Bible Commentaries
Numbers 28

Verse 10

"Handfuls of Purpose"

"Beside the continual burnt offering." Num 28:10

What can there be beside or in addition to that which is "continual"? The burnt offering is declared to be "continual," and yet something is to be added to it. Is not that simply impossible? For an answer to this inquiry we must turn to actual life, and there the mystery is being constantly illustrated. Beside the continual sustenance of household life, there is a festive occasion when neighbours and friends come to enlarge the family circle, and enhance its occasional joys. The birthday is an event "beside'" the continual love and interest lavished upon the child. The continual exercise on road, or in field, and garden, is supplemented by the annual vacation when larger excursions test the strength and appeal to the imagination. The continual regard shown between friend and friend accentuates all particular recognitions, presents, and signs of peculiar love. The answer to all such mysteries is to be found in the deeper mystery of love, that is pure and intense. Love is inventive. Love is self-forgetful. Love sees where another flower will grow, hears where another bird is singing, sees where a still purer stream is flowing. The mother who writes to her child at stated intervals, is quite capable of creating special occasions upon which to express her solicitude and affection. The doctrine of love is that nothing has been given whilst anything has been withheld. Life would sink into a dreary monotony, were not provision made for outbursts of enthusiasm. The monotonous line of life must be flowered here and there with acts which are not expressed by the letter of the law.

The continual is always held to be the principal life. That is a fact of vital consequence. Many persons are ready to be affectionate on occasions, to indulge the eccentricities of attachment and regard, and to be heroically ready for the crisis which seems to appeal to their pride of strength and resource. Such affection is not to be relied upon. It is as the morning cloud and the early dew; the occasional is indebted to the continual for its whole value. It is to the continual that the occasional owes its power of surprise, because when love is so constant as to exclude the apparent possibility of addition, the amazement is the greater that love itself has invented a new delight. Christianity is a "continual" service; it claims all strength, time, resource, and when all has apparently been done, it stretches forth its hand for something "beside." This seems to be a contradiction in words, and the contradiction may indeed be real, but there is reconciliation in the passion and vehemence of sanctified affection. Let nobody begin with the additional or exceptional, until he has honestly completed that which is continual.