upon the heads of the Levites. It was a religious ceremony, to denote that the whole nation now gave up, and dedicated this one tribe to the peculiar service of God, and bound themselves to provide for their support.

Aaron, then, offered the Levites before the Lord, for an offering of the children of Israel;" and the bullocks were offered up in sacrifice; one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt-offering, to make an atonement for the Levites. Thus, they were publicly set apart, and consecrated to God, for the duties of their office.

Every thing was now prepared for the further progress of the Israelites towards the promised land. The magnificent dwelling-place of the Most High was completed; and his glorious presence occupied its holiest apartment. His laws and ordinances were promulgated; the rites of his worship established; a priesthood consecrated; and the regulations fixed for the order of encamping, and the marching forward from oue stage to another.

The sublime and awe-inspiring scenes of Sinai had accomplished the moral design for which their Author had employed them. The time for leaving them was at hand. New regions were now to be explored, and other conditions of human life to be passed through. Nature, under different aspects, was to inculcate still further her lessons of instruction. She was to aid the discipline, severe indeed,

but necessary, which such a people as the Israelites greatly needed, and which their journeyings in the wilderness were destined to enforce.

At length, the rising cloud gave the signal for their departure. The trumpets sounded. The standards were raised. The tabernacle was taken down. The tribes were marshalled; and as the vast body began to set forward, what mingled emotions must have pervaded the breasts of such a multitude!

The hurried recollections of what they had witnessed and done, of what they had suffered and enjoyed, at Sinai; of its amazing prodigies; its natural scenes of awful grandeur; its lofty mountains and sequestered valleys; its scattered spots of delightful pasturage and repose; the refreshing streams which the smitten rock of Horeb had furnished; and the heavenly food which had supplied their wants, crowded thick upon their memory. The place where they had resided for nearly a year, surrounded with so many affecting and hallowed associations, was to be left for ever. The cloud continued slowly to advance. They followed its path. Sinai and its environs began, at length, to grow dim in the distance; and the Israelites looking back upon it with a mournful regret, wondered what new scenes were about to open before them.

To follow them with any thing like geographical accuracy, from one station to another, will be often difficult, and sometimes impossible. The

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most learned and laborious in their investigations, are not agreed on many points connected with this subject; and but a partial light is thrown upon by the researches of travellers.

it

We know, indeed, the general features of the regions which the Israelites traversed, while passing from Mount Sinai to Canaan; features greatly diversified, and the grouping of which it may be interesting, for a moment, to contemplate. They consist of chains of mountains, and often single ones, interspersed with narrow and long valleys, traversing which are sometimes sandy cliffs, sixty and eighty feet in height; extensive, sandy plains, unfruitful and destitute of water, the surface of which is, in some parts, broken by innumerable unspots shaded dulations and low hills; here and there by bushes, and covered with pasturage, and valleys where water is to be found, and the tamarisks and talh-trees grow; vast deserts, barren, horrid, and frightful; while the traveller sometimes meets with a mass of the bones of camels, horses, and asses that have perished on their way, and with heaps of stones, rudely thrown together, the tombs of pilgrims who have died of thirst or fatigue.

Parts of these regions are spoken of in the Scrip tures, as a desert land, a waste howling wilder ness," a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water,"-" a land of deserts,

and of pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt."

It was to give them the moral discipline which they needed; it was to train up the children and youth in such a school of hardihood and enterprise; it was to prepare for himself a nation suited in their habits and character to the condition in which they would be placed in the land of Canaan; it was to show forth his own power and wisdom, his justice, his goodness, and his truth; it was to leave on record, for the instruction of their descendants to the latest posterity, and of all mankind, the manner of his dealing with such a stiff-necked and rebellious people,-the history of his great long-suffering towards them, and the reasons of the deep and lasting obligations of gratitude under which they were placed to their Heavenly Guide and Protector: it was for these important ends that God saw fit, in his wise and holy Providence, to lead the Israelites, during a space of forty years, through such dreary regions, and to subject them to the various difficulties and trials which we shall see they were called to endure. In noticing what transpired on their course, we should bear these things in mind, as accounting often for what might otherwise appear to us dark and mysterious.

The more we study the Bible with a right spirit, that we may become the better acquainted with

the character and will of God, and our own character and duty; the more shall we find it to be, in all its parts,-in its histories and biographies, as well as its doctrines and precepts,-a rich treasure of instruction. Its minute details of events; its very particular descriptions of what God commanded to be done, and of his conduct towards individuals and whole communities, especially the Jewish, are given by the inspired writers, not merely to fill up the narrative, or to be passed over in the perusal as of little moment, but to enlighten the mind, to affect the conscience, and to purify the heart.

Look to God, my young friend, for the influences of his Holy Spirit, that such may be the happy result in your case, while we accompany the Israelites in their subsequent journeyings to the promised land.

CHAPTER XLV.

Taberah. Murmurings. Seventy elders chosen to assist Moses. Quails sent. Plague at Kibroth-hattavah.

It was on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year after their departure out of