became counselor to David, and, on the removal of Joab, the commander-in-chief under Solomon.

It is recorded that the mighty deeds of individual prowess which won for Benaiah his exalted rank were three. He slew two lion-like men of Moab. He killed an Egyptian giant nine feet in height. Being unarmed, he sprang at the giant and taking from him his spear, he slew him with his own weapon.

It is also said that he slew a lion in a pit in a snowy day. The details of the story are all wanting. It may be that the lion, driven by hunger, had attacked a child at the village gate; and that Benaiah had swiftly tracked him through the snow to his den in a pit; and climbing down the slippery sides had killed him there.

The lion is the king of beasts, and the great terror to the shepherds. To kill a lion with a sword or spear or club was very difficult and required great strength and bravery. But to face one in a pit was unusual. Neither the lion, nor the man, could well run away. It was a case of "beard the lion in his den." Many men have been forced into the arena with the lion, but few have ever voluntarily gone down into the pit with one.

The writer of the text adds as an additional evidence of Benaiah's daring deed that it was a snowy day. Snow was quite uncommon in that country, and such weather usually drove the people of Judah to the shelter of their homes. The snow would also make one's footing very uncertain on the mountain and the cold would benumb the muscles. The bottom and sides of the pit would be slippery, and the lion desperate from hunger.

The word lion is used about one hundred and fifty times in the Bible, and is most generally used to illustrate strength, fierceness, bravery or some like quality. Sometimes it is used in a good sense, as where the Messiah is called "the lion of the tribe of Judah;" sometimes in a bad sense, as where Zepheniah, complaining of the wickedness of the rulers, says "her princes within her are roaring lions." The form of the lion was prominent in ancient Jewish art and the lion also appears often in vision literature, where it represents certain qualities, "and the first beast was like a lion."

Courage is a fundamental virtue in man. It could hardly be called a high form of virtue, but it is certainly a fundamental one. There

was never a greater need of courage than now, but the form of courage is different. Moral courage is just as real bravery as physical courage, and is a higher type of virtue. War is said. by the ancients to be the mother of heroes, and so it is. It is right that we should admire physical bravery and strength as we do, and it is not altogether a survival of paganism that so many of the presidents of the United States have been generals, and yet moral courage is far above and beyond physical courage in its rank and importance.

You remember how Peter drew his sword and slashed at the head of one of those who came to arrest his master; but that when a few hours afterwards a young woman suggested that he was a follower of Christ, he denied with an oath that he had ever known him. What was true then is true now.

I. To be a Christian requires much moral courage. One of the trying things is, that public sentiment always commends physical bravery, and quite often, if not indeed generally, scoffs at moral courage. Let a fireman, in the course of his regular business duty, risk his life to save a life, and we all rightly join in his praise. Let

some one have the courage to differ with the majority upon some moral question and see. A congressman may have as much need of courage as a general. This kind of bravery does not require that we have bone and muscle or that we belong to any age or sex or class; it does not require that we go to any place; for the opportunity to be brave will come to us. The man who deserted his young wife and joined the army that went to fight in the Philippine Islands had to go a long way for a chance to show his courage, while the wife who went out to work to keep his children out of an Illinois poor-house had the opportunity to show courage brought to her door.

The Bible teaches us that we are in a sort of fight as Christians, but that we are wrestling, not against flesh and blood, but that our enemy is one who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. That a spiritual conflict with this lion must be waged continually. To be a Christian is to learn to walk by faith and not by sight, and this requires bravery.

Susie Burdick, returning to her work in China, is a splendid example of moral courage. Peter Velthuysen going into the fever coast of

Africa was as brave as if it had been some battle of armies. But others are tried as well as missionaries. It may be a young man or woman in Plainfield who believes that it is wrong to join in some particular form of private or public amusement. Who believes that there is little courage required to stand for principle. It may be some boy or girl who would like to acknowledge the Saviour, but who knows that the other boys and girls would make fun of them. It may be some man down in the shops who is a Christian and who ought to let it be known to the other men. It may be a student in some large school who is a member of a small denomination. It may be some traveling man to whom it is a cross to say, "I am a Christian and a Seventhday Baptist." It may be some invalid who must bear pain-on and on and on. It may be some one who is misunderstood and abused and who must endure in silence.

To be a Christian means to be separate from the world, and it takes a brave person, in these days, to come out and be separate. But there are battles within as well as battles without the man. There is sin crowding into the heart. There are temptations to pride, to worldliness