56 SINAI AND CONFIRMATION. journey which typifies your present state and future course in life. After all these blessings, after this great preservation, and not before, the Israelites come to Sinai to receive the commands of their God and their directions for their future journey, while their hearts are yet warm, and their gratitude fresh with the recollection of the preservation they had just experienced. The wilderness on which they are to be launched represents the present world-barren, unfruitful in all spiritual sustenance, yet lying as a necessary journey between the actual situation of God's chosen people, and Heaven, their promised land. Upon the edge of that wilderness you are standing now, and before you have forgotten your great deliverance,while you are thinking of the difference between the unregenerate state on that side of the water, and the regenerate on this,-while you see your pursuer driven back, and feel yourself delivered from him,-and before you have sunk under any of those temptations, or experienced any of those grievous trials that must beset you in the wilderness which lies before you,—you come to me, God's representative, to receive at my mouth the law and the testimony,—you come to the Bishop, the steward of CHRIST'S grace, to receive at his hands strength for your journey. Confirmation is your spiritual Sinai. Henceforward you will pass through the wilderness of your earthly pilgrimage, but across that wilderness you have the Heavenly Guide to lead you, that appeared to you first at your baptism. You must wait for His leading, just as the Israelites did for that of the pillar of the cloud. You must go on when He leads you, you must stop when He stops. You must not be afraid of undertaking any duty He points out, impossible as it may seem to you. Remember what happened to the children of Israel, when they thought only of the cities walled up to heaven, and the children of the Anakim that guarded them, rather than of the Heavenly Leader of their own host. Neither must you be looking out for your own means of passing forward in your journey, where the Spirit of God gives no directions. Remember what happened to the children of Israel, THE ROCK, AND THE MANNA, AND THE EUCHARIST. 57 when, without the word of the LORD, they rushed toward the promised land, and were discomfited by their enemies. The real way of serving God lies in waiting for His call, and then obeying it. The wilderness of this world will produce no spiritual sustenance; neither must you look for it, that would be like the Israelites looking back to the flesh-pots of Egypt, and being discontented because in the path that they were following they could find none of the leeks, and the onions, and the melons, and the cucumbers, which they remembered in the land of their captivity. But you need not perish with hunger or with thirst because the wilderness produces neither spiritual meat nor spiritual water. Remember how Moses and Aaron struck the rock, and how the waters flowed out abundantly, and remember how the Apostle explains this, that the Rock which follows us is CHRIST, and that under the touch of those whom He has commissioned, His grace flows upon His people as abundantly as water. Nor will you faint for want of food; remember how in that long journey "man did eat angel's food, for He gave them bread enough." So CHRIST supplies you now with spiritual food; He gives you bread enough; throughout the whole of that desolate wilderness, the world, your souls are strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of CHRIST, just as your bodies are refreshed by bread and wine. Do not presume on your privileges. Do not fancy that because you were called therefore you are chosen; because you are regenerate therefore you are safe; because you have had so much done for you, therefore you have nothing to do for yourselves. Remember the temptations that beset the children of Israel from the beginning of their course, down to the very end of it. Remember how many of them fell away; remember the sins for which they were punished; self-will, ingratitude, lust, disobedience to the authorities GOD had set over them, choosing their own form of worship instead of the pattern of those things which Moses had seen in the Mount. Remember the thousands that perished under each succeeding manifesta 58 JORDAN AND DEATH. tion of God's wrath. Now if you have any doubt that all this applies to us, quite as much as it did to them who actually passed through these dangers, open your Bibles at the tenth chapter of S. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and see what he there says about it. "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink of the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was CHRIST. But with many of them GOD was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness." Now mark what follows:-" Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt CHRIST, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, unto whom the ends of the world are come." And when at last you shall come to the borders of that promised land, will not you be divided from it, just as they were, by a deep dark impassable river? does not the Jordan of the Israelites typify to the Christian the river of death, that even at the end of his journey lies between him and heaven? and what is it that opens the way to him? what is it that shows him the way we must go? for as Joshua said to the people, we have not passed that way heretofore. "The ark of the covenant of the LORD, borne by His priests, passed before them through Jordan, and as soon as the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, the waters stood and rose up in a heap and were cut off, and the people passed through." THE ARK AND GOD'S ORDINANCES. 59 These words are also written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world, that is to say, upon whom the objects of God, through the whole previous course of this world, are come. There is no passage to our promised land, but through the river of death; there is no passage across that river revealed to us, but by the covenants of GOD, and those covenants are borne before you by the priests whom He has commissioned to bear them. III. THE SEASON OF WATCHFULNESS AND SELF EXAMINATION. "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come."-Isa. xxi. 11, 12. SEPTUAGESIMA is the seventieth from Easter- And as each week rolls round Easter draws nearer. And Easter typifies the Resurrection, and the Resurrection brings the Judgment. In the earlier part of our lives it is hardly human nature to look forward. In childhood we hardly look forward to even our future lives, much less to death, and judgment, and eternity. Our lives, then, like the calendar to which I have been comparing them, date back from Christmas. Happy for us if we have employed well our baptismal grace, and, if as our earlier years passed by, we have made our own, and laid up in store for future use, those virtues of Him Whose steps we are following, which one after another the earlier Sundays of the Calendar have set before us. I tell you now, that you have turned over a leaf in the calendar of life, just as you have turned over a leaf in the calendar of your Prayer-book. I tell you now that your calendar begins to date itself from the end of your life, not from the beginning; that your mind is opened; that your reason is strengthened; that your understanding is enlarged; that you begin to see whither |