in their duties ! Instead of taking occasion from the shortness of their time, to labour with increased diligence, how many yield to their infirmities, and make their weakness an excuse for wilful indolence ! The Lord grant, that no such declensions may take place in any of us ; but that rather " our last days may be our best days ; " and that our Lord, finding us both watchful and active, may applaud us as good and faithful ser- vants, prepared and fitted for his heavenly kingdom!]
Deut. iii. 27, 28. Thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him, ; for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see.
IN reading the records of God's dealings with the Jews, we are sometimes tempted to bring him to the bar of human reason, and to arraign his character as severe. Such hasty judgment, however, would be impious in the extreme ; since we are wholly incom- petent to decide upon matters, which are so far beyond our reach. There may be, and doubtless are, ten thousand reasons to justify his conduct, where our slender capacities cannot find any : and such light has been cast upon his procedure, in many in- stances, by the Gospel, as may fully evince the neces- sity of shutting our mouths, and of giving him credit for perfect equity, even where his dispensations most oppose our natural feelings. We may instance this in the exclusion of Moses from the promised land. He had brought the people out of Egypt, and, with most unparalleled meekness, had endured their per- verseness forty years in the wilderness : yet, when he had led them to the very borders of Canaan, he was not suffered to go in with them ; but, on account of one single offence, was obliged to devolve on Joshua his office, his authority, his honours ; yea, he was forbidden even to pray for an admission into that good land3. Dark as this dispensation must have
a ver. 23 — 27.