reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that
we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom
anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the blue. One
flash, all unlooked for, is enough to blast the tree in all its leafy
pride. Many of us, I have no doubt, can look back to times in our lives
when, without anticipation on our parts, or warning from anything
outside of us, a smiting hand fell upon some of our blessings. The
morning dawned upon the gourd in full vigour of growth, and in the
evening it was stretched yellow and wilted upon the turf. Dear
brethren, anything may come out of that dark cloud through which our
life's course has to pass, and there are some things concerning which
all that we know is that they must come.

These are very old threadbare thoughts; I dare say you think it was not
worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if
we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step
of our earthly course that 'ye have not passed this way heretofore,' we
should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character
of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and
awful; and yet most blessed in its possibilities and its uncertainties.

II. Note, again, the guiding ark.

It was a new thing that the ark should become the guide of the people.
All through the wilderness, according to the history, it had been
carried in the centre of the march, and had had no share in the
direction of the course. That had been done by the pillar of cloud.
But, just as the manna ceased when the tribes got across the Jordan and
could eat the bread of the land, the miracle ending and they being left
to trust to ordinary means of supply at the earliest possible moment,