he has made up his mind. I have a little nephew, who took a Bible he saw lying on the table and threw it on the floor. His mother said to him, "Go and pick up uncle's Bible." He said he didn't want to. His mother said: "I didn't ask you whether you wanted to or not; go and pick it up." Then the little fellow said, "I won't." His mother said, "Why, Charlie, who taught you that naughty word?" when she found out that he not only knew what it meant, but he meant every word he said. The mother says: "Charlie, I never heard you talk so before. If you don't go and pick up uncle's Bible, I shall punish you." And the little fellow says, "I won't do it." She told him again, if he didn't pick up the Bible she would punish him, and he would have to pick it up too. Then he said he couldn't. I suppose he thought he couldn't; he didn't want to. That is the trouble with men; they don't want to come. Christ says, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.' It is not because men can't come to God; it is because they won't. The little fellow looked at it as though he would like to do it, but he couldn't. At last he just got down on the floor and got both his arms around the book and tried, and said he couldn't. Now the mother says: "Charlie, do you pick up that book or I shall punish you, and you will have to pick it up too." I felt very much interested; for I knew if she didn't break his will, he would break her heart eventually. At last she broke the little fellow's will; and the minute his will was broke, he picked up the book just as easy as that.

When a man makes up his mind, he will accept God just as easy. God commands you to-day to repent. Bear in mind that God commands you to repent. Don't flatter yourselves you have never broken God's commandments. If you go out of that door without turning to him, you have done so; because here is a commandment direct from God. God commands all men now everywhere to repent; because he has appointed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness. If you go on to the bar of God without repentance and without turning from sin, sinner, there will be no hope for you.

I felt very much interested the other night at the young men's meeting. A young man said he left London and got into this city three weeks ago. His mother was a very earnest Christian, had been praying for him; and he always told her that he didn't want her to talk with him about Christianity, for he had no desire to become a Christian. He left home to get rid of her entreaties. As he was leaving home, his mother said to him: "Bear in mind that my

prayers will follow you, and you will find God in America." I sup

pose the young man was like the young man in the Scriptures, who, when his father told him to go into his vineyard and work, said he wouldn't go, and afterwards changed his mind and went. And this young man began to repent, and when he got into New York he left

the boat and came right up to the Hippodrome, and says he found God waiting for him right here. He just repented, and just received his mother's God. Sinner, God is waiting for you. Are you willing Is there any one who will repent and will return

to come to him?

to God?

A man got up one morning and saw the sun shining into his room, and lifted up his heart to God and said: "Let thy love shine into my heart;" and he found God. Why? Because he turned his face towards the Sun of Righteousness. The trouble is, you have got your back towards God; you are running away from him. Ask for light, and it will come. God will never refuse you. Oh, to-night be wise this dark, rainy, stormy night, repent of your sins and turn to God. Let us ask God to-night to turn our souls to him. Now, if you have really a desire for salvation, you can find it, just as that Englishman found it. God has been here all through the meeting, waiting with his arms stretched out, ready to welcome you.

A young man related this experience to me: "When my father died, my mother became more anxious than ever about my salvation. Sometimes she came and put her arms around me and wept over me; and I would push her away, and say there was time enough. I heard one night a voice in my mother's chamber, crying to God for her boy, O God! save my boy.' At last I could not stand it any longer. I made up my mind I would not become a Christian, and I ran away. It was a long time before I heard from that mother, except indirect ly; for she did not know where I was. I did not want her to know, because I knew she would come for me if she knew. After a while I heard that my mother was sick, and I thought I would go to her. On my way from the station to my home, I had to pass the cemetery. I stopped to take a look at my father's grave. It was a moonlight night, and the graves were very distinct; but by the side of my fa ther's grave was a fresh one. The sod was loose as if only laid that day. Then I knew I had lost my mother. The thought struck me, "Who will pray for me, now that my mother and father are gone? 1 passed that sad night by their graves; and though I feel that God has answered my prayers and forgiven my sin, I never can forgive myself for bringing sorrow to my mother's heart."

Young man, you can repent to-night, and go home and cheer your mother's heart by turning to God.

KING SAUL.

"Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel." 1st SAMUEL 8: 19.

I find in this 19th verse of the 8th chapter of 1st Samuel: "Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel"-or you might say the voice of God, for God is speaking through Samuel"and they said, We will have a king over us." I want to call your attention to this disobedience; and the consequence. For between four hundred and five hundred years God had been their King; and when they obeyed his voice and did what he told them to do, none of the nations were able to stand before them. They had never been degraded while they were walking in God's sight and obeying his voice; but now they got tired of God. They wanted to cast off his yoke. They wanted a king, like the nations around them had, who might lead their armies, and make them as imposing and splendid as the nations around them were. When God brought them into that land, he told them they should not have chariots of iron, and should not be trusting in horsemen, and in great armies; but he would be their defense; he would be their shield; he would protect them, if they would only look to him and trust him. But no. They have their eyes on the nations around them; and they come to the old prophet Samuel, who has grown very old and is about to retire from office; and they said, "We want a king." And Samuel was very much displeased, heart-broken; and he took his trouble to the Lord, as we all of us ought always to do; and the Lord says, "Well, now, Samuel, it is not you that they have rejected, but me. Don't take it so to heart, but protest solemnly against it. Tell them the consequences; and then, if they insist upon it, I will give them a king." He said this, very often, as mothers deal with their children. They let them have something, that they know will bring them into sorrow, just to show them how much better it would have been for them if they had obeyed.without a murmur; but then, there are very few of us that can learn by other men's experiences, and we want to try our own way; and God permits us, just to show how much better it is to take God's way than our own.

Now, the Lord told Samuel he would send a man there whom he should anoint king; and it seems that a man in the tribe of Benjamin, by the name of Kish, lost his asses, and he sent one of his sons to hunt them up. Little did he know as he left home where he was going to. He hunted for the asses two or three days, but was unsuccessful; and as he came near Ramah his servant suggested that

they should go up and see the seer or prophet, and he could tell them where to go. Now, the Lord had told Samuel, the day before Saul came, this was to be the man whom he should anoint to be captain over Israel. What was Saul's surprise when the seer met him on the way, took him into his house, made him stay over night, and then took him up on the roof of his house and told him what the Lord was going to do with him. Saul seems to have been full of humility, for he told Samuel that he belonged to the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and did not think that he was worthy; but God chose him, and the next morning when he left the town the prophet went with him to the outskirts of the town, and said to him, "Let your servant go on before you;" and after he had passed on and gone out of sight, Samuel anointed Saul king, and then told him what would take place on his way home, and where he would find his animals. And it all came to pass as he hid prophesied. Saul went home and went about his work as usual, taking care of his father's sheep. But one day a messenger came into the town in great haste, bringing the startling tidings that the enemy had besieged a city, and the people had offered to surrender and become servants to the enemy, if they would only just spare their lives; and the commander of the besieging army said he would grant the request on condition that he might tear out their right eyes, and the elders of Jabesh said, "Give us seven days and we will decide." If the inhabitants of the city could not get help within seven days, they would have to have their right eyes dug out. And the people lifted up their voices and wept. And Saul came in from the field, and when they told him the tidings, the Spirit of God came upon him, and he was greatly angered. And he took a yoke of oxen and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, "Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen;" and the fear of the Lord came upon the people, and inside of three days Saul had three hundred and thirty thousand people; and in the night, about daylight, he moved upon the enemy, and fought them until midday with such vigor, that there were no two of them left together; and thus he routed the whole army and saved the city, and won his way to the hearts of the people.

You know there is nothing like success. He had been successful, and had already been proclaimed at Mizpeh, king; for Samuel had brought the people up to Mizpeh, and they had cast lots, and it had fallen upon the tribe of Benjamin and upon the house of Kish. And now he had had a successful battle, and everything looked very bright and hopeful for him and his people. Why, when they raised the cry at Mizpeh, "God save the king!" it looked as if everything was going to be in their favor. Saul was a head and shoulders above all men in Mizpeh; and they said: "We have got a fine-looking king.

No nation around us has got a man like him." He was a grand man to look at. Men like to walk by sight, instead of by faith. They had got just the man, and they felt he was the one to meet the giants coming out against them; and they shouted for him, and the cry has been heard ever since in the earth, "God save the king." That was the first time that cry was ever heard, when they proclaimed Saul as king.

But now the trial comes. The next thing we hear is that the enemies are gathering again. After the defeat at Jabesh-Gilead, they called together their armies and nations. There were thirty thousand chariots of iron and six thousand horsemen, and the rank and file were like the sands of the sea-shore-a great multitude. And the heart of Saul began to sink within him, and he waited at Gilgal for Samuel to come, and the army began to be discontented; and instead of looking to God and trusting him-for he wanted them to put their trust in him-Saul gets a little discouraged and breaks the law of God. The law of God was that no man should offer sacrifices but those that were appointed. Saul had no right to do it, but he took that position himself, and began to offer sacrifices; and his friend Samuel, than whom no man ever had a purer, truer friend, said to him: "You have done very foolishly. Now your kingdom is departed from you, and it shall not be maintained. You have disobeyed the voice of God." The old saying is, "Like priest, like people." The people would not obey the voice of God. Samuel deals faithfully with him, and tells him the consequences. Saul cries, "My army is leaving me and is becoming demoralized." And Samuel says, "You ought to obey God and let the consequences be what they will."

And now it came to pass that Jonathan, Saul's son, said to his armor-bearer: "Come, and let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; it may be that the Lord will work for us, for he can save by many or by few." How the faith of Jonathan shines out here! He feels that, with the help of the Lord, he can save the whole army. Would to God we had a few Jonathans right here in New York! "Now," says he, "we will just go up there; and if they ask us to come right into camp, we will take it as a sign that God is with us. if they say, 'Stand where you are,' we will know the Lord is not with us." And when they had climbed up the steep rocks, the Philistines saw them and shouted, "Behold the Hebrews come out of their holes where they had hid themselves." And they said to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, "Come over to us." And Jonathan said, "God is with us; he has given us the land." And he and his armor-bearer went

And

up and slew the people, and in that first slaughter were about twenty men within half an acre, and the people were frightened and trembled; and the watchmen of Saul beheld the multitude melting away like the snow upon a side hill, and Saul, who was afar off, began to inquire,