to man. Through earnest students flow down scientific truths to help us in conquering, and in coercing the giant forces of the world. Through receptive souls, devoted to art, flow down thoughts of the beautiful, which, fixed in marble, or on the canvas, in architecture, or in music, are "joys for ever." God does not rain down machinery from heaven. The human authorship of great mechanical inventions may well be claimed by many, for the thoughts which gave birth to them may have found recipient vessels in many minds. We owe even our progress in mechanics to the Lord; but His providence has employed in its production those human minds which were best fitted to receive, to communicate, and to work out their idea, the thing which they mentally beheld. The time was ripe, the men were there, faithful work had prepared the foremost of them for fuller service, and the Lord gave the influx of the larger thought.

The social advancement of mankind the Lord effects through men. Captains of charity, leaders of genuine beneficence arise, sometimes from the ranks of the lowliest, and light from the heavens flows into them. They speak forth that which they see. Others hear the suggestion, discern its use, mould it into practical form, urge its claims, and press it on the attention of the nation. It educates men into feeling the want for it; into descrying the aptness of it; into being prepared for the use of it. The thought of one becomes the thought of many, until it reforms abuses, and is modelled into an institution of the world. The Lord was the author of the truth: men were no more than the mediums through whom His providence has wrought.

In like manner, the religious improvement of man takes place, firstly in the individual, and then through the individual acting on mankind. Every will which is truly submitted to God's will, every mind which is truly conformed to the image of the heavenly, is another mind and will added to the kingdom of the Lord on earth. It is this, and it is also more. It is a new channel through which may flow the purposes of Divine mercy and truth for the helping and blessing of others. It is a new centre which may receive the beams of the Divine wisdom into itself, whence they may radiate on others. It is a new power in the universe, potent for good, because animated by the love of God, and of Each recipient of the outflowings of Divine goodness and truth is a new workman under the Lord, toiling for the one great purpose of hastening the coming of His kingdom. Each of such servants is not only a soldier fighting against evil, under the standard of the Lord Jesus, but a recruiting officer winning other soldiers to the cause.

man.

God thus works for man's benefit through the instrumentality of

man!

This principle is universal. It is true, not only in regard to society at large, but as to each individual man. Man must work "together with God," in order to effect any progress. He cannot grow in intelligence without study, and the blessing of the All-Wise. He cannot advance in the fine, or in the mechanical arts, in the power to discover, or the skill to apply, new principles, without effort, and generally long-continued, intense, persistent effort, and the blessing of the All-Powerful. He cannot progress in victory over evil, in the acquisition of genuine charity, in the joy and peace of the regenerate life, without conflicts faithfully sustained, and resolutions consistently followed up. He must fight as though all depended on himself, yet looking to the Lord as though all depended on Him. God works within the man to will and to do; but the doing is the coöperation of man with God.

The example of the Lord Jesus Christ confirms this. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," (John v. 17.) is the enunciation of a great principle, as well as the assertion of an important fact. "I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work," (John ix. 4.) is the statement of a universal truth. The operation of God in Christ, glorifying the Humanity which He had assumed, was constant and increasing. As continual and as increasing was the voluntary coöperation of that Humanity with the Divine operation within Him, ever tending to the same sublime result. Herein is the Lord Jesus a pattern for all His disciples. Followers of Him in the regeneration, they must also be imitators of Him in this coöperation with God.

In like manner, the wars of the children of Israel confirm and illustrate these truths. The Lord could have conquered all the enemies of His people without any aid on the part of the people themselves. Even when they fought it was God who gave them the victory. In the conflict to which the text refers, the Lord did conquer without the assistance of "the inhabitants of Meroz." This war was against Jabin, the king of the Canaanites, who had oppressed the Israelites, by Sisera, the captain of his host, for twenty years. The people of Meroz dwelt in a district of Palestine some where near the brook Kishon. They refused to join the standard which Israel set up against their enemies. Yet their defection from the cause did not at all prevent the Israelites from conquering. "God subdued on that day Jabin, the king of Canaan, before the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel

prospered, and prevailed against Jabin, the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin, king of Canaan." (Judges iv. 23, 24.) So far as the Lord's power was concerned, there was no need for the help of man. In the most terrible battle which the Israelites waged, the battle against the five kings of Canaan, although the light was miraculously prolonged, so as to permit the Israelites to pursue their flying foes and slay them, yet, we read that "the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." (Joshua x. 11.) In the fierce battle with the Amalekites, the Israelites could conquer only so long as the arms of Moses were kept lifted up toward heaven. (Ex. xvii. 11, 12.) God commanded the people to fight; He fought with them, for them, and through their means; it was He who gave them the victory. He could have destroyed their foes without their help; but if they had not fought, the people would have been none the stronger, or the better for victories in securing which they had taken no part.

These truths point our attention to several important lessons. We, like the Israelites, have mighty foes to contend against. Like the Israelites, we must fight. While all the ability and the help come from the Lord, He demands our coöperation. There are our spiritual enemies, the "foes of our own household." There is doubt, and we must fight that; disbelief, and we must help to conquer that; self-pride, and that must be overcome; self-dependence, and that must be subdued. These are the foes of our faith and trust in the Lord: God will only conquer them through us. There is the serried host of enemies which assail our wills-evil desires, dispositions, inclinations, and concupiscences, the infirmities of our tempers, the unholy lusts of our hearts. These have to be conquered. The Lord will fight with us, and by our means, in overcoming these; but we must coöperate. Those affections. which are capable of becoming servants, represented by the Gibeonites, must be subjugated, but may be preserved, to become "hewers of wood and drawers of water" unto us. Those affections which possess some initiaments of use, represented by the Midianites, must be vanquished, though their spoil may be taken. Those affections which are utterly pernicious and bad, the total perversions of goodness and truth, represented by the Amalekites, must be utterly extirpated. There is not room enough in Canaan, the heavenly state, for them and thee! Against these, the Lord and His people must have war "to all generations." For sparing the Amalekites, Saul shall lose his crown, and his

whole house shall be destroyed. The meaning and reason of this is evident :—with that which is altogether evil in man, God can have no compromise. In respect of these spiritual foes, the cry unto man is, Spare not! slay!

There are also other enemies against whom we are called to fight ;the social and moral enemies of the world. We wonder sometimes why Providence should permit to continue such intolerable social wrongs as some of those we behold. We shrink before the dense cloud of ignorance that overspreads so many. We recoil before the cold-hearted indifference which so many exhibit to everything spiritual; the active aversion to goodness and truth which others display. We count up the victims of men's vices and the total seems appalling. We seek to number the moral and social miseries of men until the heart sickens, and the mind grows numb. Sometimes we almost incline to retire from contending against them, and to let God fight His own battle against these things. We would prefer to shelter ourselves behind our comfortable inner-life, and shun the task of coming up to the help of the Lord against these mighty enemies of man. We talk of Providence, and think of inaction: we hug the consolations of spiritual knowledge, while many a wayfarer is being beaten and stripped by the thieves: we thank God for our proud inheritance of knowledge of goodness, like the Levite, and for our power to do good, like the Priest, and never reach out a hand to the way-laid and wounded, who lies bleeding on the roadside we serenely gather our spiritual garments around us, and pass by on the other side! Well, then, in just such states, these words should ring out on our souls,-"Curse ye, Meroz; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty!"

God demands our help, in carrying forward every one of His Divine purposes in the world. If human want did not exist, where would there be room for the exercise of our charity? If human misery were not seen, how could the sweet impulses of pity ever thrill us? If we were never wronged, what could we know of the sublime privilege of mercy? If there were no weakness, how could we know the sweet joy of helping others less strong than ourselves? Life is a vast workshop of uses blessed are they who have tasted the joy of earnest toil! Life is a battle field, in which we must "fight the good fight of faith,” equipped with the weapons to be obtained from the armoury of God's Word. Whether we will or no, our existence must be a conflict, or it will be a captivity. We must rise victors, or we shall fall vanquished.

The effort to obtain knowledge is a struggle with ignorance. The effort to be virtuous is a battle with vice. The more fully we strive to be good the deeper will become the ground of the temptation that will still prompt us to do evil. Everything that will promote goodness, happiness, peace, and true wisdom, in our own souls, and in the world,that is the Lord's work, in which He demands our help. Whatever would promote the reign of evil, the continuance of wrong, the perpetuity of unrest, or the sovereignty of falsity and of ignorance,—that is an enemy of God; that should be our enemy: it is one of the mighty against which we have to come up to the help of the Lord.

Only by coöperating with the Lord can we share in the blessing which the victory was intended to secure. Of what use would it be to the child who is learning arithmetic, if another should work out all his sums? When would a child be able to compose, if another wrote out all his exercises? How many artists could there be, if another drew the design which every student was striving to compass? How can we grow into victors over the world, if we seek to shut out the world, behind the barriers of a hermitage or a cloister? To pretend to do this would be vain, for it is "out of the heart" whence evil desires and inclinations arise. Even though we could effect this, it would frustrate the purpose of the Lord's providence. The development of man, as a spiritual, rational, and free being, is a part of the great plan. The Lord intends not merely to conquer evil in His children, but also to enable His children to conquer evil. Not merely to crown them with the blessings of the triumph, but to make them "more than conquerors, through Him that loved them and gave Himself for them." Even in the Most Ancient Church, God commanded men to "replenish the earth and subdue it." He made the paradise for man; yet man had "to dress it and to keep it." Although there was then no antagonism, because there was no evil in man's soul, there was still the passive resistance of ignorance. Development was not then a warfare such as it now is; but even then it was a process demanding active exertion, and the refreshment of spiritual rest was even then only to be bought by the exercise of active powers during the waking time. What was then needful is now imperative,-coöperation with God. exercise of His liberty in antagonism to God, man has sunk down into the state of sin in which he now exists, so by the exercise of man's powers, coöperating with God, is he to reascend the declivity, regain conjunction with his Maker, and once more enter into innocence and peace. The innocence which once was known by man was an innocence

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