12

THE WANDERINGS OF THE FORTY YEARS.

of revelation. Bishop Butler says truly and profoundly of Scripture, that "thoughtful persons might compare and pursue intimations scattered up and down it which are overlooked or disregarded by the generality of the world." For instance, that is rather a startling statement made by the Apostle, "Now this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia ;" but I believe that a careful study of the context will show the truth and meaning of what seems at first a hardly intelligible metaphor. There are doubtless full many other facts in Holy Writ where a spiritual meaning might be elicited by careful and cautious study, united with prayer for heavenly guidance. One would feel this in regard to the wanderings in the wilderness, even if the religious meaning were less insisted on by Psalmist and Apostle. But St. Paul dwells on the facts of that period of Old-Testament history, and tells us that they were "ensamples ;" and Sunday after Sunday the Church reiterates to Christian pilgrims the terrible warnings of those forty years.

How often, how exceedingly often, do Christian men and women wander their space of forty years, less or more, in the wilderness, between the time. when they have been called from the house of bondage and the time when they draw near to the shores of Jordan! The work is not finished, it is only begun, when a man has awoke to the realities of the spiritual life. To how many deprived of the positive

THE ISRAELITES' SINS ARE EVERMORE REPEATED. 13

happiness of younger days, and those illusions which make so large a part of their happiness, does life appear as a wilderness of changeless sand, and any vision of green pastures and still waters is only a mirage! I think that the circumstances of the wanderings of the Israelites repeat themselves very exactly in the wanderings of the Israel of God. Men who have in some measure attained to the soberness of the Christian life, look back to the pleasurable sins they have forsaken as these to the flesh-pots. It is not causelessly that the terrible lessons against lusts in their coarsest form are so emphatically reiterated. Certainly, nothing is more common than that in this age and country men should set up a calf of gold, and fall down and worship it. Every where we might recognise in ourselves and others the murmuring, or repining, or rebellious spirit. The comparison might be pressed in all the further details. The salient point of the comparison is the life of wandering, and not the fact that the whole of that generation perished in the desert. But still this mournful fact deepens the significant warning, lest, a promise being left us of entering into rest, some should come short.

The blessedness which the Israelitish wayfarers might have realised may be realised by the Christian pilgrim tracking his course through the sands of time. Still in the heavens may be discerned the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, to temper the noontide

14

PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY LAND.

heat, and enlighten the nightly gloom. Evermore, even as the Israelites drank of the miraculous rock, supposed in Jewish legends to have followed them, we may drink of the living waters, and realise that that Rock is Christ. We receive from heaven the meat and the manna, and do eat angels' food. Through the kindly providence of God, the raiment waxes not old; our human wants are tended with all a parent's solicitude and thought. "My life is not merely a life," said the Norwich philosopher, in the Religio Medici, "but a miracle of so many years' duration." The inevitable sorrows of the pilgrim estate attain for him a solemn beauty and a solemn meaning: "In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them."

Something may be added very briefly from uninspired sources, additional to this consideration.

1. There are many books and parts of books which make up altogether a somewhat extensive and very interesting literature of pilgrimage. Possibly as much instruction might be derived from actual as from allegorical pilgrims. But it requires a great and almost impracticable effort to understand and appreciate modes of thought and life so entirely foreign to our own as these pilgrim times. There is something very interesting, for instance, in the narratives of pilgrims to the Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre which resulted in those Crusades, which, although, according to the shallow estimates of some

CHRISTIANS ARE CRUSADERS.

15

historians, they may appear as blanks in human progress, yet, in the deeper judgment of Lord Bacon, and those who have followed in his track, rolled back the tide of Asian invasion, and evoked the dormant genius of Europe. It is easy to laugh at the grotesqueness and simplicity of Arculf or Robert the Monk; but it might be possible, on historic grounds, to construct a character of the actual pilgrim not much inferior to the ideal. Such a pilgrim had a very keen sense of the corruptions with which he was surrounded, hated and mourned over sin in himself and others, and chose every where the self-denying path where difficulty is to be encountered and endured. We may derive very practical lessons from those who, smitten with the love of "the sweet land over the sea," sought the literal hills around the literal Jerusalem amid multiplied perils which we can now hardly estimate; unheeding the dangers of the river, the mountain, and the forest, the attacks of infidel foes, and the craftiness of Greek civilisation. We may derive, at least, the simple, though very necessary, lesson of a courage, zeal, and perseverance required in no less measure by the Christian pilgrim. Actions of moral heroism, especially those that really happened, have always an ethical and religious value. It has been truly said, that every act is to be regarded as a religious one which raises man above the mere animal, and brings him nearer to the divine nature. Each one signed with the sign

16

THE LITERATURE OF PILGRIMAGE.

of the Cross is in the highest sense a Crusader. In endurance, privations, and self-sacrifice, Christian pilgrims, for the most part, afford but an indifferent transcript of what has been done from inferior or mixed motives. The realities of pilgrim life have passed into our most cherished literature, the purest founts of undefiled English; and it would be well if when in youth we first studied these, we should comprehend the underlying religion. We remember the eloquent eulogism of Milton upon Spenser: "Assuredly," he beautifully writes, "we bring not innocence into the world: we bring impurity rather. That which purifies is trial, and trial is by what is contrary; which was the reason why our sage, serious poet Spenser-whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas-describing true temperance under the person of Guyon, brings him, with his palmer, through the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain.”

2. We look into the library of biography, where we see in fact what we have just contemplated in emblem. It has been said, that as the Gospel is a biography, so every biography is a gospel. That is to say, that when any life is faithfully and sincerely set down, we may derive therefrom lessons of wisdom and experience, which will indeed be a message of good tidings to us if we make them our own. Of how many good men is it true, that both their