The point which arrests attention here is that Moab, being so largely a sheep-feeding country, was dependent on its pastures, and these were dependent on the dews, and rains, and fountains, and streams. To a grazing country no greater calamity, no more precisely adapted calamity, could come than is described in this verse: "The waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the hay is withered away, the grass faileth, there is no green thing." Possibly the mischief was wrought in part by the malicious act of the invaders in stopping the wells and defiling the streams. If one thing more than another is impressed on devout minds by a review of life, it is the marvelous way in which Divine wisdom has found the best, most adapted forms for judgment and chastisement to take. Chastisement sent by the Divine Father is always precisely corrective of the evil which has called for it, and always precisely corrective to the individual and to the particular nation. This general subject may be opened out thus -

I. DIVINE JUDGMENTS HAVE PRECISE AIMS. The aim expressed in general terms is - humiliation with a view to exaltation.

II. DIVINE JUDGMENTS ARE DIRECTED TO SECURE THOSE AIMS. And this decides the form and the degree of the humiliation that is found to be necessary.

III. DIVINE JUDGMENTS ARE ADAPTED IN WAYS THAT MAY ESCAPE PRESENT NOTICE. And this occasions some of the gravest perplexities, and sternest struggles of life.

IV. THE ADAPTATION OF ALL DIVINE JUDGMENTS, TO THE SECURING OF THEIR PRECISE AIMS, WILL BE THE DELIGHTFUL DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. It will be our reading of our own history, and. of the world's history, when we have learned how to read aright. - R.T.

Too often have God's servants spoken with dry eyes and hard voices of the doom of the ungodly; and have only made them more obdurate and determined. We never need so much brokenness of spirit as when we utter God's judgments against sin. In his autobiography, Finney says, "Here I must introduce the name of a man whom I shall have occasion to mention frequently, Mr. Abel Clary, He was the son of a very excellent man, and an elder of the Church where I was converted. He had been licensed to preach; but his spirit of prayer was such, he was so burdened with the souls of men, that he was not able to preach much, his whole time and strength being given to prayer. The burden of his soul would frequently be so great that he was unable to stand, and he would writhe and groan in agony. I was well acquainted with him, and knew something of the wonderful spirit of prayer that was upon him The pastor told me afterwards that he found that in the six weeks I was in that church five hundred souls had been converted."

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)