Here was Gershon's work, to carry through the waste and howling wilderness the tabernacle and its coverings. This was indeed _true Levite service_, but it was most blessed service, and its antitype in the Church now is what we should much seek after, because it is that which alone puts the Christian into his right place in the world, i.e., the place of a STRANGER. There could be but little attractiveness in the rams' skins and badgers' skins; but, little as there was, it was, nevertheless, the high privilege of the Gershonite to take them all up and bear them cheerfully on his shoulders across the trackless sands. What, then, are we to understand by the covering of the tabernacle? I believe, in a word, it shadowed out the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was that which would meet the eye. There might be, and were, other services among the Levites of a very blessed nature, but surely it was most elevated service to carry through the desert that which so strikingly prefigured the character of Christ. This is what makes the saint "a stranger" (as the name Gershon imports) in the world. If we are walking in _the manifestation of the character of the Lord Jesus_, and in so doing realize our place as _in the wilderness_, we may rest assured it will impart a very decided tone of strangership to our character in the world. And oh, would that we knew much more of this. The Church has laid down the rams' skins and badgers' skins, and with them the Gershonite character: in other words, the Church has ceased to walk in the footsteps of her rejected Lord and Master, and the consequence has been that instead of being the wearied and worn stranger, as she should be, treading the parched and sterile desert, with the burden on the shoulders, she has settled herself down in the green places of the world and made herself at home. But there was another feature of the stranger character shadowed out in the curtain, viz., _anticipation_. This was most blessed--God dwelling in curtains showed plainly that neither God nor the ark of His strength had found a resting-place, but were _journeying on_ towards "_a rest that remained_."