e
are to be so taken up with God's plan that we have no time to idle away
and no disposition to turn aside.

"It does not so much matter how many members one may have in his
church, for under the banner of a popular Christianity soldiers march.
What if there should be a struggle ahead when to be a Christian would
mean to suffer martyrdom, or dying at the stake, or contending with the
beasts of Ephesus like Paul, how then do you think it would be?" And
yet all the time to-day the struggle is going on; both from within and
from without the foe is assailing us, the Bible is being attacked,
Christ is being denied, the resurrection is counted a myth, and the
future is being questioned, and in every part of the church it would
seem as if men thought that the life of the Christian was all a
holiday, for people are idling, gossiping, buying and selling, marrying
and giving in marriage, instead of being in the thick of the fight in
the name of the Lord of hosts. Give us three hundred in the church
right with God rather than the thirty-two thousand compromising with
sin and the world, and we shall win the victory.

I

I am impressed in this story with the thought of how much may be
accomplished without wealth, influence or material strength. We
somehow seem to think that we cannot work as ministers without a fine
equipment. We have an idea that we must have a committee back of us to
be assured of success, that if we are without influence we have a small
mission in the world, forgetting that Michelangelo wrought the frescoes
in the Sistine Chapel with the ochres which he digged with his own
hands in the garden of the Vatican; forgetting also that the greatest
work in the world has been accomplished by men like Gideon, who delayed
not for elaborate preparation, but just took firebrands and
torches--indeed, anything they could lay their hands upon--and cried
out, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and won the victory. The
text is most striking, and presents an outline which any one ought to
be able to see.

II

_They stood_. It is not so easy to stand as to march or to fight. I
have been told that the most difficult service of the soldier is picket
duty; and yet never until we learn to stand shall we be able to fight.
In the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, the thirteenth and fourteenth
verses, we read, "And Moses said unto the people. Fear ye not, stand
still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will she