Hitherto we have been occupied, in our study of this book, with God’s mode of ordering and providing for His people in the wilderness. We have traveled over the first ten chapters, and seen in them the illustration of the wisdom, goodness, and forethought of Jehovah, the God of Israel. But now we reach a point at which dark clouds gather around us. Up to this, God and His actings have been before us; but now we are called to contemplate man and his miserable ways. This is ever sad and humiliating. Man is the same every where. In Eden, in the restored earth, in the wilderness, in the land of Canaan, in the Church, in the millennium, man is proved to be a total failure. The very moment he moves, he breaks down. Thus, in the first two chapters of Genesis God is seen acting as Creator; every thing is done and ordered in divine perfection, and man is placed in the scene to enjoy the fruit of divine wisdom, goodness, and power. But in chapter iii. all is changed. The moment man acts, it is to disobey and bring in ruin and desolation. So after the deluge, when the earth had passed through that deep and dreadful baptism, and when man again takes his place therein, he exposes himself, and proves that, so far from being able to subdue and govern the earth, he cannot even govern himself. (Gen. ix.) Hardly had Israel been brought out of Egypt, when they made the golden calf: no sooner had the priesthood been set up, than the sons of Aaron offered strange fire: directly Saul was made king, he proved willful and disobedient. So also when we turn to the pages of the New Testament, we find the same thing. No sooner is the Church set up and adorned with Pentecostal gifts, than we hear the sad accents of murmuring and discontent. In short, man’s history, from first to last, here, there, and every where, is marked with failure. There is not so much as a single exception from Eden down to the close of the millennial day.