one great aim of building a house that should stand, and that should bear his name long after he had passed away. But his judgment, his foresight, his energy, his devotion to the lower ends of business success, have not availed to build him an imperishable house. Truly, "he builds too low who builds beneath the skies." If we would have the Lord build the house, we must see to it that we are working into our plans, into our life's endeavor, into our characters, into our fortunes those durable materials that shall remain when

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherits, shall dissolve;
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

"Every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God." Let us commit our building to his care, who is the great Master-builder. Then we need not fear. Then laborer and watchman shall not toil and watch in vain. Then we may work by day in confident hope, and sleep at night the sweet sleep he giveth his beloved, free from anxiety and alarms, until we are called to enter the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Text: 66

THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.

BY REV. JAMES M. BELDING,*

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Lapeer.

Who hath despised the day of small things?" Zach. 4:10.

These words fell from the lips of the prophet as a reminder to Israel that the Lord dealt with his people in divers ways, but ways that greatly differed from the wisdom of men. When he would lead his people from the thraldom of slavery and the house of Egyptian bondage, he chooses Moses, the ex-Egyptian prince, an exile from Pharaoh's court, now roaming a distant land with a price upon his head. He makes the rod of Moses more powerful than the sceptre of the great king. He leads the struggling crowd through the wilderness, and when at the Red Sea, hemmed in with mountain and desert, the advancing hosts of Egypt in hot pursuit, and the way to the throne of grace the only avenue open for escape, then he piles in diamond masonry those mighty walls of wave and tide. He paves with coral and shell an highway from the shores of slavery to

* James Mansfield Belding was born in Amsterdam, N. Y., and educated in its school and academy. A newspaper reporter for many years, he was chaplain of Chicago House of Correction for three years, and assistant to Rev. A. E. Kittredge, D. D., of the Third Presbyterian church. In 1881 he entered the Congregational Theological Seminary, and 1882, McCormick Seminary, graduating 1884. He has had pastorates at Pullman, Ill., St. Louis and Maryville, Mo., Northville and Lapeer, Mich.

the shores of freedom. He opens a pathway from the starvation of the brick kilns to the country overflowing with milk and honey. That was God's way. So dramatically thrilling is the story, so replete with the studdings of Jehovah's solicitude, so brilliant under the generalship of both Moses and his splendid successor, General Joshua, and so full of the flashings and outbreakings of a supernatural presence, that some of the higher critics as well as infidel readers are prone to write above the whole marvelous tale the word Fiction. It is wonderful how God carved from the crude block of humanity a people whose name should go down through history to the end of time; how his hand wrought that mighty transition which witnesses the converting of the nationless Hebrews into a people with a grand central government; with a throne magnificent for glory and power; and with kings and prophets the lustre of whose name has become the heritage of the ages.

But this is the way in which God works. He takes the things that are despised and with them works his righteous pleasure. With the weakest instruments he can accomplish the grandest ends. We see this illustrated all through the Bible. This is declared in emphatic words by Paul as one of the laws of the divine government. A shepherd's rod-what could be weaker than that-and yet he makes it mightier than the sceptre of Pharaoh; ram's horns when pressed to the lips of priests, through their shrill scream and the cry of faith rising from the lips of forty thousand veterans of the wilderness-they make the walls of the stronghold Jericho fall flat; a cake of barley meal—and yet it is sufficient to keep a family for many days and never grow less; earthen pitchers with clay lamps in themand yet when those pitchers are broken they scatter the hosts of the Midianites; a boy's sling and five smooth