u do the same." They are obedient to their commander.

Oh, what a strange army, with what strange equipment! They come to the
foot of the temple of Berith, and Abimelech takes his limb of a tree
and throws it down; and the first platoon of soldiers come up and they
throw down their branches; and the second platoon, and the third,
until all around about the temple of Berith there is a pile of
tree-branches. The Shechemites look out from the windows of the temple
upon what seems to them childish play on the part of their enemies.
But soon the flints are struck, and the spark begins to kindle the
brush, and the flame comes up all through the pile, and the red
elements leap to the casement, and the woodwork begins to blaze, and
one arm of flame is thrown up on the right side of the temple, and
another arm of flame is thrown up on the left side of the temple,
until they clasp their lurid palms under the wild night sky, and the
cry of "Fire!" within, and "Fire!" without announces the terror, and
the strangulation, and the doom of the Shechemites, and the complete
overthrow of the temple of the god Berith. Then there went up a shout,
long and loud, from the stout lungs and swarthy chests of Abimelech
and his men, as they stood amid the ashes and the dust, crying:
"Victory! Victory!"

Now, I learn first from this subject the folly of depending upon any
one form of tactics in anything we have to do for this world or for
God. Look over the weaponry of olden times--javelins, battle-axes,
habergeons--and show me a single weapon with which Abimelech and his
men could have gained such complete victory. It is no easy thing to
take a temple thus armed. I saw a house where, during revolutionary
times, a man and his wife kept back a whole regiment hour after hour,
because they were inside the house, and the assaulting soldiers were
outside the house. Yet here Abimelech and his army come up, they
surround this temple, and they capture it without the loss of a single
man on the part of Abimelech, although I suppose some of the old
Israelitish heroes told Abimelech: "You are only going up there to be
cut to pieces." Yet you are willing to testify to-day that by no other
mode--certainly not by ordinary modes--could that temple so easily, so
thoroughly have been taken. Fathers and mothers, brethren and sisters
in Jesus Christ, what the Church most wants to learn this day is that
any plan is right, is lawful, is best, which helps to overthrow