Ah, reader, these questions come right home to our hearts. They find us out, and make thoroughly manifest where we are. It is not for us to sit down and coolly animadvert upon the ways of Israel in the wilderness,—to point out error here and failure there. We must take all these things as types set before us for our admonition. They are beacons, erected by a friendly and faithful hand, to warn us off from the dangerous shoals, quicksands, and rocks which lie along our course, and threaten our safety. This, we may be sure, is the true way to read every page of Israel’s history, if we would reap the profit which our God has designed for us in penning such a record. But it may be the reader is disposed to ask a question here. Did not the Lord expressly command Moses to send spies? and if so, how was it wrong for Israel to send them? True, the Lord did command Moses to send the spies, in Numbers xiii, but this was in consequence of the moral condition of the people, as set forth in Deuteronomy i. We shall not understand the former unless we read it in the light of the latter. We learn most distinctly from Deuteronomy i. 22 that the idea of sending the spies had its origin in the heart of Israel. God saw their moral condition, and He issued a command in full keeping therewith. If the reader will turn to the opening pages of the first book of Samuel, he will find something similar in the matter of the appointment of a king. The Lord commanded Samuel to hearken to the voice of the people, and make them a king. (1 Sam. viii. 22.) Was it that He approved of the plan? Most surely not; on the contrary, He declares plainly that it was a positive rejection of Himself. Why then command Samuel to appoint a king? The command was given in consequence of Israel’s condition. They were growing weary of the position of entire dependence upon an unseen arm, and they longed for an arm of flesh; they desired to be like the nations around them, and to have a king who should go out before them, and fight their battles for them. Well, God gave them their request, and they were very speedily called to prove the worthlessness of their plan. Their king proved a most complete failure, and they had to learn that it was an evil and a bitter thing to forsake the living God and lean on a broken reed of their own selection.