so great a host could cross from one side to the other, for the fords were now drowned in water, and boats they had none. But Joshua, their commander, was a man of supreme energy of mind and of a high courage. And the Lord was with him.

On the third day he sent his officers through the camp, among the people. They proclaimed that on the morrow, by the grace of God, Israel would resume the march, cross the Jordan and enter Canaan; and that they were one and all to sanctify themselves in preparation for this great day; for the Lord would do wonders. At these tidings all marvelled, and there was quiet in the camp from that hour onwards.

By sunrise on the morrow, as their Captain, Joshua, had commanded, the people had broken up their camp and were now assembled in their clans and companies and were ready. And the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant advanced in solitude from out of the camp and continued on their way until they came to the shallow flood-waters that lay shining between them and the Jordan’s usual channel. And behold, as the naked soles of the feet of the priests bearing the Ark were dipped in the brim of the water, a wondrous miracle was revealed to all that gazed. For the river that yesterday had run, swirling in flood and burdened with wreckage, in the deep gorge of the Jordan, was now dammed; its waters being heaped up near the city called Adam, above twenty miles from where Israel had been encamped.

And the priests, without pause, chanting their hymns of praise, went on down into the channel until among its boulders they were in the midst of the river’s bed. There they stayed, the staves of the Ark resting on their shoulders, its gold wondrous in the sunrise. And when they had taken up their station there, the trumpets sounded. And the whole host of Israel—the men of war, the common people, the women and children, the camp-followers—went down after them with their flocks and their herds, their beasts of burden and all that they had. As they filed past the priests—none drawing near them—and looked on the Ark with its cherubim of gold, they lifted up their voices in wild acclamation, in sure trust that while this sacred emblem of Jehovah was safe in a place so full of peril, so too were they.

Hours passed by while the vast multitude of Israel moved slowly on, threading its serpentine way across the gorge. When all were safely gone their way, none hurt or injured, and not even a single lamb lost, the priests followed after them, till all were on dry land.

Then Joshua commanded that twelve picked, sturdy men, one from each of the tribes, should return into the river-bed, and bring up upon their shoulders thence twelve very hard and heavy boulders from the place where the priests had stood who bore the Ark. These Joshua set up in a circle at Gilgal, for a trophy and memorial to all that came after of the wonder that had been seen that day, so that their children’s children to unnumbered generations should be continually reminded of how by the grace of God, after issuing from the wastes of the desert, they had crossed that great river, the Jordan, in safety and dry-shod.

And Israel continued the march that day and went up into the plains of Jericho, and because of this marvel the people were moved with awe and wonder and looked with fear upon Joshua even as they had feared Moses before him.

The haze-blue mountains of Moab now left behind them, they encamped in Gilgal many days and there fulfilled the rites of their religion as they were bidden by the priests. There, too, on the fourteenth day of the first month of the new year, they kept the Feast of the Passover and offered up solemn sacrifice. It was the night of the vernal full moon, as it had been in Goshen, and though in this desolate region of Gilgal little verdure is to be seen but that of the prickling briar and the thorn, and spring-time shows but thin and sparsely, yet the early flowers of the year were now in blossom, and the birds and beasts rejoiced in its sweetness. Throughout the forty years since the first Feast of the Passover had been held in Egypt never had there been such joy in Israel. It seemed almost beyond belief that the woes and hardships and the hopes so long deferred of their pilgrimage were over, and that the very soil on which they stood was the land of their desire. Here at Gilgal the host rested, while the men of war prepared to go forward to the siege of Jericho.