From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

But in the desert one may say there is nothing but God. If there is little of earth, there is much of heaven. The glory of the desert is at night, when the full moon rises out of the level plain, as out of the sea, and walks the unclouded firmament. And when she retires, then all the heavenly host come forth. The atmosphere is of such exquisite purity, that the stars shine with all their splendor. No vapor rises from the earth, no exhalation obscures the firmament, which seems all aglow with the celestial fires. It was such a sight that kindled the mind of Job, as he looked up from the Arabian deserts three thousand years ago, and saw Orion and the Pleiades keeping their endless march; and as led him to sing of the time "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

Is it strange that God should choose such a vast and silent temple as this for the education of those whom He would set apart for his own service? Here the Israelites were led apart to receive the law from the immediate presence of God. The desert was their school, the place of their national education. It separated them from their own history. It drew a long track between them and the bitter past. It was a fit introduction to their new life and their new religion, as to their new country.

In such solitudes God has had the most direct communion with the individual soul. It was in the desert that Moses hid himself in a cleft of the rock while the Lord passed by; that the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind; and from it that John the Baptist came forth, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

So in later ages holy men who wished to shun the temptations of cities, that they might lead lives of meditation and prayer, fled to the desert, that they might forget the world and live for God alone. This was one of the favorite retreats of Monasticism in the early Christian centuries. The tombs of the Thebaïd were filled with monks. Convents were built on the cliffs of Mount Sinai that remain to this day.

We do not feel the need of such seclusion and separation from the world, but this passing over the desert sets the mind at work and supplies a theme for religious meditation. Is not life a desert, where, as on the sea, all paths are lost, and the traveller can only keep his course by observations on the stars? And are we not all pilgrims? Do we not all belong to that slow moving caravan, that marches steadily across the waste and disappears in the horizon? Can we not help some poor wanderer who may be lonely and friendless, or who may have faltered by the way; or guide another, if it be only to go before him, and leave our footprints in the sands, that

"A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing may take heart again?"

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE RED SEA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN.