OUR GOD By Octavius Winslow, 1870.

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One fiery trial, sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, has done more to break up the crusted ground of the heart, to penetrate beneath the surface, to dissect, and winnow, and separate, than a life-time of reading and hearing could have done. Oh, what secret sins have been detected, what carelessness of walk has been revealed, what spiritual and unsuspected declension of soul has been discovered, all leading to deep self-loathing, and to the laying the mouth in the dust before God! Then has the prayer gone up with an agony and sincerity never experienced before, "Search me, O God, and try me, and know any heart, and see if there be any evil way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." And all this the fruit of one hallowed trial!

We may refer to the PURIFYING power of a fiery trial as not the least blessed result of the discipline. It is the nature of fire to purify. God so employs the image. "I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will by them as gold is tried." "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sins of Levi, and purify them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." Blessed and holy fruit of trial! Who now will shrink from the process? who would wish exemption from the fire that but consumes the dross and the tin and the earth of the soul, making the silver so bright and the gold so pure, both reflecting, as they never reflected before, the nature and image of the Divine and lovely Refiner? And when we see the man of God thus emerge from the furnace of affliction, we lift our hearts in thanksgiving and praise to our Heavenly Father for providing in the covenant of grace a discipline so effectual in the accomplishment of results so blessed. "By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged: and this is all the fruit to take away sins."

Blessed Lord, if this be the result of Your fiery trial; if it be to burn up and consume the self and carnality, the worldliness and unbelief of my heart, if it be to destroy the alloy and to scatter the chaff, then let the fire burn, let the furnace glow. May I, by this burning discipline, but be made more thoroughly a partaker of Your holiness.

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"Often the clouds of deepest woe
So sweet a message bear,
Dark though they seem, 'twere hard to find
A frown of anger there.
It needs our hearts be weaned from earth,
It needs that we be driven,
By loss of every earthly tie,
To seek our joys in heaven.
And what is sorrow, what is pain,
To that parental care,
That breaks the conscious heart from sin,
When sin is hated there?
Kind, loving is the hand that strikes,
However keen the smart,
If sorrow's discipline can chase
One evil from the heart."

The apostle then proceeds in this passage to remind us that trial is no strange thing in the experience of the saints. "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." Yes, trial is not a strange thing. Common to all, it is yet more common in the history of God's people. There are many reasons why trial should not be considered by us as a strange thing. One is given in the passage under consideration- "The trial that is to try you." Trial is necessary to promote fruitfulness, to test our hope, and to eliminate in the kingdom of God within us the precious from the vile, the purity of Divine grace from the corruption of fallen nature.

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Nor should we regard trial and affliction as a strange thing, since it is the appointed and beaten path of all the saints who have either safely arrived, or are wending their pilgrim way home to God. "If God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children after all." And again, the apostle Peter says, "Knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."

No, more. Trial is not a strange thing, since our blessed Lord Himself was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Significant and instructive words! None were ever so intimate with sorrow, or so closely acquainted with grief as Jesus. He was acquainted with it in its every form, met it in its every aggravation, and tasted it in its every bitter. Standing between the wrath of God and the hatred of man, and enduring both to its utmost strength and extremity, truly never was one so acquainted with grief as Jesus was. Think it not, then, beloved, strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, since the members must be conformed to the Head, and the flock, even "the flock of the slaughter," must follow the Shepherd wherever He goes.

In such illustrious company as this, and identified in suffering with a Savior so precious, shall we not drink the cup our Father has given us with sweet submission to His righteous and sovereign will? Shall we shrink from the knife that but prunes, and from the fire that but refines, increasing our holiness, and so promoting our happiness and usefulness here, and by the same discipline advancing our fitness to take our place before the throne with those who have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb?

But God has fully and graciously met this condition of His Church. If He has faithfully and clearly revealed the fact that He has chosen His people in the furnace of affliction, He has, with equal fidelity and distinctness, revealed the truth that He stands to them in the relation of the "God of all comfort," who comforts them in all their tribulations. To an unfolding of this truth, let us devote the remainder of this chapter.

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The true comfort of God's Church demands all the resources of Deity. Sin is the cause of all sorrow, and sorrow is "legion" in its name, and protean in its shape. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; and the varied forms which those afflictions assume, are limited only by their countless number. It is not, then, without thought we assert, that the resources of God's nature alone could meet, mitigate, and remove the many afflictions, trials, and temptations to whose wholesome discipline His saints are subject, in their education for heaven, in their preparation for eternity.

And, oh, how sweet is the thought that, in all trials, and afflictions, and sorrows, we have to deal with God, even the "God of all comfort!" From Him comes the discipline! While sorrow springs not from the ground, even in the history of a fallen world, the Lord's people are taught, not only to trace His hand in the evil that is in the city, but especially their personal affliction, to His arrangement, faithfulness, and love. How submissive the language of the afflicted saint! "But what could I say? For he himself had sent this sickness." "Now I will walk humbly throughout my years because of this anguish I have felt. I am silent before you; I won't say a word. For my punishment is from you." "It is the Lord's will. Let him do what he thinks best."

Thus, in all our fiery trials, we are at once brought to God. We recognize, in the Hand that is to heal, the Hand that has wounded. In the very Being to whose bosom we fly in our grief, we see the Sender of our sorrow. Thus, the Author of our affliction and the Comforter of our grief is one, even our own God, the "God of all comfort." Naturalists tell us that by the side of every poisonous plant grows its antidote. Yet more certain is the truth recorded by the inspired penman, and revealed by Jehovah Himself: "Look now; I myself am he! There is no god other than me! I am the one who kills and gives life; I am the one who wounds and heals; no one delivers from my power!"

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In looking more closely at this truth, let us remark, in the first place, that IT IS IN THE HEART OF GOD TO COMFORT HIS PEOPLE. We need to begin with this central truth. All real comfort for any sorrow flows from sympathy; and true sympathy is the reflection of the heart. All our divine comfort is the pure reflection of the heart of God. Oh, how imperfectly we deal with this truth! God's heart is our heart; in it we dwell, as in a home, and within it we are enclosed as in a pavilion. Can we for a moment doubt the heart of God, when within His bosom He found the Lamb for our sin-offering? If, then, He spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, shall the shadow of a doubt be allowed to rest upon our minds, shading the ray of hope that rests there of comfort from God in the depth of our deepest grief and woe? In the very heart that gave us Jesus, is welled the divine spring of all the true consolation, which flows at our side through this valley of tears. Daughter of affliction, child of sorrow! God loves you from His heart. Its every pulse of life, its every throb of love, its every spring of compassion, its every drop of sympathy is yours.

God's heart speaks to your heart. Its deep love chimes with your deep grief. Do you doubt this? Listen to His command to His servant, the prophet; "Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her in full for all her sins." And mark the tenderness of God's comfort. Still it is the heart, and the heart of a mother! Whose heart so full of love, and tenderness, and sympathy, and yearning, as hers? Listen to the touching words; "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." "As one whom his mother comforts." From what source of love so pure, what fountain of sensibility so deep, what spring of tenderness so sweet, does sympathy and comfort flow, in seasons of adversity and sorrow, as hers? A mother's heart is the first home which love enters, and the last it leaves. Born with our birth, it grows with our growth, clings to us through all life's vicissitudes, smiles when time smile, weeps when we weep, and, when hoary hairs have silvered the brow, and age has dimmed the eye, and the snows of many winters bow down the womanly form, the mother's love is as deep, and fresh, and warm, as when first it clasped its new-born treasure to its bosom. Such is the comfort with which God comforts His people. "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you."

Add to this beautiful and expressive image, the thought that, God's comforts are infinite and divine, while the tenderest yearnings of a parent's heart are but finite and human, and you have the most perfect idea of the comfort with which God, your Father, is prepared to comfort you, His sad and sorrowful child.

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We anticipate, in the foregoing remarks, the idea that God's comforts are parental. He comforts us as a father. All God's corrections are fatherly; so is His comfort. The hand that slays, and the hand that makes alive, the hand that wounds, and the hand that binds up, are both a Father's hand. "If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the father chastens not." "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him." Such is the image which finds an echo in every parental heart. How soothing thus to trace the discipline of trial to a Father's hand! And truly God rebukes, and chides, and corrects us, even as a father the children that he loves. How this view softens, subdues, and heals! "If this cup is from my Father," exclaims the afflicted child, "then will I drink it without a murmur. He has pierced my heart through and through; He has smitten my sheltering gourd, and He has blighted my lovely flower, and He has shaded my pleasant picture; but He is my Father still, and I will yield Him reverence, bowing silently and submissively to the rod which only love has sent, and which already is bursting into bud so promising, and is maturing into fruit so precious, making me a partaker of His holiness."

Accept, then, the comfort with which your Heavenly Father seeks to support and soothe you in your present calamity. Refuse not to be comforted. To refuse divine comfort because God's hand has smitten, is to cherish a murmuring and rebellious spirit against God. Your persistent rejection of all the promises, and assurances, and consolations of your Heavenly Father, is as much as to say, "God has deeply, sorely wounded me, and I will not forgive, and cannot forget." Do you do well to be angry? Who caused the sheltering vine to grow? who reared the oak, around which the tendrils of your heart so long and so closely entwined? Who revealed that spring, that refreshed you so often from its clear and sparkling stream? Your Heavenly Father! Then He has but recalled what was His own; and shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Refuse not, then, the comfort which His own hand offers.

In love He sent this temporal reverse; in love He shaded your home with death; in love He transferred earth's flower to bloom in heaven's paradise; and will you now reject the consolation He would sincerely pour into your heart, exclaiming, in the spirit of contumacy and rebellion, "My soul refuses to be comforted"? God forbid! Yield your drooping heart to that comfort, as the fainting flower to the dew, as the sickly plant to the sun, and, in the depth of your gratitude, exclaim, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulations!"

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He is the "God of all comfort"- "all comfort," and for "all our tribulations." It is a delightful thought, that in His own infinite heart, in the covenant of grace, in the Gospel of His love, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, He has made provision for all the afflictions, trials, and sorrows of His people. So that no new trial springs up in your path, no new grief shades your spirit, no new calamity crushes you to the earth, but the God of all comfort has anticipated that very need in the comfort He has provided for His Church. "Oh, how great is Your goodness which You have laid up for those who fear You; which You have wrought for those who trust in You before the sons of men!"

And what a comfort is THE LORD JESUS CHRIST to His people! There could be no revelation of God, as the God of all comfort, but in and through Christ. He is the great Depository of our consolation. Yes, He is called the "Consolation of Israel." Christ is our comfort, and the Holy Spirit is our Comforter. Who can listen to these words of tenderness and love which distilled from His lips into the sorrowing hearts of His disciples on the eve of their separation from Him, and not feel that Christ is truly the Consolation of His people; "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions!" Does your sorrow spring from a sense of sin? Jesus' blood pardons. Is it from a conviction of condemnation? Jesus' righteousness justifies. Is it from the power of indwelling sin? Jesus' grace subdues. Is it from some pressing temporal need? All resources are in Jesus, and He has promised to supply all your need, and that your bread and your water shall be sure.

Is bereavement- sore, crushing bereavement- your grief? Where will you find such tender sympathy with your sorrow as dwells in His heart, of whom it is recorded, "Jesus wept"? Who can comfort that sorrow, but Christ?- and He can, and He will comfort it. Does some foe menace you, or does some insurmountable difficulty lie in your way? All power is Christ's, and He will defend you from your enemy, and will roll your stone of difficulty from before your feet. Does suffering, and languor, and waning health affect your spirits? He who "bore our sicknesses" is your Consolation now, and will not leave you to suffer and pine alone, but can either heal your malady with a word, or so make all your bed in sickness, by the supports of His grace, and the discoveries of His love, as shall make you willing to lie there patiently so long as it pleases Him.

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A few practical deductions shall conclude this chapter. Learn from the subject to take all your troubles at once to God. God wants you- speaking after the manner of men- to make use of Him as the God of comfort. Why has He revealed Himself as such, if not that you should repair to Him immediately and without hesitation in every tribulation? They are sent for this purpose that you might "acquaint yourself with Him." Many a poor soul has made his first acquaintance with God in some deep, sore trial. It was not until God tore up all his earthly comforts by the root that he was led to see that all his life he had been living "without God in the world."

But it is in after-stages of our religious life that we know more of the character of God, learn more of His loving heart and of His revealed word as we fly to Him in our tribulations for the comfort He alone can give. And oh, the blessedness of nearness to Him into which our trouble has brought us! How have we kissed the rod and blessed the hand whose smitings have made known and unsealed to us a source of such comfort and a fountain of such blessing!

And let us not overlook the VARIOUS CHANNELS through which God comforts us. He comforts us by HIS WORD, its doctrines, promises, and precepts. He comforts us through the channel of PRAYER, drawing us to His mercy-seat, and bringing us into communion with Himself through Christ. Oh, what comfort flows through this channel! The moment we arise and give ourselves to prayer, we are conscious of a mental quietness, of a soothing of heart indescribable. Prayer has unloosed the burden- prayer has dissolved the cloud- prayer has proved an inlet of peace, joy, and hope, passing understanding and full of glory.

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God comforts us by the MINISTRY of His Word. For this purpose He furnishes His servants with gift and grace, and while some are as John the Baptist, "crying in the wilderness," others are like Barnabas, "sons of consolation," able to speak a word in season to those who are weary. How expressive the words of the apostle, "God, who comforts those who are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus." Nor must we forget to remind you that God often comforts His people by writing the sentence of death upon all comfort out of Himself. Thus He spoke to His Church, "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her"- margin, "speak to her heart." Is He thus bringing you, beloved, into the wilderness of separation, of entanglement, of solitude? Be sure it is but to comfort you, to speak to your heart, and to reveal Himself to you as the "God of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulation."

Thus, then, we learn that if we would have true comfort and consolation we must in faith run to heaven for it. It is a treasure found in no earthly climate. It is a jewel of heaven, a flower of paradise, found in no mine or growing in no garden below. We can carve our own crosses, we cannot make our own comfort. Seeking it from creatures, and amid creature good, we, alas! but seek the living among the dead. "When I said, my bed shall comfort me, You scared me with dreams."

Has Jesus given you an excess of comfort? Go and pour its overflowings in some stricken heart. Remember one end of God's comforts- it is "that we might be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, by the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God." Oh, high and holy privilege- godlike and divine- of repairing to some house of mourning, to some chamber of sickness, to some bed of suffering, to some believer in Jesus passing through adversity, and of some child of the light walking through darkness, and of strengthening and comforting them in God. Be this our mission, and then shall we be imitators of God, the "God of all comfort."

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Let me remind you what a fountain of comfort you have in the truth that this God of all comfort is your God. Thus while you possess the streams, the streams lead you to their source, and all that is in God is yours. I will suppose your case one of extreme woe. I will imagine you tried in your families, straitened in your circumstances, afflicted in your person, friendless, and homeless; and yet, against all this, I will weigh the truth that the God of all comfort is your God, and knowing how infinitely this blessing outweighs all your destitution and sorrow, I would call upon you to make the solitude through which you are traveling echo and reverberate with your shouts of joy and your songs of praise.

What if your home is desolate and your provisions are scanty; what if your heart is lonely and your body is diseased; if God is your God, and Christ is your Savior, and heaven is your home? In the midst of all your trials, sorrows, and discomforts, you have more cause to be happy and to sing than the brightest angel or the sweetest seraph before the throne. They stand in their own righteousness, you in the righteousness of God; they worship at a humble distance from God, you are brought near by the blood of Christ, enter into the holiest, and call Him Father!

And is it no comfort to be assured that Christ is yours, and that you are Christ's? With such a Savior and Friend, with such a Patron and Intercessor in heaven as Jesus, how comforted should you be in all your tribulations! Jesus knows you; others may not. The world assails, the saints judge; friends misinterpret and foes condemn, just because they neither know nor cannot understand you. Jesus knows you! Let this suffice. What a comfort that you can admit Him to every cloister of your soul, to every secret of your heart, with the feeling that He sees all, knows all, and understands all; and, what is more, sympathizes with, and approves all, which must, from the nature of the case, be profoundly veiled and inexplicable to human eye.

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Oh to live independently of the saints, and above the world, upon Jesus!– this is true comfort. The moment you are brought fully to realize– "Christ knows me altogether: my personal infirmities, my secret sorrows, my domestic trials, my professional anxieties, all the workings of my inner life," you are comforted as no friend on earth or angel in heaven could comfort you. Oh, what a Christ is ours! How should we love Him, trust Him, serve Him, and if need be, suffer and die for Him.

Poor worldling! what is your comfort?– the creature that soon must die? the world that you soon must leave? a life that is but as a shadow? the prospect of a death without a Savior? and an eternity without a heaven? Is this all? Yes, this is all the real comfort which you possess. Oh, fly to Christ without a moment's hesitation or delay! Secure an interest in Jesus, make Him your Friend, trust in Him as your Savior, accept Him as your Portion, and you shall be comforted in this life, and be happy forever in the life that is to come.

"May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who loved us and in his special favor gave us everlasting comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and give you strength in every good thing you do and say." 2 Thes. 2:16-17

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THE GOD OF BETHEL

"I am the God of Bethel." Genesis 31:13.

God is now His own Artist. Hitherto, the divine portraits upon which we have gazed with such sacred delight, were drawn by human hands, "holy men of God, as they were moved by the Holy Spirit," presenting such views of the character of God as met the varied conditions of His people; thus confirming our previous observation, that each title and perfection of God harmonized with some particular need of His Church. But, in the present chapter of our work, the Great I AM shall present His own Divine likeness, drawn with a vividness and fidelity such as He only could command. "I am the God of Bethel."

Who can mistake the Artist, or question the identity of the picture? The language of the one is too stately and commanding, and the likeness of the other too divine and life-like, to admit of a moment's doubt. It is Jehovah who speaks, and speaking of Himself, says "I am the God of Bethel." The word "Bethel" means, "the House of God," and the occasion on which it was thus used marked a memorable event in the history of Jacob, suggesting some spiritual reflections appropriate and profitable to the Christian and devout mind.

The patriarch was now an exile and a wanderer, fleeing from the vengeance of Esau. He had, on this occasion, been journeying more than four hundred miles through wild and inhospitable deserts; and at night, weary and footsore, he took a stone for a pillow, and laid himself down on the cold, dewy earth to sleep. That was a memorable night in his history. While he slept, a vision of singular character and glory appeared to him. It was a 'ladder,' its foot resting on the earth, and its top in heaven. Ascending and descending this mystic communication between the two worlds, innumerable angels were seen, 'ministering spirits,' doubtless, sent from heaven to 'minister' to this tried servant of God. But the most significant and glorious part of this vision was the appearance of Jehovah at the top of the 'ladder,' addressing the lonely and desolate patriarch slumbering at its foot. The words which He uttered, and the tones in which He spoke, were well calculated to quell the fears, to comfort and assure the mind of God's servant, now passing under the corrective hand of a righteous yet loving Father– a fugitive from man's rage, yet 'beloved of God,'– a lonely exile, yet waited on by angels– a stranger and destitute, yet the heir of the very land upon which he lay– single and alone, yet destined to be the head of a race countless as the dust of the earth, and through whom, as concerning the Messiah, "all the families of the earth should be blest."

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Not less consolatory and assuring was the gracious promise of the Divine presence and care which God spoke to him on that memorable night: "Behold I am with you, and will keep you in all places where you go, and will bring you again into this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of." What a vision of glory, and what a night of repose must that have been to the desolate mind, lonely spirit, and weary body of the patriarch! How he must have desired to prolong it, and how have regretted its close! And when he awoke, we marvel not at the wondering exclamation of his awe-stricken mind, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not"– that is, I did not expect such a vision of God in such a place.

"He was afraid and said, What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God—the gateway to heaven!" The next morning he got up very early. He took the stone he had used as a pillow and set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it. He named the place Bethel—house of God."

God, in a subsequent period of his history, reminded him of this memorable incident, doubtless with a view of strengthening his faith and comforting him under a new and severe trial through which he was then passing- the grinding avarice and base treachery of Laban, his father-in-law. Speaking to him again in a dream, God said, "I have seen all that Laban does unto you." Mark, God notes all the unkindness and injustice done to His saints, and will vindicate their wrong, and avenge the wrong-doer.

"I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar, and where you made a vow unto me." What an unfolding of the character of God is here! What tender love, what covenant faithfulness, what Almighty power! Surely, if ever God gave Jacob a song in the night season of woe, it was now! Angels must have bent an ear to that song, and have learned new strains from its melody. God's dealings with men, His dealings especially with His Church, must form a subject of profound study and of rich instruction to these celestial students. The Church is their Bible, in the marvelous history of which its election and redemption, its calling and keeping, its grace and glory- they see the will, and study the mind, and fathom the heart, of Jehovah– "Which things the angels desire to look into."

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Here we may for a moment pause, and in faith appropriate to ourselves the promise which God made to His servant Jacob, "Behold I am with you." That promise was not his alone, but is ours also, on whom the ends of the world are come. We are taught that, "no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation"- that is, that no individual believer has a personal and sole right to any part of God's Word, exclusive of other believers; but that, as there is "one God and Father of all," "of whom the whole family on earth and in heaven is named," so the promises of God, from Adam downward, are the property alike of all the children of that one family, not a solitary member, the obscurest and the weakest, being exempt.

Oh, what a uniting truth is this! How should it constrain us to recognize and love as brethren all the members of the one and indivisible family of God, even though they may occupy different apartments, and feed at different tables, in the one Great House, than ourselves. God loves them all; Christ died for all, and recognizes in all His own divine image; and the Holy Spirit dwells alike in all, and seals on the lips of all, "Abba, Father!"

We repeat, what an exceeding great and precious promise of our covenant God is here- intended for all saints, intended, my beloved, for you! "Behold I am with you, and will keep you in all places where you go." What is the New Testament but the echo of the Old? Hear we not the echo of this promise in the words of Jesus spoken to His disciples on the eve of His departure from them, when, like the patriarch, they were to be left as orphans in the world, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Take hold of this divine promise of your Lord, repeated with yet more earnest emphasis, and given under yet more affecting circumstances than it was to Jacob, and Jehovah Jesus will make it good in your individual and daily experience. God in Christ is with you, His child, and will keep you in all places where His providence leads you. No time or circumstance shall interpose to prevent its fulfillment.

How soon did God fulfill His promise in Jacob's experience! Listen to his touching admonition with Laban, "In fact, except for the grace of God—the God of my grandfather Abraham, the awe-inspiring God of my father, Isaac—you would have sent me off without a penny to my name. But God has seen your cruelty and my hard work. That is why he appeared to you last night and vindicated me." Our God is unchangeable. The same divine faithfulness and love are pledged to make good the same divine promise in your history. Like Jacob, you may be an exile and a wanderer from the land of your birth, and from the home of your parents. But Jacob's God is your God, and the promises made to Isaac and to Jacob, were equally made to all their spiritual seed, were made, beloved, to you.

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Oh! then, embrace in faith, and clasp to your lonely heart, this precious promise that God in Christ is with you in all places, and will never leave nor forsake you. You are not alone. You are not Fatherless, nor homeless; you are neither a fugitive nor an orphan. Oh, no! Christ, your Friend and Brother, is with you. His heart is your dwelling-place, and His Father is your Father, and His God is your God. "Happy is he that has the God of Jacob (the God of Bethel) for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God."

We have remarked upon the word "Bethel," as signifying the House of God. This naturally suggests the subject of our present chapter– PRAYER, or, communion with God, as "the God of Bethel." The believer has a Bethel everywhere, since there is no place where God is not. The pious home, the secret closet, the public sanctuary, and even the fields where he walks at eventide to meditate, is a Bethel– the place where God in Christ meets him and communes with him from above the mercy-seat.

Next to the revelation of God as the God of atonement, the God that pardons sin, the most needed and precious revelation of Him is, as the God that hears and answers prayer. Prayer is everything to the believer. It is his vital element, the right hand of his power, his invincible armor, the feet with which he runs in the way of obedience, the wings which uplift his soul to God, and which waft him within the veil of glory. But let us, on so interesting and important a subject, exchange these general observations for a few particulars illustrative of the nature, privilege, and influence of prayer.

Our first and most natural inquiry relates to the OBJECT of prayer. To whom is prayer properly to be addressed? Reason would answer, God; but revelation goes further, and explains who God is, and the Triune relation He sustains to us as the Being that it answers prayer, and to whom all flesh should come. We are at once brought in contact with the revealed truth, that prayer is addressed to the Triune-Jehovah, and yet separately and equally, to each distinct Person in the Godhead. There may be a mystery in this statement to some minds, even as there is a mystery in the doctrine of the Trinity itself. But, let it be observed that, if the human mind could fully comprehend this truth, either God must cease to be divine, or man must cease to be human.

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