that the Lord's help
would continue? The thought of being king, and of having a set office,
perhaps without the Lord's assistance, was too much for him. He was
right in his refusal. He was one of those men who can do much if left
to themselves, and if they are supported by the Most High, but who
shrink and tremble when something is expected from them. "The Lord
shall be your King," he said. He trusted that God would speak to the
nation as He had spoken to him, and without any leader would guide them
aright. That is not the Lord's way. But though Gideon would not be
king, he desired some honour, and he asked that he might have the
ear-rings of the Midianites who had fallen. Therewith he made an
image, a thing forbidden. It stood in his house, a record of what the
Lord had done for him; and yet this very record became a snare, and
Israel fell to worshipping it, and Jehovah was displaced by the
testimony of His own love for us.

Your grandfather is now dead. Abimelech reigns in his place, and has
slain all the children of Gideon save myself. Israel has returned to
Baal; its strength has departed; before long we shall be subdued under
the Philistines. Excepting in our own house, there are none that have
not gone a-whoring after Baal; the memory of the battle by the hill
Moreh is clean forgotten; and soon the memory of my father will also
disappear, and it will be as if he had never lived. To think that the
vision of the angel in Ophrah and the night in the valley of Jezreel
should end in nothing!

* * * * * *

That night Jotham died.

_Fourteen Hundred Tears Later_.

"The time would fail me to tell of Gideon, . . . who through
faith . . . out of weakness was made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens."--_Epistle to the Hebrews_.

_Three Thousand Years Later_.

"'The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon,' answered Balfour as he parried
and returned the blow."--_Old Mortality_.

SAMUEL.

_Samuel immediately before his death spoke thus at Bamah:--_

I am now old, and before many days are past I shall be gathered to my
fathers. Behold, here I am: witness against me before the Lord: Whose
ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded?
whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to
blind mine eyes therewith, and I will restore it you. How could it be
that I could be other than that which I h