Now, the name of our altar and the character of our worship express the same idea. El-Bethel worship is higher than El-elohe-Israel worship, for this simple reason, that it conveys a higher idea of God. It gives me a more elevated thought of God to speak of him as the God of his house than as the God of a solitary individual. True, there is beautiful grace expressed in the title, "God, the God of Israel;" and the soul must ever feel happy in looking at the character of God, as graciously connecting himself with every separate stone of his house, and every separate member of the body. Each stone in the building of God is a "lively stone," as connected with the "living stone," having communion with the "living God," by the power of "the Spirit of life." But while all this is blessedly true, God is the God of his house; and when we are enabled, by an enlarged spiritual intelligence, to view him as such, we enjoy a higher character of worship than that which flows from merely apprehending what he is to ourselves individually. But there is another thing to be remarked in Jacob's recall to Bethel. He is told to make an altar "unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." He is thus reminded of "the day of his distress." It is often well to have our minds led in this way to the point in our history in which we found ourselves brought down to the lowest step of the ladder. Thus Saul is brought back to the time when he was "little in his own eyes." This is the true starting-point with all of us. "When thou wast little in thine own eyes," is a point of which we often need to be reminded. It is then that the heart really leans on God. Afterwards we begin to fancy ourselves to be something, and the Lord is obliged to teach us afresh our own nothingness. When first one enters upon a path of service or testimony, what a sense there is of personal weakness and incapacity! and, as a consequence, what leaning upon God! what earnest, fervent appeals to him for help and strength! Afterwards we begin to think that, from being so long at the work, we can get on by ourselves,--at least there is not the same sense of weakness or the same simple dependence upon God; and then our ministry becomes a poor, meagre, flippant, wordy thing, without unction or power,--a thing flowing, not from the exhaustless tide of the Spirit, but from our own wretched minds.