should be served, and it would require even more than Jewish audacity, to attempt to gainsay, or controvert it.

But while this plain and powerful lesson was taught to the whole house of Israel, by the significant symbol of which we have just read, surely another and not less important, might be suggested by it to the mind of Aaron, and to every future servant of the Most High, and which we should each, in our different stations, endeavour to remember. Any change might have taken place in the rod at the will of the Most High. It might have been, like the rod of Moses, turned into a serpent; but no, the change, commanded by the Almighty, was, that it should blossom and bring forth fruit. Fit emblem to typify a servant of the Lord! 6 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," said our Lord to his disciples, "and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." "He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." Let us, then, never forget that this must always be the distinctive mark of those who serve the Lord.

That blossoms, not have ever been the

leaves; that fruit, not wood; peculiarities of the trees which the Lord hath planted. Without this, all is useless, profitless, the mere service of the lips, and therefore of no

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avail. It is in bringing forth much fruit to God, that the Holy Spirit is glorified, and the Father honoured, and the blessed Saviour magnified; for fruit can only grow from our engrafting on the true vine, from our union with Him who has said, "Without me, ye can do nothing."

EXPOSITION XXIV.

[Here may be read chapters xviii. and xix.]

NUMBERS XX. 1—6.

1. Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin, in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.

There is a long pause in the history of the Israelites, between the events which we last read, and those which are recorded in the chapter we have now commenced. No less a period than eight and thirty years has intervened, of which no record has been handed down to us. Had Moses written as an historian, this would be unintelligible, but writing, as He did, as a legislator, and, therefore, rather to perpetuate the

laws and ordinances of God, than to communicate the minute facts of the Jewish history, we can well understand the reason, that his narrative is confined to the two first years, and the last of the sojourning of the Israelites.

During this long interval, the threatening of the Almighty had been fulfilled, and all who were above twenty years of age in the congregation, at the time of the spies, had been cut off. Now also Miriam, the elder sister of Moses, is called to her rest. She is honoured, by the Prophet Micah, by being classed with her brothers, as a leader of the children of Israel, when speaking in the person of the Almighty, he says, "O my people, what have I done unto thee? For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants, and I sent before thee, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." ""* But, alas! she also had been one of the murmurers, and must die the death. Great privileges are no preservatives against great sins. Let the highest, as well as the lowest, in the Christian family, remember, that, "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."† Miriam had lusted for power, and murmured at the supremacy of Moses, and had asked with ↑ James i. 15.

Micah vi. 3, 4.

vain-glorious self-sufficiency, "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath He not spoken also by us?" She was, therefore, numbered with them that had sinned, whose carcases," to use the words of the apostle to the Hebrews," fell in the wilderness."*

2. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.

3. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord!

4. And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there?

5. And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.

6. And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them.

We must not confound this rebellion of the children of Israel, for want of water, with that of which we have before spoken, in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, where precisely the same circumstance occurred, and Moses, at the

*Heb. iii. 17.

command of God, brought water out of the rock in Horeb. That event took place, when, as we are told, the people " had pitched in Rephidim," after having left the wilderness of Zin, and it is probable that during their long sojourn in the lower lands, these waters may have supplied them, but now, once more in a mountainous country, since the people talk of bringing them up into this wilderness," their supplies had failed.

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It is worthy of our observation, that the Israelites were thus tried by the same temptation during their first, and during their last year's sojourn in the wilderness, and sad to say, in both cases fell victims to their impatience and unbelief. True it is, that the former generation had passed away, and another and entirely new race had sprung up during the interval, but assured as we are, that they " had heard with their ears, and that their fathers had declared unto them, the noble works that God did in their days, and in the old time before them," it only renders it the more remarkable, that a second generation should have inherited so entirely the faithlessness of the first. We can almost imagine that they were speaking the very words of their fathers, when they talk of the figs, and the vines, and the pomegranates of Egypt, which to them