"There is a path which no jowl knoweth, and -which the vulture's eye hath not seen" (Job 28:1). The path which the sharpest natural perception, as symbolized by the vulture's eye, has not perceived must be a remarkable path. Such was the Lord's path here.

"There is but that one in the waste,
Which His footsteps have marked as His own."

That one path was a lonely one for the Lord while He was on earth. Foxes had holes, and birds had nests, but He had no pillow. But the lowly path of shame as a stranger and foreigner led upwards to His Father-the source of that river, the streams whereof make glad the City of God. Even as there is now one place for us in Heaven where He sits on His throne, there is in this benighted earth but one place for us, and that is in the path where His footprints are left.

The apostle Paul could say, "I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus… reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:12-14). Ittai the Gittite answered King David, "In what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be" (2 Sam. IS:21). If we know the rest in Heaven in which our Lord dwells then we rejoice in tracing out His footprints here.

"The pillar of the cloud went from before their face and stood behind them:and it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these:so that the one came not near the other all night" (Exod. 14:19, 20). The cloud in this connection may be taken as symbolizing the death of Christ, which comes in as a mighty barrier between the world and us. The marked-out path is on the resurrection side of the death of Christ. Hence the sharpest intellect cannot apprehend it. The Egyptians could not see through to the Israelites because of the cloud which was darkness to them, but the cloud was light to the Israelites. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God… they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). T. Oliver (Galashiels)