to do.  As he cried, a word was spoken in his ear soft and sweet, like the voice of the aspen by the brook; soft and sweet, and yet so sure:  “Peace be unto thee; fear not:  thou shalt not die.”  Then he rose and built an altar, to mark the sacred spot where God had talked with him and he had received his divine commission.  There it is to this day in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.  As you pass it, remember that where those stones now stand the Most High conversed with him whose blood is in your veins.

As yet Gideon was without any direct orders, but that night he heard again the same soft, sweet voice, and it commanded him to build another altar upon the highest point of Ophrah, to throw down Baal’s altar, and upon the altar to the Holy One to sacrifice the second of the bullocks belonging to Joash, the bullock of seven years old, burning it with the wood of the great idol.  The angel under the oak was before my father’s eyes, the soft, sweet voice, telling him he should not die, was in his ears; but not even the Lord God can conquer our fears, and although my father was a brave man and saved Israel, no man ever had worse sinkings of heart than he.  It was as if he had more courage and more fear than his fellows.  He did what the Lord said unto him, but he was afraid to do it by day, for not only was his tribe against him, but his father’s house also.  He took ten of his servants, and when the city awoke one morning the altar of Baal was cast down, the altar to the Lord God stood on the hill, and there lay on it the half-burnt logs of the image of Baal.  Our nation has never believed in Baal as it has believed in the Lord God.  How should it believe in Baal?  Baal has done nothing for it, but the Lord God brought us from Egypt through the desert, and was the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.  Nevertheless, when the altar of Baal was cast down and the idol was destroyed the people demanded the death of Gideon, and you know that at this day, though Baal is a false god, and in their hearts they confess it, they would murder us if we said anything against him:  they went therefore to Joash and told him to bring forth his son that they might slay him.  These, my children, were not the Midianites nor the Amalekites, but our own nation.  At the very time when the heathen were upon us we turned from the Lord to Baal, and sought to destroy the man who could have rescued us.  Thus we have ever done, and we are surely a race accursed.  But Joash secretly contemned Baal, although until now he had not ventured to say anything against him.  It made him bold to see how his son and his servants had over-thrown the altar and burnt the idol which lay there charred and unresisting.  He stood up before the altar, and facing the mob which howled at him; asked them why they should take upon themselves to plead for Baal:  “If he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar.”  The charred logs never stirred;