Could anything be more opposed to another than the nature of all that Merari had to set up was to the waste and howling wilderness around? What could be more unlike than silver and barren sand? But Merari might not shrink from all this; no, his language was, when he had arrived at a spot in the desert at which the cloud halted, "I am come to set up the patterns of things in heaven in the very midst of all the desolation and misery of the wilderness around." All this was most laborious, and would, no doubt, impart to the character of Merari a tone of sadness or sorrow which was at once expressed in his name, which means "_sorrow_." And surely the antitype of all this in the Church now will fully confirm what has been stated about the character of Merari. Let any one take his stand firmly and decidedly in the world _for Christ_--let him penetrate into those places where "the _world_" is really seen in its vigor--let him oppose himself, _firm as a rock_, to the deep and rapid tide of worldliness, and _there_ let him begin to set up "_the sockets of silver_," and, rest assured of it, he will find such a course attended with very much sorrow and bitterness of soul; in a word, he will realize it to be a path in which the cross is to be taken up "_daily_," and not only taken up, but borne. Now, if any further proof were needed of the above interpretation, we have a most striking one in the fact that there are but _very few_ of the laborious Merarite character to be found; and why is this? Simply because the exhibition of such a character will ever be attended with very much labor and sorrow to nature, and nature loves ease, and therefore human nature never could be a Merarite; nothing will make us true Merarites but deep communion with Him who was "THE MAN OF SORROWS." There is something in the service of Gershon from which one does not shrink so much as from that of Merari. For what had Gershon to do? He had to place the curtains and badgers' skins over the boards _which had been already set up by his laborious and sorrowful brother_. And just so now: if a laborious servant of God has gone to a place where hitherto the world and Satan have reigned supreme, and there raised a testimony for Christ, it will be comparatively easy for another to go and walk on in the simple _manifestation_ of Christian character, which would of itself put him into the place of "a stranger."