man, and should his faith fail, there was one in God. Before the terrible figure of the giant, and in other such circumstances, David said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High;" and so, to feed his courage from a similar source, Gideon wished for something to remember and to rest on, as proving that God was with him of a truth-something to shine like a star when the night was at the darkest-something to feel like a rock below his feet when the flood was highest.

For that purpose, casting himself on the kindness and compassion of God, he spreads out a fleece on the floor, saying, "If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, let there be dew on the fleece only; but let it be dry on all the earth beside." It fell out as he wished. With foot that leaves no trace or trail upon the grass, he goes next morning to examine the fleece, and there it lies, all glistening with the dews of night, to yield to his hands, as they wring it out, a bowlful of water. Peter only needed Christ to say, "Come," and without a thought or moment's hesitation he sprang from the boat out on the sea. In Gideon's circumstances he would have at once dropped the fleece to draw the sword and rush down on the hosts that lay in the valley of Israel like grasshoppers for multitude. Not so Gideon. Perhaps by nature one of those who, like the granite that is ill to work but is long to wear, though tenacious of their purpose when it is formed are slow to form it, he is not yet satisfied. He has heard how much both Abraham and Moses, in their days, ventured to request of God. He also will venture, and ask another miracle. Here it is: "Let not thine anger be hot against me," he says; "I will speak but this once: let it now be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew." Of the two this would be the most obvious miracle, wool being more ready than almost anything else to show signs of dew, as we have observed in beads standing thick on the tufts that furze or thorn had plucked from the passing flock when grass and ground seemed dry. The request-not on Gideon's part one of presumption, but of self-dis

trust is granted; and now he can say with David and many else, "Thy gentleness has made me great." Next morning sees the whole earth "sown with Orient pearl;" liquid diamonds top the spikes of grass and hang sparkling in the sunbeams on every bush, as Gideon, with feet bathed at each step in dew, draws near the fleece. He sees it, and has no more anxiety. No bead glistens on its surface, nor drop of water falls into the bowl, as, to make assurance doubly sure, he wrings the fleece in his hands. Now he is all faith. He has no further doubts. Recollecting the miracles of the fleece, he looks unmoved on the swarms of Midian; unmoved, sees his army of more than thirty thousand men by coward flight diminished to one-third their number; unmoved, sees the ten thousand, like a snow-wreath on which winds have blown and the sun has beaten, reduced to three hundred men. At the head of so small a band, and with no other instruments of assault but a lamp and empty pitcher and trumpet, he stands confident and ready. The fleece is his battle banner. In the faith it has strengthened, if not created, he steals down in the darkness on the sleeping camp. On a sudden-to have them answered by three hundred more-he flashes his light and blows his trumpet, and with his battle-cry, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" adds to the confusion and carnage of a scene where the Midianites, seized with a sudden panic, bury their swords in each other's bosoms.

He had a great work to do. But so has every Christian. With such temptations, perhaps, before us as have proved formidable, if not fatal, to the greatest saints-with trials to encounter that have wrung complaints from pious lips-with probably great fights of affliction to endure-with death and its gloomy terrors certainly to face-we shall need all the faith that pains and prayer can provide. The righteous scarcely are saved, many of them entering the harbor as a vessel that, with masts sprung and sails torn to ribbons and bulwarks gone by the board, bears marks of storm and danger and a sore battle for life. Paul

himself trembled lest he should be a castaway; and in view of our trials, we should labor, according to his advice, to make our calling and election sure, to have the witness of God's Spirit with our own that we have been born again, and have certainly passed from death to life. By communion with God, let us seek to get our faith so strengthened that its trials may prove its most signal triumphs; and our spiritual vision growing clearer as our dying eye grows darker, a better world rising to view as this fades from the sight, glory opening over our heads as a grave opens beneath our feet, the voice of angels falling on our ear as it grows dull and duller to all earthly sounds,-they who bend over us to catch life's last low whisper may hear us saying, "My heart and my flesh faint and fail; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for evermore."

Gideon teaches us to make thorough work of what belongs to our deliverance from sin.

In closing the account of what God did for him, and through him for his people, the historian says, "Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more." And how was this accomplished? The remarkable victory God wrought for Gideon, without any effort on his part, may be regarded as a type of that greater, better victory which, without any effort on ours, God's Son wrought for us when he took our nature and our sins upon him, dying, the just for the unjust, that we might be saved. Gideon followed up this victory by calling all possible resources to his aid. He summoned the whole country to arms, as, accompanied by his famous three hundred men, he hung on the skirts of the broken host, and with sword bathed in their blood cut down the fugitiveskings, princes, captains and common soldiers-with an eye that knew no pity and a hand that did not spare. Now, it is to work as thorough that God calls all his followers. Extermination of our sins is the work that should engage our utmost efforts and inspire all our prayers. Jesus, and he alone, has won the victory and pur

chased our salvation; but honored to be fellow-laborers with him and God, we are called to work it out. By resolute self-denial, by constant watchfulness, by earnest prayer, by the diligent use of every means of grace, and, above all, by the help of the Holy Spirit, we are to labor to cast sin out of our hearts-crucifying it—killing it—thrusting it through and through with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, till its power is broken, and there is no more life in it, and it becomes hideous and hateful as a rotting corpse, and it can be said of the sins that were once our cruel masters and oppressors, They lift up their heads no more.

This is no easy work. But heaven is not to be reached by easy-going people. Like a beleaguered city, where men scale the walls and swarm in at the deadly breach, the violent take it by force. The rest it offers is for the weary. The crowns it confers are for warriors' brows. Its rewards are bestowed on such as, cutting off a right hand or plucking out a right eye to cast it away, deem it profitable that one of their members should perish, than that their whole body should be cast into hell-fire. Nor was Gideon's easy work. His limbs were weary running, his hand was weary slaying, and the way was long and the sun high and hot, when he arrived with his three hundred followers, panting and exhausted, at Jordan's shore. To sit down? No. It had been sweet to lie on its green banks, and, lulled to sleep by the song of birds and murmur of the stream, rest under its cool shades a while; but bent on their purpose, they dashed right into the waters, and stemming the flood, passed over, "he and the three hundred men, faint, yet pursuing." "Faint, yet pursuing," be that our chosen motto. Till we are dead to sin and sin is dead to us, be it our daily work to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; and while asking that the God of hope would give us all joy and peace in believing, be the prayer we daily offer for ourselves that of St. Paul for his Thessalonian converts, "THE VERY GOD OF PEACE SANCTIFY YOU WHOLLY."

XIII.

JEPHTHAH.

EPHTHAH is a wild, lawless freebooter. His irregular birth in the half-civilized tribes beyond the Jordan is the keynote to his life. The whole scene is laid in those pastoral uplands. Not Bethel or Shiloh, but Mizpeh, the ancient watch-tower which witnessed the parting of Jacob and Laban, is the place of meeting, Ammon, one of

The war springs

the descendants of Lot, is now the assailant. out of the disputes of that first settlement. The battle sweeps over the whole tract of forest, from Gilead to the borders of Moab. The quarrel which arises after the battle between the Transjordanic tribe and the proud Western Ephraimites is embittered by the recollection of taunts and quarrels, then, no doubt, full of gall and wormwood, now hardly intelligible. "Fugitives of Ephraim are ye: Gilead is among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites." Was it, as Ewald conjectures, some allusion to the lost history of the days when the half tribe Manasseh separated from its Western brethren? If it was, the Gileadites had now their turn-"the fugitives of the Ephraimites," as they are called in evident allusion to the former taunt, are caught in their flight at the fords of the Jordan—the scene of their victory over the Midianites-and ruthlessly slain.

In the savage taunt of Jephthah to the Ephraimites, compared with the mild reply of Gideon to the same insolent tribe, we