In this illustration, which includes the remaining verses, we have, as
before, the food and rest, the journey and the suffering. We have also,
as before, memory and present experience issuing in hope. But it is all
intensified. The necessity and the mercy are alike presented in brighter
colours; the want is greater, the supply greater, the hope for the
future on earth brighter; and, above all, while the former set of images
stopped at the side of the grave, and simply refused to fear, here the
vision goes on beyond the earthly end; and as the hope comes brightly
out, that all the weary wanderings will end in the peace of the Father's
house, the absence of fear is changed into the presence of triumphant
confidence, and the resignation which, at the most, simply bore to look
unfaltering into the depth of the narrow house, becomes the faith which
plainly sees the open gate of the everlasting home.

God supplies our wants in the very midst of strife. 'Thou preparest a
table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head
with oil. My cup runneth over.' Before, it was food and rest first, work
afterwards. Now it Is more than work--it is conflict. And the mercy is
more strikingly portrayed, as being granted not only _before toil_, but
_in warfare_. Life is a sore fight; but to the Christian man, in spite
of all the tumult, life is a festal banquet. There stand the enemies,
ringing him round with cruel eyes, waiting to be let slip upon him like
eager dogs round the poor beast of the chase. But for all that, here is
spread a table in the wilderness, made ready by invisible hands; and the
grim-eyed foe is held back in the leash till the servant of God has fed
and been strengthened. This is our condition--always the foe, always the
table.

What sort of a meal should that be? The soldiers who eat and drink, and