e after the manner of Egypt; your young men have
I slain with the sword" (Amos iv. 10).

But it is a significant fact that at this day, after eighteen hundred
years of oppression, hardship, and persecution, of the ghetto and the
old-clothes trade, the Hebrew race is proverbially exempt from repulsive
and contagious disease. They also "certainly do enjoy immunity from the
ravages of cholera, fever and smallpox in a remarkable degree. Their
blood seems to be in a different condition from that of other people....
They seem less receptive of disease caused by blood poisoning than
others" (_Journal of Victoria Institute_, xxi. 307). Imperfect as was
their obedience, this covenant at least has been literally fulfilled to
them.

It is by such means that God is wont to reward His children. Most
commonly the seal of blessing from the skies is not rich fare, but bread
and fish by the lake side with the blessing of Christ upon them; not
removal from the desert, but a closer sense of the protection and
acceptance of Heaven, the nearness of a loving God, and with this, an
elevation and purification of the life, and of the body as well as of
the soul. Not in vain has St. Paul written "The Lord for the body." Nor
was there ever yet a race of men who accepted the covenant of God, and
lived in soberness, temperance and chastity, without a signal
improvement of the national physique, no longer unduly stimulated by
passion, jaded by indulgence, or relaxed by the satiety which resembles
but is not repose.

From Marah and its agitations there was a journey of but a few hours to
Elim, with its twelve fountains and seventy palm trees--a fair oasis, by
which they encamped and rested, while their flocks spread far and wide
over a grassy and luxuriant valley.

The picture is still true to the Christian life, with the Palace
Beautiful just beyond the lions, and the Delectable Mountains next after
Doubting Castle.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] There is no warrant in the use of Scripture for Stanley's assertion
that the word translated "dances" should be rendered "guitars." (Smith's
_Dict. of Bible_, Article _Miriam_.)

[29] This is to be taken literally; it does not mean the waves, but the
quicksands in which they "drave heavily," and which, when steeped in the
returning waters, engulfed them.

[30] Wellhausen, _Israel_, p. 439.

CHAPTER XVI.

_MURMURING FOR FOOD._

xvi. 1-14.

The Israelites were now led farther away from all the a