“THE WAYS OF THE LORD....” The ways of _which_ Lord? Is the jealous Lord of Moses meant, the God who thundered amidst the lightnings of Sinai, or the meek “Lord” of the Mount of Olives and Calvary? Is it the stern God that saith “_vengeance is mine_,” and who must be “_worshipped in fear_,” or the “man-God” who commanded _to love one’s neighbours as oneself_, _to forgive one’s enemies_ and _bless those who revile us_? For the ways of the two Lords are wide apart, and can never meet. No one who has studied the Bible can deny for one single moment that a large proportion (if _happily_ not all) of modern Christians walk indeed “in the _ways_ of the Lord”—Number I. This one is the “Lord” who _had respect unto Abel_, because the meat of his sacrifice smelt sweet in his nostrils; the “Lord” who commanded the Israelites to _spoil_ the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold;[57] also to “_kill every male among the little ones_,” as “_every woman ... but all the women children_ (virgins) _to keep alive for themselves_” (Numb. XXXI., 17, _et seq._); and to commit other actions too coarse to be repeated in any respectable publication. ----- Footnote 57: And no doubt also the Anglo-Indians to _spoil_ the King of Burmah of his? ----- Hence the modern warriors who achieve such feats (with the modern improvement occasionally, of shooting their enemies out of the mouths of big guns) walk, most undeniably, “in the ways” of the Lord of the Jews, but _never in the ways_ of Christ. So does the modern trader who keeps the Sabbath most rigorously, attending Divine Service thrice on that day, after treating during the whole week his hired clerks as the brood of Ham “who shall be their (Shem and Japhet’s) servants.” So does, likewise, he who helps himself, David-like, to a Bath-Sheba, the wife of Uriah, without the least concern whether he simply robs or kills the Hittite husband. For he has every right to take for his sampler “a friend of God”—the _God_ of the old covenant. But will either of these pretend they walk in the ways of their Lord of the _new_ Dispensation? Yet, he who raises his voice in a protest against the “ways” of the Mosaic God, therefore, in favour of those preached by the very _antithesis_ of Jehovah—the meek and gentle “Man of Sorrow”—he is forthwith set up on the pillory and denounced to public opprobrium as an _anti-Christian_ and an Atheist! This, in the face of the words: “_Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.... And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.... and great was the fall thereof!_”