THE GLEANING OF THE GRAPES OF

EPHRAIM.

"Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?"-JUDGES viii. 2.

It was the day after the battle, and a glorious battle it had been. The three hundred of Abi-ezer had won a glorious victory over the Midianites, who were as grasshoppers for multitude. At dead of night, provided with lamps, pitchers and trumpets, they went down the mountain side into the hostile camp, where each in silence took the place assigned to him. At a given signal the lamps were broken, the lights flashed forth, the trumpets blared and the cry rang out "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" The sleepers in their tents awoke, sprang from their couches, bewildered, terrified by the clangor and the flashing lights and fled every man for his life. The three hundred were in hot pursuit, their purpose being to intercept the fugitives at the ford of Jordan. Heralds were sent over to Mount Ephraim to say, "Go down and hold the waters of Beth-barah." The men of Ephraim hastened to the ford and that night there was a great slaughter. When the day broke, the roads were strewn with the dead as far as the old camp at Jezreel. The waters at Beth-barah were red with blood. Oreb and Zeeb, the princes of the Midianites, had been slain. It was

a time for rejoicing, a time to sing "Who is like unto our God; glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?" But there was a fly in the ointment. The men of Ephraim were always captious and overbearing. 'Why hast thou dealt with us so?" they demanded of Gideon. Why were we not called when thou wentest out to battle?" And they chid him sharply. He might have told them they were cowards, brave enough to chase a flying foe but not to be trusted in the high places of the field. He might have told them that they were proud, envious and insubordinate. But he knew that a soft answer turneth away wrath. "What have I done in comparison with you?" he answered. "For God hath delivered into your hands the princes of Midian. Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?"

The gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim! This is the portion that falls to us. We are living in a glorious day. Our fathers gathered the vintage with strife and travail and garments rolled in blood. It is for us to stand at the waters of Beth-barah and gather up the fruits of victory. The world is at its very best. If life was ever worth living, it is worth living now. Great is the privilege and correspondingly great is the responsibility of those who are appointed to glean the grapes of Ephraim.

I. Ours is the golden age of truth.

(1) The body of truth is larger than that of any former time. We shall probably agree that Aristotle was one of the most learned of the ancients; but if he were to return to-day, he could scarcely pass a preliminary examination for admission to one of our grammar schools. The results of past re

search and controversy along the past have accumulated into a great treasury of knowledge. Each generation has contributed its part. One settled the matter of the rotundity of the earth; another gave the law of gravitation; and still another the conservation of force. One gave gunpowder, another steam, and still another electricity. One argued out the doctrine of the Incarnation, another the personality of the Holy Ghost, and still another that of Justification by Faith. These truths have been laid down as postulates upon which to rear a superstructure of other truth. To be sure there are people who insist on going back and demonstrating each for himself these fundamental facts; as if seamstresses should insist on sewing with a fish bone or old-fashioned bodkin; or as if farmers were to plow their fields with a crooked stick. But the great multitude of people in these days are content and glad to profit by the achievements of the past. They believe that a better vision of the great landscape of truth may be had by standing on the shoulders of their forebears. History is not a treadmill wherein men go round and round getting nowhere, "forever learning, yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth." Nay, rather, it is a thoroughfare, the King's highway, whereon we journey like a royal troop, league by league, laden with the spoils of the conquest until we come to the palace of the King.

(2) The great body of truth, thus accumulated, is held in a truer spirit of toleration than the past ever knew. It is only two hundred and fifty years since Galileo, in the papal council, was required to make this statement: "I abjure, curse and detest the heresy of the motion of the earth, and I promise to teach

that the earth is the centre of the universe and an immovable body." After which he rose from his knees and muttered between his teeth, "Nevertheless it does move!" In our time a man is permitted, without molestation, to believe as he pleases respecting such matters. He may hold with Galileo or, if he prefers, with John Jasper of Richmond. In like manner a wise latitude prevails in respect to religious views. In the Continental Congress a motion to open the sessions of that body with prayer, was opposed by the Hon. John Jay on the ground that so many warring sects were represented upon the floor, Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians and others, that if one prayed, the rest could not with patience hear him. Blessed be God, there are no such warring sects to-day. The various denominations of believers may differ as to non-essentials, but they are all agreed as to those great fundamentals of truth which our fathers of Abi-ezer have handed down to us from the conflicts of the past. One volume of prayer goes up from all Christendom in the spirit of a true fellowship,-"one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all."

(3) And along with this spirit of toleration goes a truer orthodoxy than of old. The denominations may differ, and indeed do differ with respect to minor matters, but they are loyal to old landmarks. If you want to find skepticism with reference to these, go back to the time of the primitive Church and hear the Apostles admonishing against Arianism and Gnosticism and Docetism and Ebionism and NeoPlatonism and countless other erratic modes of faith. If you want to find heretics, go back to the Middle Ages, when the Bible was chained to the monastery

pillars, and see the wide-spread revolt of the human intellect against the absolutism of the Church; the days when the lights were out and there was no open vision; when Buils and Decretals were enforced by scourge and thumb-screw and fagot. If you are in quest of heretics, go back to the time of the Reformation; then, amid the exuberant joy of new-found freedom, all sorts of excesses in infidelity were to be found under the banner of religious emancipation. Or if you are hunting for heretics, go back to the beginning of the present century: the time of Voltaire and Rousseau and the French Encyclopedia; the time of Thomas Paine and the "Age of Reason"; when, at the inauguration of President Dwight, there were only four professing Christians in Yale College; when there was only one professing Christian in Bowdoin College; when Park Street Church was the only orthodox Church in Boston, and so unpopular that the "best people" were accustomed to sit under its ministrations, with mufflers over their faces. Oh no, these are not the days of heresy, but rather of quiet rest on the part of the great majority of believers in the fundamental and proven facts of the Christian system. It is not for nothing that our fathers, in the great struggles of the past, formulated our historic creeds and symbols. We may differ on some things which yet await their final settlement, but the universal Church can stand upon its feet to-day and say with united voice: "I believe in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, died for us, rose again and shall return to judge the quick and dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of