o Himself the dispenser of victory. To Him
all power is given on earth, and to Him it is our duty to appeal for
the triumph of His own cause. And here and there, doubtless, a
Christian heart is fervent and faithful in its intercessions. To these,
unknown, unsuspected by the combatants in the heat of battle,--to humble
saints, some of them bed-ridden, ignorant, poverty-stricken, despised,
holy souls who have no controversial skill, no missionary calling, but
who possess the grace habitually to convert their wishes into
prayers,--to such, perhaps, it is due that the idols of India and China
are now bowing down. And when they cease to be a minority in so doing,
when those who now criticise learn to sustain their flagging energies,
we shall see a day of the Lord.

Observe, however, that as the active exertion of the host does not
displace the silence of intercession, neither is it displaced itself:
Joshua really bore his part in the discomfiture of Amalek and his host.
And so it is always. The development of human energy to the uttermost is
a part of the design of Him Who gave a task even to unfallen man. Let
none suppose that to labour is (sufficiently and by itself) to pray; but
also let none idly persuade himself that while energies and
responsibilities are his, to pray is sufficiently to labour.

Thus it came to pass that Israel won its first victory in battle.
Another step was taken toward the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham
to make of him a great nation; and also toward the gradual transference
of the national faith from a passive reliance in Divine interposition to
an abiding confidence in Divine help. Let it be clearly understood that
this latter is the nobler and the more mature faith.

With martial ardour, God took care to inculcate the sense of national
responsibility, without which warriors become no more than brigands. So
it was with Amalek: he had not been attacked or even menaced; he had
marched out from his own territories to assail an innocent and kindred
race ("then _came_ Amalek" ver. 8), and his attack had been cruel and
cowardly, he smote the hindmost, all that were feeble and in the rear,
when they were faint and weary, and he feared not God (Deut. xxv. 18).
Against all such tactics the wrath of God was denounced when, because of
them, Amalek was doomed to total extirpation.

Moses now built an altar, to imprint on the mind of the people this new
lesson. And he called it, "The Lord is my Banner