The Well by the Gate

And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me water to drink of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate!—2 Samuel 23:15.

There are stories in the Bible which we are almost afraid to touch for fear of spoiling them. Although we cannot exactly say that they teach us any lesson, the mere reading of them makes us feel better. They lift us into a region high above our ordinary life, and make us breathe a purer atmosphere than that which is generally around us. Like a fine piece of music or a fine autumn evening, they take us out of ourselves and awaken in us vague, big thoughts and lofty feelings, and touch us with a sense of the grandeur and sacredness of our destiny. Such a story is this of David and the Well of Bethlehem. It makes an irresistible appeal to our better feelings, makes us think more worthily of man, and brings us nearer to God.

David was a fugitive, hiding in caves and lurking in woods, with a rather disorderly and disreputable troop of followers, in constant peril of his life, and in constant risk of being caught by his deadly enemy, king Saul. He was still a comparatively young man; yet he was outlawed. From the jealousy of Saul he had sought shelter at the court of Achish at Gath; but there, too, he had found himself surrounded by danger, and, having feigned madness, he had fled to the cave of Adullam, and after that to the hold on the hill above the cave.

As he now looked forth, the whole country round was full of rich memories. Just at the foot of the hill he had fought the famous battle with Goliath which had marked him out as the future monarch of Israel. At no great distance was Bethlehem, the village in which he had been born and bred, and almost within sight were the slopes where David as a shepherd lad had watched his father’s sheep; while down between the summits of those distant hills was the gate of Bethlehem, near which was the well where David had quenched his thirst a thousand times in those early and happy days. Now he was a hated outlaw. Saul and Achish alike sought his life. Moreover, between him and the well was the camp of the Philistines, who had just invaded that rich, fertile plain, as was their wont at harvest-time, to plunder it of the grain which was now ripe for the sickle.

I

David Longed

There came upon David a consuming desire for a taste of that water which was at the gate-side of the little town, so few miles away, where once had been his home. He was looking down upon scenes familiar since his boyhood; he suffered from the burning thirst of an Oriental summer day. Overpoweringly he remembered the days when his now bronzed face was ruddy, the evenings when he piped the sheep to their fold—all that dear domestic life, with its rural duties and its untroubled faith. The burning sun, the excitement of the hour, and the contiguity of the well increased his thirst; all the memories of his boyhood connected with that well now crowded upon him. And, thinking of it all, “David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me water to drink of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate!” It was the cry of a homesick heart, and the incident is the sweetest thing in David’s life. Never was David more manly or more truly human than when he longed for a drink from the old well of his boyhood.

1. This is the longing of an essentially good man for the things of his childhood. David was no disappointed worldling. But the troubles and trials, sorrows and disappointments of life had begun to close around him. The days of youth were over for him. He was a grown man, a marked man, a famous captain, the pride of Israel, one on whom the eyes of the nation were fixed. But he was a wanderer, driven from place to place by the moody temper and the jealousy of king Saul, insecure of his life from day to day, hunted, as he himself said, “like a partridge on the mountains.” The beautiful boy, the youth of a ruddy countenance, was now a bearded, careworn man, tried by watchings, fastings, and perils alike in the city and in the wilderness. Then, it seems, in an hour when the heart of David was probably burdened with the sense of life’s disillusionments, when “days were dark and friends were few,” when experience had brought to him a feeling of the mystery that covers the ways of God, and of the sorrow that haunts the steps of man—then, we are told, the thoughts of David went back, with a great tenderness and yearning to the far-off days of youth and the scenes of childhood, and the cry broke from his lips—“Oh that one would give me water to drink of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate!”

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.1 [Note: Tennyson.]

2. It is the longing of a successful man. David was not one of life’s failures, who had run the race of life in vain aud now looked back sadly to the promising start. He had run the race well; he had outstripped all his rivals, and he had risen higher than the most venturesome hopes of boyhood dared to soar. All of honour and wealth and power the world had to give, it had given to him, for he had been taken from following his father’s sheep to sit upon the throne of Israel; and no forsaken outcast, but a king, is he who in the cave of Adullam longs for water from the well of Bethlehem. The world had given to this man all it has to give—given what it can give but seldom and only to a few—and he had longings still. For there in the cave of Adullam he thought not of the shouts of the army of Israel or of the rejoicing songs with which he was welcomed by Israel’s daughters; nor did he think there of the honour to which he had been raised, or of the house of cedar he had built for himself. His weary spirit fled away for rest back to the days when he drank of the well of Bethlehem; and all of his life that the world would have thought worth living he would willingly have unlived, and all his honours, his rank, and his possessions he would willingly have laid aside for the light heart and the cloudless days of youth.

A friend told the writer of a visit he made one summer to the home of his childhood. He had not been back for many years. The old place had passed into the hands of strangers. The present occupant took him from room to room until he had reached the attic. There, draped in cobwebs, stood an old spinning-wheel. At sight of it his heart went to his throat. “It is my mother’s spinning-wheel,” he said. “If you will look just there you will a blood mark. One day, when a little boy, I cut my finger and the blood trickled down on the spot while my mother tied up the wound. You must let me have this old wheel to take to my home and to my children. It brings back to me my mother and my childhood as nothing else has done.”

3. It is a longing we can all more or less understand. David, like a true poet, felt and experienced the thoughts and feelings that stir in hundreds and thousands of minds, though only the one man has the gift of putting them into speech.

There is no man or woman who does not say occasionally or feel with Job, “Oh that I were as in months past!” We have visions of happy wells of which we drank in the dear old days, and from which we are now inevitably separated. We think of the time when everything was new to us and the world crammed with glory, when perfect health was in our veins and our heartbeats were all music, and we had no heavy burden of care to carry, and sorrow had not brought the shadows, and we hardly knew what it was to be weary, and no day was ever too long, and we wanted no heaven beyond because it was all heaven below.”1 [Note: J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 159.]

Four ducks on a pond,

A grass bank beyond,

A blue sky of spring,

White clouds on the wing.

What a little thing

To remember for years,

To remember with tears!

II

What did He Long for?

1. David thirsted, and he longed for water. But any water would not satisfy him. He longed for water from a particular well—“from the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate.” The traditional “David’s Well” is half a mile N.N.E. of Bethlehem. Ritter speaks of its “deep shaft and clear cool water.” A picture of it rose before David now—the sweet, cold water which he used to drink when he was a boy—and he longed for it. But why did he long for it? Was there no other fountain in all the neighbourhood from which there might have been brought for the weary king a draught as pure and cool, no other fountain whose waters could have quenched his thirst? What possible difference could it make to David whether he drank water from the well by the gate of Bethlehem, or from the spring by the cave where he lay? Thirst is thirst, and water is water. If you drink the water you slake your thirst—and that is all there is in it. What difference is there?

2. What David really desired was not mere water, or even water from the well of Bethlehem, but to drink its water as he had done in other days—to drink it with the feelings of childhood. He wished to be again the shepherd boy passing in and out at the gate of Bethlehem, free from care as in the days of other years. It was natural, but it was vain. When he longed for the water of the well of Bethlehem he forgot to consider how, though the well might be the same, he was changed; how, even if its waters were given him clear and cool as in days long ago, he must drink of it now no longer as the light-hearted boy of Bethlehem, but as a careworn man.

3. David wanted, not what he thought he wanted and asked for so importunately, but his childhood. We easily read enough between the lines of the incident to comprehend that the thirst was not so much in this man’s throat as in his heart. Amid these deeds of arms his spirit was wounded and parched. Near his native place, within sight of the hills on which he kept his father’s sheep, he was thinking of his boyhood, and his longing for the dear old well was a home-sickness. Worn out with his manifold troubles and anxieties, he wished to be a child again, and the well round which he used to play seemed a kind of fountain of youth. If he could only drink of its water, all the heavy weight of the years would fall off his spirit and he would become young again, with all the fresh hopes that animated him in life’s morning.

Ye see me now an ould man, his work near done,

Sure the hair upon me head’s gone white;

But the things meself consated ’or the time that I could run,

They’re the nearest to me heart this night.

Just the daisies down in the low grass,

The stars high up in the skies,

The first I knowed of a mother’s face

Wi’ the kind love in her eyes,

Och, och!

The kind love in her eyes.1 [Note: Moira O’Neill, Songs of the Glens of Antrim.]

III

Why did He Long for it?

1. David was feeling the strong pressure of memory, the strength of association with a happy past; the force of that strongest of all the associations which bind a man with unalterable piety to the scene of a happy boyhood. It was merely a sentiment; there were other wells as refreshing, other waters as cool, as that which trickled forth at Bethlehem. But the well of Bethlehem surely reminded him of the early days, with all their glad, free innocent ways, when he was a simple-hearted, God-fearing child, knowing little of evil and nothing of fighting and sorrow and life’s rough work. Now his hands had shed blood; his heart had been torn with fierce passions. It was not as in the olden days. He had lost much. He had gained much also, but it was the loss that he thought of now.

2. Why is it that men turn back thirsty and weary to the streams of their boyhood, and lighten up the darkness of their cave with the glory of memory? Because there are losses connected with the passing of youth which can never be repaired and made good. Other good gifts may come in the place of the gifts of youth; but David showed in that cry for “the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate,” that he was conscious of the loss of something which was absolutely past recovery. The feeling has been expressed in most beautiful verse by Wordsworth. He says that with youth something was gone from him which could never be restored.

Nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.

(1) David was thinking of his lost enthusiasms. He had not reached his prime, yet life seemed to be closing in. There were withdrawals and impoverishments about his life which perplexed that large spirit within him, as it yearned for wider scope, fuller liberty, and nobler attainments. He yearned for the ampler liberties of youth, the wild free play of childhood. He longed for those days when mankind appeared as one brotherhood; when the thought of hating, or being hated, had never crossed his mind, but when all men appeared to be one loving confederacy.

How strong the memory of victorious enthusiastic youth was in David! The first encounter with the lion and the bear—what strength it gave him! What a force it was! That great encounter with the Philistines, when in his generous, boy-like ardour he could not understand how men who believed in God could cower before a bully giant, or acquiesce in a living degradation! See again how this lived with him into darker years! See him take the sword of Goliath from the sacred precinct where it had been laid up as a consecrated relic, and say, “There is none like that; give it me!”

It constitutes the great and magnificent quality of youth that it can glow and blaze. It is a very commonplace thought after all that when men are old they will take things more calmly, meaning only that the fires will have burned low. Cynicism is a poor exchange for enthusiasm. There are many and manifest temptations of youth, such as rashness, both of judgment and of conduct, hotheadedness, passion, unbalanced zeal, but these are all the extravagances of what is its finest quality. The world needs the strong hopefulness and buoyancy of youth, as well as the large experience and cautious wisdom of age. Youth is the motive-power of the world, driving it to new ends, and bringing to it new hopes.1 [Note: H. Black.]

How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses, for ever in joy!2 [Note: Browning, Saul.]

(2) David was thinking of his lost ideals. In life, with its failures and disappointments, its cruel blows, its dread sufferings, we are all too apt to become flat and weary, stale, unprofitable, quenched in our enthusiasm, blinded in our hopes, blunted in our enterprises. We want, like David, draughts from the water of the well at Bethlehem, where we can renew our youth, and forget the darkness of the cave, the heartlessness of the foes, and the dull weight of defeats, which lie between us and the past.

A boy at school has not yet become, thank God, a bankrupt in spent pleasures. He is not that miserable creature whom you see lounging round the amphitheatre of life, languidly wondering whether the prizes which it offers are after all worth the trouble of contesting them. He is not that pitiable being who has lost all beauty out of nature, all refinement from art, all the subtler joys of simple life, in the frantic plunge after pleasure, followed by a brutal incapacity for enjoyment, and who “sees a blight in every flower, a canker in every fruit, and a baldness on the head of every prophet.”1 [Note: Canon Newbolt.]

3. There are some persons, no doubt, who tell us that all this is mere sentimentality, that it is all a mistake, that people regard the days of youth with affection only because they are far off and out of reach; or that, at any rate, it is very foolish and very unprofitable to cry over what is past recall, and to indulge in feelings which are weak and enervating, and which may unfit them for the practical business of the present hour. Well, no doubt it is possible to be mawkish and feebly sentimental about the past, and to waste to-day in useless regrets for that which is beyond recovery. But we pity the man or woman who cannot feel, at moments, as David felt, when he turned from the heat and burden of a busy, harassed life, and thought of the quiet fields of Bethlehem and the sheepfolds, and of the sweet cool water of the well by the gate, and the dear memories of childhood, youth, and home. Do you suppose David was unnerved and enfeebled and rendered less capable of facing the rough, hard cares and troubles and difficulties of life because his mind was carried back, with a great rush of love, to the days that were no more—the golden days of the morning of life?

Far from that. It is well now and then to go back in thought, and drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate. It is well to go back to the unstained memories and associations of the dawn of life; to recall the glowing dreams and visions of boyhood and girlhood; to think of the time when the mind first awoke, and the mystery and splendour of life lay unfolded before us; to rebuild in fancy the world where we first began to know and understand the high lessons of duty and obedience, and received on our souls the first impress of those Divine truths which “wake to perish never,” and remain

The fountain-light of all our day,

The master-light of all our seeing.

To think of these things when the cares and troubles of life press heavily on us, and when the heart is sore, and the feet are weary, and the world grows cold and grey, is often to find new strength and hope and courage for the necessary work of life.

“Forty years after Dr. Kidd’s death, my father was stopped by an elderly woman as he was walking in the neighbourhood of Rose Street, Dundee. She wore an apron, under which she seemed to carry a parcel. This she took from its hiding-place just as my father and she met each other. It was a little portrait in a paltry frame, the same likeness of Dr. Kidd that does duty as a frontispiece of some of his books. ‘You’ll mind wha that is,’ said she. My father looked at the engraving, and replied that he well remembered the Doctor. ‘I’m but a puir body,’ continued the woman, ‘I get aff the Buird’ (the Parochial Board), ‘but I saw the pictur’ a while syne in a broker’s shop—it was ninepence, and I saved up till I was able to buy it.’ And then she told how the Doctor used to preach in the Chapelshade Kirk on fast-days or communion Sabbaths when she was a lassie, and how much spiritual good she had got from his ministrations there, few and far between as his appearances must have been. ‘I sometimes think,’ added she, ‘that I can hear his voice reading in the Revelations yet.’ ”1 [Note: Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 305.]

We leave the simple master-words of life

Behind us with the toys of childhood’s years,

Whilst in the book-bound wisdom of the seers

We seek some scant equipment for the strife.

All nature’s lore and tenderness we spurn,

Alone fare forth in search of gold or fame,

And then look backward through the dust and shame,

Knowing that we can nevermore return.

Yet now and then a sunset or a flower,

Or some old haunt revisited once more,

Or the sea’s story whispered to the shore,

Or the wind’s music in a listening bower,

Will bring again the unalloyed delight

We knew before our life had held a wrong,

Recall the refrain of a cradle-song,

And lift the shadows from our saddened sight.1 [Note: Percy C. Ainsworth, Poems and Sonnets, 31.]

IV

How was the Longing Satisfied?

1. Water was brought to David from the very well of which he desired to drink. Three of these mighty men overheard that longing as it broke forth from his weary spirit. They waited for no command, they sounded no trumpet, they summoned no companies, but forth they went and perilled their very lives that David might have his wish. They fought their way to the well of Bethlehem—the well by the gate; they drew for their master; with their swords they cleared their way as they returned to the cave of Adullam, and there they presented the crystal draught the king had longed for. But the pure sweet water he had longed for above all things was now nothing to him in itself though he had it in his hands. He would not drink it. He knew now that he wanted it no more; or rather he knew that deeper than the thirst for water had been the longing of his wearied spirit which mere water could not satisfy.

2. If David could have gone back to the actual scenes of his childhood, he would still have been unsatisfied. He might have returned to the home of his boyhood and revisited scenes amid which he had wandered free from care, and the fields and the trees and the streams which he loved might have been around him—the same, yet how different! The charm is gone. He has returned to the home; but he can never return to the feelings of his youthful days. There is no actual going back. We cannot begin again, start afresh, make a new attempt, with the added experience of life, as many of us would like to do—“To the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return.” We cannot now re-write the story of our lives. The record, with all its faults, mistakes, confusions, sins, must stand. Nor can we replace the losses of the heart, the separations of death, and alas! the separations of life.

We return to a memory-haunted scene, and how strangely the hills, the streams, the streets have dwindled and shrunk together. Size is relative to that central affection which magnifies all its store of surroundings. That which is about us has its perspective, not in fact, but in love’s wiser fancy. We cannot restore the outer ratio of what made life’s earliest impressions. A secret and vanished beauty fails of reattachment to visible things. The lute is hushed, the chairs are vacant, and Charles Lamb’s plaint rises to pallid lips:—

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

The well is shallower. The waters that “were wont to go warbling so softly and well” do not flow as they used to flow. Their gush and sparkle have escaped, and something insipid and tasteless has come. The sweetness was about, not in, the draught. The taste was in the tongue and the lips that have changed.1 [Note: M. W. Stryker.]

3. David here was crying for his vanished childhood, and in a moment certain things happened which proved to him that he was richer as a man than he had ever been as a child. He had won friendships that were faithful to him even unto death. Three men among his followers, as soon as they heard his cry, went off, without a moment’s doubt, to obey; they broke through an army, their lives hanging by a hair at every turn, on the mere chance of bringing him a draught. It was surely more than all the delights of childhood to have gained such devotion, such love, as that! It was brought home to him that even here, in dreary Adullam, with its bitter experiences and brackish water, he had what not even Bethlehem with all its wells could give him. He had gained much, though he had lost much. He had gained more than he had lost.

There are better things than the glory of childhood, just as the gnarled, strong, winter-worn oak is nobler than the slender sapling with its first shoots of green. God did not send us into the world to be always children; but to be strong, long-suffering, serviceable men and women; to make friends and deserve their friendship; to learn patience through sorrow and courage by facing difficulties, and to take a real soldier’s part in the great battle of life. And if we are doing that, there is no need to sigh for our Bethlehem days. A man, if he has grown with some sense of duty, with some fear of God, and in a religious way; if he has fought with temptation and not always yielded; if he has learned some of the finer lessons which experience teaches, is in all ways richer than he was as a youth or a little child. His thoughts are larger and wiser; his whole conception of things is more Godlike; his sympathies are wider; his world is a bigger place. He loves and pities his fellow-men more; his hands and brain and heart are fitter for work; his influence is greater; and the world which thanks God for the children ought to thank God even more for him.

The regret we have for our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse we more than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity to enjoy Shakespeare may balance a lost appetite for playing at soldiers.1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Child’s Play.]

Let us never fancy that the path of life is a path that steadily declines and slopes downward. It is true “heaven lies about us in our infancy.” It is true that “the vision splendid” is often unveiled to young eyes. But it is still more true that heaven and God and “the vision splendid “are far nearer and closer to the man or woman who, in the battle of life, holds fast by truth and right and holiness, and pushes on, carrying a daily cross, along the rough, painful road of duty and faith and earnest living. It is a cruel mistake, and a most faithless one, to suppose that the beginning of life is better than the end of life, and that the days of youth are purer and better and of more value than the days of mature manhood and experienced old age.

The David whom we love and admire, the David who has helped and enriched countless souls, and sent the echo of his song down through the centuries and won for himself deathless glory and fame in the Church of God, is not the boy of Bethlehem, dreaming in the fields and sitting by the well at the gate in all the charm of golden youth. The David who helps us and bids us be of good cheer is the man of many trials and many troubles; the man of vast experience, much sorrow, much prayer; the man of a “broken and a contrite heart,” wounded and showing the scars of many a fight. David is dear to us because he stands before us as one who, with infinite toil and labour, and with sweat of brain and heart, gained the mastery of himself; and who, in spite of defeats, failures, and sins, held fast, sometimes almost with desperation, by what is best and highest; and so found at last the true end of life, which is the knowledge and peace of God.1 [Note: W. Harrison.]

It is the experiences of our lives that are truly valuable. It is our sorrows and our joys, our exaltations and enthusiasms, that are really so much to us. Lives grow richer as they grow older. So long as a man really lives, he is continually establishing new relations with all the things about him. Every year some new object becomes representative and suggestive of some deep experience of life. One year his business becomes glorified with all the spiritual discipline of threatened failure and restored prosperity. Another year his family life is deepened and softened by bereavement. Again, his country’s danger lifts patriotism into a passion. And yet again his body grows sacred to him by the mysterious touch of God in sickness. Always there is a new value coming into things which sinks the old and makes them new to him.2 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]

4. When David realized the gain that the years had brought, he thanked God and was satisfied. For David the water of the Bethlehem well had become wine—the red wine of the sacrament of selfless love. He could no longer think of himself, but of these three devoted hearts and of the God to whom he felt he in the long-run owed the priceless draught of human affection which had so mightily refreshed his weary soul. Their unselfish readiness to sacrifice themselves in order to gratify a chance wish, uttered in a despondent hour, made him unselfish too—nay, made him more than unselfish, made him go straight to God in a fervour of thanksgiving, and talk about it to Him as if He would be sure to understand it, and recognize its true value. In that moment David rose again to the stature of a man of God. He could thank God for what the years had brought; he could thank God for the losses they had brought as well as the gains.

An easy thing, O Power Divine,

To thank Thee for these gifts of Thine!

For summer’s sunshine, winter’s snow,

For hearts that kindle, thoughts that glow.

But when shall I attain to this—

To thank Thee for the things I miss?

For all young Fancy’s early gleams,

The dreamed-of joys that still are dreams,

Hopes unfulfilled, and pleasures known

Through others’ fortunes, not my own,

And blessings seen that are not given,

And never will be, this side heaven.

Had I too shared the joys I see,

Would there have been a heaven for me?

Could I have felt Thy presence near,

Had I possessed what I held dear?

My deepest fortune, highest bliss,

Have grown perchance from things I miss.

Sometimes there comes an hour of calm;

Grief turns to blessing, pain to balm;

A Power that works above my will

Still leads me onward, upward still:

And then my heart attains to this,—

To thank Thee for the things I miss.1 [Note: Thomas Wentworth Higginson.]

5. There is something better than looking back with longing to the days of youth. It is this—to realize that true life, the life of the soul, never grows old, although it grows up. Our true home never is, never was, amid the symbols and shadows of time, but in the grand reality of eternity. The well of Bethlehem in the morning—there is no turning back to it in the afternoon. There is a farther, a more glorious morning, a deeper, a nobler, a purer draught from the waters of God, the waters of rest. The soul in growing older is not farther from God than in the days of sweet innocence. To turn in simplest, most childlike trust to God, truth, heaven, wherever you are and however you are, is to drink deep of the water of ageless life.

Gray distance hid each shining sail,

By ruthless breezes borne from me;

And, lessening, fading, faint and pale,

My ships went forth to sea.

Where misty breakers rose and fell

I stood and sorrowed hopelessly;

For every wave had tales to tell

Of wrecks far out at sea.

Today, a song is on my lips:

Earth seems a paradise to me:

For God is good, and lo, my ships

Are coming home from sea!1 [Note: George Arnold.]

Literature

Ainsworth (P. C.), The Pilgrim Church, 147.

Aked (C. F.), Old Events and Modern Meanings, 45.

Banks (L. A.), David and His Friends, 236.

Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 227.

Burrows (H. W.), Lenten and other Sermons, 139.

Campbell (R. J.), Sermons addressed to Individuals, 191.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 502,

Greenhough (J. G.), Half-Hours in God’s Older Picture Gallery, 132.

Harrison (W.), Clovelly Sermons, 88.

MacArthur (R. S.), Quick Truths in Quaint Texts, ii. 87.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: 2 Samuel, etc., 141.

Macleay (K. A.), The Never-Changing Creed, 209.

Macmillan (H.), The Clock of Nature, 328.

Maver (J. S.), The Children’s Pace, 89.

Miller (J. R.), Our New Edens, 123.

Newbolt (W. C. E.), Words of Exhortation, 332.

Nicholson (M.), Redeeming the Time, 180.

Speirs (E. B.), A Present Advent, 292.

Stryker (M. W.), The Well by the Gate, 3.

Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vii. 170.

Christian World Pulpit, liv. 287 (Maver); lxv. 317 (Robberds).