little maid will have to kiss the hands of the Eternal God for not having come to her rescue, at the moment of her being taken captive; and the leper confess, with loud thanks to the Lord, that a good angel was sent to him at Damascus, in the person of this child; and the whole heathenish city will be compelled, by the circumstance, to confess that the Lord is God, and that there is none besides; and we shall also strike our hands together astonished, and be obliged to confess with renewed conviction, that we only need to let the Lord quietly carry on his work. He is mighty in counsel, and wonderful in working.

O happy is he, who proceeds on his way under the guidance of such a Lord, and is permitted to believe that his life rests also like a series of threads upon the loom of the Great Artificer! He may calculate beyond a doubt, that just at the point when the threads of his life seem the most entangled and confused, the most wonderful and glorious traces of his ingenious hand which overrules and directs all things, will manifest themselves. Let faith be his guide for a while in the dark, through the turmoil and apparent contradictions of his life; the time will come, when the Divine mechanism of our guidance will stand before us in complete development, and fill us with astonishment and delight. For the sentiment is eternally true, and more firmly established than the mountains of God, which the Royal harper on Zion's hill still sings to us, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, therefore will he teach sinners in the way. The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." Amen.

++

X.

THE LITTLE ISRAELITISH MAID.

ONE of those proverbs, so replete with meaning, which King Solomon has left us-the seventeenth in the first chapter of his book-says, "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." This expression meets with ample interpretation in the gracious guidance of all God's children. But these birds are nevertheless caught, as Paul says, "with craftiness and guile." The Lord sees that it would be in vain to spread the net before their eyes. Hadst thou known before-hand, my brother, that thou wouldst be pricked to the heart whilst listening to a certain sermon, that intercourse with some particular individual would have been the occasion of thy humiliation and contrition, that a book thou didst peruse, would throw the fire of repentance into thy soul, break thy heart, and embitter and degrade the world, with its pleasures, in thy esteem, thou wouldst have hastened, in thy natural blindness, to have cast far from thee the fatal volume, to have dissolved the bond of friendship, and to have avoided the church on that day of danger. But the net was concealed from the sight of the bird, and before it was aware, the snare was drawn over it, and-thou wast taken.

And the Lord acts in the progress of the life of grace in the same manner as he did at its commencement. The maxim continues in force, "Surely it is in vain, that the net is spread in the sight of any bird." He does not cease throwing out the net, in order to draw us ever closer to

himself, and to connect us more intimately with him. But
the net is concealed from our view. He does not inform
us before-hand what he intends shall befall us, neither does
he initiate us into his plans. He withdraws himself, lets
us take our own course, and causes us to feel his anger
afresh, in order to renew us to repentance, to empty us
more completely of all that is our own, and afterwards to
cause us to feel, in a more lively manner, what we possess
in him and his grace.
But he does not betray to us that
this is only a seeming withdrawal, displeasure, and aban-
donment, and that it is his love alone which disguises itself
in this rude covering; for if we knew from the first, that
he was only sporting with us in all that we have just men-
tioned, it would be in vain for him to spread the net.
Hence he is wont carefully to conceal his
view, and thus he never fails of his aim.
of Naaman, likewise, he is not unmindful
is to spread the net in the sight of the bird. The snare is
very deeply laid, and we shall soon see how this mighty
man is caught in the Lord's gracious toils.

2 KINGS V. 3.

snares from our
In the guidance
how fruitless it

"And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy."

Damascus, the metropolis of Syria, again receives us. An attractive acquaintance, which we have there made, begins gradually to render this heathenish place agreeable to us. It is always the inhabitants which make a place desirable and beautiful, and not the partitions or the walls. Naaman is the friend whom we met, the valiant general

issimo of the Syrian army. That however which attracts us to this individual is, not the fame of his mighty deeds, which irradiates him, but something widely different. The eye of Divine love and compassion rests upon him; and it is this which captivates us: in this we behold his highest glory, his peculiar excellency. At our first meeting with this warrior, there was, indeed, little to be perceived of his being a favourite of Jehovah's. He was a blind, unenlightened heathen, destitute of the true knowledge of God, and the circumstances in which he was placed, reminded us rather of a manifestation of the Divine displeasure than of anything else. You know that, afflicted with the dreadful plague of leprosy, he sat, banished from human society, and presenting a repulsive appearance, shut up in a solitary chamber of his palace. We left his gloomy cell with mournful reflections upon the imperfect nature of earthly happiness. At the very moment, however, when we beheld with painful sympathy, the temporal glory of this mighty individual sinking, faded and dead into the grave, the first dawning glimmer of an incomparably superior glory began to rise upon our eyes over its ashes. The Almighty made the preliminary arrangements for the eternal restoration of this individual. But how strange were the commencements of this work of love! We saw a Syrian out-post break through the Israelitish borders. They there fell upon an unguarded village, plundered it, and dragged away with them a young Israelitish maid, in order to sell her as a slave in Syria. Now who would have imagined, that in this heart-rending scene, the Lord began the accomplishment of his Divine and gracious project with respect to Naaman? The portion of the narrative which we have just read will show, in some respects, how far the knots which were tied will begin to be unloosed. We