and what is it but religious selfishness-a plea for self? But men must pray as best they can. We cannot expect perfect prayers from imperfect men. In the cry there may be something which God can hear to which he will make response. But prayers are not answered, because they are not prayers; they are self-excuses, self-pleadings, desires inspired by selfishness: so they are narrow, shortsighted, out of the rhythm of the music of the universe, notes that cannot be smoothed into the general utterance of the divine purpose; they may do the suppliant good by heightening his veneration or exciting within him some inexpressible desires, but as words they fall back again like birds whose wings have been broken.

Israel cried unto the Lord. What was the divine answer to that cry? It was a prophet. Jewish legend says it was Phinehas, son of Eleazar. The prayer was answered by a man:"The Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel" (vi. 8). A "prophet" is a teacher, a man who sees the largest relations of things, one who lives above the cloud and can see what is going on underneath it; a seer, a man of penetrating vision, a man whose eyes are within, and from whom God has hidden nothing of wisdom, grace, purpose, and issue. The age must be prepared for its prophets. When the age is haughty, self-contented, self-idolatrous, prophets go for nothing; they are the object of sneering remark; they may be caricatured, they may be turned into food for merriment; but when the age becomes like a door swinging on broken hinges, or like a sear and yellow leaf when all hope has died out of it, then men ask if there be not a prophet, or one who can pray-a seer who can penetrate beyond appearances and discover germs of life or hints of hope? It was so now. The prophet came, and delivered a judicial speech :—

"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land; and I said unto you, I am the Lord your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites [the Amorites were the highlanders of Palestine, and as they were the strongest of all the Canaanitish tribes they are often spoken of as representing or including the whole of them], in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice" (vi. 8-10).

Here you find a reminder,—that is to say, a reference to history.

Memory was awakened and turned upon the days that had gone, God works through recollection. Marvellous are the miracles which God works by the power of memory: memory goes back, and brings to mind things forgotten, uses them in the light of to-day, observes their action upon the circumstances which make up the immediate present; and oftentimes a man needs no hotter hell than an awakened and stimulated memory. The recollection was followed by a reproof:-"But ye have not obeyed my voice," saying in effect: I have not changed; I was continuing the line; my purpose was one of deliverance and success and honour for Israel, but ye failed in obedience: first you became reluctant, hesitant, then weary, then you complained of monotony, then you said the yoke galled your shoulders, then you fell clean away, then you built Asherah and worshipped Baal; this is the reason of all that has come upon you; blame yourselves: for men who fall away from the road of obedience fail of the heaven of blessedness.

All this is intelligible. We have been accustomed to these reminding and accusing voices ourselves, and we do not hear in them anything that startles our reason or taxes our faith. Now the prophet is succeeded by an angel. A most mysterious instance occurs, challenging our faith in its loftiest moods. Gideon was threshing wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. He was in a little sheltered corner, not daring to use a flail, perhaps, lest the beat of it should attract the attention of some listening Midianite; Gideon was almost rubbing the wheat between his hands. He was in a little cave rather than in a winepress, which is hardly the literal translation. He was in a corner by himself, rubbing out the wheat which he had industriously sown, painfully watched, and honestly gathered. It was weary work for Gideon. He felt that he was a prisoner, almost stealing his own bread. This is not unknown to ourselves. Men sometimes have to hide their food from their own relations. Some men dare not even seem to be prosperous, because they know what havoc would be wrought by those who have been watching their honourable and successful labours. Men sometimes have to hide themselves from their own flesh, and to rub out their little handful of wheat behind some sheltering crag. Some men are bound to look poor, because they know they would

be fleeced and robbed.

Is that not strictly according to our own personal experience ? This is the picture presented by the position and action of Gideon [hewer]: a hidden man, doing an honest work in the quietest possible way, only thankful if he can get his wheat turned into bread to satisfy his hunger. Watch Gideon, the one religious man of the place and time. If any one were to come from heaven now, he would come to Gideon. Like descends upon like. "And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah [in Western Manasseh], that pertaineth unto Joash the Abi-ezrite." For a time the angel was silent. How will he speak to a weary man? He will say to him: Poor laden one, this is sad work for Israel; poor weary Gideon, I am sorry for thee in my heart; Gideon, thou shouldst have been out in the open air swinging thy flail and separating the chaff from the wheat right cheerfully and hopefully-poor Gideon! Such sympathy would have overborne the man; it would have been the one drop that would have made the cup of his sorrow overflow. No, there must be sharp reaction; a note must be struck that will awaken the man wholly: he must not continue his dream-trouble, he must have his sleep driven away. What said the angel? "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." The speech seemed to be ironical. Gideon had about him the look as to weariness of a man who was exhausted. But he was a king, and he had a kingly presence, a face that only needed to be awakened to answer the angel's own in the likeness of kinship. There was no fairer man than Gideon in all the land; the make of him was a miracle of God. When he stretched himself right out to his full compass and looked his best self, one could understand how it was that he had "faithful among the faithless been," and had kept Jehovah's altar even amid the riot of the Baalworshippers. Who shall say there is no kinship between angels and men? Who has wisdom enough to declare that there is no connection between the spiritual life or lives of the universe? It is not only a higher faith but a nobler reason which would say: All we, men, women, children, angels, spirits of the blessed, are one, warmed with one fire, radiant with one glory, expectant of one destiny. We cannot settle anything about this angel that is definite and final. What do we know that is

at all of the nature of counterpart? We know something about unexpected meetings, strangers speaking to us, and yet so speaking that we know them,-speaking to us in our mother tongue, speaking to us words which we have wanted to hear but dare scarcely speak to ourselves; people making beginnings which have had happy endings ;—that we know right well. We know something of unforeseen opportunities: the cloud has suddenly opened, and we have seen where we were. Clouds often do open quite suddenly. We have seen the mariner watching for the sun for days: the mariner is ready, his glass is in his hand; if there be but one little rift in that great cloud, he will avail himself of the opportunity to know where the sun is that he may know where his ship is. A rift has come, a sudden chance; it was but a moment, a glimpse, but in that moment there was communication between earth and heaven. So far we are upon familiar ground. We know something of unaccountable impressions also; and sometimes we utter prayers that angels might have inspired, for the prayers have surprised ourselves and made sudden Sabbath in the midst of the tumultuous week. If then we know something of unexpected meetings, unforeseen opportunities, and unaccountable impressions, we seem to be not far from the angel vision, the angel touch.

When Gideon heard the angel's message, he said, in a tone we cannot reproduce, a tone made credulous by incredulity, yet with some resonance of strength in its very halting and shaking, -a tone representing a strange struggle between hopelessness and faith, experience and possibility,-"Oh, sir"-for the term Gideon used in the first instance was but a term of courtesy and not a title of religious veneration—“Oh, sir, if the Lord be with us"-but the angel did not say so; the angel said "thee." Who can listen critically? Who can distinguish between person and number in the grammar of an angel ?—

"Oh, sir, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? [see Deut. xxi. 17] and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites" (vi. 13).

It was a right answer so far. It was better that Gideon should know the exact circumstances. "To know ourselves diseased is

half the cure." Gideon must not have any false hopes. He must not be taking up any broken splinters of wood and saying: These splinters will be swords which we shall thrust through the bows of the enemy. It is well that he is driven into obscurity, that he is made to do his work with the utmost quietness, that he is compelled to act almost as a thief on the threshold of his own house. To be down so far is to be in that darkness which oft precedes the dawn.

What did the angel do? The angel did two things. (1) He "looked." Who can interpret that word? Some biblical words must remain without interpretation. Sometimes in translating books from foreign languages into our own we are obliged to quote certain words and let them remain untranslated; we hover over them, point to them, give clumsy paraphrases of their possible meaning, but think it better after all to set down the word itself, for it has no equivalent in our own language. It must be so with this word "look." That look begat attention, inspired confidence, elevated thought, stimulated veneration, and looked Gideon into a new man. There are looks which do so. There is one look which is yet to do this in all the fulness of its meaning the day is to come when we shall be like Christ, for we shall see him as he. is. These are spiritual looks that we read of in the Old Testament, and that we have experience of in the current of our own lives. (2) The angel, however, not only looked but "said "-changed his tone, used human speech, addressed the man in his mother tongue. He said, "Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites have not I sent thee?" (vi. 14). But Gideon was astounded, and said in effect: Impossible

"Oh, my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family [my thousand] is poor [the meanest] in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house" (vi. 15).

This is quite in the line of biblical history. Sarah "laughed " when the angel said that she should be the mother of one who should be supreme in history; Moses was shocked when he was told that he, a wandering, stammering shepherd, should face the Pharaohs of Egypt and demand justice to Israel; Paul was amazed that he should be chosen for great missions of deliverance.