xxxvi. 26); draws it that it may follow; quickens it that it may

live. He opens the heart that He may imprint His own law, and mould it into His own image (Acts xvi. 14; Jer. xxxi. 33). He works, not merely by moral suasion or by the bare proposal of means of uncertain power, but by the invisible Almighty agency. The work then begins with God. It is not that we first come, and then are taught; but first we learn, then we come (John vi. 45). . . . Shall we then wait indolently till He works? Far from it. We must work, but in dependence upon Him. He works not without us, but with us, through us, in us, by us, and we work in Him (Phil. ii. 13; Job xi. 13). Ours is the duty, His is the strength; ours the agency, His the quickening grace. "The work, as it is a duty, is ours; but as a performance it is God's" (Bishop Reynolds).--_Bridges._

Undoubtedly we arrange and plan. That is a matter of consciousness. But these are but the tools of the Designer. He uses our plannings to shape the last word to His mind. . . . The _"arrangings of the heart"_ are, indeed, as much God's as the final _"decree,"_ because, in brief, everything is. He destines everything; but not in the same sense in which they are consciously man's. They precede the end, and are present. They cannot determine the end, that is future. I cannot determine now what I will say the next moment. God can. I can and do arrange. But at any convenient point, at any interval, even the very least, God can swing me round. What I shall say is a part of His providence. I cannot ordain to say it in such a way as that it shall be said. In the smallest interval that follows God may tempt Pharaoh, and he may have new views as to letting the children of Israel go. God cannot tempt me to evil; but He can govern by the privation of good. And, therefore, "the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever He will." This, of course, implicates God, to our weak seeming, in the sins of the wicked. The next verse discharges Him from any such accountability. (See Miller's rendering of verse 2, in his comments.)--_Miller._

Though a man have never so exactly marshalled his matter in hand, as it were, in battle array, as the Hebrew imports, though he have set down with himself both what and how to speak, yet he shall never be able to bring forth his conception without the help of God. . . . Digressions are not always unuseful. God's Spirit sometimes draws aside the doctrine to satisfy some soul which the preacher knows not. But though God may force it, yet man may not frame it.--_Trapp._

This is a matter of experience to which the preacher, the public speaker, the author, and every man to whom his calling or circumstances present a weighty difficult theme, can attest. As the thoughts pursue one another in the mind, attempts are made and again abandoned; the state of the heart is somewhat like that of chaos before the creation. But when, finally, the right thought and the right utterance for it are found, that which is found appears to us, not as if self-discovered, but as a gift; we regard it with the feeling that a higher power has influenced our thoughts and imaginings; the confession by us "our sufficiency is of God" (2 Cor.