aims are often missed, and it is well that they should be. We should
thank God for disappointments, for hopes unfulfilled, or proving
still greater disappointments when fulfilled. It is mercy that often
makes the harvest from our sowing a scanty one, for so we are being
taught to turn from the quest in which searching has no assurance of
finding, to that in which to seek is to find. 'I have never said to
any of the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain.' We may not reach
other lands which seem to us to be lands of promise, or when we do,
may find that the land is 'evil and naughty,' but this land we shall
reach, if we desire it, and if, desiring it, we go forth from this
vain world. The Christian life is the only one which has no
failures, no balked efforts, no frustrated aims, no brave settings
out and defeated returnings. The literal meaning of one of the Old
Testament words for _sin_ is missing the mark, and that embodies the
truth that no man wins what he seeks who seeks satisfaction elsewhere
than in God. Like the rivers in Asiatic deserts, which are lost in
the sand and never reach the sea, all lives which flow towards anything
but God are dissipated and vain.

But the supreme realisation of an experience like Abram's is
reserved for another life. No pilgrim Zion-ward perishes in the
wilderness, or loses his way or fails to come to 'the city of
habitation.' 'They go from strength to strength, every one of them
in Zion appeareth before God.' And when they appear there, they will
think no more, just as this narrative says nothing, of the sandy,
salt, waterless wildernesses, or the wearinesses, dangers, and toils
of the road. The experience of the happy travellers, who have found
all which they sought and are at home for ever in the fatherland
towards which they journeyed, will all be summed up in this, that
'they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of