We then read that when their children should ask them, when they came into the promised land, what they meant by all this it is in the original Hebrew, "What this?" which plainly we are to interpret, "What means this?" just as "This is my body " means "This represents my body"— when they asked what they meant by this, the answer of the parent should be, "By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage." You see here, as I mentioned on the previous chapter, the provision that the school shall always subsist in the family, that the teacher and the taught shall be a relation reciprocated and sustained there. It assumes the curiosity and inquisitiveness of the young, and it insists upon the duty of the parent to gratify that curiosity by explaining Divine truths, facts, and institutions, as they ought to be explained.

And so important were all these things, that God says, they shall be like a token stamped upon the hand, and so present to them, that they shall be like the phylacteries, or pieces of parchment, hanging over the forehead, and between the eyes. The Pharisees carried this out literally, but evidently it is the spirit, and not the parchment of it, that was obligatory upon God's people.

"God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt." Now you might say, could not God, who could miraculously lead them out of Egypt, and feed them, and make a pillar of fire guide them through the darkness of the night, have armed their hearts with courage enough, and their weapons with success enough, to destroy the Philistines? Why should he lead them by a circuitous, and not by a straight route into Canaan? If you will trace upon any of the maps in Bagster's Bible the route from Egypt into Canaan, you will find that it was purposely and deliberately circuitous. And if you ask why, the same answer, perhaps,

must be rendered that you must give when you ask, “Why have I been led to my present position by a route so circuitous? Why have I reached my present relationship, my present state, by so circuitous a route? The answer is, that you never could have reached it by a straighter one, God knows best what is, not the nearest, but the surest way and which is most for your good and for his glory. In the beautiful language of the Prophet, He leads the blind by a way that they know not. It is our business to look at the pillar of cloud by day, and at the pillar of fire by night. We are to run the race "set before us." We did not set it before ourselves, God set it before us. Whether it be circuitous or straight, long or short, rough or smooth, we are to run the race set before us with only one anxiety "looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith." The Israelites in their exodus from Egypt were to pursue their route through the wilderness, not inquiring, nor complaining, whether it was circuitous or straight, but looking to the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. If we can only look at the right guide, lean upon the right arm, contemplate the right object, all the rest should never trouble

us.

As our day is, our strength shall be. "My grace is sufficient for thee."

But there is another idea suggested by this, and it is a very important one, that on God's part there never is a profusion of miracles; open a chapter of the Bollandists, or the annals of the beatification and canonization of the Romish saints, and there is such a profusion of miracles, that they are sparkling all day and all night, until you are weary of reading of them. But in God's Word you never find a miracle unless a miracle be actually required; and when the miracle is done, it carries its own majestic credentials upon its own brow; there can be no doubt about it. Now, you will notice here that God treated the men as rational, responsible, intelligent beings. If it had been all miracles,

man might as well have been an automaton; but as man was a responsible creature, that God wished to train, to indoctrinate, to shape and mould after his own Divine model, God dealt with him as a rational being, and only stepped in when there was absolute necessity for it. Even a heathen poet could say

"Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus."

That is acted upon God never steps in

"Never should a God step in unless there be a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a God." throughout the whole of Scripture. with supernatural power, except when the natural is at its wits' end. God was training a race of craven, spiritless, broken-hearted slaves. He would not substitute for themselves Himself; but he would school them, as a nurse leads a child, helping it only when it is about to fall. How beautiful is this thought, that the Great Father should thus bend over his family as a mother watches her infant child, helping it only when it needs it, knowing that to help it too often would be to frustrate what she has in view, as not to help it at all would be to expose it to danger. God deals with his people, too, according to their growth. He gives a dispensation to one state that he does not give to another. He regards men as progressive creatures, and fits his dealings and dispensations accordingly.

It is said that they "went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt," that is, in companies, or battalions, so many abreast. It does not mean that they were armed with weapons for battle.

In the 19th verse there is a reference to Joseph's bidding his brethren swear that they would carry his bones out of Egypt into Canaan. You see how they recollected the good and great patriarch's dying request. And what did Joseph mean by it? It was a pledge to the slaves in Egypt that they would yet be in Canaan; it was a declaration that

though his bones might rest for a season in the tombs of the Pharaohs, his heart beat towards Canaan. It is a lesson to us that this is not our rest, that there remaineth a Canaan, a true rest, for the people of God. It was not a mere piece of caprice, but a suggestive, prefigurative, and significant fact, showing that Joseph looked forward to that day when his bones, like the bones of his nation in the valley, seen by Ezekiel, should again be clothed in flesh, and come bone to bone, and he should rise again.

We see next, God's guidance of the people by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. We can form an idea of the gigantic size of this phenomenon by the fact, that two millions and a half of people had to see it. You can conceive what an immense space of ground this number must have covered. I believe that, when the first ranks had reached the Red Sea, the last had hardly escaped from Egypt. The shape of this pillar is supposed to have been like ascending smoke; and mathematicians might easily calculate the height it must have risen to, in order to be seen by all this mass of people. One may suppose that it must have risen nearly a mile into the skies. I shall take another opportunity of explaining that that pillar was the presence of God which afterwards rested on the ark. It was called the Shechinah, from a Hebrew verb meaning "to dwell;" and we can see that it was the great type of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ROUTE OUT OF EGYPT. THE RED SEA. DESPAIR OF THE ISRAELITES. HEROISM. SLAVERY. MOSES PRAYS. GOD REPLIES. PILLAR OF FIRE. SHECHAN. THE DIVIDING OF THE SEA. DESTRUCTION OF PHARAOH.

THE chapter I have read records one of the most stupendous miracles in the whole annals of the Christian history. We read that Pharaoh so far submitted, when the death of the first-born struck every heart with terror and dismay, that he let the Israelites go out a few days, as he thought, into the wilderness, in order to sacrifice; in the hope, upon his part, that after they had done so they would return to the brickkilns, and continue the productive slaves of Pharaoh and of Egypt. But when word came, that the Israelites had not simply gone out for a holiday, but had begun their final exodus from Egypt, with their faces towards the the land of Canaan; and when he heard that they had been directed, not by the straight route that seemed to man the nearest, but by the route that God knew to be best; -just as it is still for what we think the best way to the accomplishment of an end is not always so; and it is well that God sometimes leads the blind by a way they know not, and brings them to the result by a route unexpected and incomprehensible to them, but in the end most for their good and for His glory-he determined to pursue them. It appears that the Israelites encamped upon the west side of the Red Sea, some twenty or thirty miles, at the very lowest, below what is now called Suez; and if any one will look at their