ships behind us, and dying to this world, to live entirely for the next. To the objection that we should be deserting the station in which God had placed us, I urged that our first duty is the care of our own souls. I compared it to Lot flying out of Sodom. In giving up my hereditary rank and riches, I considered that I should injure no one. My children, being brought up in total ignorance of their origin, would have no cause for regret; and if religion be true, they would be incalculable gainers, since riches (if Christ be an authority) are a great hindrance in the way to heaven. For several days I debated this question with myself, and one consideration alone determined my conclusion on it in the negative. I could not reconcile it with my duty to leave my aged father."

These are the touching words of one who lived to openly avow his change and confess Christ before the world. He added to his faith courage. His circumstances needed it, and so do those of the humblest Christians. Nor shall we go without it if we seek God's help. He that gave Nicodemus, who once came stealing to Jesus under the cloud of night, courage to perform the last kind offices to the dead-He who gave the disciple that denied his Master before a woman courage to confess him before all the Jews and charge home on them the guilt of his innocent blood-He who turns the pliant sapling into a tree, that, with roots wrapped around the rocks, lifts its head on high and defies the storm,-He will make his feeblest followers "valiant for the truth"-bold to avow themselves the followers of Jesus, and say,

XII.

GIDEON.

VALLEY abandoned to solitude, however picturesque and beautiful, wears a melancholy air. Its loneliness and silence are so oppressive as well as impressive that

we would be glad to hear a dog bark or a cock crow, or in the blue smoke that wreathes up against gray crag or brown hillside see some sign of human life. The feelings, allied to sadness, such a scene produces are deepened by the green spots we ever and anon alight on, marked by nettles, a clump of decaying trees and some crumbling ruins. These ruins were once happy homes; children played on that daisy-sward; gray patriarchs sat under the shadow of these aged trees; hospitable fires blazed on these cold hearths; and from these roofless walls the voice of joy and gladness, of praise and prayer, echoed in other days.

But the land of Israel, when Gideon was raised up to be its deliverer, presented a yet sadder aspect. The forests into which some, and the idol groves into which others, of their beautiful hill-sides had been turned, were indications of departure from the pure faith of their fathers. The "evil heart of unbelief" and the fascinations and wiles of the daughters of the land, had turned these hitherto God-favored and God-protected sons of Jacob into worshipers of Baal and Ashtaroth, whose vile services they attempted to unite with the worship of Him who had said, "I will not give mine honor to another." In consequence, the happy estate which had thus far been the lot of the Israelites was

now at an end, and in place of fields of waving grain and fruitful vineyards, their land became a scene of desolation, presenting an aspect sadder than roofless ruins and deserted villages. The houses were there, but no children played about the doors; the fields, but they bore no crops; the pastures, but they fed no cattle; the hills, but they bleated with no flocks of sheep; and the people also, more unfortunate than the peasantry of Europe, whom other lands receive when their own casts them out, possessed no homes but such as they found in caves and dens and mountain crags. To this extremity had the country been reduced by the invasions of the hosts of Midian. With occasional periods of relaxation, and exceptional cases such as Gideon's, during seven long, weary years its wretched inhabitants had suffered-for disease always treads on the heels of want-the threefold scourge of war, pestilence and famine.

It were difficult to imagine a more painful contrast than that between the condition of Israel in these days and the prospects of their fathers on entering the land of Canaan. "Blessed," said Moses in his parting address to the tribes before they entered the promised land-"blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field; blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep; blessed shall be thy basket and thy store; blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face; and the Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in all that thou settest thine hand unto." What a shower of blessings in the form of promises! and if anything could have comforted the people for the loss of Moses, it was the prospect of entering on such a splendid career of peace and prosperity as this picture presented. Nothing more beautiful than the picture; but, alas! contrasted with the future sorrows and sufferings of the nation, apparently not more unsubstantial the visions of a

dream-the brilliant arch that vanishes in the storm whose dark cloud it spans. It seemed as if the people had "looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.” No wonder, therefore, that when the angel appeared to Gideon by the oak at Ophrah, accosting him with these hopeful words, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor," his answer expressed the deepest disappointment. Looking around him on the desolation of his country, and at that moment in terror lest the Midianites should appear before he had got his corn threshed and buried out of their sight, no wonder that, in such afflictive circumstances, he returned this melancholy reply, "O my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?-the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites."

But whatever reasons Gideon and his countrymen had to mourn, they had none to murmur or cast blame on God. He had not failed in one jot or tittle of all he spake to their fathers by the lips of Moses; nor did their deserted homesteads and ravaged fields and empty stalls and silent hills belong to those mysteries of Providence it baffles the wisest to solve.

First, as to the question, "If the Lord be with us, why bath this befallen us?" that was easily answered. It finds a solution -a clear, sufficient answer-in the words with which Moses prefaced his series of beatitudes, the nail on which that string of pearls was suspended. "All these blessings," he said, "shall come on thee and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." They had not done so, nor was proof of that far to seek. It rose there, near by the threshingfloor, insulting God, in an altar erected to the worship of Baal, though the Lord had commanded them, saying, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Secondly, as to Gideon's complaint, "The Lord hath forsaken us," their trials proved the contrary. They are bastards, not sons, that grow up without chastisement; they are common, not

precious, stones that escape the lapidary's wheel; they are wild, not garden, trees that never bleed beneath the pruning-knife. "Whom God loveth," says the apostle, "he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that he receiveth." Others, I may remark, besides Gideon, but with less reason or excuse, have fallen into his mistake. Nor when blow succeeds blow, and trials, like foaming waves, break on the back of trials, and we look on them through the dim and distorting medium of our tears, is the complaint unnatural, "The Lord hath forgotten me, my Lord hath forsaken me." Nevertheless it is a mistake, and a great mistake -a feeling that should be resisted by the people of God, since it tends to defeat his gracious purpose, and aggravate instead of alleviate the sufferings by which he seeks to sanctify and draw them more closely to himself. God has no other object than these in afflicting his children; nor is it possible for fancy to imagine anything more touching or tender than the manner in which, as one hurt by their unworthy suspicions, he replies, "Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb? She may forget: yet will not I forget thee. I have graven thee on the palms of my hands, and thy walls are continually before me."

To prepare the ground for sowing, the husbandman, if I may say so, afflicts it—he drives a ploughshare through its bosom and tears asunder its clods with iron teeth. Similar was the purpose for which God afflicted Israel by the hand of Midian. That object accomplished, as the sower follows the ploughman to cast seed into the furrows his share has drawn, God sent a prophet to preach to his people. With a rock for his pulpit, with repentance for his text, and for his church some mountain hollow, where ghastly crowds, creeping from their caves, assembled to hear him, this preacher set forth their sins as the cause of their sorrows, calling them to repentance. Nor, such a forerunner of Gideon as John Baptist was of Christ, did he call in vain. Tears course down the furrows of famished cheeks. The voice of suf