lasting impressions than this tender, patient, planning God. Yet here
even their stomachs forgot those rock-freed waters. These people must be
kinsfolk of ours. They seem to have some of the same family traits.

Listen: they begin to complain, to criticise. God patiently says nothing
but provides for their needs. But Moses has not yet reached the high level
that later experiences brought him. He is standing to them for God. Yet he
is very un-Godlike. Angrily, with hot word, he _smites_ the rock. Once
smiting was God's plan; then the quiet word ever after. How many a time
has the once smitten Rock been smitten again in our impatience! _The
waters came_! Just like God! They were cared for, though He had been
disobeyed and dishonoured. And there are the crowds eagerly drinking with
faces down; and up yonder in the shadow standeth God _grieved_, deeply
grieved at the false picture this immature people had gotten of Him that
day through Moses. Moses' hot tongue and flashing eye made a deep moral
scar upon their minds, that it would take years to remove. Something must
be done for the people's sake. Moses disobeyed God. He dishonoured God.
Yet the waters came, for _they needed water_. And God is ever
tender-hearted. But they must be taught the need of obedience, the evil of
disobedience. Taught it so they never could forget.

Moses was a leader. Leaders may not do as common men. And leaders may not
be dealt with as followers. They stand too high in the air. They affect
too many lives. So God said to Moses:--"You will not go into Canaan. You
may lead them clear up to the line; you may even see over, but you may not
go in." That hurt Moses deep down. It hurt God deeper down, in a heart
more sensitive to hurt than was Moses'. Without doubt it was said with
_reluctance_, for _Moses'_ sake. But _it was said_, plainly, irrevocably,
for _their_ sakes. Moses' petition was for a reversal of this decision.
Once and again he asked. He wanted to see that wondrous land of God's