Sermon vi.

The Bread of the Wilderness.

"He fed thee with manna (which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know); 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 doth man live."-Deut. viii. 3.

THE people broke up from their encampment by the waters in Elim, and resumed their wilderness march. The next stages of their pilgrimage would lead them through some of the most strangely magnificent mountain scenery in the world. They had first to traverse the successive wâdys of the sandstone region, whose intensely brilliant colour surpasses anything which is to be met with, at any rate within the ordinary tracks of civilized man; and then the wilder and grander granite world spread its grim peaks and passes before them; conducting them, by approaches which cast the sphynx avenues of Egypt into the shade, into the inner court of that sublime temple, where they were to hear the voice and behold the glory of Jehovah, and pass through the great crisis of their history.

The higher mountains of the peninsula of Sinai gather themselves into three chief clusters, whose loftiest peaks are known as Mount Serbâl, Mount St. Catherine, and Um-Shômer-the most distant and the loftiest, whose peak, until recently at any rate, no human foot has scaled. The broad character of this region is sterile sublimity. The silence, the desolation, the grand form and colour of the mountains, produce an impression on the mind of every imaginative traveller, which remains sacred, wholly apart from all the other experiences of life.

The sublimity of the grandest Alpine peak is tempered by a veil of grace; the exquisite softness and roundness of the snow outline, the murmurs of cascades which fill the air with music, and the bright starry flowers which gem the earth at your very feet, lend a touch of grace and even gentleness to the most awful mountain forms. But in front of Sinai no brook, no tree, no flower, no bird, gives it is blank desolation; Titan petrified in death. were steadily advancing. of them was already cut

animation to the scene: grandeur-but as of a Into this region they The horizon in front by lines of rich variety

and beauty. It was an education to look upon them, and to learn that by that have them pursue their way.

path God would Elim has many

sisters, in the neighbouring valleys. There is some exquisite scenery in the passes between Elim and Rephidim, with visions here and there of the blue waters of the gulf, one peep of which Dr. Stanley thus describes :

"Another glorious day. We passed a third claimant to the title of Elim, the Wâdy Tayibeh, palms, and tamarisks, venerable as before; then down one of those river-beds, between vast cliffs, white on the one side, and on the other, of a black calcined colour, between which burst upon us once more the deep blue waters of the Red Sea, bright with their white foam. Beautiful was that brilliant contrast; and more beautiful and delightful still, to go down upon the beach and see the waves breaking on that shell-strewn, weed-strewn shore, and promontory after promontory breaking into those waters right and left most delightful of all the certainty-I believe I may here say the certainty (thanks to that inestimable verse in Numbers xxxiii.),—that here the Israelites, coming down through that very valley, burst upon that very view-the view of their old enemy and old friend, that mysterious sea, and one more glimpse of Egypt, dim in the distance in the shadowy hills beyond it. Above the blue sea rose the white marbly terraces, then blackened by the passage of the vast multitude. High above those terraces ranged the brown cliffs of the Desert, streaked here and there with the purple bands which now first began to display themselves. And as the bright blue sea formed the base of the view, so it was lost above in a sky of the deepest blue I have ever observed in the East.". STANLEY: Sinai and Palestine, p. 69.

This was their last vision of Egypt. Their sea was thenceforth to be the Mediterranean, the

highway of the Tyrian commerce, the focus of all the activity of the ancient world. We turn with them somewhat sadly from their last view of their old home, though it had been a bitter one. Memory clings even to scenes of pain and sorrow. It is not without sadness that we bid any haunt, however mournful, farewell. But the call, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward," rings again through the host, and they pass on across the burning plain of Murkâ, and by the gorgeous valleys which lead into Rephidim, the entrance to the great oasis of Paran-now the Wâdy Feirân-beyond whose palm-groves the solemn peaks of Serbâl rise. The sites of Dophkah and Alush (Num. xxxiii. 13) are quite lost, but Rephidim can be identified with tolerable certainty. It means "the resting-place,' and must have been in the near neighbourhood of the great resting-place of the Desert, the paradise of the Bedouins. The plain of Murkâ, the wilderness of Sin, was the scene of their first murmuring for food; but it will be more convenient to trace their course to Rephidim, and consider together the whole question of their miraculous supplies, and their first battle with and victory over their foes.

The oasis of Paran-the Wâdy Feirân-is the widest and the richest of those splendid luxuriant

valleys, which here and there, at rare intervals, relieve the monotony of the Desert route. It lies at the foot of Mount Serbâl, of which Dr. Stanley testifies, "it is one of the finest forms I have ever seen." The combination of the wild granite peaks of the mountain, its black shadows, its sterile silences, with the sparkling beauty of the broad oasis which nestled in its breast, presents a spectacle which I suppose can be seen only in those sublime deserts, through which God led His This oasis was, in the days of Moses, the home of a people strong enough to dispute with Israel the passes of the mountains; and, down to the sixth century, was the seat of a settlement which was a bishopric of the Christian Church.

sons.

We identify Rephidim the more readily with Wady Feirân, because nature seems herself to have marked it out as the inevitable resting-place of the people on such a march. The fact that Dophkah and Alush were between Elim and Rephidim, compels us to look for the latter far on in the direction of Sinai. Again, it is evident that the people called Amalek (possibly a generic name for the rovers of the Desert) were established there. There had been no time since the exodus for an Idumæan people to have taken the alarm, and sent an expedition southwards to close the first passes of the Desert against the heirs of