weight of
them all; loving them all, attending to them all, interceding for them
all. All that befalls me, Jesus orders. Food and raiment, health and
strength, friends and home, are gifts from Him. Every tear I shed, He
knows it, He appoints it. If he sends me sorrow and trial, I will go and
enter the gates of this city SHECHEM, and remember, "_Jesus_ (Jesus, who
died for me) bears me on his _shoulder_!"

Moses speaks of God conducting the children of Israel through the
wilderness of old as a kind father carries on his shoulder his weak and
weary child. "_Thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a
man doth bear his son._"[28] And David says in an hour of trouble, "_I
am poor and needy, yet the Lord_ (lit) _carries_ me on his heart."[29]

I like to look at that New Testament picture--Jesus, the good Shepherd,
carrying a bleating sheep or lamb back on His shoulder to the fold. That
poor wanderer had gone astray on the dark mountains; but the great and
gracious Shepherd had gone after it "until He found it; and when He
_had_ found it, _He laid it on His SHOULDERS, rejoicing_."[30]

Young reader, what _perfect_ security and safety you have in Jesus, and
in His Gospel City! Far, far more so than the manslayer had of old in
his. I daresay, even although he was delivered from the Avenger, the
Hebrew refugee could not help at times dreading lest the other might
come upon him secretly. I daresay, at night, on his lonely couch, he
would sometimes dream of the Goel stealing beside his pillow, and he
would start from his unquiet sleep at the scaring vision. Not so in the
case of those who have fled to the "Gospel Refuge." They can say in
sweet confidence, "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep; because
thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety."[31] He who is their
"_Keeper_" says of them, "_They shall never perish; neither shall any
pluck them out of my hand._"[32]

[Illustration: Hebron]

Third City--Hebron.

Hebron is the most ancient of all the cities of Canaan. It was as old,
if not older, than Damascus, and was built seven years before Zoar in
Egypt. After wandering about from place to place in the land of promise,
pitching their tents and altars, it was here the patriarchs had, for the
first time, a settled home. We need not wonder at their selection of the
old Canaanite city, on the peaceful slope of the southern hills,
nestling amid olive-groves and terebinths, and looking down on one of
th