quipment complete. The helmsman stands impatient at the wheel,
and all the sailors are alert, but not a ripple runs along the vessel's
side. She waits, and must wait, for a heavenly breeze to fill her
sails, and till it comes she cannot stir. Like that ship the Church is
wanting impulse, and we ought to be waiting for it, and praying for it.
The power we need can only come from heaven, the breath of God must be
our real moving force, and we should be wiser, stronger, and more
hopeful if we entered into the meaning of the old, oft-repeated verse:

"At anchor laid, remote from home,
Toiling, I cry, 'sweet Spirit, come,'
Celestial breeze no longer stay,
But swell my sails, and speed my way."

BARZILLAI

BY REV. GEORGE MILLIGAN, M.A., D.D.

"There is nothing," says Socrates to Cephalus in the _Republic_, "I
like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as
travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of
whom it is right to learn the character of the way, whether it is
rugged or difficult, or smooth and easy" (p. 328 E.).

It is to such an aged traveller that we are introduced in the person of
Barzillai the Gileadite. And though he is one of the lesser-known
characters of Scripture--and we might perhaps never have heard of him
at all had it not been for his connection with King David--on the few
occasions on which he does appear he acts with an independence and
disinterestedness which are very striking.

The first of these occasions is at Mahanaim, in his own country of
Gilead. In the strong fortress there David and his companions had
taken refuge after the disastrous revolt of Absalom. Owing to their
hurried flight, the fugitives were wanting in almost all the
necessaries of life, and they could hardly fail also to have been a
little apprehensive of the kind of welcome the Gileadites would extend
to them. But if so, their fears were soon set at rest. Three of the
richest and most influential men in the district at once came to their
aid. Shobi the son of Nahash, and Machir the son of Ammiel, and
Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim, brought beds, and cups, and wheat,
and barley, and honey, and butter, and sheep--all, in fact, that was
needed--for David, and for the people that were with him: for they
said, "_The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the
wilderness_" (2 Sam. xvii. 29).

In so acting, the first of these, Shobi, may have been trying to