But now the prophetess passes off the scene, and the voice of melody is exchanged for the voice of murmuring. Wilderness life is becoming irksome. The trials of the desert put nature to the test; they bring out what is in the heart. Forty years’ toil and travail make a great change in people. It is very rare indeed to find a case in which the verdure and freshness of spiritual life are kept up, much less augmented, throughout all the stages of Christian life and warfare. It ought not to be such a rarity; it ought to be the very reverse, inasmuch as it is in the actual details, the stern realities of our path through this world, that we prove what God is. He, blessed be His name, takes occasion from the very trials of the way to make Himself known to us in all the sweetness and tenderness of love that knows no change. His loving-kindness and tender mercy never fail. Nothing can exhaust those springs which are in the living God. He will be what He is spite of all our naughtiness: God will be God, let man prove himself ever so faithless and faulty. This is our comfort, our joy, and the source of our strength. We have to do with the living God. What a reality! Come what may, He will prove Himself equal to every emergency—amply sufficient “for exigence of every hour.” His patient grace can bear with our manifold infirmities, failures, and shortcomings, and His strength is made perfect in our utter weakness. His faithfulness never fails; His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. Friends fail or pass away; links of fond friendship are snapped in this cold, heartless world; fellow-laborers part company; Miriams and Aarons die; but God remaineth. Here lies the deep secret of all true and solid blessedness. If we have the hand and heart of the living God with us, we need not fear. If we can say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” we can assuredly add, “We shall not want.” Still there are the scenes of sorrow and trial in the desert, and we have to go through them. Thus it was with Israel in the chapter before us. They were called to meet the keen blasts of the wilderness, and they met them with accents of impatience and discontent. “And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, ‘Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.’” (Ver. 2-5.)