and resumed the battle and gained the day, twenty thousand driving
back two hundred thousand. For those who are defeated in the battle
with sin and death and hell nothing but shame and contempt; but for
those who gain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ the gates of
the New Jerusalem will hoist, and there shall be an abundant entrance
into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord, toward which you do well to
keep your windows open.




STORMED AND TAKEN.

"And Abimelech gat him up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the
people that were with him, and Abimelech took an ax in his
hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it, and
laid it on his shoulder.... And all the people likewise cut
down every man his bough, and followed Abimelech, and put them
to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all
the men of the tower of Shechem died also, about a thousand
men and women."--JUDGES ix: 48, 49.


Abimelech is a name malodorous in Bible history, and yet full of
profitable suggestion. Buoys are black and uncomely, but they tell
where the rocks are. The snake's rattle is hideous, but it gives
timely warning. From the piazza of my summer home, night by night I
saw a lighthouse fifteen miles away, not placed there for adornment,
but to tell mariners to stand off from that dangerous point. So all
the iron-bound coast of moral danger is marked with Saul, and Herod,