SUBORDINATE, NOT SUPERFLUOUS; OR, DEPRECIATED MEMBERSHIP 353 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 22. THE WRATH-DISPELLING POWER OF A SOFT ANSWER 357 PROVERBS xv. 1. A TWICE-TOLD TALE OF YEARS 361 ECCLESIASTES vi. 6. DAYBREAK NO SOLACE: NIGHTFALL NO RELIEF 365 DEUTERONOMY xxviii. 36, 37. BUYER’S BARGAIN AND BOAST 367 PROVERBS xx. 14. GRAY-HAIRED UNAWARES 372 HOSEA vii. 9. RESTRAINED ANGER 376 PROVERBS xvi. 32. EVANESCENCE OF THE EARLY DEW 381 HOSEA vi. 3. EARS TO HEAR 386 ST. LUKE viii. 8. NOT ALONE IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS 389 PSALM xxiii. 4. SECULAR ANNOTATIONS ON SCRIPTURE TEXTS. _FELLOWSHIP IN ACHAN’S FALL._ JOSHUA xxii. 20. When Achan the son of Zerah committed a trespass in the accursed thing, wrath fell not alone upon Achan, but upon all the congregation of Israel; “and that man perished not alone in his iniquity.” The text is one to arrest the thoughtless, and to suggest even to the most thoughtful matter for very serious consideration. “Should one man sin, and would God be wroth with all the congregation?” That deprecatory question had been put twenty years before Achan’s trespass, by the congregation of Israel, in the matter of Korah, when they fell upon their faces and pleaded with God, the God of the spirits of all flesh. And some centuries later the confession of King David in time of pestilence took this form: that he had sinned and done wickedly; but those sheep—those subjects of his, involved in the penalty of his transgression, and dying off like sheep in a flock to the right and left of him, seventy thousand of them from morning to evening, from Dan even to Beersheba,—what had they done?