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PECULIAR MEANS

Nothing is more remarkable in the Bible than to see how God, as if to teach us to trust in nothing and in none but himself, selects means that seems the worse fitted to accomplish his ends. Does he choose an ambassador to Pharaoh?—it is a man of stammering tongue. Are the streams of Jericho to be sweetened?—salt is cast into the spring. Are the eyes of the blind to be opened?—they are rubbed with clay. Are the battlements of a city to be thrown down?—the means employed is, not the blast of a mine, but the breath of an empty trumpet. Is a rock to be riven?—the lightning is left to sleep above, and the earthquake with its throes to sleep below, while a rod is used which is more likely to be shivered on the rock than to shiver it. Are men to be converted by preaching, and won from sensual delights to a faith whose symbol is the cross, and whose crown is to be won among the fires of martyrdom? Leaving schools, and halls, and colleges, God summons his preachers from the shores of Galilee. The helm of the church is entrusted to hands that had never steered aught but a fishing boat; and by the mouth of one who had been its bitterest persecutor, Christ pleaded his cause before the philosophers of Athens and in the palaces of Rome—Guthrie.

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— February, 1886 —