Clearly Gideon’s family had passed through some terrible tragedy previous to this war of

emancipation. He had not learned our Lord’s teaching of forgiveness and acted on the usual maxims of his age. Possibly, also, he felt that he was the executioner of God’s vengeance upon these chiefs, whose names, ‘‘Immolation’’ and ‘‘Trouble,’’ were derived from their desperate deeds. As they stood anticipating death, they uttered a memorable sentence, ‘‘As the man is, so is his strength.’’ The usefulness of our lives is not to be gauged by what we say or have or think, but by what we are. It is not gift but grace that leaves the deepest dint upon other lives. If you want to be strong in the arm, you must be pure and true at heart.

The gold and purple of the spoil enabled Gideon to make an ephod, presumably on the pattern of that described in Exodus 28. It was not exactly an idol but a kind of fetich, and it diverted the thoughts of the people from Shiloh and the spiritual worship of the unseen and eternal God. So apt is the human heart to cling to some outward emblem—it may be a crucifix, a wafer, or a church—and miss that worship in spirit and in truth for which the Father seeks.

Judges 8: 29—9:6. The Children of Israel were ouilty of great fickleness and instability. They soon relapsed into Baal worship and forgot to show kindness to the family of their great leader. But such is the frailty of the human heart. However hot we may be for Christ to-day, we may be cold and distant to-morrow. It seems as if the great adversary taunts us with this as he did John Bunyan, to whom he kept whispering, “‘T’l] cool you, I’ll cool you.’? We must take our fickle hearts to our Lord, asking him to keep us true and hot in our love. There are times when his friendship is the most real thing in life, but then the rainbowglory fades in the sky. Let it not be so any more, O Lord, we beseech thee!