Arab tribes, the Azazimehs. It lay aside from all the usual routes, and the guides, knowing the risk they ran in leading travellers to it, never spoke of it, and if asked, professed absolute ignorance. A spring bursting from a rock in a recess reached by an unsuspected sudden turning among the cliffs, a paradise of delightful greensward, fruit-trees, and game, and outside this a wide expanse shut in by hills, and called Wady Gadis, producing crops in their seasons, and having narrow outlets to the wilderness world around, make up the description of this happy discovery. The large isolated tract occupied by those Azazimeh Arabs may be considered as generally representing the wilderness of Zin; the Wady Gadis, the wilderness of Kadesh; and likewise Kadesh-barnea. Measured on the map, Ain Gadis is about forty-seven miles due south of Beersheba, fifty-six south-west from the Dead Sea.

XXIII. THE MISSION OF THE SPIES (Num. xiii.).—By the command of God, and as stated in Deut. i. 20, on the proposal of the people themselves originally, Moses sent forth twelve leading men, one of each tribe, to search the land of Canaan. Judah was represented by Caleb, Ephraim by Oshea or Hoshea, a name meaning Salvation, and now, by the prefix Je standing for Jehovah, changed to Jehoshua or Joshua, denoting Jehovah's salvation. Their instructions were to penetrate to the farthest north: "See the land, what it is, and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strong-holds; and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land." The season was that of the first ripe grapes, which would be in or about August. So the twelve explorers went forth from the wilderness of Paran (Num. xiii. 3), from the wilderness of Zin (ver. 21); and after an absence of forty days they returned to the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh (ver.

26), or Kadesh-barnea (xxxii. 8), all these words being used. As specimens of its productions they brought pomegranates and figs, but especially a vine branch with one cluster of grapes, which had to be carried on a staff between two. It had been cut at the brook of Eshcol, and enormous as it was, it has been matched for size and weight, as is well known, by clusters grown under favourable conditions in England. Their report was as follows: “We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great. And moreover we saw the children of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan." Caleb, observing some agitation among the people at this formidable account in the presence of Moses, here interposed and said: "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it." The other spies (Joshua excepted) replied: "We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. It is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof, and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature; and there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which came of the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." By the land eating up its inhabitants we are probably to understand an allusion to the perpetual war and bloodshed among a people addicted to arms, oppressing, enslaving, tyrannising over and grinding down the weaker classes; anything therefore but a united and really powerful people; no commonwealth but a multitude of contentious chieftains and castled robbers, the lives of the inferior orders sacrificed to their ambition. The weak point of this report was not its relation of facts, which were probably all true; but their saying"We be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we." Such language was simply a denial of their being under God's leading. It was in flat contra

diction to the words of Moses at the advance of the ark, "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered." If the spies were right, the people had been brought into the wilderness for their betrayal; there was no God leading them at all; Moses was an impostor; their Tabernacle was unmeaning, their polity an illusion; they were not a theocratic or a chosen people; the promised land was altogether visionary. The intrepid words of Caleb were quite lost upon the people, and the unworthy fears of the ten spies, leaders in Israel, prevailed. They broke out into open mutiny. "Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? Were it not better for us to return unto Egypt? . . Let us make a captain, and let us return unto Egypt." The folly of such a design was on a par with its undutifulness. The spirit of it was the spirit of grasshoppers indeed. To go back without Moses, without God; chased by every foe of the desert, expecting to be received back into Egypt as friends! Situated as they were, the Anakims in front of them, the desert and Egypt behind them, their only way of safety was the way of faith and courage, as when they were between the Red Sea and the Egyptians, and the order was "Forward!" In this sense Joshua and Caleb spoke out in a manner worthy of two true Israelites: "The land which we passed through to search it is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it us, a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us. Their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Fear them not." This noble appeal was not seconded by the ten brethren, and it made no impression on the multitude, who were ready to stone them to death. "The Lord is with us, fear them not," was the watchword of the faithful. "We are not able," was the cry of the doubters. At the intercession of Moses the divine displeasure was so far averted that the protection and

guidance from above were not withdrawn ; but there was no contrition in the nation, and it was sentenced to exclusion from Canaan for forty years, dating from the time of their leaving Egypt, about thirty-eight years from the arrival at Kadesh. Not one of that generation who was over twenty should enter the promised land except Caleb and Joshua. As the searching of the land had occupied forty days, the penal exclusion was to last forty years. Thus the nation was pardoned, but not without the exaction of a penalty. God had declared Himself at Sinai (Exod. xxxiv. 6), as one who would forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin, but would by no means clear the guilty. There was to be a penalty for guilt, which would not otherwise be cleared. It was not cleared by being overlooked and forgotten. The passage of Exodus is quoted in the intercession of Moses (Num. xiv. 17, 19), and may be considered as illustrated by the pardon and sentence now under notice.

XXIV. REPULSED FROM CAnaan (Num. xiv. 40—45).— The people now came to a sense of their sin; yet it was no genuine repentance, inasmuch as all real submission was lacking. They resolved on seizing Canaan at once, and the sentence of exile in the desert for forty years they were bent upon reversing, not by proper humiliation but by force and presumption, though plainly told by Moses that they were acting against the divine will. The inspiring words, “Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered," were not heard, and the host was not preceded by the ark. The sacred narrative runs thus: "And they rose up early in the morning and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised; for we have sinned. And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? But it shall not prosper. Go not up, for the Lord is not among you, that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword; because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be