillar of cloud and fire, and every Divine ordinance were as so many tokens and symbols of His presence.

II. WHAT DID GOD MEAN BY DEALING THUS WITH THE PEOPLE? God has a meaning in everything. You know one great design embraces our whole life, from the beginning to the end; and then a still larger design takes in the lives of all living things: so that God is not only dealing with me in His dispensations toward me, but He is dealing with all His creatures in dealing with me. There is an end to which everything that happens is subjected. What did God mean by dealing as He did with the people before us?

1. He treated them in this way to humble them. They thought of themselves more highly than they ought to think. They had been accustomed, some of them, to stand by Him as though they were on a level with Him, and to ask Him what He did this for, and what He did that for — not, mark, as an obedient and trustful child, but as a rebel would inquire of some ruler against whom he had risen up. Well, the people had been accustomed in this way to ask God, "Why?" and God brought them down from this. And we say that this is a sublime spiritual spectacle, a man injuring himself by pride, and God lowering that man's estimate of himself. There is something sublime in this — in the great God occupying Himself with one of us men, having our abasement for His object, and so ordering all things as that our pride shall be laid low.

2. God dealt with the people thus to show them what material they were made of. He knew them, but they did not know themselves, and He would have them know themselves. Is the eye evil? Is the ear deaf? Is the tongue fired by hell? Is the neck an iron sinew? Is the heart stone? God knew: they did not — and He dealt with them as He did to show them what they were.

3. God dealt thus with them to show them further what He could do. "That He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord."

4. God's end in His dealings with Israel was instruction and correction, and all the spiritual advantages to be derived from that instruction and correction.

III. WHAT GOD REQUIRES in respect of this instruction and correction. What a mighty effect upon life memory has! It adds the past to the present. Now among the several moral and religious advantages of memory is your being spared the toil of learning the same lesson over and over again.

(S. Martin, D. D.)

II. In remembering all the way which we have been led, WE SHALL FIND IT HIGHLY PROFITABLE; because each of our lives is so directed, sooner or later, for two ends — to humble us, and to prove us whether we will serve God or no.

1. Here we see, first, that all events are ordered for our humiliation. Is it not so? Have you had no remarkable turns in your lives, when, yourself or your friends intending one thing, another has come to pass? Have you had no answers to prayer, when, in your helplessness or agony, you besought God and He hearkened? Look back to your youth; how He controlled your self-wickedness, overruled your ignorance, directed your forwardness. It may be, He answered your prayers and punished your inventions; or that what you were so eager for and prayed to obtain so earnestly, as thinking it would without fail make you happy, He refused, and you now find greatly to your comfort. You must bear these in mind; they were so ordained to humble you. We hear men say of their troubles that they are humbling; how they will try in consequence to remove them, to fling themselves out of them. They are thwarted: this causes irritation; it shows them a glimpse of what they really are, poor and weak, blind and naked, and humbles them. God sends these troubles for this purpose — to humble you. Let no Christian therefore try, for it is a vain work, to shake them off; God sends them to humble him. Let the prayer of this man rather be, Let me be humbled. God exalteth the humble, but casteth away the proud.

2. But in discussing this branch of our subject we have another end also laid open to us; this is to prove us. Christ, by Malachi, says, that His coming will have the same effect on the world as the fire of the refiner on silver. And as all the multiplied complications of our chequered lives are ordered to fit us for Christ's kingdom, we may well suppose they are calculated to produce this same effect — that of refining or proving. We are told that God will do this in several passages: "I will refine them as silver is refined: the Lord your God proveth you." Now there is so much alloy, even in our best services, that all this is necessary.

III. DO THESE THINGS SEEM HARD? Listen to the great comfort to be derived from our subject. It is all — if you turn to ver. 16 — to do thee good at the latter end. It is true, enemies mean mischief; false friends wish confusion of face: but, as Joseph said to his brethren who had sold him, and instrumentally had brought on him the miseries he suffered in Egypt, "Ye meant it for evil; but lo, God hath brought it to good," so with Christians; the different tribulations and unevenness on their road, are the spurs which should quicken their pace to Jerusalem above, the mother of us all.

(J. D. Day, M. A.)

II. These words were spoken to a people, the great majority of whom were ungodly, wicked people. God has been leading them. They do not think so.

III. In calling us to remember, God has the most important practical purposes to answer. There is a moral purpose to every man's life.

1. Humility.

2. Experience.

3. Freedom.

IV. There are many things we ought to remember. Infancy. Childhood. Opportunities of receiving truth. Trifling with religious impressions.

V. There must come a time when we shall be obliged to remember.

VI. Remembrance now will save us from all this. VII. The first effort to remember will be owned and blessed by a gracious Saviour. "I will arise," etc.

(W. G. Barrett, M. A.)

1. That it is a way. That the character of the path is to be estimated not by the present difficulty or danger, but by the importance of the end. God says to you, as you would say to every traveller along a difficult path, "Look up; leave caring for the track at thy feet; look on to the end that is already in sight." Full little cares the weary pilgrim for the roughness of the path or its peril; his heart strains on — Rome, Jerusalem, will reward it all. Is the end worth the toil? That is always the one question.

2. Consider the infinite variety of the way, the many rich elements and influences which it combines to educate your life. A dead and dreary monotony is no part of the plan of God in the education of His sons. If you want to see vast monotones, broad sand tracks, boundless plains, go to Asia and Africa, the continents of slaves and tyrants. If you want to see rich variety, hill and valley, tableland and plain, lakes, rivers, inland seas, and broken coastlines, come to Europe, the home of civilisation, the continent of freeborn and free-living men. And manifold in beauty, in variety, in alternations of scenes and experiences, is this wilderness way by which God is leading His sons. The valley, remember, is part of the mountain. If you will have the height of the one with its exhilaration, you must have the depth of the other with its depression. It is the memory of the depths that makes the heights so grand and inspiring.

II. Thou shalt consider THE BEAUTY OF THE WAY. I believe the wilderness to have been only less beautiful than Canaan. In many points, if not more beautiful, more striking and grand. It was a bright contrast to the dismal monotony and fatness of Egypt. And through the forty years' journey that people had spread round them all the pomp and splendour of Nature, her grandest aspects, her most winning, witching smiles: "And thou shalt consider all the way by which the Lord thy God hath led thee." Lift up thine eyes and take in all the beauty and goodness of the world. "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works, how beautiful; in wisdom and in goodness hast Thou made them all." We none of us take half joy enough, the joy we have a right to take, in the goodly world which our God hath built. Poor we may be and struggling, and all the higher interests and joys of life, art, literature, music, may be tasted but rarely, and in drops. But the Great Artist has taken thought for the poor. He wills that their joys shall not be Song of Solomon. The beauty, the glory, which art at its highest faintly adumbrates, is theirs in profusion Thou shalt consider the good world through which the Lord thy God hath led thee.

III. Thou shalt consider THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS (Exodus 16:11-15). This miracle of the manna is a very wonderful miracle, repeated every day before our eyes. The God who made the manna their food makes bread of corn your food. It is good sometimes to get behind all the apparatus of laws which hide the hand of the living God from us, and take our daily bread, our daily breath, as the sparrows and the lilies take their food and their beauty, direct from the hand of our Father in heaven.

IV. Thou shalt remember THE PERILS OF THE WILDERNESS. It is distinctly by a perilous path God leads us, that we may see as well as dimly guess at our dependence, and ascribe our deliverances to the hand from which they spring. Life is one long peril. Physiologists say that if we could but see the delicate tissues which are strained almost to bursting by every motion, every breath, we should be afraid to stir a step or draw a breath lest we should rupture the frail vessels and perish. "Strange that a harp of thousand strings should keep in tune so long." But it does keep in tune; it is in full tune this day. Remember the perils of the way. Remember the moments of sickness and agony, when death seemed to stand over you. There are deadlier perils than death around us each moment, perils which threaten the second death. Temptations of no common strain. Some of you, by a wonderful chain of providential agencies, have been delivered from positions which you felt to be full of peril, in which, had you continued, you must have fallen; but the net was broken and you have escaped. Thou shalt remember THE SINS OF THE WILDERNESS.

VI. Thou shalt remember THE CHASTISEMENTS OF THE WAY, and consider "that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."

VII. Thou shalt remember THE ELIMS OF THE WAY, the sunny spots, the living verdure, the murmuring fountains, the rustling, shadowing palms, where not seldom you have been permitted to lie down and rest. The wilderness had nooks as fertile, as beautiful as Canaan. Earth has joys, though rare, pure and deep as the joys of heaven. We are ever moaning over our sorrows. We take our mercies as a thing of course. "The people came down to Elim, where were springs and palms." I do not catch the notes of a song of praise. Remember the way and count the Elims by which it has been gladdened, the moments of rapture in which the full heart, swollen almost to bursting, has murmured out its thanksgiving, and realised that "it is a blessed thing to be."

VIII. Thou shalt consider THE END OF THE WAY. Forget that, and it is all a mystery. "Be patient, brethren, and see the end of the Lord" (7-11). "The Lord doth bring thee in." Every sorrow, toil, pain, chastisement He sends is to bring thee in with joy, with glory; to make thee rich for eternity.

(J. B. Brown, B. A.)

(Bishop Cheney.)

( T. Watson.)

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

II. Again, THE WORLD GROWS IN EXPERIENCE, increases its stores of knowledge, and its power over matter.

III. But now to come to a more definite illustration of the truth, THAT THE INDIVIDUAL IS BUT THE SPECIES IN MINIATURE. Ever since the creation of man, God has been proving His rational creatures by various dispensations.

1. Man, when ejected from Paradise, had a certain limited degree of light and help.

2. Man was next put under the restraints of human law — the warrant for the whole compass of human law being contained in that sentence, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." This was a new help, a new light. Did man recover himself under it from the ruins of the fall? Alas, no! Consider that one saying to Abraham, "The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." It shows that mighty nations had sprung up upon the earth's surface who were forgetful of God, and among whom stalked oppression and lust, such as called down vengeance from heaven.

3. So a law was henceforth to be revealed from heaven, and to be made plain upon tables of stone, so that he who ran might read it. Surely when it was so explicit, when it had so manifestly the attestation of heaven, man's evil propensities would not dare to break through its restraints. But the third dispensation failed, as the two preceding ones had done.

4. Subsequently the precepts of the law were expanded and spiritualised by the prophets, those inspired preachers raised up in orderly succession to bear their testimony for God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Still, man was unreclaimed: walked, as ever, in the way of his heart, and in the sight of his eyes. The servants who were sent to receive of the fruits of the vineyard were sent away empty, beaten, stoned, slain.

5. A pause, during which the voice of prophecy was hushed, and then full of augury and hope, the new dispensation, with its covenant of pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace, broke upon a world, which had as yet been stricken down and foiled in its every conflict with evil. A revealed Saviour, joining, in His mysterious Person, man with God — this was the new Light. A revealed forgiveness through His blood, of every transgression — this was the new encouragement. A revealed Sanctifier, who should take up His abode in the abyss of the human will, and there meet evil in its earliest germ — this was the new strength. In the long-suffering of God this dispensation is still running its course.

(Dean Goulburn.)

1. In overruling the curse pronounced at the fall of man. Affliction, pain, and all the various ills that flesh is heir to are the means of bringing men to their right mind, of showing them the vanity of earthly things, and of maturing moral virtues and Christian graces. How few would regard their spiritual destitution but for this discipline! Even death itself is made a moral blessing. Its terrors lead men to seek Christ and a preparation for heaven; its uncertainty induces watchfulness.

2. There is a moral lesson in the present usual consequences of vice and virtue. The vices which are most injurious to society being poverty and shame, the virtues which are most conducive to the welfare of society are most favourable to the temporal welfare of individuals. Filthiness of the flesh usually has its fit punishment in the diseases of the flesh; filthiness of the spirit, its appropriate penal visitation in the disappointments and vexations of the spirit. The largest amount of temporal misery may be traced to idleness, indecision, improvidence, and transgression. And neglects from inconsiderateness, not looking about us to see what we have to do, are often attended with consequences altogether as dreadful, as from any active misbehaviour from the most extravagant passion. The consequences tread upon the heels of the fault; and indeed, vice generally becomes its own punishment.

3. Observe, also, the encouragements which providence furnishes to seek pardon at the hand of God. We are sinners, and have forfeited every blessing and enjoyment but such things as are essential to us as accountable beings — necessary to endow us with that responsibility in which the law of God contemplates us. Nevertheless, God continues to us innumerable forfeited blessings; and the continued bestowment, notwithstanding that they are abused, and converted into occasions of unthankfulness, or weapons of rebellion, marks a forbearance admirably calculated to "lead men to repentance."

II. THE PARTICULAR ENDS OF GOD'S PROVIDENTIAL DISPENSATIONS TOWARDS THE CHURCH.

1. Since humility is the proper counter working of the fall, the first design named by Moses is "to humble thee."

2. A second great object of the discipline of providence over the Church is here specified: "To prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no." Not that the principles and fluctuating feelings of the heart are not fully known to God, but that we know not our own hearts. It belongs essentially to probation that we should be proved. Something must ever be left as a test of the loyalty of the heart. Every day offers a test to some part of our character. Some duty is required which is painful or disadvantageous to our temporal interests; or we are placed in such circumstances that our precise duty is involved in considerable obscurity, and requires patient thought and a conscientious balancing of reasons and scrutiny of motives. Thus God proves what value we set on acts of disobedience as such, and shows us that our virtue is to be estimated by the amount of temptation and the difficulties of obedience.

(F. A. West.)

1. We will consider HOW GOD PROVES US, and what we are to understand by this part of our subject. We at once see that by proving us the Lord must mean, not the finding out what we are, but the showing it. Man's heart is not like a boxed mainspring of a watch, all but wound up from God's sight, as it is from ours, and of which only a part of the chain, a few links now and then, may be seen moving across and over it, as the chain works round; but there is no covering over the mainspring of our hearts to God's eye: glass is transparent, and hearts are glass to God. When God is said to have led His people "forty years in the wilderness, to prove them and know what was in their heart," it was to show them and others what was in their heart, and not to know and find out for Himself. During these forty years He suffered them to pass through a variety of trials and temptations, all calculated to prove and show which among them would keep His commandments and which would not. So is it still with the professing Church of Christ. We must be proved as Israel was; for only they that are proved shall enter the heavenly rest. And temptations alone can prove us. Our honesty is proved when we were tempted to be dishonest, and through God's grace resisted the temptation. Our truth is proved when we might have gained by untruth, and yet were enabled to overcome the temptation. Our chastity is proved when the allurements to sinful lusts were thrown in our way, and we shrank from the snare. Our trust in God is proved when we were in want or difficulties. But further, "They also help to make known what is in our hearts." When God's grace first comes into the Christian's soul it is as when the windows of some old ruined house, long shut up in dust and neglect, are opened, the light is let in upon the rooms. It is as when those who have undertaken thoroughly to repair it, take up the floor, and take down the skirtings, and examine the timbers, and lay bare the drains. No one could have thought, even from the outward appearance, that such a mass of rotten timber, such a heap of dust and filth, and so many vermin, could have got together. And it is not till the work of repairing begins in our hearts that we begin to know anything of their real condition. While there is no light of God's Spirit shining in us, we know nothing of our inward corruptions. We are like persons long used to the close, foul, and unhealthy air of some sick room; it, is not till we have left it, and felt the freshness and sweetness of the air of heaven, that we know what the other was. We cannot know what our heart is till we know what is in our heart; and we cannot know what is in our heart till that which is in is drawn out; and temptation alone can draw it out. It is temptation which shows us what is in our hearts — that brings out in various ways the miserable pride and self-conceit, the hypocrisy and dissimulation, the vain self-confidence, the impurity and uncleanness, the fear of man's shame and love of man's praise, the envy and jealousy, and all those other evil tempers and dispositions which are in every soul of man by nature, but which man only learns to know and feel by grace; and the great object of all the various trials and circumstances through which the believer is made to pass, as Israel through the wilderness, is "to show him what is in his heart."

II. THE EFFECT OF ALL THIS IS "to humble him." The self-righteous sinner is always a proud man: he has, indeed, nothing to be proud of, and everything to be ashamed of; but because he is blind to his sins and faults, blind to the real character of his heart, and ignorant of himself, he is proud, Now, no proud man ever came to Christ — no man that thinks himself righteous ever came to Christ. He may call himself a miserable sinner; but he does not feel or really believe what he says. The Christian wishes to be humble; but he is not what he wishes to be. He wishes "to learn of Him who is meek and lowly of heart," and he is a learner in Christ's school; but he is often humbled for his want of humility. Still, the growing experience of his heart is humbling him: he is becoming daily better acquainted with himself, and likes himself every day less and less. He once thought that, excepting a few faults (and those very few and very excusable and natural), there dwelt in him many good things. Now he can say, even from what he already knows, "that in him" (that is, in his flesh) "there dwelleth no good thing."

(W. W. Champneys, M. A.)

II. IT IS A SELF REVEALING WORK. "The evil principle sleeps in the spirit as the evil monster in the placid waters of the Nile; and it is only the hot sun, or the sweep of the fierce tempest, that can draw or drive it forth in its malignant manifestations."

III. IT IS A DIVINE WORK God alone is the true moral schoolmaster; He alone can effectually discipline the soul.

1. By the dispensation of events.

2. By the realities of the Gospel.

3. By His influence on conscience.

IV. IT IS A SLOW WORK. Goodness is not an impression, an act, or even a habit; it is a character, and characters are of slow growth. It is a growth, and requires cultivation — planting, nourishing, and seasonal changes.

(Homilist.)

(George Macdonald.)

II. The afflictive dispensations of providence ARE INTENDED TO PROVE THE SINCERITY AND TO INCREASE THE STRENGTH OF RELIGION IN THE HEART OF THE GODLY. 'Tis the battle that tries the soldier, and the storm the pilot. How would it appear that Christians can be not only patient, but cheerful in poverty, in disgrace, and temptations, and persecutions, if it were not often their lot to meet with these? He that formed the heart knows it to be deceitful, and He that gives grace knows the weakness and strength of it exactly. The Word of God speaks to men; therefore it speaks the language of men. "Now," said the Lord to Abraham, "I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me." In the wisdom of God, believers are thus put in possession of an undeniable evidence of their own sincerity, and which goes further to assure them of their final salvation than a thousand inward feelings, which are often the effect of imagination alone. It is of importance, besides, to observe that every such trial is a means not only of proving the reality of their religious principles, but of confirming and increasing them. It is with the mind as with the body. Exercise and exertion increase its vigour and strength.

III. Consider THE ULTIMATE DESIRE AND EFFECT OF ALL THESE DISPENSATIONS. "To do thee good at thy latter end." When entered into heaven, their knowledge will be enlarged and perfected; and what is at present concealed from them will burst on their view as a necessary part of the discipline of grace in conducting and completing their everlasting salvation. They will then perceive that by poverty they were guarded from the dangers to which wealth would have exposed them, or that the meanness of their station preserved them from the snares of ambition, or that sickness was the means of correcting their tendency to the pursuit of sensual pleasures and worldly joys. Penetrating into the counsels of the Lord, they will see the mercy even of His heaviest judgments, and the wisdom of His most unsearchable ways. At present they may be in heaviness through many tribulations, but the trial of their faith being much more precious than that of gold which perisheth, though it be tried with fire, shall be found to praise and honour and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

(D. Dickinson, D. D.)

(J. Parker, D. D.)

I. We have here God's providential treatment of men in this world set forth AS A PROCESS OF DISCOVERY. "God led them forty years in the wilderness, to prove them, and to know what was in their heart." Under God's providential economy earthly and practical life is but practical development. Man's business on this sublunary platform is to work out his hidden character in the face of the universe — to make manifest his secret thoughts even in forms of materialism. The fashion of the man's garments, the furniture of his dwelling, the pictures he hangs upon his walls, the volumes he places in his library, the places of his favourite recreation, the style of men with whom be delights to associate; yea, his very bearing as he mingles with men and walks in the market place — are all but the visible expression of the quality of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And this practical manifestation of character in life is with a great Divine purpose. In the case of the Israelites it was to show who, of the wanderers in the Exodus, were proper men to go over to Canaan; and in our case it is to show who, of these dwellers upon earth, are becoming meet for the heavenly inheritance. Not that God needs to learn this, but that He would have His universe know that He is just when He judges and clear when He condemns. And this, this is life! The development in actual forms of the hidden things of the spirit! This making known to a universe what there is in the heart! Oh, then, how awfully solemn a thing it is to live — just to live!

II. And it brings us to consider this other providential design — A PROCESS OF DISCIPLINE. "The Lord God led them forty years in the wilderness to humble them.' Here, by a common scriptural figure, the great grace of humility is put metonymically for all the distinguishing graces of Christian character. And the meaning is, that God led them about in the wilderness as in a state of pupilage and preparation for the civil and ecclesiastical immunities of Canaan. And in illustrating this thought we only ask you to observe how earthly trials and affliction are the finest means of sanctification. You perceive at once, in the case of the Israelites, that if God had allowed them to pitch a permanent encampment in some fair oasis of the desert, then, instead of becoming more humble, they would have waxed worse and worse in arrogance and carnality. And it needed the burning sun, and the hot sand, and the fiery serpents, and the constant assaults of the fierce men of Amalek and Moab to humble them before God, and make them meet for a citizenship in the theocracy of Canaan. And so of Christians on earth — a moment's consideration will show you how afflictions are, after all, the finest discipline of sanctification. Yes, yes, it is thus God sanctifies — He takes away the earthly, that the heart may rise to the heavenly; He tears the bark from its mortal moorings, that it may launch forth toward the eternal haven; He stirs up the nest of the slumberous eagle, that, with exulting pinion, it may soar to the sun!

(C. Wadsworth.)

I. "HE HUMBLED THEE AND SUFFERED THEE TO HUNGER." How true to life that is! How often there comes to a man, at his setting out in life, a time which humbles him, when his fine plans fail him, and he has to go through a time of want and struggle! His very want and struggles and anxiety may be God's help to him. If he be earnest and honest, patient and God-fearing, he prospers — God brings him through; God holds him up, strengthens and refreshes him, and so the man learns that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

II. There is another danger which awaits us, as it awaited those old Jews — THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY IN OLD AGE. It is easy for a man who has fought the battle with the world, and conquered more or less, to say in his heart, as Moses feared that those old Jews would say, "My might and the power of my wit hath gotten me this wealth," and to forget the Lord his God, who guided him and trained him through all the struggles and storms of early life, and so to become vainly confident, worldly and hard-hearted, undevoted and ungodly, even though he may keep himself respectable enough, and fall into no open sin.

III. OLD AGE ITSELF IS A MOST WHOLESOME AND BLESSED MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL OF MAN. Anything is good which humbles us, makes us feel our own ignorance, weakness, nothingness, and cast ourselves on that God in whom we live, and move, and have our being, and on the mercy of that Saviour who died for us on the Cross, and on that Spirit of God from whose holy inspiration alone all good desires and good actions come.

(C. Kingsley, M. A.)

     8404   commands, in OT

Deuteronomy 8:1-2

     8670   remembering

Deuteronomy 8:1-5

     8231   discipline, divine

The Lesson of Memory
'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these lofty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no.'--DEUT. viii.2. The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a sailor's log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

National Wealth
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.) Deut. viii. 11-18. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth …
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch

Subterraneous Places. Mines. Caves.
Thus having taken some notice of the superficies of the land, let us a little search into its bowels. You may divide the subterraneous country into three parts: the metal mines, the caves, and the places of burial. This land was eminently noted for metal mines, so that "its stones," in very many places, "were iron, and out of its hills was digged brass," Deuteronomy 8:9. From these gain accrued to the Jews: but to the Christians, not seldom slavery and misery; being frequently condemned hither by …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Emmanuel's Land
P. G. Deut. viii. 7-10 The land! the glory of all lands, Beyond the Jordan's wave; Beyond the weary desert sands-- The land beyond the grave! Now safe witin that glorious land, We prove His faithful Word; 'Midst Canaan's golden fields we stand, The ransomed of the Lord. Amidst the burning desert drought We learnt His watchful love; Streams from the flinty rocks He brought, Sent bread from Heaven above. Our God in weariness and need, His love was measured there By hunger which His hand would feed, …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others

Palestine Eighteen Centuries Ago
Eighteen and a half centuries ago, and the land which now lies desolate--its bare, grey hills looking into ill-tilled or neglected valleys, its timber cut down, its olive- and vine-clad terraces crumbled into dust, its villages stricken with poverty and squalor, its thoroughfares insecure and deserted, its native population well-nigh gone, and with them its industry, wealth, and strength--presented a scene of beauty, richness, and busy life almost unsurpassed in the then known world. The Rabbis never …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

The Temptation of Christ
Matthew 4:1-11 -- "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a …
George Whitefield—Selected Sermons of George Whitefield

Why all Things Work for Good
1. The grand reason why all things work for good, is the near and dear interest which God has in His people. The Lord has made a covenant with them. "They shall be my people, and I will be their God" (Jer. xxxii. 38). By virtue of this compact, all things do, and must work, for good to them. "I am God, even thy God" (Psalm l. 7). This word, Thy God,' is the sweetest word in the Bible, it implies the best relations; and it is impossible there should be these relations between God and His people, and …
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners:
A BRIEF AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF THE EXCEEDING MERCY OF GOD IN CHRIST TO HIS POOR SERVANT, JOHN BUNYAN; WHEREIN IS PARTICULARLY SHOWED THE MANNER OF HIS CONVERSION, HIS SIGHT AND TROUBLE FOR SIN, HIS DREADFUL TEMPTATIONS, ALSO HOW HE DESPAIRED OF GOD'S MERCY, AND HOW THE LORD AT LENGTH THROUGH CHRIST DID DELIVER HIM FROM ALL THE GUILT AND TERROR THAT LAY UPON HIM. Whereunto is added a brief relation of his call to the work of the ministry, of his temptations therein, as also what he hath met with …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

In Death and after Death
A sadder picture could scarcely be drawn than that of the dying Rabbi Jochanan ben Saccai, that "light of Israel" immediately before and after the destruction of the Temple, and for two years the president of the Sanhedrim. We read in the Talmud (Ber. 28 b) that, when his disciples came to see him on his death-bed, he burst into tears. To their astonished inquiry why he, "the light of Israel, the right pillar of the Temple, and its mighty hammer," betrayed such signs of fear, he replied: "If I were …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Meditations Before Dinner and Supper.
Meditate that hunger is like the sickness called a wolf; which, if thou dost not feed, will devour thee, and eat thee up; and that meat and drink are but as physic, or means which God hath ordained, to relieve and cure this natural infirmity and necessity of man. Use, therefore, to eat and to drink, rather to sustain and refresh the weakness of nature, than to satisfy the sensuality and delights of the flesh. Eat, therefore, to live, but live not to eat. There is no service so base, as for a man …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Third Sunday Before Lent
Text: First Corinthians 9, 24-27; 10, 1-5. 24 Know ye not that they that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run; that ye may attain. 25 And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 26 I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the air: 27 but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. II

Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf. …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament