children stooped down and leaned toward that cradle, and took the little one in His arms, and walked away with it into the bower of eternal summer, your eye began to follow Him, and you followed the treasure He carried, and you have been following them ever since; and, instead of thinking of heaven only once a week, as formerly, you are thinking of it all the time, and you are more pure and tender-hearted than you used to be, and you are patiently waiting for the day-break. It is not self-righteousness in you to acknowledge that you are a better man than you used to be-you are a better woman than you used to be. What was it that brought you the sanctifying blessing? O! it was the dark shadow on the nursery; it was the dark shadow on the short grave; it was the dark shadow on your broken heart; it was the brooding of a great black trouble; it was a raven-it was a raven. Dear Lord, teach this people that white providences do not always mean advancement, and that black providences do not always mean retrogression.

Children of God, get up out of your despondency. The Lord never had so many ravens as he has this morning. Fling your fret and worry to the winds. Sometimes, under the vexations of life, you feel like my little girl of four years last week, who said, under some childish vexations: "Oh, I wish I could go to heaven, and see God, and pick flowers!" He will let you go when the right time comes to pick flowers. Until then, whatever you want, pray for. I suppose Elijah prayed pretty much all the time. Tremendous work behind him. Tremendous work before him. God has no spare ravens for idlers, or for people who are prayerless. I put it in the boldest shape possible, and I am willing to risk my eternity on -it: ask God in the right way for what you want, and you shall have it, if it is best for you. Mrs. Jane Pithey, of

Chicago, a well-known Christian woman, was left by her husband a widow with one half dollar and a cottage. She was palsied, and had a mother, ninety years of age, to support. The widowed soul every day asked God for all that was needed in the household, and the servant even was astonished at the precision with which God answered the prayers of that woman item by item, item by item. One day, rising from the family altar, the servant said: "You have not asked for coal, and the coal is out." Then they stood and prayed for the coal. One hour after that, the servant threw open the door and said: "The coal has come." A generous man, whose name I could give you, had sent-as never before and never since-a supply of coal. You cannot understand it. I do. Ravens! Ravens!

My friend, you have a right to argue from precedent that God is going to take care of you. Has he not done it two or three times every day? That is most marvelous. I look back and I wonder that God has given me food three times a day regularly all my life-time, never missing but once, and then I was lost in the mountains; but that very morning and that very night I met the

ravens.

O the Lord is so good that I wish all this people would trust Him with the two lives-the life you are now living and that which every tick of the watch and every stroke of the clock informs you is approaching. Bread for your immortal soul comes to-day. See! They alight on the platform. They alight on the backs of all the pews. They swing among the arches. Ravens! Ravens! "Blessed are they that hunger after righteousness, for they shall be filled." To all the sinning, and the sorrowing, and the tempted deliverance comes this hour. Look down, and you see nothing but spiritual deformities. Look back, and you see nothing but wasted oppor

tunity. Cast your eye forward, and you have a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversary. But look up, and you behold the whipped shoulders of an interceding Christ, and the face of a pardoning God, and the irradiation of an opening heaven. I hear the whir of their wings. not feel the rush of the air on your cheek? Ravens!

Do you
Ravens!

There is only one question I want to ask: how many of this audience are willing to trust God for the supply of their bodies, and trust the Lord Jesus Christ for the redemption of their immortal souls? Amid the clatter of the hoofs and the clang of the wheels of the judg ment chariot, the whole matter will be demonstrated.

22

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HORNET'S MISSION.

"And the Lord will send the hornet."-Deut. vii: 20.

It seems as if the insect world were determined to war against the human race. It is attacking the grainfields and the orchards and the vineyards. The Colorado beetle, the Nebraska grasshopper, the New Jersey locust, the universal potato destroyer, seem to carry on the work which was begun ages ago when the insects buzzed out of Noah's ark as the door was opened.

In my text the hornet flies out on its mission. It is a species of wasp, swift in its motion and violent in its sting. Its touch is torture to man or beast. We have ali seen the cattle run bellowing from the cut of its lancet. In boyhood we used to stand cautiously looking at the globular nest hung from the tree branch, and while we were looking at the wonderful pasteboard covering we were struck with something that sent us shrieking away. The hornet goes in swarms. It has captains over hundreds, and twenty of them attacking one man will produce certain death. The Persians attempted to conquer a Christian city, but the elephants and the beasts on which the Persians rode were assaulted by the hornet, so that the whole army was broken up and the besieged city was rescued. This burning and noxious insect stung out the Hittites and the Canaanites from their country. What the gleaming sword and chariot of war could not

accomplish was done by the puncture of an insect. The Lord sent the hornet.

My friends, when we are assaulted by behemoths of trouble--great behemoths of trouble-we become chival ric, and we assault them; we get on the high-mettled steed of our courage, and we make a cavalry charge at them, and, if God be with us, we come out stronger and better than when we went in. But, alas! for these insectile annoyances of life-these foes too small to shoot-these things without any avoirdupois weight-the gnats, and the midges, and the flies, and the wasps, and the hornets. In other words, it is the small stinging annoyances of our life which drive us out and use us up. Into the best conditioned life, for some grand and glorious purpose, God sends the hornet.

I remark in the first place that these small stinging annoyances may come in the shape of a sensitive nervous organization. People who are prostrated under typhoid fevers or with broken bones get plenty of sympathy, but who pities anybody that is nervous? The doctors say, and the family says, and everybody says, "Oh! she's only a little nervous; that's all." The sound of a heavy foot, the harsh clearing of a throat, a discord in music, a want of harmony between the shawl and the glove on the same person, a curt answer, a passing slight, the wind from the east, any one of ten thousand annoyances, opens the door for the hornet. The fact is, that the vast majority of the people in this country are overworked, and their nerves are the first to give up. great multitude are under the strain of Leyden, who, when he was told by his physician that if he did not stop working while he was in such poor physical health he would die, responded, "Doctor, whether I live or die the wheel must keep going around." These persons of whom