"Be not deceived;

his boys came back with a lie upon their lips. God is not mocked." You lie to your parents and your children will lie to you. The reaping time will come. Twenty or thirty years had rolled away; and now his own boys come back and say that his favorite son, the idol of his heart, the one he loved-he had fallen into the same sin that Rebekah and Isaac committed; he loved Joseph and Benjamin more than the rest of his sons, and that brought jealousy into that home and family, and now the fires of jealousy are kindled in the hearts of these brothers; and they begin to plan how they can put that favorite son out of the way. They wanted to murder him; they had murder in their hearts; and they would have killed him, if God hadn't overruled them. They cast him into the pit, and it was ordered by God that he should be brought up out of the pit and sold into slavery in Egypt; and the old man mourned for that boy for twenty long years. It was a good deal more than he sowed; the reaping time had come; and you will find, when they told him that Joseph was dead, they could not comfort him. His sons and daughters gathered round him; but he would not be comforted. He says, "I will go down to my grave mourning for that boy. You can see the old man, as he lay upon his bed at night; he dreams of that boy being torn into pieces by wild beasts; you can hear his voice haunting him, and for twenty long years he mourned over him as dead.

When they came back from Egypt, and reported that the governor of Egypt had treated them roughly, and said that they could not get any more corn until they brought down Benjamin, and he had already taken Simeon and thrown him into prison, the old man cried: "Joseph is not; Simeon is not; and now you take Benjamin from me. All these things are against me." He had a stormy voice, hadn't he? The man that cannot walk by faith always has trouble. The man that is all the time planning, and will not let God plan for him, always has a stormy journey, and never knows what true peace and comfort is.

And in the 47th chapter, when he gets down into Egypt himself, what a testimony that was to take down to the king of Egypt; it would not get many converts for his God. The Egyptians would say: "If that is your testimony about your religion, we don't want it; we would rather have the god of the Egyptians, than to have such a God as you have." We find it says in the 47th chapter and the 9th verse: "And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage." Queer testimony to take down to the heathen king! He would not win a great many souls to Christ with it. And these Christians who are always walking by sight never lead any to

the cross of Christ; they are a great hindrance to the church to-day. If we take Christ with us, and believe in his word, our testimony will be worth something. When we do, the Son of God has been with us all the time; he has blessed us, and the light has been shining brighter and brighter along the pathway to heaven.

Let us keep this in mind, that although Jacob had all these failings, God was with him and blessed him, and condescended to call himself the God of Jacob, the God of Israel; and this all magnifies grace. There may be a man here to-day who has got a mean, treacherous disposition. Bring it to God; he has got grace enough to give you victory; he gave Jacob victory. We find the old man passing away in peace, although in exile in Egypt; and he might have died in his own land with his family around him; and his end might have been glorious like that of Joshua in Timnath-serah, if he had only been willing to walk by faith. But, no, he took himself out of God's sight and planned all the time; and if he had a castle, you might have written over every door, "Doubting Castle." There was the trouble with Esau, the trouble with his father-in-law, and from his natural life up, because he would not take God by faith and trust him.

Oh, may God help us to learn a lesson from Jacob; and may we know what it is to put ourselves wholly in God's hands, and let God plan for us. A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his knówing it. The very hairs of our heads are numbered, for our heavenly Father knows we have need of these things. God will take care of us if we will put our trust in him. Let us put our trust in God, and not keep planning all the time to see how it is going to come out.

CHARACTER OF JOSHUA.

"There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life; as I was with Moses, so I wil be with thee. I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of ■ good courage." JOSHUA 1: 5, 6.

You that were here last Thursday afternoon, remember that I was talking about the life and character of Jacob. This morning I will talk about Joshua, and draw a contrast between the two. Jacob was one of those characters that wanted to walk by sight altogether; he wanted to reason out everything, like a great many men now-adays. Joshua was the man that walked by faith; and you will find the key of his character in three words, courage, obedience and faith; and he dared not be in the minority. There are very few men at the present time that like to be in the minority; they always want to be in the majority; they want to go with the crowd. But when a man has laid hold of the divine nature of God, has become a partaker of the divine nature, he is willing then to go against the current of the world.

Where Joshua met the God of Israel first, we are not told. We don't catch a glimpse of him until he is about forty years old. The first sight we get of Joshua was as he came up out of Egypt. We are told, after Moses had struck that rock in Horeb, and the children of Israel had drank the water which came out of that rock-and that was typical of Christ, because Paul says in Corinthians "that rock was Christ"; the next thing that happened after that, Amalek came out to fight them; but they had got a draught of the living water; and they were able to meet Amalek and overcome him. That is a type of the world; and Joshua goes out to take charge of the armies, and that is the first glimpse we have of him. His first battle was successful, and his last was successful. He never knew what defeat was, because he believed in the Lord God of heaven. Moses went up into the mountain to pray, and while he was praying, Joshua was down there fighting Amalek; and while Moses's hands were up Israel prevailed, and Amalek was defeated, and Joshua had prevailed.

As I said the other day, when I was talking about Joshua, there is only one thing on record against him; and that is, he was opposed to lay preaching. He didn't like the idea of Eldad and Medad prophesying in the camp; they didn't belong to the regular apostolic crowd, those that were set apart for the purpose; and Moses rebuked him,

and told him all God's people were prophets. And that is what we want in this city.; every man that has heard the voice of God saying, "Come," let him take up that cry and extend it. "Let him that heareth say, Come." If you have heard, let others come. But after Moses rebuked him, we never hear of his complaining any more about Eldad and Medad. It is the only thing on record against him. The next we hear of him is in connection with those twelve spies. That I spoke of the first Sunday I was here, and will pass over that. You remember he came back, and was one of the only two of the twelve that dared to bring in a minority report. But now the forty years' wilderness journey is over; and all these forty years you cannot find any place where Caleb or Joshua ever murmured, where they ever complained; they were not that kind. And whenever you find a man or a woman that is successful in God's service, you will never hear them complaining or whining; you will never hear them murmuring; they are looking on the bright side all the while; they are of good courage; and then it is the Lord God blesses them.

And now as I said, the forty years' wilderness journey is over, and Moses is about to leave. And if you never read that farewell address of Moses-you will find it in the last few chapters of Deuteronomy-I would advise you to read it to-day. You are reading a great many printed sermons now-a-days; suppose you read this sermon of Moses. There is more truth in that sermon than in fifteen hundred of the sermons now-a-days. Let me just give you a few verses: "Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass. Because I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Why, there are two or three sermons in one verse. Just see what the Lord did; the Lord did it all. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, bearing them on her wings, so the Lord above did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." And so he went on and finished his sermon. And now God called him off into Mount Nebo, and showed him that land which he could not

go over to possess; he showed him the land from Dan to Beersheba, and pointed out the portions of land which each tribe was to have; and then, some one said, God kissed away his soul and buried him. The greatest tribute ever paid to mortal man was paid to Moses, and he was buried by the Almighty himself.

Joshua was now to take charge of the armies of God. And the word of the Lord came to Joshua saying: "Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel." If Joshua had been like a great many of us, now-a-days, he would have said: "Lord, I don't know how I am going to take this people over Jordan; it is just harvest-time; all the banks are overflowed. Hadn't we better wait a few weeks, until we can go over at some place and ford it? How am I to get these three million people over?" But Joshua had got the word from God; and the God that brought them through the Red Sea and through the wilderness could take them over Jordan. The Lord gave orders, that was enough; he got his word and he brings them to Jordan. Their faith must be tried. He will not have a people that he has not tried. He had kept them in the wilderness forty years, and now he brings them in sight of Jordan. If he had brought them up there forty years before, what murmuring there would have been! "You might as well have let us die down in Egypt, we cannot get across this river; and when the enemy sees us, if we get a bridge or a pontoon across, they will shoot us, and we will be defeated and slain on the banks of the Jordan; we had better have died in Egypt; we had better turn round and go back." That would have been their cry forty years before; but now they have got faith, and are in sight of Jordan, and there isn't a word of complaint.

Joshua tells the priests to take the ark, and they were to be about two thousand cubits ahead of the people, so that the people could see them; and they were to walk right down to the Jordan, and the moment the soles of their feet touched the water the waters were to be cut off. There is faith for you! These very men, without any questioning, take up the ark of God. God is with them and calls them across Jordan, and is not going to leave them; and the moment their feet touched the water the waters are cut off, and they pass to the middle of the stream and put down the ark; that ark represented the Almighty God of Israel. He was in the ark and with the ark and right there in the midst of death (for Jordan means death and judgment), right in the middle of the stream was the Almighty, and he held that river in the hollow of his hand; and now the people sweep beyond the ark, three millions of them; you can hear their solemn tread. Not a word was said as through death and judgment they go; Joshua is leading them up on to resurrection ground, and into the promised land. And after they all got over, twelve men,