“O God, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.”

SERMON XXIV.  THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE.

Preached on Whit-Sunday.

DEUT.  XXX. 19, 20.

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:  therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:  that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him:  for He is thy life, and the length of thy days:  that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

These words, the book of Deuteronomy says, were spoken by Moses to all the Israelites shortly before his death.  He had led them out of Egypt, and through the wilderness.  They were in sight of the rich land of Canaan, where they were to settle and to dwell for many hundred years.  Moses, the book says, went over again with them all the Law, the admirable and divine Law, which they were to obey, and by which they were to govern and order themselves in the land of Canaan.  He had told them that they owed all to God Himself; that God had delivered them out of slavery in Egypt; God had led them to the land of Canaan; God had given them just laws and right statutes, which if they kept, they would live long in their new home, and become a great and mighty nation.  Then he calls heaven and earth to witness that he had set before them life and death, blessing and cursing.  If they trusted in the one true God, and served Him, and lived as men should, who believed that a just and loving God cared for them, then they would live; then a blessing would come on them, and their children, on their flocks and herds, on their land and all in it.  But if they forgot God, and began to worship the sun, and the moon, and the stars, the earth and the weather, like the nations round them, then they would die; they would grow superstitious, cowardly, lazy, and profligate, and therefore weak and miserable, like the wretched Canaanites whom they were going to drive out; and then they would die.  Their souls would die in them, and they would become less than men, and at last—­as the Canaanites had become—­worse than brutes, till their numbers would diminish, and they would be left, Moses says, few in number and at last perish out of the good land which God had given them.

So, he says, you know how to live, and you know how to die.  Choose between them this day.

They knew the road to wealth, health, prosperity and order, peace and happiness, and life:  and they knew the road to ruin, poverty, weakness, disease, shame and death.

They knew both roads; for God had set them before them.

And you know both roads; for God has set them before you.

Then he says—­I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.