While traversing the wilderness the Israelites often grew weary and murmured at the discipline of the way. It was a necessary discipline, because of their unbelief and hardness of heart, as Moses said in rehearsing their wilderness history, "The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee-to know what was in thy heart" (Deut. 8:2). They had to learn by experience what they would not learn in any other way-that it is a sad and a bitter thing to distrust and rebel against a God of love and grace.

On the occasion referred to in our title, they had been repining under the stress of the journey; they "spake against God, and against Moses," and the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they "bit the people, and much people of Israel died" (Num. 21:5, 6).

The presence of these venomous reptiles, and the effect of their deadly work, spread consternation in the camp, and led the people to cry out to Moses, "We have sinned… against the Lord and against thee. Pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us,"

But God's ways are not like man's ways. He does in-indeed undertake for His unhappy and afflicted people, but not in the way which they had thought. That is one thing which manifests the Bible as being an inspired book. No other book in the world speaks like it. It is utterly surprising to see how the thoughts revealed in it are different from what man's thoughts are, or would be under the same conditions. And so here:man's way would have been-as Israel's was-"Take away the serpents from us." Now that is just what men are busy at all the time. The serpents are here in the world, afflicting its inhabitants. What mean those columns in the daily newspapers, the world over, with an ever-increasing list of crime, not only in its volume but in its revolting character. What does it all signify? Are there not many agencies at work to destroy these hideous serpents, these destructive things everywhere cropping up to distress society? Are not education, and religion, and Societies, and laws, all combining to drive out these "serpents" of evil, to make the world a "decent place to live in"? Yet, spite of it all, the evil increases, till the Police and other authorities are appalled at what confronts them; and ministers of religion who believe that their business is to improve the world, to reform mankind, are conscious of their helplessness (unless their eyes are utterly blinded), while the waves of crime sweep by one after another.

What is the lesson of it all? Is man growing worse, and giving the lie to the fond hope of the "survival of the fittest"? Certainly, moral conditions are getting worse, and men and women are living at a pace they never lived before. What a mad rush, as we think of eternity before every soul of man! Yet many turn from the thought, and seek to forget it, losing themselves in the whirlpool of this world's vain pleasures, schemes, and delusions. Reader, are you in any measure ensnared by them?

Well, of one thing we may be certain-God does not intend to make another paradise in this world. It is too darkly stained with sin; and if men are all too willing to forget, God cannot; for as we read, "God requireth that which is past." That which man would like to forget God insists shall be faced. While well-intentioned men and women are praying, so to speak, "Take away the serpents from us," God says, "No; the serpents must remain, since you have induced the conditions which made them inevitable. You cannot get rid of the evil in that way. If God comes to deliver the world from the bondage of corruption (as He surely will in His time and way), it can only be by first manifesting the sin which has brought in the corruption.

Do you know, dear reader, that the vile and awful things at which you shudder are pent up in your own heart, ready to break out if provoked? Nay, what has produced that which you yourself have discovered there? It is but a fragment of all that is there. All that takes place around you is the outcome of what was sown in man's heart, when at the serpent's suggestion man dared to rebel against his Maker.

It is not by chance that the Lord Jesus in that memorable night when one of Israel's religious guides sought an interview with Him, referred him to the incident of our title. He said, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14,15).

The Lord thus shows us God's way of getting rid of the ugly things which moralists and others would like to see banished from the world. When the people said, "Take away the serpents from us," God said in effect, "No, you must have these things present with you. They are the fruit of the seed you have sown, and 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' " The seeds of crime and all manner of evil were sown, and are continually sown, by revolt against God. When in perfect goodness and love God sent His Son into the world, He was hated, cast out and crucified! The world has never repented of its choice when its representatives demanded Barabbas, and the crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. 27:21, 22). "We will not have this man to reign over us," they said. Then God says, "If you will not have my beloved Son, you must have the serpents. You cannot have a paradise and shut Me out of it." But, notice, men are trying to make just such a paradise-a world with nice people, with crime, disease, death, etc., abolished, but they do not want God nor His beloved Son. He might be accepted if recognized to be but a man, but not as a Saviour dying for us upon the cross. Therefore the serpents stay.

How did God effect His people's deliverance from the curse of the serpents? He commanded Moses to make the similitude of a serpent; to nail it to a pole and raise it in the sight of the people for every stricken one to gaze at. Thus they could see what it was which affected them so terribly. And the Lord has taken this old lesson from the wilderness history of His earthly people to impress it afresh upon the tablets of our hearts for all time-yes, for all eternity, for it will never be effaced from the memory of the redeemed how God has put away our sin. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Mark well those words, "Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." He who did no sin, who knew no sin, must yet be "made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

It is at the cross, and nowhere else, that we learn fully what sin is, and how God, by its judgment on our Substitute has put it away for us. For there "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." Yes, by His stripes, and in no other way.

"O Love divine, thou vast abyss,
Our sins are swallowed up in Thee!
Covered is our unrighteousness,
From condemnation we are free.
While by Thy blood absolved we are
From sin and guilt, and every fear."

For every one who has come to and received that Saviour, the right is given to enter the kingdom of God. God has put in our hearts the anticipation of that day when ve shall "dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

"And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, nor maketh a life, but those only who are written in the Lamb's book of life" (Rev. 21:27). Wm. Huss