What was the first Adam, when set in his little territory in the garden of Eden, to the eye of God, compared with the second Adam?-that One, the Giver of eternal life, the smitten Rock, who in a moment could fill ten thousand souls with streams of living water. What a contrast! he whose days in the garden of Eden were but a span; whose beginning-a little handful of dust-God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life; and that One, the eternal life in the bosom of the Father before all worlds; He who could speak the word and give life to corruption; He, the One in whom God could accept those taken out of the pit where they gad fallen, having chosen them in Him before the foundation of the world, to fill them with all spiritual blessings in Him.
In the wilderness it was the Lord trying the heart, to see if He Himself was enough, and whether they were a people who, as " strangers and pilgrims with God," had their hearts so packed vp that when they found no water they could say, " But we have God with us and Canaan before us."' -Whether they found such a measure of joy in the wilderness as to show that their hearts were packed up to go forward.
We are in a system where everything turns on fallen man as the main object. That which separates me from it, is the thought that I am Christ's in heaven, chosen in Him before this system I am in had a beginning. This thought gives a great steadiness to the mind in all that we may be passing through. His, and kept by Him in everything, and waiting on Him to see what He will do. If I left my body to-night, I should go straight to Him; and when He leaves the throne to come and take His people home, my body will go too; the dead raised, the living changed, and made like Himself. All to stand round Him-He the center, and they covered with all His beauty: