THE

HE readers of "A Young Man's Annotations" on Genesis, in our November part, will be gratified by some further extracts from his interleaved Bible. The freshness and devoutness of the former series are still apparent; with occasional mystic touches, which show the manifold applications suggested to a quick-discerning mind by every part of the Divine Revelation. The absence of much that may be learned from commentators, is itself a commendation of notes like these, showing as it does to readers of Scripture generally how much may be gained by the free and fearless exercise of their own thoughts. But still the chief value of these pages to many will be the way in which CHRIST is everywhere beheld.

Exodus xii. The Death of the Egyptian Firstborn; the Slain Lamb; and Israel's Deliverance.

MIDNIGHT.

I. Two CLASSES of people. Repeated sin of Egyptians, despising God's long suffering, not with impunity.

II. POSITION OF EGYPTIANS.-Sentence already past. Every tick of clock, every grain of hour-glass bringing them nearer time of execution. Ere to-morrow's sun rose. Perhaps sleeping; had perhaps seen Israelite slaying lamb while passing by in the evening. What of those of ch. ix. 20? Social position no safeguard, ch. xi. 5. III. SHED blood not enough. SPRINKLED.

IV. SAFETY NOT DEPENDENT ON garb of pilgrim. Nor on sincerity and earnestness-unleavened bread-but on sprinkled blood. Assurance of Salvation, 1 Jno. v. 13. Ex. xii. 22; by faith not sight. That their faith might rest on God's word, not on their sight.

V. NOT FEELING. Whatever feeling, blood outside the same. Do you think that an Israelite could know that his household was safe? Do you think the Israelite who had sprinkled the blood, and believed that he and all his were safe, was presumptuous? Had the Israelite a good ground for assurance? You ought to have assurance-cannot be happy without. "He went 1 See SUNDAY AT HOME, p. 44.

on his way rejoicing." How could an Israelite standing beside his table, clasping in his hand the little hand of his eldest boy, be happy if he did not know he was safe?

Let us pay a visit to two houses. First house: "When the destroying angel has passed our house," says he (the master), "and the night of judgment is over, I shall then know that I am safe, but I cannot see how I can be sure of it till then. All I can do is to spend the long dreary night hoping for the best." Second house: No paleness or trembling, all tranquillity and peace. "Ah," say they all, "we are only waiting for Jehovah's marching orders, and then we shall bid a last farewell to the taskmaster's

cruel lash, and all the drudgery of Egypt." "But do you forget that this is the night of Egypt's judgment?" "We know it; but our first-born is safe, the blood has been sprinkled according to God's law." "So it has been next door, but they are all unhappy, because uncertain of safety." "But we have more than the sprinkled blood, we have the unerring word of God about it. God has said (ch. xii. 13), 'I will," etc.

The sprinkled blood makes us safe, the spoken word makes us sure.

Which of those two houses was the safer? No. 2? No. Both are equally safe. Their safety depends upon what God thinks about the blood outside, and not upon the state of their feelings inside.

Exodus xxi. 5, 6. If the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.

There is no life so free as that which has escaped all other masters in becoming the bond-slave of Jesus. There is no nature so exuberant with joy and peace unspeakable, as that which has felt the stab of the awl, has been tinged with the blood of self-sacrifice for His dear sake, and has passed through the open doorway to go out nevermore.

There is no rest so unutterable as that which knows no further care, since all care has been once and for ever laid on Him who can alone bear the pressure of sorrow and sin, responsibility and need. Then the spirit of Heaven, where the will of God is done, would engird our barren, weary lives-as the Gulf Stream engirds some wintry shore, dispelling the frost and mantling the soil with flowers of fairest texture, and fruits of Paradise.

Leviticus i. The Burnt Offering.

See John x. 17, 18. The burnt offering (complete surrender) sets forth the Lord Jesus doing the will of the Father. It was an ineffable delight to Him to accomplish the will of God on this earth. No one had ever done this before. Some had, through grace, done that "which was right in the sight of the Lord," but no one had ever, perfectly, invariably, from first to last, without hesitation, and without divergence, done the will of God. He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil. ii. 8). "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." And as He walked from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross of Calvary, the intense devotion of His heart told itself forth in the accents, "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" The cross, as foreshadowed by the burntoffering, had an element in it which only the Divine mind could apprehend. It had depths so profound that neither mortal nor angel could fathom them. There was a voice in it which was intended exclusively for, and went directly to, the ear of the Father. There were communications between the cross of Calvary and the throne of God, which lay far beyond the highest range of created intelligence. The burnt offering does not foreshadow Christ on the cross as bearing sin, but Christ on the cross as accomplishing the will of God. That He contemplated the cross in these two aspects is evident from His own words. When He looked at the cross as the place of sin-bearing, He exclaimed, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." His pure and holy mind shrank from contact with sin, "the mire of the depth"; and His loving heart shrank from the thought of losing for a moment the light of His countenance.

Numbers ix. 15-23. Guidance. Guidance. The Cloud by day; the Fire by night.

GUIDANCE.

It may seem to some tried and timid hearts, as if every one mentioned in the Word of God was helped, and they are left without help. They seem to have stood before perplexing problems, face to face with life's mysteries, eagerly longing to know what to do; but no angel has come to tell them, and no iron gate has opened to them in the prison-house of circumstances. Some lay the blame on their own stupidity. They are blunt and dull.

How does a father treat his child? He will come down to your ignorance. Only,

1. Our motives must be pure (Luke xi. 34). We are liable to the workings of self in our holiest and loveliest hours.

2. Our will must be surrendered (John v. 30). "If any man WILL do His will, He shall know," etc.

3. We must seek information from Scripture. God may bid us to act against our reason; but this is excep

tional. For the most part He will speak in the results of deliberate consideration, weighing and balancing the pros and cons. He would dictate a miraculous course by miraculous methods. But when the ordinary light of reason is adequate to the task, He will leave us to act as occasion may serve. (Peter in prison.)

4. We need to be much in prayer for guidance (Psa. xxvii. 11; James i. 5), soliciting that His will may be impressed on the surface of our will, as the heavenly bodies photograph themselves on prepared paper. (Asking Him to shut doors, to shatter mistaken projects.)

5. We must wait the gradual unfolding of God's plan in providence. God may delay. There was delay concerning Sennacherib's host. (Jesus walking on the sea; raising Lazarus; sending angel to Peter.) He stays long enough to test patience of faith, but not a moment behind the extreme hour of need. Lights begin to multiply as we reach the town. Steps are ordered-not the next mile, but the next yard; not the whole pattern, but the next stitch in canvas. Beyond this, we are in the dark.

Numbers xv. 38. Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue.

This ordinance concerning the "ribband of blue " closes an important chapter.

The man found gathering sticks (vers. 32-36) was guilty of presumptuous sin. The gathering of sticks was not to meet a necessity. To the Israelite the double supply of manna was given on the morning of the day before Sabbath. And as the uncooked manna would not keep, it was necessary that early in that day it should be prepared for food. He had no need of sticks to cook his Sabbath's dinner. And the country was so hot that no man would kindle a fire from choice or preference. His object was simply to show openly and publicly that he despised God, and refused to obey His holy ordinance-rightly, therefore, was that man put to death. But occasion seems to have been taken in connection with this judgment to introduce the wearing of the "ribband of blue." Blue is the colour of heaven. The beautiful waters of the deep sea reflect it, as do the depths of the cloudless sky. When the clouds come between, then, and then only, is the deep blue lost. It is the will of God that there should never be a cloud between His people and Himself. "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Ought we not to be more thorough in our service, not simply doing well that which will be seen and noticed, but as our Father makes many a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert, so to do all that we can do as under His eye, though no other eye ever take note of it?

Numbers xxi. 4-9. The Murmuring People, the Fiery Serpents, and the Cure.

THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

I. THE MORTAL PERIL. Because they had despised God's way, and God's bread (vers. 4, 5). One of the

standing follies of men-they prefer a will and way of their own. They called the manna by an opprobrious epithet, which in the Hebrew has a sound of ridicule about it. Man prefers the flesh meat of carnal reason, the leeks and the garlic of superstitious tradition, and the cucumbers of speculation-to God's Word.

1. They had been actually bitten by the serpents. Christ sent to save the lost. Salvation for the guilty.

2. The bite painful. Every vein became a boiling river, swollen with anguish; for such the Son of Man was lifted up.

3. Bite mortal. No question about that-" much people died" (ver. 6). They saw their own friends die, and helped to bury them. They knew why they died. Left without an excuse for imagining they could be bitten and NOT die. We are left in no doubt as to what sin will do.

11. THE REMEDY PROVIDED. Of Divine origin. Men have prescribed fomentations. I would rather not try them. When God ordains a cure, He is by that very fact bound to put potency into it. We need not know how it will work.

1. It was a serpent impaled on a pole. As you would take a sharp pole, and drive it through a serpent's head to kill it. So this brazen serpent was exhibited as killed, and hung up as dead. It was the image of the dead form of a fiery serpent. It had no venom of itself (Rom. viii. 3). Sin, death, and hell slain.

2. But one remedy; lifted high in the midst of the camp that all might see.

3. Bright and lustrous.

Newly-made brass; it might have been of any other metal, or of wood, if God had so ordained. There is enough brightness in Christ to catch a sinner's eye.

4. An enduring remedy. Had it been of other materials it might have been broken or have decayed. A serpent of brass would last as long as the fiery serpents pestered the desert camp.

III. APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. It might have been carried to the sick man's tent; it might have been applied by rubbing; he might have had to say a certain form of prayer, or have a priest present to perform a ceremony. But no use in any of these plans!

IV. THE ORDAINED WAY OF HEALING.

1. Only a look. The cure was simple, for the danger was frequent.

2. Very personal. A man must look for himself; if he refused no one could help him. There was only one hope for his life. He must look to that serpent. It has come to this-you must look, and look for yourself.

3. Looking=abandoning self-help, not sitting looking at the wound. The remedy a display of Divine love. V. The cure effected at once, not to wait five seconds. No doctor can cure a fever like that. Note: The healthiest way to live where serpents swarm-never take your eyes off brazen serpent.

Deuteronomy i. 1. These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness.

DEUTERONOMY.

With the exception of the Psalms, the Lord Jesus Christ quotes more often from this book than any other. The law may lead us to the margin of rest, but unless

there be a Joshua-Jesus to lead us in, we can never enter the goodly land of present rest. The moment we enter into rest we are expected to keep the law more thoroughly, more utterly, more promptly, more obediently, than we ever thought of doing when we looked on the law as a means of salvation. Love is always more inexorable than law. Thus the ground of consecration is the infinite love of God (iv. 37; vii. 6, 7; x. 15; xxxiii. 3).

Deut. ii. 28. This is the way God would have His children pass through this world. Never getting under obligation to the world-acquiring nothing. They are to inherit it (ver. 31; Heb. xi. 8), but at present it is only the land of promise (Heb. xi. 9, 10, 13, 16). Our blessed Lord and Master acquired nothing (2 Cor. viii. 9; Phil. ii. 5-8). All that He left was His seamless coat, for which they gambled (Matt. xx. 26-28; Luke xviii. 22; 1 Tim. vi. 6–11; 2 Tim. ii. 3, 4).

Deuteronomy xxvi. 1-11. A Basket of Fruit.

1. A definite experience :-" When thou art come unto." More than that:-" and possessest it." More still:-" and dwellest therein," resident owners. The best proof of being in the land, was to bring the fruit of the land; the best proof I can give of being at the seaside is a bucketful of sea-weeds and shells. The best proof that I am a Christian is the first-fruits of the Spirit (Rom. viii. 23). "Thanksgiving is good-thanksliving is better" (Philip Henry). The world will judge us by our basket of fruit. As the Indians said of the Spaniards who stole them for slaves-" What a god must theirs be who has such hell-hounds for his servants and children." If we have the fruits we are to use them as appointed.

2. A place (ver. 2, last clause). Tabernacle. Temple. Now Christ true Temple.

3. A priest--Christ again.

4. A profession. This is where so many stick fastthey dare not say, "I am come." As if there was so little superiority of Canaan over Egypt that one could not know the difference. Fancy an Israelite saying, "You see, sir, we must not be presumptuous. I trust we have crossed the Jordan; but I am not sure we are in Canaan. I sometimes think we are still in the wilderness" (Heb. xii. 22; iv. 3; Rom. x. 10). Let us confess that the Lord has brought us forth out of Egypt. It would be a poor salvation from drowning that did not bring a man forth out of the water. We are not to present the fruits of our profession before the world, but we are to set it before the Lord, and with holy confidence say, "I am come into the land" (1 Tim. vi. 17).

Deuteronomy xxxi. 6. He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

Observe the frequent repetition of these words. Just before Moses departs. Then Josh. i. 5; just as Joshua begins his independent course. David dying passes them on to his son Solomon (1 Chron. xxviii. 20), and the Epistle to the Hebrews (xiii. 5) hands them over as a possession for ever to every generation of mankind. Moses, the type of our Lord, utters this text as he quits the earth. Our Lord says, almost as He was ascending to heaven, "Lo, I am with you alway."

STRANGE boats these are-are they not? I am sure

you cannot for a moment imagine them English, and I am equally certain you cannot guess what their cargo is. They are native boats on the river Nile, which, as you know, is the great river of Egypt; in fact, there would be no Egypt were it not for the Nile.

This great stream fertilises the whole land, first by overflowing the low ground which is called the Delta. Then in the higher portions there are canals, which bring water into the fields, and by primitive means the water is raised, and so the whole land is irrigated.

These native boats are called "nuggers," and their cargo is "teben," which is chopped straw.

When, this year, I looked at these boats, or at old Cairo saw great heaps of "teben" in the market-place, my thoughts went a long, long way back into the past. Look in your Bible at Exodus, fifth chapter, 7th to 12th verses. The Israelites had lost the favour of the reigning Pharaoh. He commanded that they should be made slaves, and as the most crushing labour he could put them to, he compelled them to make bricks and build treasure or store cities for the king. In Egypt bricks are not baked by fire in kilns as with us, but are dried by the hot beams of the sun, which in that land shines with great power. Last year, before I left Egypt, it was one hundred and forty degrees in the sun. So hot is it that men often die of sunstroke. And be sure the sufferings of the Israelites were very great, and doubtless thousands of the poor people died; which was just what this cruel king wished for. He said he was afraid of their great numbers. You remember also that he ordered that all the little baby boys were to be slain.

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Well, in making these bricks the people had to use mud, for there was no clay. Straw was mixed with the mud to make it cohesive. The Bible says "straw" was used, but the word in Hebrew should be translated chopped straw," that would give the true meaning of the word. It is strange that the old Hebrew word is "teven," while the Egyptian of to-day calls it in Arabic "teben," so nearly alike in sound and spelling are the two languages in this instance. The poor Israelites complained to the taskmasters of their hard and killing work, and asked for some respite; but in anger the king said: "No! you are idle. You shall work now, for I won't give you any chopped straw' to mix with the mud. Go out and gather 'straw' for yourselves." And the Bible goes on to tell how the people were scattered about over all the land of Egypt trying to gather "straw" for themselves. Be sure of this, that all the children, boys and girls, were obliged to gather straw too. And what made the order more cruel was that harvest had long been over, and so it would only be the straw that had dropped by the way that they would find. By-and-by we shall see that they gathered other things

too. And yet another point in the cruel order was that the Israelites were to make just as many bricks as if chopped straw" had been given to them.

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In that land of Goshen this year I saw many ruins of cities built of these bricks of Nile mud. The land is most fertile still; it swarms with life, human and animal. Rich crops of corn were there, with multitudes of fellahin (agricultural labourers) gathering them in. Yet hard by was the desert, bare and dry, in the hollows of which were lagoons (pools of water), grass, rushes, and stunted bushes, and again, fields of grain. There I pictured to myself, instead of the poor fellahin, the still poorer Israelites gathering the "straw," making the bricks, and all under the burning sun.

Some few years ago a clever explorer, a most gifted man, was with a host of natives digging in this very province of Egypt, and discovered the ruins of Pithom, one of the very cities the Bible says the poor Israelites had to build. He found many great store chambers for corn. They were built of sun-dried bricks, some of which had the Egyptian word "Pi Tum" or "Pithom" written on them. But, more wonderful still, on examining these walls, the lower courses of bricks were found to be made with "chopped straw" and mud; then, above these, there were layers of bricks several feet high with "long straws," bits of sticks, fragments of rushes, weeds, and odds and ends, anything and everything in short that would help to bind mud together. This was the time when the poor Israelites were "scattered abroad" gathering anything they could to help them in their crushing tasks. The upper courses of bricks had nothing but mud. The slaves had exhausted and picked up every scrap of material which would bind the mud. Not a scrap of straw, or rush, or weed, was left. What a picture of grinding slavery! What lives had been sacrificed before they came to this!

The Hebrew for "long straw" is in our Bible translated "stubble." You never see it now in Egypt, but "teben" you often see; mixed with barley it is used for feeding cattle, as with the Arabs of Palestine, for oats are not used. In ancient Egypt oats were quite unknown. "Teben" is really chaff and crushed straw. It is got by the treading of oxen over the threshing-floors; when the oxen have trodden out the grain the mass is thrown up into the air by men with long wooden forks, and the grain being heavier falls to the ground. The straw is blown aside, afterwards to be gathered into heaps, and then brought down the river on these boats. Sometimes two boats are fastened together with planks, and the chopped straw piled up on them. So these strange boats with their stranger cargoes of to-day, recall to our minds the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt, and an old custom retained proves the truth of God's Word.

HENRY A. HARPER.