unished with a swift
and sharp hand. On board a ship at sea, for instance, where the
safety of the whole ship, the lives of the whole crew, depend on
instant obedience, mutiny may be punished by death on the spot.
Many a commander has ere now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel
without trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on the spot;
by the sound rule that it is expedient that one man die for the
people, and that the whole nation perish not.

And so it was with the Israelites in the desert. All depended on
their obedience. God had given them a law--a constitution, as we
should say now--perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them. If they once
began to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them.
That great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up,
probably fought among themselves--certainly parted company, and
either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by
the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites--who were
ready enough for slaughter and plunder. They would never have
reached Canaan. They would never have become a great nation. So
they had to be, by necessity, under martial law. The word must be,
Obey or die. As for any cruelty in putting Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram to death, it was worth the death of a hundred such--or a
thousand--to preserve the great and glorious nation of the Jews to
be the teachers of the world.

Now this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel. They rebel against Moses
about a question of the priesthood. It really matters little to us
what that question was--it was a question of Moses' law, which, of
course, is now done away. Only remember this, that these men were
princes--great feudal noblemen, as we should say; and that they
rebelled on the strength of their rank and their rights as noblemen
to make laws for themselves and for the people; and that the mob of
their dependents seem to have been inclined to support them.

Surely if Moses had executed martial law on them with his own hand,
he would have been as perfectly justified as a captain of a ship of
war or a general of an army would be now.

But he did not do so. And why? Because MOSES did not bring the
people out of Egypt. Moses was not their king. GOD brought them
out of Egypt. God was their king. That was the lesson which they
had to learn, and to teach other nations also. They have rebelled,
not against Moses, but against God; and not Moses, but God must
pu