need putting in mind of that in these
days as much as those old Jews did.

However that may be, what Moses promised these Jews, if they trusted
in the living God, was that they should be a great nation, they and
their children after them; that they should drive out the Canaanites
before them; that they should conquer their enemies, and that a
thousand should flee before one of them; that they should be blessed
in their crops, their orchards, their gardens; that they should have
none of the evil diseases of Egypt; that there should be none barren
among them, or among their cattle. In a word, that they should be
thoroughly and always a strong, happy, prosperous people.

This is what God promised them by Moses, and nothing else; and
therefore this is what we must think about, and see whether it has
anything to do with us, when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and
nothing else.

On the other hand, God warned them by the mouth of Moses that if
they forgot the Lord God, and went and worshipped the things round
them, men or beasts, or sun and moon and stars, then poverty,
misery, and ruin of every kind would surely fall upon them.

And that this last was no empty threat is proved by the plain facts
of their sacred history. For they DID forget God, and worshipped
Baalim, the sun, moon, and stars; and ruin of every kind DID come
upon them, till they were carried away captive to Babylon. And this
we must think of when we read the book of Deuteronomy, and nothing
else. If they wished to prosper, they were to know and consider in
their hearts that Jehovah was God, and there was none else. Yes--
this was the continual thought which a true Jew was to have. The
thought of a God who was HIS God; the God of his fathers before him,
and the God of his children after him; the God of the whole nation
of the Jews, throughout all their generations.

But not their God only. No. The God of the Gentiles also, of all
the nations upon the earth. He was to believe that his God alone,
of all the gods of the nations, was the true and only God, who had
made all nations, and appointed them their times and the bounds of
their habitations.

We cannot understand now, in these happier days, all that that
meant; all the strength and comfort, all the godly fear, the feeling
of solemn responsibility which that thought ought to have given, and
did give to the Jews--that they were the people of Jehovah, the one
true God.

For you must remembe