ory of his people. Their past seems to him a
mirror in which they may read their future. He believes that 'which is
to be hath already been,' the great principles of the divine government
living on through all the ages, and issuing in similar acts when the
circumstances are similar. So he foretells that there will yet be once
more a captivity and a bondage, that the old story of the wilderness
will be repeated once more. In that wilderness God will speak to the
heart of Israel. Its barrenness shall be changed into the fruitfulness
of vineyards, where the purpling clusters hang ripe for the thirsty
travellers. And not only will the sorrows that He sends thus become
sources of refreshment, but the gloomy gorge through which they
journey--the valley of Achor--will be a door of hope.

One word is enough to explain the allusion. You remember that after the
capture of Jericho by Joshua, the people were baffled in their first
attempt to press up through the narrow defile that led from the plain of
Jordan to the highlands of Canaan. Their defeat was caused by the
covetousness of Achan, who for the sake of some miserable spoil which he
found in a tent, broke God's laws, and drew down shame on Israel's ranks
When the swift, terrible punishment on him had purged the camp, victory
again followed their assault, and Achan lying stiff and stark below his
cairn, they pressed on up the glen to their task of conquest. The rugged
valley, where that defeat and that sharp act of justice took place, was
named in memory thereof, the valley of _Achor_, that is, _trouble_; and
our Prophet's promise is that as then, so for all future ages, the
complicity of God's people with an evil world will work weakness and
defeat, but that, if they will be taught by their trouble and will purge
themselves of the accursed thing, then the disasters will make a way for
hope to come to them again. The figure which conveys this is very
expressive. The narrow gorge stretches before us, with its dark
overhanging cliffs that almost shut out the sky; the path is rough and
set with sharp pebbles; it is narrow, winding, steep; often it seems to
be barred by some huge rock that juts across it, and there is barely
room for the broken ledge yielding slippery footing between the beetling
crag above and the steep slope beneath that dips so quickly to the black
torrent below. All is gloomy, damp, hard; and if we look upwards the
glen becomes more savage as it rises, and arme