CHAPTER II. CLUSTERS OF ESHCOL. In some hour of solemn jubilee, And odors snatched from beds of amaranth, Strange bliss, which he shall recognize in heaven. COLERIDGE. A traveller, after a long journey, when he is weary and faint, and sits down, if he sees the town before him, it puts life into him, and he plucks up his feet, and resolves not to be weary till he be at his ourney's end. O, look at the crown and white robe set before you, and faint if you can get on the top of Mount Nebo, — look on the land of promise, those good things set before you ; taste the grapes of Canaan before you come to Canaan. NALTON. ALL superior minds are enterprising. They are marked by an activity which conceives and attempts greater things than the surrounding multitude. Their spheres of effort may be various, their powers unlike, their measures of success very diverse, yet all minds which impress themselves upon others, and accomplish much for good or evil, are characterized by a forth-putting energy and courage. Little souls are timorous. They venture nothing; they do not aspire; they do not grow; for they shrink within themselves, listless and inactive. Among those sent from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land of promise, were Caleb and Joshua, men of true enterprise, and their subsequent career showed them possessed of a persevering and sanctified energy. They never lost the impressions of their visit to the goodly land; the beauty of its prospects, and the security of the covenant of Jehovah's pledge of possession to them. "And they came unto the brook Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs and they said, We came unto the land, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.” Are not we in the wilderness? is not Canaan before us? are not clusters of Eshcol presented to us? Shall we not taste of the same, and quicken our steps toward the Better Land? Older and discerning Christians remark an unusual spirit of worldliness in the churches. It is feared by judicious fathers and mothers in Israel, as well as by younger Calebs and Joshuas, that there are tokens of defection; evidences of a desire to return to Egypt; and that idolatry, in the form of covetousness, is stealing upon the hearts of the people of God. Well may they tremble for the sacramental host when they find an Aaron sanctioning the dance around some golden calf, and witness such ingratitude for deliverance, such readiness in yielding to the seductions of neighboring idolaters; when they hear, too, such complaints of the weariness of the way, and the absence of Egyptian luxuries; and behold such reluctance to go forward at God's command, and take possession of the promised land. Strange it is, and deplorable, that fugitives, under the sanction of God's own right arm, should sigh for a return to bondage and darkness! The worldly spirit deals with things present. It is not far-reaching or far-sighted, but its range is bounded by the horizon of time. It has no wings; it is of the earth, earthy. Whence comes the manna? why gushes water from the rock? whither guides the pillar of cloud and of fire?—are questions it never asks. It knows not how to soar; how to anticipate and trust; how to see him who is invisible, and to repose under the shadow of his wings, unmindful of the wilderness, and unalarmed by foes. But the heavenly-minded man walks by faith, — that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And, among the great verities which hold possession of his soul, no one has a firmer lodgment than that of the saints' everlasting rest. All the circumstances of his present journey, all his remembrances, point to a Better Land, that is, a heavenly. But most of all, the word of the Lord hath settled it. Did he not swear unto Abraham, "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession?" In the horror of great darkness that fell upon him, did not a smoking furnace and a burning lamp pass between the cloven pieces, to ratify the covenant? "Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying, in David, To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God." O, yes, in every assurance of the covenant-keeping Jehovah; in every believing aspiration of patriarchs and prophets; in every mystery and miracle from Messiah's incarnation to his ascension; in every teaching and motion of the Holy Spirit, in his word and in the souls of the sanctified on earth, there is a pledge of Canaan to come. The spiritually-minded know this. They know that if they are Christ's then are they Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Heaven is to them no mere poetic sentiment; no speculative conjecture, or philosophical deduction; no traditionary record; but an assured certainty. Though not having received the promises, they have seen them afar off. The heavenly-minded man has heavenly things in mind. The objects and occupations of the world above are not mere matters of record in the Bible, themes suggested as his eye lights upon Baxter's Saint's Rest, interesting subjects upon which he once heard a lecture, -items of pantology, about which he has no doubt, and as little thought; they fill his mind,— they are present to his eye; they are home acquaintances. Fully persuaded of their existence, and expecting presently and personally to enjoy them, he often turns to the directory of Canaan, which inspiration supplies. He passes round by the ascent of Ahrabbim, he goes up from Kadesh-barnea, he traverses the valley of Eshcol and Jordan, surveys Carmel and Hermon, and that goodly mountain, Lebanon; he wanders cver the vine-clad he |