ren after us; because our prosperity is grounded on the real
truth, and that of the heathen on a lie; and all that the heathen
expect their false gods to do for them, one here and another there,
all that, the one real God will do for us, himself alone.

Do you not see what a power and courage that thought must have given
to the Jews? Do you not see how worshipping God, and loving God,
and serving God, must have been a very different, a much deeper, and
a truly holier matter to them than the miserable selfish thing which
is miscalled religion by too many people now-a-days, by which a man
hopes to creep out of this world into heaven all by himself, without
any real care or love for his fellow-creatures, or those he leaves
behind him?

No. An old Jew's faith in God, and obedience to God, was part of
his family life, part of his politics, part of his patriotism. If
he obeyed God, and clave earnestly to God, then a blessing would
come on him in the field and in the house, on his crops and on his
cattle, going out and coming in; and on his children and his
children's children to a thousand generations. He would be helping,
if he obeyed and trusted God, to advance his country's prosperity;
to insure her success in war and peace, to raise the name and fame
of the Jewish people among all the nations round, that all might
say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and an understanding
people.'

Thus the duty he owed to God was not merely a duty which he owed his
own conscience or his own soul; it was a duty which he owed to his
family, to his kindred, to his country. It was not merely an
opinion that there was one God and not two; it was a belief that the
one and only true God was protecting him, teaching him, inspiring
him and all his nation. That the true God would teach their hands
to war and their fingers to fight. That the true God would cause
their folds to be full of sheep. That their valleys should stand
rich with corn, that they should laugh and sing. That the true God
would enable them to sit every man under his own vine and his own
fig-tree, and eat the labour of his hands, he and his children after
him to perpetual generations.

This was the message and teaching which God gave these Jews. It is
very different from what many people now-a-days would have given
them, if they had had the ordering of the matter, and the making of
those slaves into a free nation. But perhaps there is one proof
that God DID gi