ch He is the centre and the theme should part
from us as He did, shedding with its final words the dew of benediction
on our upturned heads.

I venture, then, to look at these significant closing words of the two
Testaments as conveying the spirit of each, and suggesting some thoughts
about the contrast and the harmony and the order that subsist between
them.

I. I ask you, first, to notice the apparent contrast and the real
harmony and unity of these two texts.

'Lest I come and smite the land with a curse.' That last awful word does
not convey, in the original, quite the idea of our English word 'curse.'
It refers to a somewhat singular institution in the Mosaic Law according
to which things devoted, in a certain sense, to God were deprived of
life. And the reference historically is to the judgments that were
inflicted upon the nations that occupied the land before the Israelitish
invasion, those Canaanites and others who were put under 'the ban' and
devoted to utter destruction. So, says my text, Israel, which has
stepped into their places, may bring down upon its head the same
devastation; and as they were swept off the face of the land that they
had polluted with their iniquities, so an apostate and God-forgetting
Judah may again experience the same utter destruction falling upon them.
If instead of the word 'curse' we were to substitute the word
'destruction,' we should get the true idea of the passage.

And the thought that I want to insist upon is this, that here we have
distinctly gathered up the whole spirit of millenniums of divine
revelation, all of which declare this one thing, that as certainly as
there is a God, every transgression and disobedience receives, and must
receive, its just recompense of reward.

That is the spirit of law, for law has nothing to say, except, 'Do this,
and thou shalt live; do not this, and thou shalt die.'

And then turn to the other. 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with
you all.' What has become of the thunder? All melted into dewy rain of
love and pity and compassion. Grace is love that stoops; grace is love
that foregoes its claims, and forgives sins against itself. Grace is
love that imparts, and this grace, thus stooping, thus pardoning, thus
bestowing, is a universal gift. The Apostolic benediction is the
declaration of the divine purpose, and the inmost heart and loftiest
meaning of all the words which from the beginning God hath spoken is
that His condescen