[Preached at a Sunday School Anniversary.]

This is a children’s question. God does not wish the boy to be snubbed when he wants to know. There is a kind of curiosity which is like the scent in a hound a Divine instinct and must not be checked, for that is waste. If you chill your child when he comes to ask, you may break the link which binds him to you, and never be able to weld it again. There will be a time come when you will long to have the lad come to your side, but it will be too late. “When your children shall ask their fathers . . . Then ye shall let your children know” (21-22.)

Obedience to god’s commandments will cause our
children to ask questions which will be A
blessing to their life.

This is very different to what is called “questionable conduct.” We don’t want your son to say “I cannot understand how my father makes his ledger square with the Bible;” or the girl to say, “How does mother make this love of display harmonise with the class-meeting?” No, no! this is not it; but, “What mean these stones?” As the little girl said to her sister, “What is it makes mother’s face shine so after she has been in her chamber so long?” That mother had been praying to her Father which seeth in secret, and He had rewarded her openly. If we live lives of cheerful obedience, the children will say, “What is the Sacrament? What do you do at the Class-meeting? &c. Why cannot I go with you?”

These stones are very suggestive. There are sermons in them. Some lessons which will occur to every one; others that need to be thought over again and again. For instance, there are twelve,

A stone for each Tribe.

They all came out of the bed of Jordan, and yet, there are no two alike! Judah’s is not like Napthali’s, and yet both came from the same place, and are in the same heap. We are not alike, though we be the children of the same Father. You and I are very different, yet it is “Our Father.” Yours as much as mine. John Bunyan knew this, for he makes his pilgrim band to consist of very great contrasts. Mr. Valiant for-the-truth, as well as Mr. Despondency. And they all get across the stream.

It has been a favourite dream, in all ages, to have a church of one pattern. Uniformity, that is, all of one shape. God does not make the trees which bear the same kind of fruit of one shape. You can make artificial flowers by the shipload, all one tint, but the bees won’t come round your ship when you unload it! In a town where I have preached many a time, there is a place of worship at each end. As you come from the railway station, there is one which begins the town a Baptist Chapel, plain and convenient, but right on the street, with the busy traffic all round; while at the other end of the town there is a church with a spire that makes you look up and think it is an anthem in stone! All around are old-fashioned houses, with gardens filled with flowers, and green lawns, while beyond there is a real country lane, with May in the hedges, and the music of larks and blackbirds. What a contrast! Yet if the ark of God were in danger, there would be brave hearts come from both places to die for the truth. No! let us have done with this wish to have all the same. It will become monotony. Go down into the Jordan and fetch your stone! Aye, aye, and one will pick the heaviest, one that will make his knees totter; and another will choose the squarest, and yet another the smoothest, but each man lays his in the heap, and it is well done!

“What mean these stones?”

Why, that it is safe to go where the ark goes.

That chest is the sign of God’s presence. There is the blood on the mercy-seat, and there are the angels of gold looking at that spot of blood. All the time the ark stood still in the bed of the river, the people could pass in safety. There are many Jordans for some of us to pass, but we need not to fear if God is there. There is the Jordan of poverty. It is a deep stream, and the water runs fast: yes, but if the ark goes first, thou shalt not be overcome. Does Providence call on thee to go down in the world? Never fear! the Ark is there. “I will never leave thee.” We are thinking now of a friend of ours, not sainted, but saintly, who has seen great reverses of fortune, yet her life has been a psalm. She reminds me of a robin, for, like him, her song has been sweeter than ever in the dark days. You may have to cross the river of persecution, but the Ark is there. When the three brave men preferred the furnace to idolatry, they found the Son of Man in the flames waiting for them, and so shall you.

And when it comes to the Jordan of death, we shall know the Ark has gone on before. Some of you lame ones will step it out bravely when you see the Ark. Don’t you remember, that good old “Ready to Halt” left his crutches on the bank? It was because he could see the Ark in the bed of the river.

Do not these stones teach that

God honours faith?

Brave Levites! Who can help admiring them, to carry that Ark right into the stream; for the waters were not divided till their feet dipped in the water (ver. 15.) God had not promised aught else. This is what is needed what Jabez Bunting was wont to call “Obstinate faith,” that the promise sees and “looks to that alone.” You can fancy how the people would watch these holy men march on, and some of the by-standers would be saying, “You would not catch me running the risk. Why, man, the ark will be carried away?” Not so, “the priests stood firm on dry ground.”

We must not overlook the fact that Faith on our part helps God to carry out His plans. “Come up to the help of the Lord.” The Ark had staves for the shoulders. Even the Ark did not move of itself, it was carried. When God is the architect, men are the masons and labourers. Faith assists God. It can stop the mouth of lions and quench the violence of fire. It yet honours God, and God honours it. O for this faith that will go on, leaving God to fulfil His promise when He sees fit! Fellow-Levites, let us shoulder our load, and do not let us look as if we were carrying God’s coffin. It is the Ark of the living God. Sing as you march towards the flood.

These stones we can see, remind us of other stones we cannot see (verse 9.) “And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the Ark of the Covenant stood, and they are there unto this day.” Will these stones ever be found? More unlikely things have happened. Any way, they serve us as a lesson. There are things unseen as real as things we look on every day.

Ordinances are signs as well as REMEMBRANCERS.

What do you call that piece of wood there? Why, the communion rail, to be sure. Communion? what does that mean? It is only a piece of wood, and yet it makes us think of Him Who, the same night that He was betrayed, took bread, saying, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Kneeling at that rail, we may, by faith, take hold of the Man who died for us. Rightly used, the Lord’s Supper may be manna angels’ food.

What is this day? The Sabbath. The Rest Day. The toils of life are o’er for a little time. Ah! this is another of the stones we see, which tell of stones we cannot see. There is a Sabbath that has no week-day; there is a world where there is no toil, no anxiety, no tears!

“O, long expected day begin!”

What do you call that sweet noise? Music? And what is that but another of these stones we can see, which tell of others we see not as yet. Dr. Watts said of sacred music

“Thus, Lord, while we remember Thee,
We, blest and pious grow;
By hymns of praise we learn to be
Triumphant here below.”

While I hear those children’s voices I seem to catch the sweeter strains of my children in heaven, singing their joy. Those deep, manly bass voices remind me of the psalms up yonder like the sound of many waters. Why, the very crape some of you wear reminds me of some who sat by your side, and who are now clad in garments “whiter than snow.”