ROADS AND PATHS. 331 



die in war, their hones at least must be brought home and laid 

 in their own tomb. It is much the same strong tribal and 

 family feeling which led Joseph to give " commandment con- 

 cerning his bones," and made Jacob say, " Bury me with my 

 fathers, in the cave which Abraham bought for a possession 

 of a burying-place," and recalling how he had there laid the 

 remains of his nearest relatives (Gen. xlix. 29-31). 



Roads and Paths. — The poetical books of Holy Scripture 

 are full of figures taken from roads and paths, for we con- 

 stantly meet with such expressions as "way," "goings," 

 "leading," "guiding," "footsteps," "slipping," "sliding," 

 " stumbling-block," and many others. And such language 

 is by no means unfrequent even in the prose portions of the 

 sacred writings ; so that the figures have long ago passed 

 over into our Western speech and become so naturalised that 

 when we speak of taking a right or wrong path (as regards 

 conduct), it hardly seems a figurative expression at all. But 

 further, on account of the perfection attained by our modern 

 civilisation, all these figures have become faint and weak to 

 us compared with their force to those who live in the East. 

 With our wonderful railway system covering the whole 

 country, with our smooth roads and paved streets, travelling 

 has been divested of almost all its discomfort and of a large 

 proportion of its danger, and we must live in a country like 

 Madagascar, which is without roads, to realise the vividness 

 of such expressions as, " Teach me, Lord, the way of Thy 

 statutes," " Teach me Thy way, and lead me in a plain path," 

 " He set my feet upon a rock and established my goings," 

 &c. How often as I have picked my way up or down a 

 rough rocky staircase rather than a road, or toded painfully 

 along a slippery clay slope, have I recalled the words, " Hold 

 up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not," 

 " Ponder the path of thy feet, and let thy ways be estab- 

 lished ; " and at other times, either on foot, or borne on the 

 shoulders of my stout bearers, or occasionally on horseback, 

 when skirting the edge of a sheer precipice by a narrow 

 path, have I realised the terrible force of some of the curses 

 in the Bible, " Let their way be dark and slippery," " Their 

 footsteps shall slide in due time;" or with more cheerful 



