of Judges, "So let all
thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun
when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years."

It seems incredible that there could be such a difference in the
experiences of God's people, and yet, as you study them in all their
wanderings, you will find, if you turn over but one leaf of the Bible,
the people who sing to-day are active in evil to-morrow, and the
history of Israel is the history of one's self. Life is like a short
ladder, as some one has said, and we spend most of our time going up to
pray and down to sin. There is a striking picture in the second verse
of the sixth chapter. The chosen people of God were dwelling in caves
instead of their rightful positions in their homes, and the same is
true to-day; men who ought to be at the front are left behind because
they are living selfish lives or lives of sin. Do not for a moment
think that I am saying that because a man is living out of sight that
he is doing nothing, for we have only to remember Gideon to know that
this is not true. He was a hidden man doing an honest work, and the
Angel of the Lord called him, saying, "The Lord is with thee, thou
mighty man of valor." To this Gideon makes a significant reply in the
thirteenth verse of the sixth chapter of Judges, "And Gideon said unto
him, Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen
us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying,
Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken
us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites." For the angel
had said, "The Lord is with thee, Gideon," and Gideon had said, "If the
Lord is with us, then how can these things be?" And the angel did not
say it. How often it is true that we miss the truth of God because we
miss the grammar of the Bible. When Gideon had thus replied, we read
in the fourteenth verse of the sixth chapter, "And the Lord _looked_
upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel
from the hand of the Midianites; have not I sent thee?" And the thing
to pay special attention to there is that the angel _looked_ at Gideon.
Sometimes in translating a foreign language you come upon a word which
you cannot express in your own language; so it is with us here, for the
Lord looked Gideon into a new man and said unto him, "Go and thou shalt
save the people," which leads me to say that one man