that of impenitence and persistent sin, which has not its own specific illumination in the Scripture promises. The day has its sun, the night its moon and stars, and even the arctic zone its aurora borealis. God's love has beams of light strong enough to reach every spot in that part of the sphere of moral being where His name is had in reverence. Scripture has light for the darkness of penitence, of labour, of suffering in all its forms, of bereavement, and of death. 1. Our gloom and darkness are not essentials of life. He who supposes they are must begin by assuming the light of Divine encouragement to be insufficient. 2. Our gloom and darkness are not desirable. They cannot be; God has sought to remove them in every form. 3. Our gloom and darkness are of our own choosing. Our Heavenly Father has provided light for all who seek light, and invites all to walk therein. 4. Our gloom and darkness are harmful and sinful. They prevent our work, discourage others, shew our neglect of the Bible, or they shew that reading and meditating we do not believe. III. There is no encouragement apart from obedience. (Verses 7, 9.) In the sphere of moral life wicked men always walk opposite to the Sun of righteousness, and thus are ever in the night. In order to be strong for conflict, Joshua is to be strong in the comfort of hope; in order to be strong in hope, he is to be strong in obedience. 1. He who disobeys the precepts has no right to the promises. It is as though a child should steadfastly ignore his father's wishes, and then presume upon his unrestrained gifts and his undiminished love. 2. He who disobeys the precepts lacks the spirit which alone can use the promises. Lax obedience shews lax faith, and promise yields its value only to trust. Lax obedience shews lax interest, and no man can really delight where he is careless. IV. There can be no sufficient obedience without meditation. (Verse 8.) We are responsible, not only to do what we know, but to know what there is to be known. The ambassador who refused to open the despatches of his government would plead ignorance in vain. When Nelson shut his eye against his admiral's signal, he was none the less guilty of disobedience. Men may neglect to read the Scriptures, and then say, "I knew not that I transgressed," but the very ignorance which they plead is an aggravated form of guilt. God complains of Ephraim, "I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing." V. There can be no satisfactory meditation which does not centre in God Himself. (Verse 9.) "Have not I commanded thee?" We must look through the written word up to God, whom it is meant to reveal. We must look through all revelation on to Him. The Bible is light on God. The miracles of Christ are not recorded to excite wonder, they are to reveal God. It is possible to make Gethsemane, the Lord's Supper, and even the Cross so many superstitions. The brazen serpent became a relic at which men stopped, rather than a memory through which they went on to God. Hezekiah did holy work, then, to break it in pieces, and to call it "Nehushtan." If Christ be not risen again, even Calvary is worthless; "Your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." Gethsemane, the Supper, the Cross, are only good as they reveal the finished atonement and love of the living Saviour, and through Him the pardon and love of God. Riddling all superstitions of mere Bible-reading and formal religion through and through, the living Son of God looks down from heaven, and says to Saul of Tarsus, "That they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified BY FAITH THAT IS IN ME." (Acts xxvi. 18.) Faith is to be in the living Christ, not in cold duties and dead things. Trench has somewhere said, "Our blessedness is that Christ does not declare to us a system, and say, This is the truth;' so doing He might have established a school: but He points to a person, even to Himself, and says, I am the Truth;' and thus He founded, not a school, but a Church, a fellowship which stands in its faith upon a person, not in its tenure of a doctrine, or at least upon this only in a sense which is mediate and secondary." SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES. Verses 3-5. GOD'S SUFFICIENT PRO MISES. God I. They reveal their value only as far as we use them. Where men tread, there shall they inherit. This can only be known by going on in the strength of them. Each says, like its Divine Author, "Prove me now herewith." II. They have respect to all preceding promises. "As I said unto Moses.' "Vested interests." No one promise ignores the property which men may have in another. Christ destroyed nothing of the O. T. Scriptures; He fulfilled them. Nowhere so much as on and around the cross do we read the words, "That the Scripture might be fulfilled." III. They have regard to all that which might weaken and limit them from without. (Verse 4.) The boundary had military fitness. Strasbourg and Metz. loves to give so that we can hold. A Christian with only penitence, only humility, only zeal, must ever be weak, -too weak to stand. He who sets foot on the whole circle of the graces, and inherits them all, has not only a broader and richer possession, but a more secure. IV. They are not merely general, but personal. "Before thee. They are each for all the people, all for each of the people, and most for him who most needs them. V. They are as continuous as human want. "All the days of thy life." As good on weekdays as on Sundays; and on sad days as on days of song. Good for all kinds of days, to the end of our days. VI. They are made clear by illustration, and thrice blessed by precedent. "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." So of all in the Scriptures. Somebody has tried and proved each of them. The increasing value of the Scriptures. The interest of man's experience is ever accumulating on the capital of the written word. The Bible is richer today than it ever was before. VII. They have their foundation and worth in the Divine character. "I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." II. Verse 5. I. God's presence gives perpetual and unvarying victory. Any man may conquer, who fights with the Lord on his side. Victory is then as sure in one place as in another. Pharaoh, Red Sea, Wilderness, or Canaanites,— it matters not which, nor when. God's presence is given irrespective of everything but sin. 1. Irrespective of ability, disposition, or temperament. Men choose their companions in view of traits of character. God walks with all who fear Him. Variety in O. T. prophets. prophets. So the apostles. 2. Irrespective of social condition and particular circumstances. The various instances under which this same promise was given To Jacob, the outcast (Gen. xxviii. 15); to "the church in the wilderness" (Deut. xxxi. 6); to Joshua as well as Moses; to Solomon, the king, in his work of building the temple (1 Chron. xxviii. 20); to "the poor and needy" (Isa. xli. 17); to the persecuted Hebrew Christians (Heb. xiii. 5). III. God's presence once given is intended to be given for ever. The doctrine is full of consolation-should be as fully received as it is absolutely statedmust be carefully guarded from presumption. He who reverently listens to the cry of Saul, "The Lord is departed from me,' or marks with Christian spirit the pitiable weakness of Samson, who "wist not" that he was in like manner left to himself in his deliberate sinfulness, will not rashly blindfold himself with a creed. "To be forsaken of God implies utter loneliness, utter loneliness, utter helplessness, utter friendlessness, utter hopelessness, and unutterable agony."-Met. Tab. Pulpit, v. 8., pp. 603-605. "Joshua was sensible how far he came short of Moses in wisdom and grace; but what Moses did was done by virtue of the presence of God with him. Joshua, though he had not always the same presence of mind that Moses had, yet if he had always the same presence of God, would do well enough." "What Joshua had himself encouraged the people with long ago (Num. xiv. 9), God here encourageth him with." MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.-Verses 6-9. THE CHARACTER AND SPHERE OF COURAGE. These words are principally about courage. Joshua would both need it, and need to shew it, in leading the Israelites into the land of their inheritance. God graciously braces men where they are most liable to fail. It was in this matter of courage that the people had given way already. (Numb. xiii. 26—33; xiv. 1—10.) So Jehovah mercifully strengthens them in their weak place. It is thus that our Father deals with us all through the Bible. He does not fortify us where we are strong, but on the side where our strength is small. Thus Christ dealt with Peter. An earthly parent warns his child of what he knows to be dangers. So God speaks to us. Wherever we come, then, to a warning in the Scriptures, let us remember that it indicates a weakness. It is no mere spiritual talk. Danger lies there. The warning comes from Him whose eye sees farther down the line of our life than we can; and to go heedlessly on means collision, disaster, wounding, and possibly death. God has regard to the bearing of men personally. Napoleon's oversight of men in battle is said to have been remarkable. It is with the infinite discernment of omniscience that the King of kings watches His people, and says to them individually, "I will be with thee." God specially marks the leaders of His people. No officer must fail. Faint-heartedness in them would be doubly a sin. I. God would have courage to occupy a large place in our characters and lives. It is to cover all the ground, whithersoever we go. 1. Courage is to lead us up to all conflicts that are duties. Joshua is to go against Jericho, whose people have shut themselves within their walls, in fear; against the five confederate kings, to rescue the Gibeonites; against each of the remaining kings. But courage is not to run to foolhardiness; it is to march only in the path of duty. It had nothing to do with revenging itself on old foes in Egypt, or in anticipating future enemics on the other side of the Euphrates. "A valiant man Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways."-B. Jonson. It is folly that braves the field to which duty makes no call. True couragecourage that said, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished," said also, "When ye pray, say.... Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Yet courage never falters before work which ought to be done. Hougomont or Alma, Abyssinia or Ashantee, it matters not which. 2. Courage is to help us to endure when reverses and suffering come. When, through Achan's sin, the Israelites were driven back at Ai, "the hearts of the people melted, and became as water." There are many places in life where soldiers of the cross must be tried by defeat as well as by difficulties. The struggle for maintenance. Family and social reverses. The moral conflict, in which we are to be found "striving against sin." The spiritual warfare, in which, in holy communion, we are to seek to win our way into the presence and mind of Christ. II. God would see us courageous, because no courage is the same thing as no faith, and "without faith it is impossible to please Him." Almost all who profess religion have the faith of a creed. They believe in certain doctrines. They have, more or less fully outlined, a theological idea of the way to heaven. It is well; but all this is a very small part of what God requires when He asks for our faith. The faith which He seeks is faith in Himself, as always being with His servants to help them; it is faith in His watchfulness, His presence, His love, His purpose, His power; it is faith in victory everywhere through Himself. That is the faith which Jehovah asks, as He sends the Israelites forward to inherit. Probably many will be surprised by-and-by to discern how little God cares for the faith which strives after some particular definition of a creed, rather than after what an apostle calls "the faith of Him." It is against poor trust, not against bad definitions, that the Bible is full of such urgent remonstrance. Does not the Lord allow as much room for definitions as for dispositions? Caleb and Joshua might differ in their understanding of the Passover, or the exact meaning of the service on the Great Day of Atonement; I do not think God would much mind, providing the creed of neither shewed distrust of Him. The Holy Spirit inspires Paul, and also James. No man would care much if, when his child grew up, she differed from him in his views of gardening or poetry; but it would be real pain to him should she doubt his word. There are some creeds which must dishonour God. The denial of the Saviour's divinity shews distrust of God simply on a point of difficulty in comprehension. Praying to images, or to dead Christians through them, is as though a child were to fear failure if it should ask a favour of its parent in person, and were to get a servant to make the entreaty instead. It is the distrust which wounds. There are places where creeds may become fatal, yet not fatal as a matter of discernment and definition, but fatal in their utter want of trust in the Lord. They present the most astounding of all paradoxesdoubt of God formulated into a religion, and then offered as worship. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." When we are tempted to do wrong by the promise of great gain, can we remember God and dare to be true? When temptation promises present pleasure, can we remember our Father's warnings and better promises, and be firm to deny ourselves? When called to lose our bestloved friends or children, can we look into the awful darkness, and rest in His words about their happiness and our own profit? When bidden to teach, or preach, or live the Gospel in the face of bitter enemies who far outnumber us, can we hear Him say, " Lo, I am with you alway," and dare to go on as in the company of that overwhelming majority into which His presence ever multiplies even our solitude? That is the kind of creed about which God so incessantly enquires in the Scriptures. He says almost nothing-perhaps nothing at all-about definitions which touch the judgment without necessarily involving the heart. Instead of always translating "trust" into "faith," as we go forward to inherit, it may be well if we sometimes render it in this old thought of "courage." courage in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Repent ye, and have courage in the gospel." 'Lord, increase our courage. "Have courage in God." III. Though God desires courage in us all, fear has its proper sphere, and often does holy work. 66 "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from. 66 "Have God never intended that we should feel no fear. We are to fear and distrust ourselves. We are to fear danger as something beyond our own strength. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And we are to "work out our own salvation in fear and trembling." But all fear, as we look within, is to be stayed in courage as we look up to God. The sin is in giving way when we have omnipotence and infinite love for a defence. No man, then, should say, "I fear," and let that drive him to fear which is yet deeper. IV. Courage, to bring honour to God, must always be courage for the right and the true. 1. Men admire courage in the abstract. Prize-fighting has drawn multitudes. The mere soldier is sometimes not distinguished from the lofty patriot. Thus, perhaps, the mistake concerning Milton's Satan, in "Paradise Lost." Some critics have complained that Satan is the hero of the work. That is to forget that courage, in itself, is not truly worthy of admiration. Fowls, sheep, bulls, wild beasts, also have courage, and fight unto death. 2. God loves courage only when it is prompted by truth and righteousness. Such courage He always has honoured, and will honour: Daniel; the apostles before the Sanhedrim; Paul. It is said that the King of France summoned the Prince de Condé before him, giving him his choice of three things: "Go to mass, die, or be imprisoned for life." Said the Prince, "With regard to the first, I am fully determined never to go to mass; as to the other two, I am so perfectly indifferent that I leave the choice to your Majesty." We are not called to martyrdom, nor even to imprisonment for the truth's sake; possibly if our apprehension of sin were always what it should be, we should find that whatever courage death might need, life requires even more. Instead of discoursing on the topic of the passage, the verses may be taken as shewing THE HONOUR, THE INFLUENCE, AND THE SOURCE OF TRUE COURAGE. I. The honour which is put upon courage by God. 1. He makes the servant who has courage in Himself His own constant companion. "The Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest." 2. He makes the servant who has courage the subject of His peculiar teaching. The entire passage is a special instruction to the man who has already so valiantly, before his fellows, shewn himself afraid to distrust God. Thus The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." 3. He makes the servant who has courage the instrument of fulfilling His covenant. "The land which I sware unto their fathers, thou shalt divide." 4. He makes the servant who has courage a blessing and a joy to his fellows. Joshua should lead them into the land: instrumentally, their homes and future possessions should come to them from his bravery and his fidelity to God. II. The influence which is conceded to courage by men. All men own its power. 1. Courage loses no favourable opportunity to begin warfare; fear would miss many an opening. 2. Courage appals its foes before it smites them: it thus needs only half the strength of timidity. The arm which resists it is already feeble by reason of fear. 3. Courage seizes all advantages which are offered in the conflict. Fear is blind, and, till too late, overlooks them. 4. Courage gives no opportunity to the defeated foe to rally. Fear happens to win the day, and sits down surprised and contented, talking of valour. The conflict has to be fought over afresh, and it may be that the battle is then lost. 5. Courage is imperial in itself, and must reign, However it may be with the Graces of the ancient classics, the Scripture graces were all "born in purple." Love conquers everywhere. Patience presently wins the day. Humility may seem of lowlier mien, but "The meek shall inherit the earth," and "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Hope, always aspiring, enters already "within the veil." to courage, "To him that believeth, all things are possible." III. The strength which courage draws from the Scriptures. 1. To neglect the Bible is to prepare the way for fear and trembling. (a) There can be no sufficient courage without light, and the Bible is "a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path." The awe which comes from darkness. (b) There can be no sufficient courage without confidence of being right, and the Bible assures the just man. The hesitation which comes from uncertainty. (c) There can be no sufficient courage without love, and our love is born of knowing the love of God. (d) There can be no sufficient courage without hope, and he who neglects the Bible can have no satisfactory ground of hope. 2. It is not enough to have the Bible, it must be used. (a) The courage that comes from speaking the truth to others: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth.' (b) The courage that comes from meditation in the truth: "Thou shalt meditate therein day and night." (c.) The courage that comes from doing the truth: "That thou mayest observe to do all that is written therein." THE THREEFOLD ALLIANCE;-GOD, Law, MAN.-Verse 8 only. As I. The law of the Scriptures is one with physical law, and he who obeys the Scriptures has physical law for an ally. All life is against that man who is against the Bible; all life is for the man who is obedient to the Bible. Suppose the laws which touch our health worked just the other way; what a curse law |