Rbilities of poverty, or of the weakness of hereditary disease, who have been Ice! in God's providence to high place, powers, and usefulness. Let us find our faculty nn,l endowment. It is the key to God's purpose in our life; let us develop it. Life will then bring to us its best. Let us but follow on along the line of our Divine endow- ment, and even the "least may become the first."-R. T. Vers. 18-22.-Man's power and God's power in war. It was a characteristic feature of Jewish thought, and it was a fitting expression of the theocratic principle, that God was recognized as directly concerned in and related to every event, and in such a way as madA him, in a very real and deep sense, the cause of the event. '!'he observation of this peculiarity is necessary to the understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures, aod it alone explains some of the Scripture difficulties, especially those which seem to assert that God is the author of evil, that he hardened Pharaoh's heart, sent an evil spirit to Saul, and a lying spirit into the prophets, etc. Still, admitting this general feature, there appears to be an unusual positiveness and strength about the assertions in this passage, that " the war was of God ; " that " they cried to God in the battle, and he was entreated of them; because they put their trust in him." Probably the his- torical reference is to the" great war in the time of Saul between the trans-Jordanic Israelites and the Hagarenes, who then occupied the rich tract north and north-east of Gilead, known as the Hauran at tile present day." A study of the map will impress the importance of the subjection of this district to the security of the trans-Jordanic tribes. The Hagarenes were "noted for their thievish habits, and were regarded a~ savage and warlike." We note, from these verses, that the difficulty of putting rightly together man's working and God's strl!'Tlgthening finds constant and ever-varied illus- tration in Holy Scripture, coming up to view in very unlikely places. Here the instance is a striking one, because, in the common and less thoughtful estimate of men, war is precisely the thing in which God is not wanted; in which tho whole foreground is occupied with man's armies, man's weapons, man's skill, and man's energies, and there is plainly no room for God. The instance is an impressive one, because in such unusual circumstances we are called to learn the lesson of trust, and to see that man only achieves a true success when he is strong in God. Even in his wars man should find the principle working that is so skilfully expressed by the apostle in relation to the personal life: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. ii. 12, 13 ; sco the form in the Revised Version). The possibility of uniting energy and trust in war- times may be illustrated in the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus and of Cromwell. I. MAN'S C\WN worui: IN wAB. It is usually entered upon for reasons of state. The times bring round to some men the spirit of conquest. Nations undertake wars to secure their boundaries, to repress the encroachments of neighbours, etc.; and even in sncred wars, such as the Crusades, the real object is the securing of some humac sovereignty, such as WI\S claimed by the pope. Waris the great sphere for the exercise of man's trained physical powers. And it is usual for success in war to follow the greatest army and the highest efficiency. So it is of all human things the most intensely human. II. MAN's TRUST IN Gon IN WAR. If the object of the war be right, man need never soparate God from it. And, to impress this, Scripture shows us God fighting with and by means of armies; even saying distinctly," the war was of God." Wo have not to decide the right in historical cases, which demand a fuller basis of judgment and more complete knowledge than we possess; but we must decide the right of any wars which we sanction, and only when assured of the right can we trust God for success III. Gon's WORK THROUGH MAN IN WAB. None can read the story of the r-.~;, without seeing that God has used war I\S one of the severer agents in his providential workings for the sum total of good. And no m1u1 can read aright the "signs of hiH times" without finding God in battle-fields, "making the wrath of man praise him." Impress for all right spheres of human life the practical compatibility of trust and toil.-R. T.
Ver. 25.-The sin of idolatry and its Judgments. In the Divine wisdom it had been planned that the idolatrous Canaanites should be wholly dispossessed, so that no rcu1- 1. CHRONICLES, G 82 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [on. v1. 1- 81.