the war right into his heart and mind, and destroy the very pith and essence of it. He must do nothing in the sight of man that he would not do in the sight of God. This is carrying on unsparingly the war with Amalek.

The Divine Word tells us how to accomplish this.

First of all, Moses says unto Joshua, "Choose us out men, and go out and fight with Amalek; to-morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand." "So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill." Moses in the spiritual sense, as we have oftentimes explained in this divine history, is representative of the LAW OF GOD in the soul; the confession that we ought to obey the divine will as the Lord commands. This becomes a conscience for the real Christian; a living law of God. He says to himself at all times, What does the Word say about this? and what he feels the Word says, is to him the law, that is, Moses with the rod in his hand. But he went up to the top of the hill. Now this is an exceedingly interesting and graphic description of what must take place in our spiritual warfare, for the hill is a representative of a holy state of heart, a loving state, lifted up towards the Divine Being. You will find a hill thus representative everywhere in the Word of God. Instance the first verse of the 121st Psalm, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth." In the 7th verse of the 30th Psalm we find, "Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong." Not that the Lord has made some outward mass of earth to stand strong, but He makes our exalted love for Him to stand strong. It is of this the Word says again, "The hills shall flow with milk, and the mountain drop down with new wine."Joel iii. 18. That is to say when our hearts are lifted up with love to the Lord, and charity towards our neighbour, the milk and new wine of heaven will flow down and give us courage, and the desire to instruct and bless others.

The Lord says to us in this divine history, you must go up on to the hill, you must not think of fighting simply from mere knowledge, or from yourselves, you must enter into the love of the Lord and of divine things. You must be united with the Lord Jesus Christ, and come up into a state of loving trust in Him, a loving confidence that He will not forsake you. When that is the case you will not only have Moses, but he will be on the top of the hill, and with the rod of his power in his hand.

Aaron and Hur supporting the hands of Moses represent truths on each side supporting the soul; truths of faith and truths of love. We are told that as the contest continued Moses' hands sometimes became weak, and began to fall down, and that at other times they rose up, representative of the alternate feeling of rising towards the Lord, and weakness from human frailty. In the early stages of our religious life we cannot remain persistently in a state of faith and confirmation. Sometimes we are weak, weary, and almost dying, the hands go down. At other times we rise up in affection towards the Lord, we are then courageous and strong. Thus, as the arms of Moses rose up, it is said, "Israel prevailed, when they fell down Amalek prevailed."

And so it is written in our text, "But Moses' hands were heavy"-our hands are heavy when we have little affection. Just as we find that warmth makes things ascend so the warmth of inward love makes the soul rise up with joy. When we have but little affection the hands become weak and unsteady; when supported by love and faith they rise.

The hands of Moses, it is said, " were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him." A STONE is spiritually symbolic of foundation truth-such truth as is in the letter of the Sacred Scriptures. In the letter, the Word forms foundation lessons, resting places, as it were, for the soul. A person may have an idea, but while it remains an idea only, it is fleeting, and will pass away, but if his idea is in accordance with Divine Truth and he finds a text for it in the letter of the Word, the idea becomes steady, it rests upon a "Thus saith the Lord," as a foundation. There is then a steady rock on which his soul can repose. Hence, our Lord Jesus in the closing of His divine Sermon on the Mount says, "He who heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will tell you unto what he is like; he is like unto a man that built his house upon a ROCK, and the winds blew, and the rains descended, and the floods came and beat upon that house, and it fell not, because it was founded on a rock." Now, in putting the stone under Moses, and letting him sit upon it, there was figured to us the necessity for supplying the mind with the divine instruction contained in the letter of the Word. We should not feel, but know, on the sure declaration of Holy Writ abundantly supplied, that, "It is not the will of our Father, who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." The suffering waverer, who scarcely knows whether the Lord cares for him or not, should often have his soul strengthened with passages which assure him that God is

Love. “The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." Passages like this form the stone upon which Moses can sit. These promises of love can be seen to be so plain, that the noviciate, the earliest thinker of divine things can see and understand them. When we think we are lost and hope begins to fail, let us read the truths of redemption and learn that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. And the Father of Heaven will then say of us, "My son who was dead is alive again, and who was lost is found." These truths form the rock of heaven, place this under Moses, and then he will sit firmly. Moses' hands will sometimes become heavy, but put this stone under him, with Aaron on one side, and Hur on the other. With love and faith lifting up his hands Israel will defeat Amalek down to the very setting of the sun. The soul will completely triumph over this fatal evil. And, now, finally, 7, my beloved hearers whenever you are harassed by discouragement and despair, take this course, go up to the top of the hill, look to the Saviour for strength, take Aaron and Hur with you. Let them take a stone from the Divine Word and do you sit upon it. Say, Here I rest, this is from the eternal God. This is the rock of my salvation, nothing can shake me. Here, I will put my trust. My Friend, my Saviour, my Redeemer-he has the love that will save me He has the power that will prevail over the evil. He shall reign for ever and ever. In such case Amalek will perish and die away even to the going down of the sun. So the soul will have rest. You can then lie down in peace and confidence and say, All is right. He has given his beloved sleep; my troubles are passed. "Bless the Lord, Oh, my soul! and all that is within me bless his Holy Name."

SERMON XVIII.

JETHRO'S ADVICE TO MOSES TO CHOOSE RULERS.

"Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties and rulers of tens."-Exodus xviii. 21.

We are here called to witness a most interesting event. We find Moses after having been absent for a considerable time, and having passed through a series of most momentous adventures, again returned to his original place of departure. Thence he had set out with the charge of freeing the Israelites from bondage by the command of the Lord, and there he returned again. Almost at the very spot where the Divine Being had appeared to him and promised him what would happen, there he had brought the children of Israel to rest near the mountain of God. There had come his father-in-law, who had doubtless heard of the marvellous adventures through which he had passed. We have pointed out, when noticing these circumstances on a former occasion, that Jethro is not simply called " a priest of Midian," but "the priest of Midian," a term which is probably equivalent to the ruler of the Church, or of that description of religion that prevailed all over Midian. In some ancient manu

scripts the term for this father-in-law, or at least for his position, is the prince of Midian, and probably he was priest and prince. In ancient nations, the binding principle was religion, and the princes were the embodiment of the religion. In this instance,

the priest, or the chief priest, and the prince are probably one.

Moses having brought the children of Israel thus far, almost as we have said to the very spot where he had received his mission to break down the power of Pharaoh, there Jethro his father-inlaw came to meet him, and they conversed together, and asked each other, it is said, of their welfare. We can clearly imagine how interesting must that conversation have been. What each would

have to recount as having happened during the interval of absence. Moses would relate all the wonders by which his people had been set free; the manner in which the proud tyrant of Egypt had been troubled; at length, the utter overthrow of the Egyptian host in the Red Sea; the way in which the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud had led them from time to time; how the manna came down; and how they conquered Amalek. We can hardly imagine anything more interesting, anything more deeply impressive or touching than what would happen in the conversation between these remarkable men. But now another great stride in Israelitish progress was to be made. From a multitude they were to become a nation.

They had just recently had a struggle with a bitter foe. They had felt the need and were to learn the power of order.

They had arrived at complete rest, and then had spread themselves out in the plain just at the foot of the mount of God, completely delivered, but finding themselves only a great multitude not yet well arranged or well and satisfactorily governed. After being delivered from the outward foe, now came the time for being delivered also from inward danger. For an immense multitude like that with no regulations or order, must have been in the greatest possible difficulty, until such arrangements could be made as would reach the circumstances of every man and point out what was needed to be done for the sake of order.

Now this succeeding operation, the transformation of this immense multitude of individuals into a nation, is the subject placed before us by our text, and the difference between a people and a nation is this. People is a word that denominates men in their individual condition, every man being a portion of the people. But an immense number of individuals is no more a nation until they are placed under regulations of divine order, than an immense number of grains of sand is a rock. A promiscuous multitude becomes a nation by law and order. Order is heaven's first law. Individual people are like the atoms of the human body, order brings them into the beauty and strength of the human form. The perception of this law, the placing of it before Moses, the arrangements that resulted from it, and the constitution of the nation are the subjects brought before Moses by Jethro.

The people were two millions in number, uninstructed, brought out of a long and depressing condition of slavery, with little intelligence, and little perception of their true wants, or of true order. Jethro places the difficulty properly when he says, "Thou wilt wear away and all this people with thee." It would be just