there, or resting on some patch of green, they had to close up round
their precious charge; others might let their eyes wander from the
path, they had ever to look to their charge. For them the journey had
a double burden, and unslumbering vigilance was their constant duty.

We likewise have unslumberingly and ceaselessly to watch over that
which is committed to our charge. For, depend upon it, if for an
instant we turn away our heads, the thievish birds that flutter over
us will be down upon the precious seed that is in our basket, or that
we have sown in the furrows, and it will be gone. Watch, that ye may
keep.

And then, still further, see how in this story before us there are
brought out very picturesquely, and very simply, deeper lessons still.
It is not enough that a man shall be for ever keeping his eye upon his
own character and his own faculties, and seeking sedulously to
cultivate and improve them, as he that must give an account. There
must be another look than that. Ezra said, in effect, 'Not all the
cohorts of Babylon can help us; and we do not want them. We have one
strong hand that will keep us safe'; and so he, and his men, with all
this mass of wealth, so tempting to the wild robbers that haunted the
road, flung themselves into the desert, knowing that all along it
there were, as he says, 'such as lay in wait for them.' His confidence
was: 'God will bring us all safe out to the end there; and we shall
carry every glittering piece of the precious things that we brought
out of Babylon right into the Temple of Jerusalem.' Yet he says,
'Watch ye and keep them.'

What does that come to in reference to our religious experience? Why
this: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is