will become, through drought and carelessness, a barren waste, like the wr,rn-rmt hn,l, of slave-holding people, which once were glorious virgin soil. And traveller~ havrJ nr, difficulty in believing that Palestine is under the curse of Gorl.1 The threat r,f Deuteronomy has become II sad reality, and the land stands as a wiLncss to the faith- fulness of God to his thrcatenings, III. A curse was to rest upon THEIR CHILDREN, No more terrible form of judgment can be supposed than this. Parents arc touched deepest in their children. Hence it must havo been a great trial for the waywar,\ Jews to find their children deterioratin" through their sin, and carrying in their persons the curse of God. Population d windlerl~ and instead of being tho countless people they once were, they have become so small that it is one of the wonders of the w,irld that they maintain their separate existence. IY. DISEASES of the most frightful kind were to come upon them. Now, it would seeru that certain diseases were peculiar to Egypt, and of these the Israelites were particularly afraid. Now, the Lord threatens them w_ith all the diseases of Egypt, of which they were so afraid (vers. 27, 35, 60). The diseases with which the human frame is visited are certainly manifold and terrible. To attach them to sin in a way of natural law only makes the judgrnent the more terrible. Of course we cannot say special sickness is proof positive of special sin; but we can say that but for sin tl1crc would have been no suffering and no sickness; and that sin deserves all that is sent. 'l'he frightful character of the sickness and sorrows God sends is the expression of his detestation of man's sin. V. FAMINE was a still worse curse. 'l'o perish with hunger because of the scarcity of food is terrible. 'l'o waste away for want of due nourishment is terrible. Yet this the Lord threatened, and ultimately sent as the history tells us. VI. WAR AND SIEGE. 'l'he worst enemy of mankind is man. Of all judgments war is worst. And the siege endured in Jerusalem twice over transcends all others record eel in history. Of minor 'sieges at Samaria and elsewhere we need not speak. According to Josephus, eleven hundred thousand Jews perished in the course of the siege of Jerusalem under Titus by sword, pestilence, or famine. "Besides these eleven hundred thousand, ninety-seven thousand were taken prisoners ; and these were reserved, not for the light sufferings commonly undergone by prisoners of war in our days, but for the horrors of the slave-market, and for a life of perpetual bondage." 2 It is believed that direct reference is'made to the Roman eagles iu vers. 49, 50, etc., and it is known that women ate their children in the terrible siege. VII. D'xsrERSION AND BONDAGE. 'l'o those with national spirit dispersion must have been terrible. Emigration is now deemed bad enough, even though it may be to a better inheritance. But the Jewish dispersion threatened was captivity which we know came upon them at different times. The Babylonish Captivity was acknowledged by them to be in consequence of their sins, the recognized curse of God. And even after their return in part to Palestine, they came in for bondage to tht! yoke of Rome, and felt the yoke of iron on them. • VIII. The OFFSCOURING OF ALL THINGS unto this day. The Jews were threatened with such a scattering among the nations as would make them universally despised. And they have become so. Even yet, notwithstanding toleration and Jewish rno_ney- grubbing, the nation has not secured the respect of mankind. As Byron wrote- " Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast, How shall ye flee 11way and be at rest I The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cuve, Munkind their country-Isr,,el but the gr,ne In Such ln briof are the jnclgments threatened, and, as history shows us, faithfully executed. '!'ho nation constitutes the beacon of history-the most terrible evidence c,f the perils of disobedience I The following lessons of a practical character are surely tau,,ht:- { Of those to whom much is given shall much be required. No nation was so favoured; 1 Cf. • Tho Land and the Book,' by D1·. W. M. Thomson, edit. of 1860, p. 3-1: 1; Stanley's • Sinai und Pnlostine,' pp. 117-123; Kitto's 'Physical History of Pl\lestiu~,' p. cxx., etc. • Dr. Arnold, tll s11pra, p. 47. THE BOOK OF DEUTEHO.NOMY. tee. x.xvm. 1-68.
but, ne;::l<'cting its opportunities, no nntion has been so cursed. It hns been more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, and for Sodom and Gomorrha, than for the Jews. 2. It is terrible when ;'udgment has to begin at the house of God, 'l'his is the meaning of the melancholy history. It is a tragedy at the house of God (1 Pet. iv, 17). " Let him that thinketh be standeth take heed, lest he fall." 3. The prophetic threatening did not prevent their apostasy, Though as we believe ha,ing their possible career through disobedience to direct judgment so carefully sketched, the prophecy lay for ages as a sealed, if not a neglected book.1 We think, with the rich man in Hades, that categorical warning would reform any of our brethren, no matter how abandoned, b11t find it a mistake (Luke xvi. 27-31), He who knows the end from the beginning has by his prophecy demonstrated that warning is often despised just in proportion to its particularity and faithfulness. 4·. The /11dgment on earth is an ,·mage of a more terrible .iudgment beyond, "For us, each of us," said Dr. Arnold, "if we do fail of the grace of God, . . . there is reserved a misery of which indeed the words of the text are no more than a feeble picture. There is a state in which they who are condemned to it shall for ever say in the morning, Would God it were even! and at even, \Vould God it were mornina I for the fear of their heart wherewith they shall fear, and the sight or their eyes which they 8hall see." In forecasting what the doom ()f the impenitent shall be, we would do well to remember what God has done to sinners in the present life. Imagination may picture post-TTWrtem pardons and insist on sentiment determining the doom of disobedience, even when perpetuated; but the history of judgment here on earth should make every sane man fear to speak lightly of the judgment beyond. May God presene us all from such an experience, through the blood and merits of Jesus!- H. M. E.