fering ascends to heaven sanctified by the voice of sorrow; confessions of penitence mingle witn groans of pain; the caves and dens they had turned into dwellings they turn into oratories; and now another ear than the rocks hears their prayers—the cry, "How long, O Lord, how long?" The set time is come. Past

is that darkest hour which precedes the dawn. Heaven's gate is thrown open, and an angel, leaving it, cleaves his way earthward to raise up in Gideon one who should break the yoke of Midian, and rise the deliverer of the oppressed.

Such was the order of God's government and dealings then, and such, it is important to observe, it is still. The people of Israel were to be relieved of their sorrows, but not till they had repented of their sins. Penitence must precede peace. Sins not repented of are sins not forgiven; and since true joy is as certainly born of godly sorrow as bright days of gray mornings, or rather day itself of the dark womb of night, they, therefore, who fancy themselves forgiven the sins which they have never sorrowed for, only deceive themselves, saying, "Peace, peace! when no peace is to be found."

The story of Gideon is written for our instruction. Nor will it have been written in vain if, seeking to obtain deliverance from the bondage of sin and, to use Paul's words, "work out our salvation," we take him as a pattern. Copying and cultivating the qualities which contributed so materially to his success, let us enter on our own battles in the spirit of his famous cry, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."

Gideon teaches us to be humble and self-distrustful. In his history the curtain rises on a scene of obscure and humble lifea threshing-floor in some sequestered nook, where we see a man, to beat out the grain, driving bullocks round and round over some corn. It has happily escaped the pillage of the Midianites, and he intends to conceal it in the ground for further safety. This countryman is Gideon, the future deliverer and judge of Israel, and that his humble task. Fired with ambition, it might

have been natural for him to leave such obscure employments to others, and panting to deliver his country and also distinguish himself, aim at something better suited to his talents and position. "What manner of men were they whom ye slew at Tabor?" was his question to the conquered and captive kings, Zebah and Zalmunna. "As thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king," was their answer. Now this answer, though fatal to themselves (for their victims were Gideon's brethren), presents his case as one of those where the body seems to take form from the mind it lodges, and to reveal, by a certain nobleness of bearing and expression, the greatness of the soul within. Yet Gideon, though belonging—if we may judge from this—to the order of Nature's nobility, abandoned himself to no dreams of ambition, but was called of God from the quiet, diligent and contented discharge of the humblest duties to honors and usefulness he never dreamed of. If God should call him to a higher place, well; if not, also well. In this combination of a humble disposition and a brilliant destiny, Gideon was by no means singular. He is one of a constellation of men who have emerged from obscurity and the contented discharge of humble offices to shine as stars. Christ's call, for example, found Matthew at the receipt of custom; Simon and Andrew, James and John, mending their nets on the shores of Galilee. Moses got his call when discharging the duties of a shepherd in the land of Midian, and David his, when, a dutiful son, he herded his father's flocks on the hills of Bethlehem. It is the busy, not the idle, not such as are dissatisfied, but contented with their lot and do its duties well, whom God usually calls to posts of honor and of distinguished usefulness.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit"-the astonishing exclamation with which our Lord opened his Sermon on the Mount, and at once took his hearers captive-finds no more appropriate illustration than Gideon offers. "The Lord be with thee, thou mighty man of valor"-the words with which the heavenly

messenger first accosted him-had fallen on a self-confident and ambitious spirit like a spark on a train of gunpowder, setting it in a blaze, firing it instantly. And had such been Gideon's temper, to the call, "Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel; have not I sent thee?" how had he leapt up, and casting away the ox-goad to draw the sword, with the blare of trumpet summoned his country to arms! But a humble, modest, selfdistrustful man, he is overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task. Measuring it and himself, the difference is such that he deems it hopeless; and eager to escape from an enterprise in which he can anticipate nothing but certain failure, he cries, "O my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh; and I am the least in my father's house!" Few have so thrust office and honor away. Nor does he venture to accept them till assured by a miracle that his call is from heaven-till he sees fire flash from the cold rock, and the angel, at whose touch it came, leap on the altar and ascend to heaven in its flames.

History offers many remarkable parallels, but none perhaps more remarkable than that between the self-distrust and diffidence of Moses and the self-distrust and diffidence of Gideon. In this they present a remarkable and instructive contrast to the ready confidence with which the disciples of our Lord-by nature very inferior men-responded to his call. It was from no aversion to the work that both Moses the leader, and Gideon the deliverer, of Israel shrunk from it, but from the very humble estimate they had formed of their own powers. The disciples seem to have been troubled with no such scruples, but the contrary. Their mutual jealousies and unseemly strifes for precedence argue a self-sufficient spirit. So strong was this in Simon that swelling waves and roaring storm were not formidable enough to deter him from an attempt to rival his Master and also walk upon the sea-in Thomas, that when Jesus, by repairing to Bethany, was to put his life in jeopardy, troubled with no mis

givings, he said, " et us go also and die with him"-in the whole band, that amid the dangers of that ever-memorable night in which our Lord was betrayed, they made professions heroic and brave as Peter's, declaring, "We will die with thee rather than deny thee."

But the contrast between the spirit and temper in which Moses and Gideon on the one hand, and the disciples on the other, entered on their respective vocations, is not more remarkable than that between the manner in which they filled them. With Moses returning to the court of Pharaoh to beard the haughty tyrant, where he sits armed with imperial power and surrounded by those that obey his nod, compare Simon Peter, cowering before a woman's eye, and skulking away from observation and her questions into the darkness of the night. With Gideon advancing at the head of a handful of men against the whole host of Midian, or hanging in pursuit on their flying columns, compare the disciples as, struck with terror, they scatter and fly from the garden where they have left their Master a prisoner in the hands of his cruel enemies. From these cases, how should we learn that our strength lies in our weakness-in our sense of it-in what fosters that frame of mind which Paul expressed by this remarkable paradox, "When I am weak, then am I strong"! The self-distrust which cries to God for help and works out salvation with fear and trembling-which, casting away all confidence in an arm of flesh, clings to the arm of Jesus-which says with Moses, "Unless thou go with us, let us not go up," and with Jacob, "I will not let thee go unless thou bless me"-like the army which, drawn out in battle array, was seen to first fall on its knees in prayer,—this is the sure presage, not of defeat, but of victory. In the self-distrust which prompts to prayer, and makes a man cast himself on God, and substitute for human weakness the power of a divine omnipotence, we may say, as Samson did of his unshorn locks, "In that our great strength lies."

Gideon teaches us the importance of having our faith strength

ened. Any means Gideon possessed for accomplishing the work he had undertaken were, humanly speaking, altogether inadequate. He had not a chance of success, if it could be said with truth, "There is no hope for him in God." Faith being then, as faith is still, the medium of connection between human weakness and divine power, it was his mainstay. He was thrown entirely on its strength. The ship does not ride the storm otherwise than by the hold her anchor takes of the solid ground. By that, which lies in the calm depths below, as little moved by the waves that swell and roll and foam above as by the winds that lash them into fury, she resists the gale and rides the billows of the stormiest sea. But her safety depends on something else also. When masts are struck and sails are furled, and, anchored off reef or rocky shore, she is laboring in the wild tumult for her life, it likewise lies in the strength of her cable and of the iron arms that grasp the solid ground. By these she hangs to it, and thus not only the firm earth, but their strength also, is her security. Let the flukes of the anchor or strands of the cable snap, and her fate is sealed. Nothing can avert it. Powerless to resist and swept forward by the sea, she drives on ruin, and hurled against an iron shore, her timbers are crushed to pieces like a shell. And what anchor and cable are to her, the faith by which man makes God's strength his own was to Gideon, and is still to believers in their times of trial.

Aware of that, and teaching us by his example a lesson of the highest practical importance, Gideon prepared for his enterprise by seeking to have his faith strengthened, deeming that of such transcendent consequence as to ask, what God kindly granted, a miracle-ay, two miracles-to strengthen it. The time was coming to him-as probably in sore temptations and heavy trials, and certainly in the awful hour of death, it shall come to uswhen he would have to stand face to face with difficulties no mere human energy could overcome, and dangers no mere human fortitude could meet. There could be no help for him then in