It seems incredible that there could be such a difference in the experiences of God's people, and yet, as you study them in all their wanderings, you will find, if you turn over but one leaf of the Bible, the people who sing to-day are active in evil to-morrow, and the history of Israel is the history of one's self. Life is like a short ladder, as some one has said, and we spend most of our time going up to pray and down to sin. There is a striking picture in the second verse of the sixth chapter. The chosen people of God were dwelling in caves instead of their rightful positions in their homes, and the same is true to-day; men who ought to be at the front are left behind because they are living selfish lives or lives of sin. Do not for a moment think that I am saying that because a man is living out of sight that he is doing nothing, for we have only to remember Gideon to know that this is not true. He was a hidden man doing an honest work, and the Angel of the Lord called him, saying, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor." To this Gideon makes a significant reply in the thirteenth verse of the sixth chapter of Judges, "And Gideon said unto him, Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites." For the angel had said, "The Lord is with thee, Gideon," and Gideon had said, "If the Lord is with us, then how can these things be?" And the angel did not say it. How often it is true that we miss the truth of God because we miss the grammar of the Bible. When Gideon had thus replied, we read in the fourteenth verse of the sixth chapter, "And the Lord _looked_ upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites; have not I sent thee?" And the thing to pay special attention to there is that the angel _looked_ at Gideon. Sometimes in translating a foreign language you come upon a word which you cannot express in your own language; so it is with us here, for the Lord looked Gideon into a new man and said unto him, "Go and thou shalt save the people," which leads me to say that one man right with God is mightier than a host against God. The seventh chapter of Judges opens with the significant word "then." You must have all that goes before in your mind to appreciate this word. God has a plan for every life, and all your sickness, your disappointment, your discipline, is for something. There must be a "then" for you. It is the call of God and the answer to it that makes real life. Compare Gideon the farmer with Gideon the soldier, and you will see the difference in a human life. Let one, however low or ignorant, but hear the voice of God and respond to it, and when such an one answers God's call for his country, for the