(6) Humbling infirmities in the hour of triumph the occasion for God's interpositions.-Samson was sore athirst, in order to keep him lowly after such a marvellous victory, gained with Such a weak weapon. His resource was prayer; a sure refuge zo us also, if we believe our heavenly Father's command and promise: "Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver hee, and thou shalt glorify me" (Ps. 1. 15). Samson pleaded ver. 18) his past experience of God's goodness, as his ground of praying for further grace (compare 2 Cor. i. 10): Thou ast given this great deliverance into the hand of Thy servant." He had heretofore treated the victory as if it were due to himelf. Now he calls it a 'deliverance,' yea, a "great delivernce" from God. Our most effectual way to gain help for the resent and future is to give GOD glory for what He has done the past. He glories only in being God's 'servant.' It is 1 excellent plea: "I am thine, save me" (Ps. cxix. 94, also 25). Further he pleads God's glory as at stake, if He Could suffer His servant to "die for thirst, and fall into the nd of the uncircumcised." So we should plead (compare r. xiv. 21; Dan. ix. 19). Herein Samson manifested the real Ith which animated him, notwithstanding many defects; so at the Spirit of God, who delights to see the graces and to member no more the sins of His people, enumerates him in e saintly roll (Heb. xi. 32).

(7) Thirst of the Antitype.-Jesus the Antitype, on the cross d, 'I thirst.' He who alone can give "the living waters," I who saith "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and nk" (John iv. 10, vii. 37), and made the smitten rock yield er to the millions of Israel in the wilderness, and who saith a. xliii. 20), "I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in desert," was Himself athirst. Why? Because He thirsted our salvation, and would fulfil all that was written in the phecies (Ps. lxix. 21; John xix. 28, 29) concerning Him. He thirsted in order to bless us, so He pronounces blessed n that thirst after Him (Matt. v. 6). He invites all such. come to the waters" (Isa. lv. 1, xliv. 2, xlv. 13).

3) The thirsty ones filled: the full emptied. The more tied of self we come, the more welcome we are. Samson

had called the place of his triumph Ramath-Lehi (ver. 17), "the lifting of the jaw-bone," but when he received the seasonable relief of his thirst in answer to prayer, he gives the place a name more indicative of God's grace than of his own prowess. God opens many a spring of comfort to them that pray in time of distress. Even as He opened Hagar's eyes to see the well in the wilderness (Gen. xxi. 19; compare xvi. 7, 14). Enhakkore, "the fountain of him that cried," should encourage us in every strait to flee to Him who saith, "When the poor and needy seek for water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them; I will open rivers in the high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water" (Isa. xli. 17).

(9) The once-rejected owned as Ruler.-Henceforward Samson was the recognised Judge of Israel. He whom the men of Judah had bound and given up to the Philistines, became now owned by all as their ruler and deliverer. So Jesus, "the stone whom the builders refused, became the head stone" of the spiritual Israel, the church. The time also is soon coming when fully "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied (Isa. liii. 11). The Jews who betrayed Him into Gentile hands, "shall look on Him whom they pierced" (Zech. xii. 10, xiv. 9), "and all nations shall be gathered to Jerusalem, the throne of Jehovah" (Jer. iii. 17), and He shall be "King over all the earth."

6. Ruin by lust: recovery by penitent and believing prayer: Victory in death.

(1) Dallying with temptation a perilous venture.-Fleshly lusts war against the soul. Yet men flatter themselves they can toy with the temptress, and not be entrapped. Wine and licentiousness take away the understanding (Hos. iv. 11). When we, like Samson, lay down our head to sleep in the lap of temptation, our spiritual enemies are never more wide awake. The sounder we sleep, the greater our danger. I was truly said, "Samson, when strong and brave, strangled lion; but he could not strangle his own lust. He burst th

fetters of his foes, but not the cords of his own passions. burnt up the crops of others, and lost the fruit of his own virtues, when burning with the flame enkindled by a single woman" (Ambros., Apol. ii. David, c. iii.: quoted by Keil). Like a moth fluttering about a candle flame, though already corched by it, Samson unwarned by his narrow escape from ne danger which he incurred by lust, rushes into another. Herein may be seen the tempter's assiduity, Samson's security, nd Jehovah's superabounding grace (Eph. ii. 7; Rom. v. 20; Tim. i. 14). He who as a Nazarite, ought to have been purer than snow and whiter than milk," blackens himself ith harlotry (Lam. iv. 7).

Grace still interposing, yet he was delivered by God from Le ruinous consequences of this step; conscience roused him a sense of his danger, as that of one that lieth upon the

p of a mast" (Prov. xxiii. 34). (Prov. xxiii. 34).

omptings of the Spirit whom he so greatly grieved, he awoke the sense of his guilt in defiling a temple of the living God mpare 1 Cor. iii. 17; Eph. iv. 30; Jer. xliv. 4), and of his nger in a city shut in by foes on every side. If any has en tempted to lie down in sin, it is a special grace from God, ne be aroused out of it before the trumpet call to judgment prise him. It is better to awake late, than never, to see 's danger through lust at the eleventh hour, rather than en the season for repentance is gone, to lift up one's eyes in torments of the lost. Samson came to the gates of Gaza, y to find himself shut in by them. But the Lord this time eked his feet out of the net; Samson, not staying to break the gates, tore up the posts with them, in the face of the inels..

o the Antitype, at midnight long before dawn (Matt. ii. 1, 4; John xx. 1), whilst the keepers for fear became as I men, not only rolled away the stone from the door of the lehre, but carried away the pillars of death, so that the s of hell can never prevail against His church (Matt. xvi. compare Hos. xiii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 55-57).

) The transgressor, though he escape often, is caught at last. Can a man take fire in his bosom, and not be burned?"

(Prov. vi. 27, 28.) The burnt child dreads the fire. But the sinner, with the strength of a man, is far less wise than a child; for though narrowly saved from the deadly penalty of his lust before, he again plays with the flame. The gamester will play on, though often a loser, till the last throw of the dice ruins him. The libertine will sacrifice money, health, reputation, and soul, for the sinful pleasure of a moment (see Prov. vi. 26, vii. 26, 27). The drunkard will have his glass, though it be at the cost of drinking at last "the wine of the wrath of God poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation." So the spiritual temptress, whether carnal wisdom (falsely so called, since it ignores the revealed wisdom of God), worldly pleasure or worldly gain, "casts down many wounded, yea, slays many strong men; her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." The law of God written in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and "reproofs of instruction are the way of life," and the only power to keep us from the flattery of the tongue of every Delilah (Prov. vi. 23, 24).

(3) The way of sin is an inclined plane, sinking lower and lower by successive steps, till God departs from the backslider.Satan, like a skilful general, gains by siege many a fort which he could not carry by assault. On four distinct occasions, probably on as many different days, Delilah, the 'languishing one (as her name means), tempted Samson to tell the secret of his God-given strength. Like a serpent, she coiled closer and closer round her victim each time; and he, with amazing infatuation, as a bird fascinated with the eye of the destroyer ventured nearer and nearer the temptation; so much so that in the third instance, he trifled so presumptuously with hi divine gift, and so tempted God, as to propose that the sever consecrated locks, the pledge of his strength, should be wove with the web. When any ventures so near the edge of rui his fall is imminent. Man, with all his vaunted strength, is a easy prey to Satan, when off his guard. Our wisdom, in th case of carnal temptation, is not to meet and fight, but to "fl youthful lusts" (2 Tim. ii. 22), as Joseph (Gen. xxxix. 10 shunned to be even with the temptress. The power of tempt

tions which, instead of shunning, we trifle with, increases by repetition, and our power of resisting them decreases. By daily mportunity, and challenging his love, the vile harlot wrung rom Samson his secret at the last. The spring of his strength vas his dedication to Jehovah: his Nazarite locks were the acramental sign of God's covenant of grace with him. Let one, therefore, slight the sign to which God attaches the grace f the covenant, even though the connection between them may eem arbitrary and not apparent. Laying down his head in he lap of the temptress, he lost his locks of consecration, and ith them lost God in him, the only source of strength. amson said, "If my hair be cut off, my strength will depart om me; but the sacred writer gives the truer reason for mson's loss of strength-" Jehovah was departed from him" er. 17, 20).

Woe be to that man and that people from whom God parts (Hos. ix. 12.) Fallen professors are made by punishnts to feel this, and say, "Are not these evils come upon because our God is not among us"? (Deut. xxxi. 17). en we lose our godliness, we lose also our manliness; for n was made in the image of God.

4) Declension from God is often unsuspected by the backslider.mson wist not that the Lord was departed from him." a sad but sure sign that a soul is becoming thoroughly al, when the man is unconscious of the withdrawal of the y Spirit, and flatters himself, amidst his lusts, that his itual strength is the same still as when he was consecrated God. "Strangers have devoured Ephraim's strength, and he weth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, he knoweth it not " (Hos. vii. 9). A secure state is often associated with a vaunting and fluent tongue: "I will go as at other times before, and shake myself." But when vah has departed from any one, Ichabod is written upon the glory is departed, and he is utterly powerless against