Joshua 1

The Happiest Happiness

Ye shall pass over before your brethren armed... and shall help them; until the Lord have given your brethren rest. Joshua 1:14-15.

Today's text is a Bible story which is told no fewer than three times, first in the third chapter of Deuteronomy, second in the thirty-second chapter of Numbers, third in the first chapter of Joshua. And the very end of the story you will find in the twenty-second chapter of the same book. You may never have noticed it it is such a little story but it is a very important story all the same, and I want to talk about it this morning.

In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth verses of that first chapter of Joshua you will find Joshua reminding the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh of an old promise they had made to Moses. The time had come, said Joshua, for fulfilling that promise. What was it?

Some time previously the Israelites had conquered and driven out the inhabitants of the land west of Jordan. And at that time these two and a half tribes had said to Moses, “This land will suit us better than the land across the river, even although that is the Promised Land. This will suit our flocks and our herds.

May we stay and settle here?” “Yes,” said Moses, “on one condition that when, it comes to the crossing of Jordan, when it comes to the time that the rest of the tribes go over to the Promised Land, you will not stay here selfishly in safety, but you will send over in the van of the army your picked fighting men; you will help your brother tribes to win their inheritance across the river.” And the two and a half tribes solemnly promised that they would carry out this condition. They would not be selfishly content with their own good fortune. They would help the other tribes to conquer the people east of Jordan. And when that was done, and only then, they would come back to the land of their choice, and settle down happily with their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds.

Boys and girls, that old, old story reminds me of an even older story, an Indian legend, a sort of fairy tale. I shall tell it you as it was told to me.

Long ago, so long ago that there was just time before it for the “longest ago,” there lived in the north of India Himalya, the king among mountains. The snowflakes crowned his forehead, and the clouds robed him in purple, and the winds were his slaves. He was the wealthiest of monarchs, for he had treasures of gold and silver, and he had caverns whose roofs were of diamonds and whose floors were studded with emeralds. But he had a treasure fairer and dearer than any of these an only daughter, the laughing sparkling Ganga. She was so beautiful and gentle and precious this daughter of old Himalya that the Immortals came to earth and took her up to Heaven to live with them.

But no sooner had she left this earth than many terrible things began to happen there. The little flowers drooped and faded, the grass and the herbs withered, the people grew feeble and sickly, the cattle died of thirst, and all the land of Hindustan was like to become a desert.

Then there arose one who remembered the wisdom of Garuda, the king of birds; and he went to that most educated fowl and said, “O Garuda, how may we bring back health and happiness to this earth?” And the king of birds swayed slowly on the branch of his tree and said, “There will not be health and happiness for man or beast till Ganga shall quit the heavenly regions and descend to refresh the world.”

But who could ask the beautiful Ganga to leave her heavenly home?

At last one of the Immortals, touched with the misery of mankind, climbed to the brow of old Himalya, and called to the beautiful Ganga, that queen among rivers. “O child of old Himalya, thy heavenly home is full of delights. Its light is golden yet soft, its air is heavy with perfume and thrills with the sound of music and song, and those who dwell there are happy. But, O child of old Himalya, the earth where thou once didst dwell is parched with a feverish thirst, the little flowers are withered, the gazelles find no stream to refresh them, the herons are dying, and the swans have left. Men are feeble and sickly, the earth is the dwelling-place of sorrow, the air is laden with sighs, the sound of weeping is ever in the land. Therefore, O Ganga, descend!”

Then the great heart of Ganga throbbed in her bosom. She rushed from the home of the gods crying, “I come, O beloved! Doubly beloved for thy sorrow!”

Singing and dancing and laughing, scattering jewel-drops on either hand, she came to earth. And wherever she passed the flowers unfolded their petals, the herons revived, the gazelles came to drink, and the swans, like fluttering clouds, returned to the land. And the children of men, who had lived in despair and sickness, at the touch of her glistening waters found happiness and health.

Boys and girls, that is the legend of how the Ganges, the most glorious river of India, came to be. It is only a legend, but both it and the story of the two and a half tribes seem to me to say the same thing. They both tell us that we can never be truly happy or truly blest till we have cared for the sorrows of others and made them happy too.