all, and has emptied the bitter cup which men's transgressions have
mingled. Therefore the solitary death in the desert proclaims 'the
wages of sin'; that death outside the city wall proclaims 'the gift of
God,' which is 'eternal life.'

II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard
fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work.

For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and
steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never
abandoned, and that was that he might look upon and enter into the
blessed land which God had promised. And now he stands on the heights
of Moab. Half a dozen miles onwards, as the crow flies, and his feet
would tread its soil. He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far
north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash
where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of
Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and
Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further
south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and
Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of
sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls
upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile
valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a
diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding
the plain, the little Zoar. This was the land which the Lord had
promised to the fathers, for which he had been yearning, and to which
all his work had been directed all these years; and now he is to die,
as my text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, 'there in Moab,' and
to have no part in the fair inheritance.