there was a traitor in the camp. And one of his servants said, "None, my lord, O king; but Elisha the prophet that is in Israel, is the real discoverer of the thing; and such is the penetrating ken of that prophet of the Lord, that you cannot whisper a word in your bed chamber that shall not reverberate in echoes through his ministry, and because of his power." Well, the king, excessively annoyed at this, that even in the secresy of his own palace he could not say a word the echoes of which would not be heard by everybody to whom Elisha wished to convey them, said, "Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him;" not thinking that the man who had these prerogatives, or was armed with so startling and mighty a mission, would naturally be able to prevent his being arrested by any force that he could send after him. He sent horses and chariots, and a great host; they came in the secresy, and silence, and darkness of the night; they compassed the city about; the king of Syria forgetting that the battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift, nor all results achieved by might, nor by power, nor by numbers, nor by hosts. Well, when the servant of the man of God,-not Gehazi, for he had dismissed Gehazi as a detected thief and liar; and had no doubt sought out a better servant, and found a good and a pious one ;-" when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots ;" and there was thus no chance of escape for him or for his unhappy master. The moment that he saw this he ran to his master and said, Alas, my master, how shall we do?" evidently despairing. But Elisha answered, with a calmness, a quietness, and a self-possession which are always the attributes of strength and genius,

"Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." And he rolled aside the curtain that concealed the invisible from the visible, the higher level from the lower; and the servant saw the mountains around full of horses and chariots of fire, as the mountains are round Jerusalem, ready to defend and protect God's great and holy prophet, whilst he was executing God's great and beneficent mission. Well, when they came down to seize him, Elisha prayed unto the Lord, and said, not out of private and personal spite, but acting judiciously as God's agent, "Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness." And God did so. Elisha then led them out of the way, and brought them into Samaria; and then he opened their eyes, and they perceived that they were in the midst of a hostile country, surrounded by foes. "And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them ? shall I smite them ?"-thinking now that he had got the Syrians completely in his power, and thirsting for revenge, for he was anything but perfect, any more than the king of Syria. But how magnanimous and noble was the reply of Elisha, which was the will of God as well as the dictate of his own heart: "Thou shalt not smite them; wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master." Now if you want the secret of victory in every instance in this world, here it is overcome evil with good; heap coals of fire upon their heads. You will never overcome evil with evil, calumny with calumny, reviling with reviling, bad names with bad names; but you will overcome evil with good. How did God overcome it? By Christ upon the cross,

the expression of his love. How does Christ overcome it now? Rejected and despised of men on earth, he spends the cycles of the years in interceding and pleading for them. If we could only act upon that principle as individual Christians, we should have more peace and quiet; and humanly speaking, in the light of a mere earthly expediency, more success and prosperity in the world.

Well, it came to pass after this that the king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. There was a great famine, the details of which are extremely shocking; and yet these details were but slight instalments of the awful scenes recorded by Josephus in his History of the Jews, when he describes the memorable siege of Jerusalem, and the downfall and dispersion of the Jews. The incidents recorded in this siege are mere trifles in comparison of what took place there. And still when one reads the history of the siege of Sebastopol, and compares it with the records of the siege of Jerusalem, dreadful as were the scenes, and terrible as were the sufferings of our countrymen at Sebastopol, they were perhaps as nothing compared with the awful scenes and sufferings of the Jews in the last act of that dreadful tragedy in which they were the sufferers, and Titus and Vespasian were the chief actors.

We read that the king, thinking that Elisha was the cause of all, sought to destroy him; just as Herod, thinking that John the Baptist was the troubler of his conscience, took off his head; the one and the other forgetting that the secret spring of the evil was not in the prophet that foretold it, but in their own sins and iniquities before a holy and a heart-searching God..

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ASSURED CONFIDENCE;

OR

WITH AND AGAINST.

"And he answered, Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them."-2 KINGS vi. 16.

I MAY notice some parallel passages which cast light partially upon this. The first occurs in 2 Chronicles xxxii. 7, where he says, "Be strong and courageous; be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him; for there be more with us than with him." And if we refer to the other parallel passage given also in the margin, we find it refers us to Romans viii. 31: “If God be for us, who can be against us ?" Take, therefore, the one passage in connection with the other; and let us, in the combined light of all three, learn the lessons that will edify, instruct, and comfort.

First of all you will notice, that there were two great classes, the besieged and the besiegers, referred to in this chapter; the besieged the people of God, the besiegers the enemies of God. There are but two great classes in every company, whatever the circumstantial, or intellectual, or relative distinctions; there are only two great classes that God sees, and if our eyes were opened we also should see-sinners by nature, with a succession from Adam; and saints by grace, with a succession from Christ. I assume, therefore, that this passage is the language of comfort to those who are saints by grace, and need to be cheered and

you

encouraged against imaginary or real difficulties that may beset and surround them. There are two sights in our world. There is the sight of the natural eye, an inlet of beauty, and magnificence, and joy; and there is the yet higher sight of the eye of faith, which sees far beyond the visible horizon, penetrates the walls of heaven, looks through the cope and dome of the sky itself, and sees arrayed on our side hosts like chariots and horses of fire, our protection, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem. What I wish therefore to shew is, that when to the human eye there seems to be dan ger, or there seems to be inevitable destruction; if our eyes could be opened, as one day they will be, we should see that as in the bosom of the blackest cloud that threatens to overshadow the green fields and the fertile earth-and in its fleecy folds there are dewdrops for which the rose and the violet are thirsting; so in what seems to us careering judgment coming to blast and destroy, there are hidden and folded up God's covenant mercies, ready to descend, and bless and beautify the surface that they visit. What, therefore, I wish to shew from this passage is, that the things that seem to us altogether hostile, when seen by the inner eye, which is the true eye, are altogether for us, if—that is a little word, but it involves a mighty amount of meaning-if we be the children of God.

Now, then, let us ask, who are they that are with us? I do not say we see them. We have, many of us, so vulgar, common place, and mean apprehensions, that we fancy there is no force where there is not bulk protruding and thrusting itself upon our sight. We fancy very often that there is no good where there is no noise or sound. And yet this is a great mistake.