n and by believing, and who have, because they doubt not.
Let us, then, at this time of year[1], as is fitting, follow the train
of thought thus opened upon us, and, looking back into the Sacred
Volume, trace the intimations and promises there given of that sacred
and blessed Feast of Christ's Body and Blood which it is our privilege
now to enjoy till the end come.

Now the Old Testament, as we know, is full of figures and types of the
Gospel; types various, and, in their literal wording, contrary to each
other, but all meeting and harmoniously fulfilled in Christ and His
Church. Thus the histories of the Israelites in the wilderness, and of
the Israelites when settled in Canaan, alike are ours, representing our
present state as Christians. Our Christian life is a state of faith
and trial; it is also a state of enjoyment. It has the richness of the
promised land; it has the marvellousness of the desert. It is a "good
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring
out of vallies and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines, and
fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive, and honey; a land
wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack
any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills
thou mayest dig brass." And, on the other hand, it is still a land
which to the natural man seems a wilderness, a "great and terrible
wilderness, wherein are fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought,
where there is no water;" where faith is still necessary, and where,
still more forcibly than in the case of Israel, the maxim holds, that
"man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

This is the state in which we are,--a state of faith and of possession.
In the desert the Israelites lived by the signs of things, without the
realities: manna was to stand for the corn, oil, and honey, of the good
land promised; water, for the wine and milk. It was a time for faith
to exercise itself; and when they came into the promised land, then was
the time of possession. That was the land of milk and honey; they
needed not any divinely provided compensations or expedients. Manna
was not needed, nor the pillar of the cloud, nor the water from the
rock. But we Christians, on the contrary, are at once in the
wilderness and in the promised land. In the wilderness, because we
live amid wonders; in the promised