Numbers 33:56

REFLECTIONS

MY soul! pause here, and behold the wonderful love of GOD to his people. Behold, what a series of hazardous journeys, as they must have appeared to human nature, and impossible ever to have been accomplished by flesh and blood, unprotected by the LORD, were GOD'S Israel brought through. Call to mind, in rehearsing these two and forty stages of their pilgrimage, what a train of miracles accompanied them, more or less, at every stage. Traverse, in idea, the inhospitable regions of uninhabited desolate places the LORD led them through, for forty years together, during the whole of which space their garments waxed not old, neither were their feet swollen, and surrounded as they were with beasts of prey, and fiery flying serpents, and scorpions. And behold the people at the close of their journey, as many in number at least, and as healthy, as when they first set out; and will not every beholder be prompted to exclaim, what hath GOD wrought! But while beholding Israel of old, forget not, my soul, to contemplate the true Israel of GOD now. Is not our JESUS carrying home his church through the wilderness? Are not his people in continued movements? Are they not exercised with the same wilderness dispensations? And is not JESUS himself always with them, driving out every enemy before them, and continually manifesting himself to them otherwise than he doth to the world? Oh! my soul, search diligently for thine own personal interest and part in this history; and do thou be continually inquiring for the evidences of thy journey in the spiritual warfare of JESUS, until the LORD shall have accomplished thy wilderness state, and shall bring thee home to Canaan, to behold his glory, and dwell with him forever.