called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to Siloam and wash; so I went away and washed and I received sight.' Sounding down the centuries, the voices mingle of two washed ones. The Gentile saying: "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel,' and the clear-eyed Jew, 'One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.'

To very many has this blind man brought light, before and since the day when David Stratton, then himself groping for light, wished the story prolonged, saying to his friend: 'Read me mair o' yon blind man the guid Lord Jesus speered after.' 'There's no more told of him. The last thing is this, "He said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him.”’

CHAPTER XIV.

Prayer at the Well.

'But God, who caused a fountain at thy prayer
From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay
After the brunt of battle, can as easy

Cause light again within thy eyes to spring,
Wherewith to serve Him better than thou hast ;
And I persuade me so; why else this strength
Miraculous yet remaining in those locks?
His might continues in thee not for nought,
Nor shall His wondrous gifts be frustrate thus.'

'God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore (the well of him that called, or cried).' JUDG. XV. 19.

UT of the six names mentioned in the apostle's little postscript to the great catalogue of overcomers in Heb. xi., four have their biographies in the Book of Judges, and are as gleams of light on an otherwise dark sky. The life of Samson especially is a blaze of light shooting out

E

from the darkness. In his history the dazzling events follow each other in quick succession, and before we are aware we are standing among the wreck of all his glory. The laurel wreath seems withering ere he is crowned.

Two of his prayers are mentioned in the short biography of four chapters. Before his birth Manoah had prayed, and received a definite answer. The angel whose name was secret returned to his tent, not to eat bread or tarry, but to leave his orders, and in the sacrificial flame return to God. After the three hundred jackals have worked havoc in the standing corn, the strong man takes up his abode in a rocky crag. He soon takes vengeance on the Philistines for binding him, and with an ass's jawbone he slays a thousand men. But he is sore athirst. Not long before, when he had slain the lion, he had been fed with honey, and now he prays, 'Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of Thy servant; and now shall I die for thirst?' God heard his cry, and made a well for him. He drank, his spirit came again, and he revived.

There is something deeply pathetic in his last prayer. Before, it was the strong young man pray

ing as if to take heaven by storm; now, the blind
petitioner, bound with fetters, worn with the grind-
ing in the prison-house, in subdued tones pleads,
'O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and
strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O
God.' Not often does a pleader pray himself away,
and know in the very act that he will not plead
again. But this was faith, and, Samson-like, he
prays and leans.
A crash; and all is done.

'O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious !
Living or dying, thou hast fulfill'd

The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now liest victorious
Among thy slain, self-kill'd.

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold

Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin'd
Thee with thy slaughter'd foes, in number more
Than all thy life had slain before.'

CHAPTER XV.

B

Beer-sheba.

'Was happiness,

Was self-approving, God-approving joy,
In drops of dew, however pure? in gales,
However sweet? in wells, however clear?
Or groves, however thick with verdant shade?

They waked the native fountains of the soul
Which slept before! and stirred the holy tides
Of feeling up, giving the heart to drink,

From its own treasures, draughts of perfect sweet.'

EER-SHEBA, one of the most familiar Bible

spots, took its name from a meeting at a well. Travellers tell us that besides two larger wells there are here five smaller ones. The curbstones are worn by the friction of the ropes, and round the wells are the troughs for the cattle. Many and various events happened here, but the meeting of Abimelech and Abraham has for us a peculiar interest.