xvii. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 307 



ites. The transition from the wilderness to Canaan 

 was not made over continuous dry land; a water- 

 boundary was interposed, through which they had to 

 pass. And did not this teach them that in the pas- 

 sage from the wandering life of the desert to a settled 

 home in the Land of Promise they were not to con- 

 tinue the same persons in the new circumstances that 

 they had been in the old; but, on the contrary, 

 were to undergo a moral change, a spiritual reforma- 

 tion. They were to be made a holy nation, in order 

 to be fit occupants of the Holy Land. Their passage 

 of the Jordan was therefore a baptism of repentance ; 

 the river at the entrance of the Holy Land, like the 

 laver at the entrance of the tabernacle, afforded a 

 bath of purification ; and the memorial stones laid in 

 the bed of the river, over which the waters, when they 

 had safely crossed on dry land, returned, burying them 

 for ever from sight, represented the fate which should 

 have been theirs had God dealt with them according 

 to their sins. There was a stone for each of the 

 twelve tribes ; and these twelve representative stones 

 stood in the room of the whole people, and underwent 

 the doom from which, by the mercy of God, they 

 escaped. And just as the scape-goat carried away 

 the sins of the people, confessed on its head, into 

 the wilderness, into a land of forgetfulness, so the 

 dark, muddy waters of the Jordan carried away the 

 stones which represented the sins of the Israelites into 

 the Dead Sea, there to be engulphed for ever. 



In the former miraculous passage of the Red Sea, 



