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more distinctly and fearfully contrasted; but couple with God's denunciations of vengeance on the idolatrous nations before enumerated, his gracious reason for exterminating them by degrees, and not immediately. What was it, Mary? MARY. Lest the beasts of the field should increase upon the Israelites.

MAMA. Yes; and completely is the necessity of the merciful precaution eorroborated by later travellers. One of them says, the country once so fertile, but now once more depopulated, “about Cana in Galilee, swarms with tigers, leopards, and jackals, whose howlings would strike the boldest traveller (not inured to them) with the deepest sense of horror." How remarkably this state of things confirms the prophecies regarding the desolation of Judea, we need not now stay to' remark. But remember, it was only by falling at length into the sins of the Canaanites, that their conquerors became sharers in their punish

ment.

By what salutary considerations does Moses in the 8th chapter, propose to guard his countrymen against so great an evil?

MARY. He bade them remember that God "led them forty years in the wilderness, to humble them and prove them, and fed them with manna which their fathers knew not."

MAMA. And what might they have learned from this miraculous support?

MARY. That "man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

MAMA. Do you remember by whom these remarkable words were quoted and applied?

MARY. Yes, Mama; by our Lord in the desert, when Satan wanted him to turn the stonesinto bread. I never knew till now in what part of the Bible the words were "written."

MAMA. And now that you do know, it will help you to see the force of our Lord's inference, that He who had sustained in the same wilderness a whole nation forty years without natural bread, could as easily, in its absence, support the strength of a single believing servant.

MARY. Did the clothes of the Israelites really never grow old all that time; or how were the children born among them provided?

MAMA. The power of God supernaturally to clothe as well as feed his people during their wanderings, none but an infidel can question; and thus has the text sometimes been literally interpreted. But as (according to our Lord's application,) even bread itself could derive its nutritious quality only from the blessing of God-so the raiment supplied, by whatever means, to a

great nation in the desert, must have been due to the same Almighty providence.

But, Mary, let us observe the grand object both of God's merciful and afflictive dealings with the Israelites, viz. their fatherly chastisement and training for his future service. Never let us forget that Canaan, with all its riches and fertility, was a type of that "better" land of which alone it can be said with perfect truth, that in it the Christian "shall not lack anything ;" and let us look on every event of our pilgrimage towards it, as a part of the discipline necessary to fit us for our "Father's house."

Did all the forty years' painful experience of the Israelites prove a more than sufficient preparation for the perilous prosperity of their earthly rest?

MARY. No, Mama; in spite of it all, they "forgot God."

MAMA. While we bless His name that we cannot forget Him in our heavenly home, let us beware lest we "fall short of it through unbelief," or contempt of the warnings so abundantly bestowed upon us in His word.

What precept does Moses give on occasion of our partaking of God's bounty?

MARY. "When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God."

MAMA. On which text the laudable custom of giving thanks at meals is thought (among the Jews at least) to have been founded. It is one, at all events, which no Christian will feel disposed to omit. But what may be the state of the hearts of those, who even in words acknowledge the "Giver of all good?"

MARY. They may be lifted up," Mama. Moses was afraid the Israelites would think that "their power and might had gotten them all the wealth of Canaan."

MAMA. And what was predicted, and actually proved to be, the effect of such guilty arrogance and ingratitude?

MARY. They "should surely perish, like the nations God had destroyed before their face;" and so it happened, Mama, just as Moses warned them.

МАМА. Let it warn us, my child. If "God spared not" his own chosen people for the national sins of pride and infidelity, what ground have Christians who fall into them, to hope for impunity, or exemption from the sweeping and awful sentence, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God?"

222

MORNING NINETEENTH.

LESSON.-Deuteronomy, Chapters ix. x. and xi.

MAMA.

I think we may gather, my dear Mary, from the exhortation of Moses in these impressive chapters, that the existing generation of Israel, whose progenitors had forfeited Canaan by distrust and unbelief,-had more need to be guarded against the opposite sins of pride and presumption; since the same enlightened monitor who on former occasions rebuked their exaggerated fears of the "children of Anak," now sets before them, without disguise, the might and power of the cities, "great and fenced up to heaven," which they were about immediately to attack. Can you account for this change in the style of their paternal lawgiver, or in the temper of his hearers?

MARY. Mama, I dare say it was because they had already killed Sihon and Og, and all their people, that they had grown proud, and needed

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