emble soil that drinketh in the rain
that cometh upon it oft, and yet to remain unfruitful. Already the
conduct of Israel was such that the place was named from human
worthlessness rather than Divine beneficence. Too often, it is the more
conspicuous part of the story of the relations of God and man.

_AMALEK._

xvii. 8-16.

Nothing can be more natural, to those who remember the value of a
fountain in the East, than that Amalek should swoop down from his own
territories upon Israel, as soon as this abundant river tempted his
cupidity. This unprovoked attack of a kindred nation leads to another
advance in the education of the people.

They had hitherto been the sheep of God: now they must become His
warriors. At the Red Sea it was said to them, "Stand still, and see the
salvation of the Lord ... the Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall
hold your peace" (xiv. 13). But it is not so now. Just as the function
of every true miracle is to lead to a state of faith in which miracles
are not required; just as a mother reaches her hand to a tottering
infant, that presently the boy may go alone, so the Lord fought for
Israel, that Israel might learn to fight for the Lord. The herd of
slaves who came out of Egypt could not be trusted to stand fast in
battle; and what a defeat would have done with them we may judge by
their outcries at the very sight of Pharaoh. But now they had experience
of Divine succour, and had drawn the inspiring breath of freedom. And so
it was reasonable to expect that some chosen men of them at least will
be able to endure the shock of battle. And if so, it was a matter of the
last importance to develop and render conscious the national spirit, a
spirit so noble in its unselfish readiness to die, and in its scorn of
such material ills as anguish and mutilation compared with baseness and
dishonour, that the re-kindling of it in seasons of peril and conflict
is more than half a compensation for the horrors of a battle-field.

We do not now inquire what causes avail to justify the infliction and
endurance of those horrors. Probably they will vary from age to age; and
as the ties grow strong which bind mankind together, the rupture of them
will be regarded with an ever-deepening shudder,--just as England
to-day would certainly refuse to make war upon our American kinsmen for
a provocation which (rightly or wrongly) she would not endure from
Russians. But the point to be observed is that war cannot be in