as I have said, was threshing by the wine-press, on his guard even
there lest he should be robbed or slain, and it seemed strange to him
that the angel should say the Lord was with him. So strange did it
seem, that even before he fell down to worship, he turned and asked the
seraph why, if the Lord was with him, all this mischief had befallen
them, and where were all the miracles which the Lord wrought to save
His people from the land of Egypt. For there had been neither sign nor
wonder for many years--nothing to show that the Lord cared for us more
than He did for the heathen. My father had thought much over all the
deeds which the Lord had done for Israel; he had thought over the
passage of the sea when Israel could not find any way open before them,
and the very waves which were to overwhelm them rose like a wall and
became their safeguard. But he himself had seen nothing of this kind,
and he almost doubted if the tales were true, and if times had not
always been as they were then, all events happening alike to all, and
hardly believing that God had ever appeared to man.

The angel did not answer him, but looked him in the face, and said, "Go
in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the
Midianites: have not I sent thee?" My grandfather, Joash, was one of
the poorest men of his tribe, and as for my father, nobody had ever
thought anything of him, nor had he thought anything of himself. _He_,
a solitary labourer, unknown, with no friends, no arms; he to do what
the princes could not do! he to lead these frightened slaves against
soldiers who were as the sand for numbers! It was not to be believed,
and yet--there sat the angel. It was broad noon; in the shade of the
oak his light was like that of the sun. It was not a dream of the
night, and he could not be mistaken. Nay, the angel's voice was more
sharp and clear than the voice in which we speak to one another--a
voice like the command of a king who must not be disobeyed. Yet he