d
enter.

Thenceforth the cloud was the guide of their halting and their march.
Many a time they grieved their God in the wilderness, yet the cloud was
on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night,
throughout all their journeyings.

That cloud is seen no longer; but One has said, "Lo, I am with you all
the days." If the presence is less material, it is because we ought to
be more spiritual.

* * * * *

Looking back upon the story, we can discern more clearly what was
asserted when we began--the forming and training of a nation.

They are called from shameful servitude by the devotion of a patriot and
a hero, who has learned in failure and exile the difference between
self-confidence and faith. The new name of God, and His remembrance of
their fathers, inspire them at the same time with awe and hope and
nationality. They see the hollowness of earthly force, and of
superstitious worships, in the abasement and ruin of Egypt. They are
taught by the Paschal sacrifice to confess that the Divine favour is a
gift and not a right, that their lives also are justly forfeited. The
overthrow of Pharaoh's army and the passage of the Sea brings them into
a new and utterly strange life, in an atmosphere and amid scenes well
calculated to expand and deepen their emotions, to develop their sense
of freedom and self-respect, and yet to oblige them to depend wholly on
their God. Privation at Marah chastens them. The attack of Amalek
introduces them to war, and forbids their dependence to sink into abject
softness. The awful scene of Horeb burns and brands his littleness into
man. The covenant shows them that, however little in themselves, they
may enter into communion with the Eternal. It also crushes out what is
selfish and individualising, by making them feel the superiority of what
they all share over anything that is peculiar to one of them. The
Decalogue reveals a holiness at once simple and profound, and forms a
type of character such as will make any nation great. The sacrificial
system tells them at once of the pardon and the heinousness of sin.
Religion is both exalted above the world and infused into it, so that
all is consecrated. The priesthood and the shrine tell them of sin and
pardon, exclusion and hope; but that hope is a common heritage, which
none may appropriate without his brother.

The especial sanctity of a sacred calling is balanced by an immediate
assertion of