GIDEON.

B. C. 1249.

EVERY country in its turn has had its hero, who against all human hope has delivered it from the yoke of foreign oppression. The history of such men is interesting beyond that of all others. To the mere reader, the hurried, the numerous, the mighty events which bring on such a change of fortune, supply a constant spring of strong excitement. To the calm thinker, the insignificance of the means compared with the magnitude of the end, points out a more than usually visible instrumentality of God, and he is induced to follow the final event into all its consequences. He has ever found it soon terminate in something which especially concerns the Church of God. As surely as every river ultimately terminates in the sea, so do all events, more or less directly, contribute to the general welfare of that Church. Some streams are swallowed up by larger, impounded in lakes, run through obscure glens, and thus their connexion with their final receptacle is seldom even thought of. But others flow with a wellknown and readily traced course to that end. Of this latter kind are the national events of which we

1.

are speaking. The least important of them requires to be traced but through a few streams, before it reaches the main stream which rolls directly to the ocean. In Jewish history this hero is Gideon. United as Church and State were in his country, we come at once in all its events to the fortune of God's Church, the most remote being but as the brooks on the western coast of that country, their spring-head being close to the But this peculiarity makes them very instructive. From God's visible agency in these we can gather the tokens of his invisible agency in others; and the divine commission of Gideon affords us a clue to the spirit which prompted and furthered the designs of Alfred and Tell.

sea.

Two centuries had not elapsed since their entrance into the land, when the children of Israel were reduced to a state little better than that under which they had groaned in Egypt. The cause of this wretchedness should be a warning to all nations and rulers of nations. Israel was no sooner settled in the land than he began a ruinous course of expediency, preferring the dictates of human policy to the express will of God. This people had been commanded by God to root out the wicked nations from the land, had been warned that such as should be left would be snares and traps unto them, and scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes. But short-sighted man refuses to take on faith the distant end of God's dealings, which he cannot see, and looks to the immediate result of his own, which he flatters himself that he distinctly sees. Weary, therefore, with war, and impatient to enjoy the bliss set before him, Israel permitted to remain

as tributaries those whom he had been so strongly charged to drive out. The usual disastrous fruits of expediency were not tardy in showing themselves. He intermarried with these forbidden nations; and consequently the children, at least, forsook the God of their fathers, who had given them the land, and went and served the abominable false gods of the stranger. But religion is the only bond which can keep a people permanently together. The love of God alone can produce such love of man as shall overcome the natural selfishness which is ever busy at work in dissolving the frame of society; obedience to God alone can engender such obedience to man, as shall counteract the rebellious spirit which has possessed his heart since his first temptation by the arch-rebel. Israel, therefore, whose body had been framed together by religious institutions more fitly and closely than any nation before or since, no sooner abandoned God, than he fell asunder like a broken potter's vessel. He was trampled upon by the most contemptible of enemies. The nations under whose yoke he fell, were such as to make every honourable cheek burn with shame and indignation at such a subjugation. They were the wandering tribes of the desert, the Midianites and Amalekites, who came up against them with their camels and their cattle. Such an enemy would be contemptible to a warlike nation, such as Israel had once been. But now he quailed before these undisciplined shepherds, who covered and devoured his land like locusts. He forsook his fields, and fled with his cattle to the caves in the mountains. When necessity compelled him to sow, the Midianite and

Amalekite reaped.

And if by chance he reaped, he was obliged to thresh out the corn in the closest secrecy.

It is in this stealthy employment that Gideon is first discovered to us. And that such a man should be compelied to such a measure is a proof of the deep humiliation of Israel. He was not treading it out in the open air with oxen, according to the common custom, but threshing it, concealed in the pit of a wine-press. How must the hero's spirit have groaned amid this degradation; how indignant must he have been with himself; how contemptible in his own eyes. Yet he saw no resource. Whatever self-confidence there might be left in himself and in a few others, there was no mutual confidence. The defect of this makes the first and great difficulty in the deliverance of an enthralled nation. No one can find where or how to begin. The good and wise understand not each other, and are as a discharged body of artificers, without mutual help, without instruments. To add to Gideon's despondency, a prophet had appeared amongst them, who told them, in the Lord's name, that it was for their thankless abandonment of Him that he had thus abandoned them. But no repentance appeared in Israel the worship of Baal still kept the place of the worship of Jehovah. Perhaps his thoughts had taken this serious turn, and he was pondering in his mind the claims of the God of his fathers upon him, when for a moment he paused to indulge a thought which struck him. He lifted up his eyes from his work, and suddenly caught the sight of a stranger sitting under the turpentine-tree of his village, which

was Ophrah. The stranger immediately addressed him, and said, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." Gideon despondingly replied, "If the Lord be with us, how has all this befallen us?" He received for reply a charge to go in that his might, and deliver his country. Still he despondingly objected the insignificance both of his family and of himself. The stranger, whom he now took for a prophet, assured him that the Lord would be with him. But, with that want of confidence in all without, which is one of the effects of slavery, and which Moses on a similar occasion had exhibited, Gideon demanded a sign from the prophet of his commission from God. one he shortly received.

And a very unequivocal He had brought forth cakes

and flesh to entertain his guest, and was bidden to set them on the rock. The stranger touched them with his staff, when fire burst forth from the rock, and consumed them. Thus he turned into a sacri

fice what Gideon had offered as food.

By this

manner of accepting his offering, Gideon discovered that his visitant was the Lord. He was at first greatly terrified, but the Lord re-assured him; and as the first-fruits of his devotion, he built on the spot an altar to the Lord.

Gideon forthwith was a different man. He felt that might in which the Lord had bidden him go forth. All his slavish despondency vanished, and a lofty spirit, equal to the mighty occasion to which he was called, possessed him. Not one of all the heroic deliverers of their country can be compared with Gideon on this point. However generous, however even religious may have been the spirit which