In a word, God’s presence secured every thing. Unbelief might say, What! are three millions of people to be fed on air? Who has charge of the commissariat? where are the military stores? where is the baggage? who is to attend to the clothing? Faith alone could answer, and its answer is simple, brief, and conclusive,—God was there! And that was quite sufficient. All is comprehended in that one sentence. In faith’s arithmetic, God is the only significant figure; and having Him, you may add as many ciphers as you please. If all your springs are in the living God, it ceases to be a question of your need, and resolves itself into a question of His sufficiency. What were six hundred thousand footmen to the Almighty God? what the varied necessities of their wives and children? In man’s estimation, these things might seem overwhelming. England has just sent out ten thousand troops to Abyssinia; but only think of the enormous expense and labor—think of the number of transports required to convey provisions and other necessaries for that small army. But imagine an army sixty times the size, together with the women and children; conceive this enormous host entering upon a march that was to extend over the space of forty years, through “a great and terrible wilderness,” in which there was no corn, no grass, no water-spring. How were they to be sustained? No supplies with them, no arrangements entered into with friendly nations to forward supplies, no transports dispatched to meet them at various points along their route; in short, not a single visible source of supply—nothing that nature would consider available. All this is something worth pondering. But we must ponder it in the divine presence. It is of no possible use for reason to sit down and try to solve this mighty problem by human arithmetic. No, reader; it is only faith that can solve it, and that, moreover, by the Word of the living God. Here lies the precious solution. Bring God in, and you want no other factors to work out your answer; leave Him out, and the more powerful your reason, and the more profound your arithmetic, the more hopeless must be your perplexity. Thus it is that faith settles the question. God was in the midst of His people. He was there in all the fullness of His grace and mercy—there in His perfect knowledge of His people’s wants, and of the difficulties of their path—there in His almighty power and boundless resources, to meet these difficulties and supply these wants. And so fully did He enter into all these things, that He was able, at the close of their long wilderness-wanderings, to appeal to their hearts in the following touching accents: “For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand; He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; _thou hast lacked nothing_.” And again, “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.” (Deut. ii. 7; viii. 4.)