“Lilies have no sin
    Leading them astray,
  No false heart within
    That would them bewray,
  Nought to tempt them in
    An evil way;
  And if canker come and blight,
  Nought will ever put them right.

  “But good and ill, I know,
    Are in my being blent,
  And good or ill may flow
    From mine environment;
  And yet the ill, laid low,
    May better the event;
  Careless lilies, happy ye! 
  But careless life were death to me.”

II.

The courage of Asa had as its root confidence in God, and this is shown more fully in the narrative which appears in the Second Book of Chronicles than in the First Book of Kings.

His reforming work—­carried out with ruthless vigour—­naturally raised up adversaries on every side.  In the court itself Maachah and her party were implacable.  Outside it the idolatrous priests, and all their hangers-on, whose vested interests were abolished, were plotting and scheming against the king.  But Asa was imperturbable, because he had found God to be his refuge and strength.  The man who really fears God finds the fear of his fellows thereby cast out.

To Jehovah, therefore, the brave king brought all his difficulties.  This was beautifully exemplified when he found himself confronted with an overwhelming force of Ethiopians, for then “Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power:  help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude.  O Lord, Thou art our God; let not man prevail against Thee.”  Prayer was the secret of his strength, and in it we also may find all the help we need in meeting our discouragements—­the ignorance which tries our patience, the indifference to God which nothing seems to stir, the vice which holds its victim as an octopus, the sin which is as subtle as it is strong.  Against them all we have no power, and may well pray as Asa did.  “Lord, help us.”  Then He will fulfil the promise, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.”

III.

After his great deliverance Asa renewed his consecration.  The need for its renewal shows that in character and conduct he was far from being all that he ought to have been.  He was not “perfect” in that sense.  His earnestness cooled down.  Through his carelessness the “high places” were re-erected.  He seems to have been content that the “groves,” with their grosser forms of idolatry, were gone, and that other forms might be tolerated, just as some, who have conquered their vices, are morally ruined by what the world calls little sins.  But, in spite of these failings, the judgment of God, who is ever slow to anger and of great mercy, was that Asa’s heart was “perfect”—­sound, whole, and sincere, though not sinless.