to the mind, as scourging is to the body x:" and " it were bet- ter to have a millstone hanged about your neck, and to be cast into the sea, than that you should offend one of Christ's
little onesy" If any think, that, because multitudes
concur with them, they are the less in danger, I would remind them of Gibeon's enemies, and say, " Associate yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces ; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces2."]
2. To those who yield to discouragement —
[Think not of your own weakness, but of the power and grace of Christ. And if others cry out by reason of a confe- deracy, join not with them in their desponding apprehensions, but " sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself, and make him your fear, and him your dread a."]
x Heb. x. 33. and xi. 36. y Matt, xviii. 6.
z Isai. viii. 9, 10. a Isai. viii. 12, 13.
Josh. xi. 23. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord said unto Moses ; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes.
THE promises of God, though often slow in their accomplishment, are sure to be fulfilled in due season. Abraham waited twenty years for the pro- mised child, till, according to the course of nature, there was no hope that Sarah should ever become a mother; yet Isaac was born to him in due time. God promised to give to him and to his posterity the land of Canaan ; yet it was four hundred and thirty years before his posterity were brought out of Egypt ; and forty more before they entered into Canaan ; and even then it was six more years before they obtained a quiet possession of it. Still however, the promise could not fail, nor did it fail in any particular. The accomplishment of that event is recorded in the words we have just read ; which will naturally lead us to contemplate the conquest and partition of the promised land. I. The conquest of the land —