Let us, however, be on our guard against impatience "For God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt." The tortuous path of Israel was prescribed out of a tender regard for its safety; and the same wise loving kindness determines the involutions, tangents, and circumnavigations of our pilgrimage. We are conducted "round about" in order to escape hills that are too steep, currents that are too strong, ordeals that are too bitter. "He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust," and leads us in a safe way because of our enemies. The meandering track we wearily tread irritates us, and excites in our heart cruel thoughts of God; yet if we saw truly, we should glorify the exquisite wisdom and grace which find for us at every step the line of least resistance. Indirection is not misdirection. The way is long, obscure, and apparently arbitrary; but the sufficient reason for all our perplexing wanderings is found in the weakness of our nature and the exigencies of life's discipline.

He fixed thee 'mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

In the sanctification of character the same method of indirection is followed. The ordinary moralist makes a frontal attack on the weaknesses and errors of human nature. He strikes directly and bluntly at the vices of men, concentrating his strength upon exposing, denouncing, and chastising their of

fences. The programme of revelation is widely different. Conversion is God's roundabout way of getting into the rear of a man's vices to dislodge them and to compel their retreat. Instead of contenting Himself with an immediate onslaught on our sins and follies, the Divine Saviour follows a deeper policy, and works round by the understanding, conscience, and heart, although the process is intangible and protracted, and does not commend itself to the natural man. And the whole process of our sanctification is effected in the same way. We pray earnestly that we may be enabled to attain this grace or the other, but the graces sought are not in some supernatural way immediately planted in our heart. Is prayer therefore unheeded? Not so. It is usually answered through a long course of events whose significance at the time we do not comprehend, but which eventually disciplines us into the very perfections we coveted. Henry Drummond, writing of the rest which God gives His people, remarks: "It is a roundabout way, apparently, of producing rest; but nature generally works by circular processes; and it is not certain that there is any other way of becoming humble, or of finding rest. If a man could make himself humble to order it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens."

God's order in the purification of society is similarly devious. The frontal attack on public evil is the only mode that commends itself to the mind of many reformers; but the Captain of Israel directs His unseen and unsuspected armies into the rear of social sins and

wrongs, cuts
cuts off their supplies, en-

velops them, saps and mines in the darkness, until the alien host mysteriously melts away. The New Testament makes no frontal attack on slavery, as abolitionism does; but first by the working of great doctrines of justice and love makes abolition inevitable. It makes no frontal attack on intemperance, as Mohammed did by the prohibition of wine; but by the slow, silent action of its grand ideals of purity and sacrifice guarantees and inaugurates a sober world. It makes no frontal attack on sensuality, after the manner of monasticism; but by revealing to men nobler delights and inspiring them with moral strength it hastens the time when all the people shall be righteous. The impatient resent this tardy process, yet the end shall justify it. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." The educationalist, the legalist, and the politician may unavailingly demonstrate for ever in the enemies' front, unless spiritual forces, which elude observation and work on eccentric lines, first render strongly intrenched evils untenable. The pathway by which God is introducing the race into its Canaan exhausts all mathematical figures. If nature abhors straight lines, still more does Providence. But He who governs the races and the ages has a sufficient reason for every detour and eccentricity. Do not resent the serpentine path, the confused movements, the unaccountable delays; eternal wisdom and compassion are ever discovering the line of least resistance for the race as well as for the individual.

Let us, then, imitate more closely the divine method of indirection in dealing with evil. In our personal moral culture we may act thus with advantage. To brood over our besetting sin becomes dangerous; it is wiser to attempt a flank movement, and defeat it by occupying our mind with other thoughts, interests, occupations, and pleasures. The smith seeking to render smooth a plate of iron that has been accidentally distorted does not smite directly the protuberances themselves, lest in doing so he should break or wound the plate he designs to flatten. Knowing the fibre of the metal, he strikes quite away from the obnoxious bulgings, so removing the inequalities without marring the sheet. In dealing with the faults of society there is a place for protest and prohibition, but to treat them effectually we must take the wide excursions of the intellectual and spiritual reformer. Most profitably might the ministry cultivate this generalship. Didactic and controversial presentments of the truth are not the most effective; we succeed best when the reader or congregation hardly knows where the moral comes in. Direct assaults on men's opinions and defects often provoke them into the attitude of self-justification and defiance, whilst the noble guile of insinuation and suggestion manœuvres them out of prejudices and positions we deprecate. Astronomers are said to see certain stars whilst they look askance.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

In attempting the recovery of the fallen remember the charm and virtues of indirection. The instructed

physician of to-day, in dealing with morbid conditions of mind and body, hopes much less from direct methods of medicine and treatment than from the indirect action of education and environment. This holds good equally in the treatment of morbid elements of character. In the training of children the shortest way of dealing with their faults may prove the longest. Do not unceasingly and painfully emphasize the fault and labour it; attenuate and destroy the evil thing by getting at it from another side. Lead the child along the line of least resistance. When by stratagem we carry our point with neighbours or friends we say, "I got round them." By a worthy artfulness let us "get round" people, that we may save them from Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land.