The word of Jehovah was precious (or rare) in those days: there was no open (or frequent) vision. (1 Sam. 3: 1.)

THAT was a dark time in Israel. There was no settled government. Anarchy exposed the people to the assaults of the heathen round about them. Idolatry deprived them of the one religious principle which might have given them unity and courage. Without faith in God, they were left à prey to their enemies. The tabernacle indeed remained, but old Eli, with his two reckless and licentious sons, showed how impotent mere ceremonialism is to stay the tide of human passion and selfishness.

But God had pity upon the apostate nation. He desires to communicate himself to men. Like the all-surrounding atmosphere he presses into our lives, and wherever there is an empty nook or crevice, he will enter in. Most of us are so full of our own concerns that we leave no room for God. It is only the simple, the humble, the childlike, that receive him. It seemed as if in Israel there was only one such receptive nature. It was the little Samuel. In the darkness of the night God spoke to him. The things that were hidden from the wise and prudent were

A sermon preached in the Parsells Avenue Baptist Church, Rochester. N. Y., at the ordination of Samuel F. Langford, September 13, 1904.

revealed unto a babe. And so began a long line of prophets, and there was at length open vision of God and his truth.

I wish to take this phrase "open vision," and make it the foundation of a discourse on God's communications to men. Let us notice, first, man's great need of open vision. We appreciate very highly our need of insight into the laws of nature and the characters of our fellow-men; for without knowledge of gravitation we might fearlessly walk over the precipice, and without knowledge of human iniquity we might innocently put ourselves into the clutches of the villain. But to know God is more needful still, for without knowing him we cannot properly understand ourselves or anything else. The soul is made for God, and it is restless until it finds rest in him. That is a beautiful picture in the book of Genesis of man's unfallen condition-the loving pair walking with God in the garden, as little children with their father, listening to his words, protected by his presence, obedient to his will. All the subsequent history of the good is an effort to get back to Eden. Moses prays: "I beseech thee, show me thy glory!" Job cried: "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!' David pleads: "Hide not thy face from me!" Only in Jesus is the lost vision of God perfectly restored.

Conscience is not enough. That has been left as God's witness in the soul, since the sense of his personal presence has ceased. But conscience can only warn. The mandatory element cannot overcome the influence of strong temptation, nor answer the sophistries that make the worse appear the better reason.

The Bible is not enough. Even though it is the record of God's past revelations, it may become a merely external word that has no power to quicken the dead soul. Some power is needed that can turn the outer word into an inner word, with power to move and melt the heart. Preaching is not enough, and ordinances are not enough, and churches are not enough. What we need is living contact with God himself, personal intercourse with the Father of our spirits. Conscience and Bible and preaching and ordinances. and churches are valuable, just so far as they prepare the way for our own access to God, but they fail of their purpose if they bring us only to the gate of the temple and leave us without the open vision.

Notice, secondly, that there are times when this open vision is peculiarly needed. In the book of Proverbs the wise man tells us that where there is no vision the people perish. Vision-by which I mean the apprehension of God's presence and the understanding of his will-is the only thing that can keep either the individual or the community or the nation from moral deterioration. Things will never go of themselves unless they are running down-hill. There is a downward gravitation of our nature which nothing but the sight of God and the motives drawn from the unseen world can ever counteract. Plato speaks of "that blind, many-headed wild beast of all that is evil within thee." The blindness is not so much the cause of sin as it is the result of sin. Sin is an opiate that takes away our powers of moral perception, and the more we sin the more blind we become to the real nature of our condition or to the danger of it.

Physicians tell us that some of the most deadly diseases do not reveal themselves in the patient's countenance, nor has the patient any adequate consciousness of his malady.

Some years ago I visited an asylum for the blind. As I inspected their recitation-rooms and saw their eagerness to learn, I felt thankful for the new science that was providing books with raised letters, and was permitting touch to be substituted for sight. And when I saw hundreds of those sightless human beings gathered in the great lecture hall, and waiting silently for some word to be spoken to them, it was a privilege to utter that word. But when, a little time after, I heard of the burning of a similar asylum, and of the frantic groping of the poor blind children toward the fire-escapes when the stairways were cut off by the smoke, I realized as never before the misery of those who have eyes, but who cannot see. In the Old Testament, the king of Syria sent horses and chariots and a great host to encompass the city of Dothan and capture Elisha the prophet. Elisha prayed Jehovah to smite the army with blindness, and the prophet led that blind host into the very midst of their enemies. It was a mercy to them, for food and drink was put before them and they were set free. But Satan sometimes blinds a whole people, only to destroy them. They sink into immorality or give themselves up to commercial gambling, or go out on wars of conquest, because they lack the vision of God and have no fear of God before their eyes.

A third truth which I would have you notice is this: God restores his people by giving the open

vision to a few. The darkest part of the night is just before the dawn. When the enemy comes in like a flood the Lord lifts up a standard against him. God never leaves himself without a witness. Somewhere, in the most godless times, can be found those who love and serve God. Elijah may fancy that he alone is left to stand for the truth among a nation of idolaters, but God shows him that he has yet seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And God makes this very Elijah the beginning of a second line of prophets, that holds on through Elisha and Ezekiel even to Malachi and John the Baptist. At the very time that the army of the king of Syria is stricken with blindness, supernatural vision is granted to Elisha's servant, and the young man's eyes are opened; he sees, and, behold! the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire round about his master.

So, in every dark day in the history of his people, God wakens some chosen servant of his to see what the common crowd are blind to. And this it is to be

a prophet. The prophet is one lifted up in spirit so that he gets God's point of view, sees the things of the present under the form of eternity, descries truths which to his contemporaries are yet below the horizon. It does not follow that he will be able to predict the future, though to know the spiritual significance of the present is to have premonitions of things to come. But he will see the relations of the present life to God, and so will be able to speak words. which go to the heart of present needs. It does not follow that he will be able to give new communica