e weather, like the nations round
them, then they would die; they would grow superstitious, cowardly, lazy,
and profligate, and therefore weak and miserable, like the wretched
Canaanites whom they were going to drive out; and then they would die.
Their souls would die in them, and they would become less than men, and
at last--as the Canaanites had become--worse than brutes, till their
numbers would diminish, and they would be left, Moses says, few in number
and at last perish out of the good land which God had given them.

So, he says, you know how to live, and you know how to die. Choose
between them this day.

They knew the road to wealth, health, prosperity and order, peace and
happiness, and life: and they knew the road to ruin, poverty, weakness,
disease, shame and death.

They knew both roads; for God had set them before them.

And you know both roads; for God has set them before you.

Then he says--I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day,
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.

He called heaven and earth to witness. That was no empty figure of
speech. If you will recollect the story of the Israelites, you will see
plainly enough what Moses meant.

The heaven would witness against them. The same stars which would look
down on their freedom and prosperity in Canaan, had looked down on all
their slavery and misery in Egypt, hundreds of years before. Those same
stars had looked down on their simple forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, wandering with their flocks and herds out of the mountains of the
far north. That heaven had seen God's mercies and care of them, for now
five hundred years. Everything had changed round them: but those stars,
that sun, that moon, were the same still, and would be the same for ever.
They were witnesses to them of the unchangeable God, those heavens above.
They would seem to say--Just as the heavens above you are the same,
wherever you go, and whatever you are like, so is the God who dwells
above the heaven; unchangeable, everlasting, faithful, and true, full of
light and love; from whom comes down every good and perfect gift, in whom
is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Do you turn to Him
continually, and as often as you turn away from Him: and you shall find
Him still the same; governing you by unchangeable law, keeping His
promise for ever.

And the earth would witness against them. That fair land of Canaan
whith