These secret things, however small, And this thought brings me peace. I do not need to say one word; He knows what thought my heart hath stirred; Makes all its throbbings cease. And then upon His loving breast Until it seemeth all in vain That care, fatigue, or mortal pain NEWS OF THE CHURCHES. THE annual meetings of our denominational societies have just concluded at the time we go to press. We are thankful to say that at all of them the reports were eminently satisfactory. Especially so was the report of the Baptist Missionary Society, which, instead of announcing a serious financial deficiency, as had been feared for many months, announced that the receipts of the year had been larger than in any previous year except the Jubilee year, and that, in fact, the Society would begin the new year free from debt. The Baptist Union held its meeting under the presidency of the Rev. H. S. Brown, of Liverpool; the Rev. G. Gould, of Norwich, being appointed vicepresident. The union of the British and Irish Mission with the Baptist Union was completed, and we anticipate its results with much satisfaction. late of Gosport, of the church at The following reports of MINISTERIAL CHANGES have reached us since the publication of our last issue:-The Rev. W. R. Woolley, late of Bristol College, to Bideford; the Rev. H. L. Lapham, of Regent's park College, to Myrtle-street, Liverpool, to be assistant minister to the Rev. H. S. Brown; the Rev. C. D. Crouch, of Bulwell, Notts, to Shoreham, Sussex; the Rev. J. A new school, by the side of Mostyn, recently of Philadelphia which a chapel and a minister's and Troy, N.Y., to Stoke, Ipswich; house are to be built, has been the Rev. J. F. Foster, to Wick, erected at Horley, Surrey, at the Scotland; the Rev. J. Urquhart, cost of Mr. S. Barrow, of Redhill.-late of Bombay, to Whyte's CauseA new chapel has been opened at way, Kirkcaldy; the Rev. W. S. Huddersfield for the ministry of Davis, of Queen's-park, Manchesthe Rev. E. T. Scammell.-A new chapel has been opened at Girlington, near Bradford, in association with the church at Westgate, in that town.-A new chapel has been opened at Towcester, Northamptonshire, for the ministry of the Rev. W. Fielder.- A new chapel has been opened in Warwick-street, Deritend, Birmingham, for the ministry of the Rev. S. W. Martin. -A new chapel has been opened at Gravel, Radnorshire. The Rev. D. Lewis, late of Scapegoat-hill, has been publicly recognised as the pastor of the church in Drake-street, Rochdale; the Rev. W. Hughes, of the church in Barnesstreet, Accrington; the Rev. G. C. Williams, of the church in Millstreet, Bedford; the Rev. E. Carr, of the church at Sleaford, Lincolnshire; the Rev. T. Watts, of the church in Frogmore-street, Abergavenny; the Rev. T. G. Strong, ter, to Union Church, Huntingdon; the Rev. J. E. Perrin, of Esher, Surrey, to Broad-street, Ross, Hereford; the Rev. R. Jones, of Cwmbelar, Monmouthshire, to Mochdre, near Newton, in the same county; the Rev. H. V. Hobbs, of Great Missenden, Bucks, to Tenbury, Worcestershire. The Rev. H. L. Overbury, after seven years' ministry, has resigned the pastorate of West Gorton Church, a branch of Oxford-road Church, Manchester. The Rev. D. Davies has resigned the pastorate of the Oakes Baptist Church, Lindley, Huddersfield. The Rev. A. Seddon has resigned his pastorate at Town Malling, Kent. We regret to announce the death of the Rev. F. Britcliffe, of Skipton, Yorkshire, at the age of fifty-five; also of the Rev. F. Wills, late of Llandudno, at the age of seventyseven. JULY, 1878. THE BLESSING OF THE TRIBES; OR, HOW MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD, BLESSED THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL BEFORE HE DIED. BY THE REV. T. G. ROOKE, B.A., PRESIDENT OF RAWDON COLLEGE. No. V.-BENJAMIN. Deut. xxxiii. 12. Ir was observed in the first paper of this series, that the blessing of the tribes by Moses consisted largely in a prophetic foreshadowing of the lots which these tribes were severally to occupy in the conquered territory of Canaan. The first distinct example of this fact meets us in the case of Benjamin, who, although he was the youngest of all the sons of Jacob, stands fourth in this significant enumeration which the man of God was inspired to make before his death. It is not altogether easy to discern the principle which determined the arrangement here, for Moses equally disregards the order of birth among the tribes, and the order of their encamping and marching in the wilderness, and the order of their settlement in Canaan. It has been suggested that the spirit of prophecy caused Moses to look far beyond the merely temporal aspect of the history of Israel, and to recognize its typical relations with the spiritual kingdom of Messiah; and that the peculiar arrangement of the names was partly meant to indicate certain of these hidden mysteries. Such an opinion would be fully confirmed by a review of the order in which the tribes have been marshalled thus far. Reuben is mentioned first, not so much by courtesy and in remembrance of his birthright, as to mark with emphasis the mournful lessons of his fall. The real leader and head of Israel is Judah, and the blessing makes haste to rest on him with the first of its utterances in which no ambiguity lies. But the royal destinies of Judah are incomplete if separated from the priestly destinies of Levi. Messiah, that seed for whose sake Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had received their divine election, was to be a "priest upon his throne; and therefore the blessing of the third son is made by Moses to follow immediately upon the blessing of his sceptred brother. So the keynote of the entire prediction is struck in a spiritual rather than in a temporal sense; remembering which fact, we cease to wonder at finding the name of Benjamin next in the enumeration to that of Levi. For the local centre of Jehovah's spiritual kingdom in Israel was fixed in the lot of Benjamin. Though his territory was the smallest of all in Canaan, it included the sacred mount Moriah on which the palace-temple of the great King was built, and the tribe for VOL. XXI. N.S. VII. which this honour was reserved might well be called "the beloved of the Lord;" and, though Benjamin was the youngest of Jacob's sons, he might well take precedence of them all, in that the blessing which was to rest upon Judah's throne was confirmed to him also for ever through the bond of the Levitical priesthood. "Of Benjamin he said, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; He will cover him all the day long, And He shall dwell between his shoulders." It was the singular good fortune of Benjamin to have been the "beloved" of his father and his brethren before he was thus distinguished by the peculiar favour of God. The name which was given him by Jacob, "Son of (my) right hand," denoted a special warmth of paternal fondness and hope. (See Gen. xxxiv. 18). And whilst the elder son of Rachel, Joseph, was envied and hated by his brothers because of their father's preference for him, Benjamin seems never to have inherited this odium or this persecution, although the partiality of Jacob was quite as manifest in his case as it had been in Joseph's. He rather appears as the common darling of the family, for whom every one has a special care. In the memorable drama of the going down to Egypt to buy corn, Benjamin is the central figure around which all the pathos of the story gathers. Reuben goes bail for him; Judah offers to bear every penalty in his stead; Joseph hastens to his chamber that his servants may not see how his bowels yearn over this long-lost brother; Jacob sits mourning in his tent until the child of his tenderest love is restored to his bosom. And what the youth thus was to his father and to his brethren, the tribe seems also to have been to its fellow tribes in the subsequent history of Israel. The royal Psalmist speaks of "little Benjamin " with an accent of peculiar tenderness, and names him even before the family of Judah to which he himself belonged (Psa. lxviii. 27). Even in the most tragical episode of the times of the Judges, when extermination had almost befallen this tribe as the righteous punishment of crimes that had been committed by its sons, the old instinct of fondness revived in the hearts of the other Hebrews with so much strength at the very crisis of Benjamin's fate, that it availed to snatch him from destruction, and to make him more than ever the darling of his house (see Judges xxi. 2, 3, 6). For not long afterwards the first king of Israel was selected from this the smallest of the tribes; and "little Benjamin" became the accepted ruler and head of all his brethren. The natural connection of Benjamin would, of course, be closest with the tribe of Joseph, which, like himself, was descended from Rachel, the dearest of Jacob's wives. But from a very early period we are able to trace a strong bond of union betwixt Benjamin and Judah, which, indeed, proved at last more real and more lasting than the birth affinity with Ephraim and Manasseh; for at the separation |