re so called lies in the fact that in them also the Spirit of God is
resting, and through them the Spirit of God is working.

This lesson, which still needs to be enforced in our own day, is
perhaps best deduced from an incident so early and so simple as this.
Just as we may learn more of the way in which an engine really works
from a simple model--say of George Stephenson's--than from one of the
complicated machines of the present day, so we may gain the more
instruction from this incident, because of its very simple character,
while its antiquity keeps it out of the confusion caused by modern
controversies.

Eldad and Medad were men called of God to undertake holy service for
the good of His people. In their case the call was manifestly inward
rather than outward. Though truly chosen, they were not in the
Tabernacle, nor were they wrapped in the cloud, and they received no
ordination from the laying on of hands by Moses and Aaron. The
evidence of their call lay in their fitness for the work, and their
fitness was due to the gift of the Spirit. Yet all this occurred under
a dispensation which was far more strict in ceremonial law than that
under which we live.

What does it teach? It surely confirms our belief that the word of God
is not bound. The exposition and enforcement of Divine truth is not to
be confined to those who have received priestly ordination by some
outward rite. No man therefore has the right to forbid any preacher
from exercising his functions on the ground that his orders are not
regular, or because he has not been recognised by an Episcopate, a
Presbytery, a Conference, or a Union.

To put the same truth in hortatory form, I would say to any one who has
knowledge of Divine truth, who has experienced the graces of the Holy
Spirit, and who has the gift of utterance: You are called upon, by the
fact of possessing these qualifications, to serve God as opportunity
comes. You ought not to be silent on the claims of Christ, nor should
you refrain from leading others in prayer, while on every other topic
you are fluency itself. "_Neglect not the gift that is in thee_,"
whether it came by laying on of hands, or in some other way. Every
true convert should sometimes feel as the prophet Jeremiah felt, when
he said, "_The word of the Lord was within me as a burning fire shut up
in my bones. I was weary with forbearing and could not stay_." The
work assigned too often exclusively to the minister