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could not see his Lord. He saw the waves, he felt the spray, he heard the wind. But he looked and he saw no face, no arm, no hand, and in that moment Peter began to sink. Do we still detect that presence in the tempest? Do we discern the presence and the love of God in the confusion of our common day? When we see nothing but the storm, we sink. When we see Christ enthroned in it, we triumph.

J'

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY

Morning

AI AND THE SIN OF ACHAN

Passage to be read: Josh. vii. 1-26.

ERICHO was now in ruins, and Israel must press on

to other victories. Had Jericho been the capital of

the land, its fall would have been the signal for a wide submission. But Canaan was broken up into many petty kingships, and Jericho with its suburbs was but one of these. So the conquest of Jericho was not final; it left the other cities unsubdued; and the first to oppose the march of Israel was the little highland town of Ai. It had a familiar ring for Joshua, that name. It mingled with boyish memories of the story of Abraham (Gen. xii. 8). And when Joshua heard that yonder town to the west was Bethel, how near him it would bring the God of Jacob! Ai, then, must be taken next; and Joshua, acting on his scouts' advice, sent some three thousand men to the assault.

BUT if Jericho, that seemed impregnable, had fallen,

Ai, that looked an easy capture, stood fast. The hardy townsmen did not await attack. They sallied out of the ports as the Israelites were clambering up the hill, and in the swift impetuousness of their highland charge, as before the torrent of a highland river, they swept their foes down the slope into the quarries. It was a terrible check to these victorious arms. It staggered the faith of all, even of Joshua. We do not wonder to find Joshua, with rent clothes and dust upon his head, lying

on his face before the Lord. Then Joshua learned the secret of the failure. The Captain of the armies of the Lord had sheathed His sword (v. 13), because Jehovah's covenant had been broken. And what the sin was that had angered God, and how the guilt of it was fixed on Achan, and how Achan was punished in the valley, all this, in the strong and simple words of Scripture, is written for us in these verses.

Now

OW let us learn some lessons, and first the perils of our victories. After seven days spent marching around Jericho, Ai must have looked a petty place. Compared with those mighty walls that had seemed to rise to heaven, the battlements of Ai were as nothing. Flushed with their victory, heated with the slaughter, the Israelites needed no miracle to capture Ai. There was little necessity of calling upon God to help them to win a little place like that. Three thousand men will do it, said the spies. Then let three thousand men be sent, said Joshua. But of earnest prayer to God for victory, and of cries for help to the Man with the drawn sword, I find never a whisper in the story. And that is the constant peril of our triumphs. They make us confident and self-assertive. Our heart is throbbing, our arm is strong, we almost forget our need of God to-day. So God rebukes His children, lifts up the cup of failure to their lips, scatters them on the hills and through the quarries; until like Joshua and all the elders, and all the apostles and disciples too, they learn that 'without Me ye can do nothing.'

NOTE, too, that the blame of our failures may lie at our own doors. When the three thousand fled and the thirty-six were slain, Joshua went straight to God about it, and he did well. But read his prayer, and you will catch a strange note in it-Joshua reproaches God. Why hast Thou brought us here? Why art Thou going to

destroy us? Why were we not content to dwell across the Jordan—as if the power of God had not been seen at Jericho. Then Joshua learned-and none but a loving Father would have so taught him-that the blame lay not in heaven, but at his door. It was not God who was responsible for the flight; it was sin in the camp of Joshua that had caused it. Blame not the promises, charge not that sad disaster on the Throne; the secret of failure lies in the tents of Israel! How prone we still are when we are worsted, to carry the blame of it too far away! How ready, in every fault and every failure, to trace the source of it anywhere but in ourselves! In spiritual defeats never accuse another. Never cry out against the name of God. It is in the tented muster of my heart, and in the things buried and stamped under the ground there, that the secret of my moral disaster lies.

MARK, too, the wide sweep of a single sin. When Achan stole the Babylonian garment and the gold, he never dreamed that others would suffer for it. The crime was his, and if it should ever be discovered, the punishment would fall on his own back. If one had whispered to him in the critical moment that the whole army would suffer for his tampering, how Achan would have ridiculed the thought! Yet that was the very thing that happened, and that very thing is happening still. From Joshua to the meanest camp-follower of Israel, there was not one untouched by Achan's folly. It scattered the three thousand before Ai, it slew the sixand-thirty, it spread dismay through all the host. And how Achan's home was brought to ruin by it, is all told in this tragical chapter. That is ever the sad work of sin. Like the circles of ripples, its consequences spread, and on what far shores they shall break, none knows but God. I may think that my sin is hidden. I may be certain none has observed my vice. But in ways mysterious its influences radiate, and others suffer because I am bad.

BE sure, too, that your sin will find you out. Humanly

speaking, it was the unlikeliest thing in the world that the sin of Achan should ever be detected. There was no one to miss that Babylonian garment, for the wearer was lying stabbed in Jericho. There would be never a hand stretched out for the silver again, for the hands that had counted it were stiff in death. When Achan stole it, too, the moment was one of such overmastering excitement, that the eyes of his fellowcomrades had been blind. He was quite safe. He could never be caught. Then came that morning when the priest stood in the door of the tabernacle, and the people passed before him in their order. And Judah was taken, and in Judah the clan of the Zerahites; and the house of Zabdi was taken, and in that house the family of Carmi, and when one by one the members of this family filed past, the voice of Jehovah indicated Achan. Was there ever such an instance of divine detection? Ever? -the page of every human life is written with them. God is all merciful: God is love. But be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

E

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY

Evening

THE TRANSFIGURATION

Passage to be read: Matt. xvii. 1-21.

VERY reader of the Bible has noticed how often

it brings us into mountain scenery. It was on a mountain that Abraham prepared to offer Isaac. It was from a mountain-top that men received the law of Moses, and from a mountain-side the law of Christ. The bitterest conflict between Elijah and the prophets of

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