Which led his people. The addition, "through the wilderness," is significant and suggestive, because a wilderness is distinctly a pathless region, in which mere human skill is baffled. And it reminds us that Israel was provided for and guided for thirty-eight long years in such a region. Surely Israel ought to have said, "God's providence is mine inheritance." Is it a gain or a loss that we have ceased to recognize or to speak much of God's providence? It was a very real thing to our fathers; it is not very real to us. At least, this might appear to be the fact. We are, however, disposed to argue that the truth and fact are as truly preserved and valued as ever they were, only they have gained a new setting and new shaping.

I. THE IDEA OF PROVIDENCE FITTED THE OLDER CONCEPTION OF GOD. It belongs to the apprehension of God as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler. He is Lord of the whole world of things, and is thought of as controlling all things in the interest of his own special people. He is the Universal Provider, and our fathers delighted in stories of remarkable providential interpositions, guidances, and arrangements. And still no man can read his own life, or watch the lives of others, without being impressed with the wonder-working ways of Divine providence, which make the "unexpected" the thing that happens. Constantly in life we find things are brought round for us which we could in no way have mastered or arranged.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."

II. THE NEWER CONCEPTION OF GOD GLORIFIES HIS PROVIDENCE. Christ has brought to men a comprehensive name for God. It includes the very essence of every previous conception and name, but puts man into a new and more directly personal and affectionate relation with God. He is our Father. And his providence is his fatherly care of our every interest. Has a child any such providence as his father is to him? And yet a child never thinks of, or speaks of, his father as providence. And in the measure in which we can enter into the idea of God as our Father, we shall find that we lose out of use the term "providence," but keep all the reality of it, and indeed glorify it, as we lose the impersonal and therefore cold element, and see it to be the wisdom and power and activity of our Father, which is beautified and sanctified by his love for us his sons. - R.T.

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I. God ACTS. He is the great worker, — never resting, never failing, never wearying, — the worker of all workers, the motor in all motions.

II. God acts EVERYWHERE. In the heavens He rolls the massive orbs of space; on the earth He maketh the grass to grow and clotheth the earth with verdure.

III. God acts FROM and FOR HIMSELF.

1. From Himself. Our activity is often excited and controlled by something external to ourselves. His never. Nothing is extra. No ruling principles or persons, not all the hierarchies of intelligences, nor the rushing forces and forms of universal matter can excite Him. His action is that of absolute spontaneity. He is responsible to no one.

2. For Himself. There is no other reason for His activity but what pleases Him. The chief measure of any moral intelligence is the gratification of His predominant disposition. In God this is love. Hence His pleasure in creating the universe and sustaining it is the diffusion of His own happiness. His pleasure is the pleasure of His creatures; His happiness and theirs are identical.

(David Thomas, D. D.)