Take, again, the account of the singular retribution that came upon the people in the days of David because of Saul’s treatment of the Gibeonites.  These aborigines belonged to the ancient Canaanitish tribes, and were so astute as to impose even upon Joshua, and to obtain from him a treaty on false pretenses.  Still an agreement was made with them on the terms that they should be permitted to live in the land, but that they should be “hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the Lord.”  This contract was faithfully observed on both sides until the days of Saul, who sought to slay them “in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.”  And what was the result?  A famine lasting for three years, which was only removed at last by the giving up, according to the ancient practices of the Gibeonites, of seven of Saul’s sons for execution.  Now there is much in that old history that is difficult for us at this distance of time, and ignorant as we are of the customs that prevailed among these tribes, to understand.  But no one of us can read it without being reminded of our treatment of the Indian tribes that linger among us still.  Have we not broken almost every treaty that we ever made with them?  Have we not said, unpityingly regarding them, that their destruction before the advance of civilization is inevitable?  And have we not forgotten that the God of the Gibeonites lives to be the avenger of the Indians?  If the hewers of wood and drawers of water were not beneath his notice long ago, think you he does not see and chronicle the wrongs of the Indians to-day, and shall not he render to every man according to his works?

Before passing from the Old Testament to the New, I merely mention the fact that among the ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ we find two belonging to alien races, namely, Rahab of Jericho, and Ruth the Moabitess, whose very presence in that noble line is a prophecy of the glorious truth that the Son of David was to be also the Son of man, the Saviour of sinners of every name and nation, the kinsman of all races, the brother of humanity, and that as he represents them all in his priestly intercession yonder, so in each of them we may see a representative of him here and now upon the earth.

But now what may we learn from Christ himself in the New Testament?  It is true that his personal ministry in the world was almost entirely confined to the Jews.  It had to be so limited at first, if his gospel was to gather force for its triumphant march over the world at a later day; but even during his life in the world he came repeatedly in contact with men and women of races other than that of the Jews, and always in such a way as to show his sympathy with them and love toward them.  I remind you of his long and earnest conversation with the woman of Samaria, at the well of Sychar, and of the fact that she was a descendant of that mixed nationality which sprung from the amalgam of those heathen colonists that were sent by the King