two people who are in sympathy what each wishes, and Jesus Christ will
speak to us, if we keep close at His heels.

They that follow Him will 'receive His words' in another sense. They
will take them in, and His words will not be wasted. And they will
receive them in yet another sense. They will carry them out and do
them, and His words will not be in vain.

So, dear brethren, the peace, the strength, the blessedness, the
goodness, of our lives flow from these three stages, which this singer
so long ago had found to be the essence of everything, recognition of
the timeless tenderness of God, the yielding to and answering that
love, so that it separates us for Himself, the calm security and happy
submission which follow thereon, the imitation of Him in daily life,
and the walking in His steps, which is rewarded and made more perfect
by hearing more distinctly the whisper of His loving, commanding voice.




ISRAEL THE BELOVED

'The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the Lord
shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His
shoulders.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 12.


Benjamin was his father's favourite child, and the imagery of this
promise is throughout drawn from the relations between such a child and
its father. So far as the future history of the tribes is shadowed in