120 BATTLES OF THE BIBLE.

faith. Gideon wished to shew respect to the visitor who
had honoured him so greatly. He went into his house
and brought out a piece of a kid, and cakes of flour, and
broth in a vessel, and presented it. His heavenly guest
told him to lay the flesh and the cakes on the rock that
was near them, and to pour out the broth upon them.
Gideon obeyed. Then, with the staff he held in his
hand, the visitor touched the food which had been
prepared for him. The touch of his staff brought
fire from the rock, which consumed the things Gideon
had prepared; then the worker of the miracle va-
nished.

Johnnie. What did he mean, grandfather, by burning
the meat and the bread ?

Grandfather. It shewed Gideon that he was no mor-
tal man, but a spirit from heaven; it shewed him too
that his offering had been accepted by the Lord. At
first when the angel vanished he felt alarmed, but the
Lord spoke comfortably to him, so he built an altar
there, and called it Jehovah-Shalom, which means the
Lord peace. That night the Lord spoke to Gideon,
commanding him to cut down his father’s sacred grove,
and throw down the altar of Baal, and build an altar to
the Lord on the top of the rock near which the angel
appeared to him. There he was to burn the wood of
the grove, and offer for a sacrifice his father’s young
bullock. This was a dangerous task, yet it was per-
formed by Gideon. He did not do it by day, lest he
should be interrupted in the doing of it by the idolatrous