and they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord."

The Jewish Talmud tells us that Rabbi Akiba was once travelling through the country in a time of war. He had with him an ass, a fowl, and a lamp. At nightfall he reached a village where he sought shelter, but without success. "All that God does is done. well," he said; and going to the forest he resolved to pass the night there. He lit his lamp, but the wind blew it out. "All that God does is done well," he said. The ass and the bird were devoured by wild beasts; yet still the Rabbi said no more than, " All that God does is done well." Next day he learned that a troop of the enemy's soldiers had passed through the forest that night. If the ass had brayed, if the cock had crowed, or if a light had been seen, he would probably have lost his life.

One day a lad picked up a gold ring, and as the owner could not be discovered he gave it to his mother to keep, telling her that it would do for his wedding ring. Inside the ring the motto, "God's providence mine inheritance," was engraven, and the boy said that it should be the motto of his life. His life was long and prosperous, and when he died a representation of the ring was cut on his tombstone, and underneath his name the last text he was able to read: "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me into glory."

Let us take God's providence for our inheritance,

and there will be no room left for vain hankerings after other and imagined better portions. The manna comes from heaven in appointed measure. Let others covet the double supply. I am content with such things as I have, for He hath said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

Two little girls were walking home on a moonlight evening. One said to the other, "No matter how fast we walk the moon keeps up with us every step of the way; it doesn't move at all, and yet it is always going along with us." So it is with God; though He seems far away, He is always near us in the journey of life.

Those who are wise make Him the greatest factor in their daily calculations--the chief force and fact in their lives. To will what God wills is the only science that gives us any rest.

O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us! Let this or that be done as Thou shalt please! Give what Thou wilt. Deal with me as Thou thinkest good. Set me where Thou wilt. Behold, I am Thy servant, prepared for all things; for I desire not to live unto myself, but unto Thee; and oh, that I could do it worthily!

Roundell Palmer, who became Lord Selborne and Chancellor of England, lived in the spirit of this prayer. In the keenest legal and political excitements his thoughts turned naturally to the overruling providence of God. "You see," he wrote in 1886 to a friend,

"I can sometimes croak as well as you. But, when my soul is in heaviness, and when all seems dark, there is always one thing to suggest strength and patience— the belief in a Power greater than ours, which can, and will in the end, overrule all things for good."

CHAPTER XVI

OLD TESTAMENT HEROES

"It is the province of reason to judge of the morality of Scripture."Butler.

"True religion does not wish people to treat their reason as though it were a dangerous beast to be beaten back with a bar of iron."-Cardinal Newman.

N estimating Old Testament heroes people often

IN

fall into opposite errors. One is, the error of those who fancy that what they would consider wrong in a heathen contemporary must not be condemned in Jacob or in David, or in other persons mentioned in the Bible; and that when any one is praised there, every act of his life is approved of by God and held up to us as an example. The other error is, to test the characters of such men as Jacob, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, by our Christian standard of morality, and to make no allowance for the time, place, and circumstances in which their lives were cast. To both these classes of incapable judges we may say, "Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all."

Is it not true that most people, at least when young, prefer the character of Esau to that of Jacob? The plain man, living in tents, who was to inherit the promise, appears to us at first sight far less chivalrous, good-natured, and guileless than his brother, the daring huntsman. Who has not felt sympathy for the impulsive man of the field, as he returns weary from the chase, with his quiver and bow, crying out to his thrifty, stay-at-home brother, "Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage"?

Èsau, we think, ought not to have sold his birthright in order to indulge appetite; but what of Jacob? Did he not entrap his brother, deceive his father, make a bargain even in prayer? In his dealings with Laban, in his meeting with Esau, is he not calculating and deceitful?

It is true that Jacob did all this and was all this. We ought not to forget, however, that the story is an Eastern one, told without any reference to the moral conceptions of modern Christendom or even to Western secular ideas of honour and of fair play.

Very valuable are the lessons for young men in the history of these two brothers, Esau and Jacob, going out into life from their father's home. In both there are many things to be imitated, and many things to be avoided; but, in the main, Jacob's example is the one to be followed, because, with all his faults, he had learned what his brother had not, that life is an earnest thing.