Ai. When it was not taken the first time, examination was to be made to find out the reason of the failure; a proper plan to achieve success was laid down, and the attack was to be made again and again, until full victory was accomplished. So must it be with us. When we see Ai before us, whether it be in our temper, in our greedy desires, in our vanity, in our apathy for good, or in any other form of selfishness, we must strive, and pray, and labour, until we have done the sacred work required of us, and rooted out this enemy of God from our hearts. We must first bring up the truths of the Word condemnatory of the evil we are striving to overcome. They are numerous, for the whole Word has for its object to subdue evil and to enforce good. The front attack consists of these soldiers of heaven, these opposers of sin, these words of weight, under the direction of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, our Divine Joshua. The insolence, impatience, and recklessness of evil, are shewn in the rush forth of the men of Ai to repel the approach of the warriors of Israel.

But Joshua had also placed five thousand men to lie in wait, and at the signal from him to assail the pestilent city from behind, and give it to destruction. These ambush-men, placed behind, on the west, represent those perceptions which observe the origin and tendency of the principles with which we have to do. Influx from heaven enters into good men from behind, where the cerebellum lies in secret power, the centre of our whole nervous system. Influx from the lower world also enters from behind. The liers in wait behind, represent those powers of observation which watch the operation of the hidden impulses and motives, which are the mainsprings of wrong. Observation behind, then, represents watch to detect the inner character of our resistance to the Most High. When the soul is determined to inquire into the real nature of its weakness and failures, to observe the issues of death as they come out of the impurities of self, and of the dark world which plays upon self in the human heart, we have liers-in-wait, five thousand men appointed by Joshua. The west side of the city, represents the evil which is opposed to love to the Lord, of which the east is the symbol.

Joshua lodged the night before the battle among the people.— ver. 10. The Lord is with the soul in the state preceding combat, to give confidence and strength. He sleeps not, but He giveth His beloved sleep. The Lord provides for our coming trials in various ways, but ever certainly provides. It may be night with us, and the coming trial may cast its shadows before, but when we are disposed to do the Lord's work, He will be with us and

impart to us strength needful for the coming hour of danger and conflict. "As thy day is, so shall thy strength be."

"And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai."

Early in the morning indicates the vigour of a new state. When the soul has girded up itself, and is ardently resolved to accomplish with energy the work which the Lord has appointed it to do, a new day has opened; it is very early in the morning. We oppose our evil, we look our mental enemy full in the face, and soon the battle commences. The contest in the soul is precisely like that of earthly war. There is the Lord Jesus, the Commander of the host. Then there are the subordinate Captains, Faith, Hope, Charity, Self-denial, Love of Truth, Conscience, and many others. Under these are ranged in order by the Lord, hosts of truths to do battle against the opposing armies, and to overcome in the name of the Lord. At the early part of the battle we are informed that, "Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness."

It is one of the laws of Divine Providence, that before an evil can be conquered, it must be manifested, so that its real nature can be seen. This is the reason, no doubt, for the permission of evil in the world. Where evil does not break out before the world, it breaks out before the mind, and presents itself distinctly in thought. Such manifest presentation in the mind, of the heinous pretentions of evil, was figured in the case before us by the king and the men of Ai hasting and going out in pursuit of Joshua, and being thus drawn away from their strong-hold. When they were thus fully drawn forth, the Lord said unto Joshua, "Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand towards Ai; for I will give it into thine hand."

Divine Truth, drawn to a point against sin, is a spear. "The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God," represents Divine Truth as generally opposed to all falsity and evil. It is a twoedged sword from the mouth of the Son of Man. But Divine Truth, as directed against malice and other evils of the heart, as pointed like the finger of conscience, the spear of heaven against manifest guilt, was represented by Joshua's uplifted spear directed against Ai. It was as if he said, There is the accursed fountain of a thousand crimes; there is the abode of robbers of your peace, destroyers of your purity, infesters of your path, defiers of your God. Strike down this gate of hell, this castle of

contempt, this reveller in pollution, this vulture of corruption. There is the rebellious bulwark of sin, the den of ruffians. Your enemies are now fully out before you. Destroy their lurking place and destroy them. Such is the import of Joshua's outstretched spear, held in his hand towards the city.—ver. 18.

The ambush arose quickly out of their place, and hasted and set the city on fire.-ver. 19. This destruction of the city by the liers-in-wait, represents the condemnation and destruction of evil by the interior powers of the mind. In the state here represented, there is a perception of the infernal character of sin. It is seen behind, it is seen before. It is condemned by the letter of the Word, and condemned by its spirit. It is seen to be fiendish in its origin, and to lead to ever increasing ruin. The ambush destroys the city, and then issues out against the ruthless robbers who had sallied out to destroy Israel. "Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed Ai. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until even-tide; and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day."

To hang the king on a tree, means to exhibit the infernal character of the principle meant by Ai in clear perception, and to condemn it. To take the carcase down and bury it under a heap of stones, is to reject it as condemned by all the great truths of the Word in its letter.

What, then, is our Ai? What evil have we still rooted in our hearts? What is our leading sin? Israel can make no advance in us until that is overthrown. There is Ai. We have, I trust, thrown down Jericho. We do not believe now that the inner purification of the heart is impossible, nor that it ought to be delayed. There stands Ai threatening our path: but Joshua is with the host. He is arranging the attack before and behind. Let us be courageous and faithful, sincere and steady. Let us unflinchingly devote to destruction the foes of our peace, the impure and selfish passions of our hearts, and victory will certainly be ours.

"We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with spiritual wickedness in high places." But we wrestle also on the side of Him who is Conqueror of death and hell, and at His command. Let us go on in His strength, for He has said, "I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you."

SERMON LVIII.

THE COVENANT WITH THE GIBEONITES.

"And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord. And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them."-Joshua ix. 14, 15.

The very remarkable transaction to which our text refers, is one that brings under our notice a weak and timid, but not a vicious people. Duplicity is the defence of slavish minds. The Hivites were the old, possibly the oldest, inhabitants of Canaan which history can trace. They inhabited the centre of the land, but were also settled here and there in various portions, some of them dwelt in Mount Hermon.-Judges iii. 3, Joshua xi. 3. Gibeon, their chief city, was only about five miles from Jerusalem on the north. They appear at different times in the Sacred History, and on the whole give us an idea of a well-disposed simple people. Every church however corrupt, and every nation however generally abandoned, has a remnant of persons who are good compared with the wicked multitudes among whom they live. In Canaan, there were portions of the inhabitants less heinous and intolerable than others, and the chief of these were the Hivites, of whom were these inhabitants of Gibeon.

These people dreaded the approach of Israel. They had heard of the fame of the Lord, and what He had done in Egypt. They had heard also what had happened nearer home: how it had fared with the kings of the country, just beyond the Jordan, who had resisted the passage of the God-protected host, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan. They were not warriors, and if they had been, they felt themselves quite incapable of stemming the tide of invasion. They took counsel, and concluded the best thing to be done, would be to represent themselves as a nation living far away, of no importance to the Israelites, in relation to the country which was then being

settled, but very desirous of being in friendship with those who were visibly protected by heaven.

There were wily ones amongst them, and they sent ambassadors, disguised as men who had come from afar. They took old sacks upon their asses, and leathern wine bottles, old, rent, and mended. They had old garments, old clouted shoes, and old bread, dry and mouldy. The Israelitish leaders heard their story, enquired nothing further, and made the defensive covenant with them, which the Gibeonites sought; and when, three days after, they learned that the representations which the Gibeonites had given of their being from a far off country were not true, they still concluded to abide by the covenant, possibly from learning that they were a harmless people, and because they had undertaken to do good service, as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation. These people continued under the protection of the Israelites up to the time of David, for more than five hundred years, (2 Sam. xxiv. 7), though they seem to have been but little distinguished. Their lives were saved, and they were protected, and that was all.

We shall be prepared to admit, without doubt, that this very curious transaction has its significance, like all others recorded in the Divine Word. Indeed, if we have succeeded in obtaining a definite conception of the divine idea in the Israelitish dispensation in making the law, as expressed by the Apostle, a shadow of good things to come, then it must follow, that every incident in the Divine History is expressive of some fact, some circumstance in our spiritual life, and in the progress of the Church.

What then is involved in this covenant with the Gibeonites? What by the covert and surreptious way in which it was ob tained? And, lastly, what is indicated by the permission of these people to live, but to live in comparatively lowly offices, as hewers of wood and drawers of water?

The Canaanites were the central portion of the ancient Church. In the perversion, the prostitution, and decay into which it slowly and gradually, but surely sunk, when its emblems became idolatry, and its virtues generally perished, the mental leprosy had still its centre in them. Its inspirations were no longer from heaven; but instead, their impious lusts were inflamed by the weird suggestions of the nether world. Then sin in its thousand forms celebrated its hideous orgies, and in their turn, long before the Jewish time, they made the commandments of none effect by their traditions.

At the end of a religion however, when men sit in darkness,