It must have been perfectly beautiful to mark God’s workers in the wilderness. Each one was at his post, and each moved in his divinely appointed sphere. Hence, the moment the cloud was lifted up and the order issued to strike, every man knew what he had to do, and he addressed himself to that and to nothing else. No man had any right to think for himself: Jehovah thought for all. The Levites had declared themselves “on the Lord’s side;” they had yielded themselves to His authority; and this fact lay at the very base of all their wilderness work and service. Looked at in this light, it would be deemed a matter of total indifference whether a man had to carry a pin, a curtain, or a golden candlestick. The grand question for each and for all was simply, Is this my work? is this what the Lord has given me to do? This settled every thing. Had it been left to human thinking or human choosing, one man might like this, another might like that, and a third might like something else. How then could the tabernacle ever be borne along through the wilderness, or set up in its place? Impossible! There could be but one supreme authority, namely, Jehovah Himself. He arranged for all, and all had to submit to Him. There was no room at all for the exercise of the human will. This was a signal mercy; it prevented a world of strife and confusion. There must be subjection—there must be a broken will—there must be a cordial yielding to divine authority, otherwise it will turn out to be like the book of Judges—“every man doing that which is right in his own eyes.” A Merarite might say—or think, if he did not say it,—“What! am I to spend the very best portion of my life upon earth—the days of my prime and vigor—in looking after a few pins? Was this the end for which I was born? Am I to have nothing higher before me as an object in life? Is this to be my occupation from the age of thirty to fifty?” To such questions there was a twofold reply. In the first place, it was enough for the Merarite to know that Jehovah had assigned him his work. This was sufficient to impart dignity to what nature might esteem the smallest and meanest matter. It does not matter what we are doing, provided always we are doing our divinely appointed work. A man may pursue what his fellows would deem a most brilliant career; he may spend his energies, his time, his talents, his fortune, in pursuits which the men of this world esteem grand and glorious, and, all the while, his life may prove to be but a splendid bubble. But on the other hand, the man that simply does the will of God, whatever that may be—the man who executes his Lord’s commands, whatever such commands may enjoin—that is the man whose path is illuminated by the beams of divine approbation, and whose work shall be remembered when the most splendid schemes of the children of this world have sunk in eternal oblivion.