CHAPTER VIII.

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“I

THE CANAANITES.

"Cursed be Canaan."-Gen. ix. 24

HAVE been thinking," said Janet, next evening,

"what a dreadful trial it must have been to Moses not to be allowed to take his people into the promised land, after all that he had gone through with them. It seems to me a sort of disappointment that I could hardly have borne."

"Surely it was a great punishment for so small an offence, too; just for getting out of patience with the most provoking people that ever lived!" Martin added.

"Ah! Martin!" replied Mrs. Conway, "unbelief and stubbornness look things to be utterly condemned when written in the records of the past; don't they? Yet, this was unbelief in the leaders too. Must we fetch you water?' said Moses, and struck, instead of speaking to the

rock. But if pride and want of faith were to be condemned in the nation, how must they be silenced in the chiefs? Certainly Moses must not forget through whose power he acted, any more than the people must forget under whose banner they marched. If Moses had been allowed thus to stand in God's stead, and to let the people imagine that it was he who brought the water out of the rock, I think he saw what would have followed, if you do not. You remember his words, Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes.' Great as Moses was,

he must not be an object of worship; nor did he ever wish that. It was God's power that was to be shewn forth, and not his. And for that reason, no doubt, 'no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' Could his grave have been pointed out, how many pilgrimages would have been made to it!"

"Only it must have seemed that Moses was as bad as the rest of them," remarked Stewart. "Let me see; none of the men that came out of Egypt might go into the promised land, because they believed what the spies said about it, at least, about its inhabitants, and how impossible it would be to take it from such giants ;wasn't that it? Though they had seen how God could bring them out of Egypt, and even through the sea, they wouldn't believe that He could conquer all those people! Why, it seems to me as if they acted like idiots!

"Not really more so, Stewart, than many do now, who are counted very wise people," his mother said.

"Well, they richly deserved to be punished; and I'm sure I'm very glad that they never got into that good land it served them right. But who could feel that about poor Moses?" Martin said, warmly. "The worst

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part of his punishment was just being included in the same punishment with such a set of rebels."

"Well, we are not told what they thought, or he felt," returned Mrs. Conway; "but I imagine that very soon, when they came to their senses, they would be more troubled about what they had brought upon their leader than even about themselves."

"Doesn't it seem extraordinary how two or three millions of people could have existed for forty years in a desert, or how they could ever have been kept quiet at all?" Harry said.

"Yes; and nothing but God's power could have done it. It was a most remarkable proof of His might, that a

restless, rebellious people should have been compelled so to wear out their lives," his mother replied. "Observe, too, that those people were not unknown to the surrounding tribes. There were several nations quite near them, near enough to hear of all that God had wrought; and this fact rendered it inexcusable in them to remain as they did in idolatry and sin. So it seems to me that, while punishing the Hebrews for their ten times repeated rebellion, God was prolonging the day of grace for these other people, and giving them opportunities of repentance. I don't think that we ought to forget this when we read of the terrible destruction that overwhelmed those doomed races as soon as the order to enter in and take possession was given."

"I see," said Martin; "but many people do think that those stories of slaughter upon slaughter of what they call innocent people, are just so many arguments against the truth of the Bible; don't they?'

"Innocent people!" exclaimed Harry. "Why, you said yourself a little while ago that you supposed they were more than ordinarily wicked."

"I know; and I don't say anything else now," returned Martin, quietly; "I am only repeating what I have heard other people say; and indeed, when they say innocent, they only mean that they were innocent of hurting the Israelites. They don't see what right these Israelites had to touch them."

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Exactly so," rejoined Mrs. Conway; " and that is just what any one might think, if he were to put God out of the question. But if we once admit that He is the Ruler of the world, then surely what He commands us to do must be the right thing, and what He forbids the wrong one. Did your objectors ever hear of the flood, or of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?"

"Oh, yes, of course," said Martin ; "there are old

traditions about the flood everywhere, I believe, and a good many about the destruction of Sodom, too, around those parts."

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"Very well; then why not accept the Bible account, which gives us the reason why these judgments were sent? God is a righteous Judge; and He will not be mocked. A time for retribution will come at last. But He has a right to use His own instruments: either water, or fire or men, or whatever else He wills, must work out His purposes.

"A curse had been hanging over the Canaanites ever since the time of Noah. But it was not to fall until they had manifestly brought it on themselves. Their sins were to reach a certain height, before the fiat went forth. The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full,' God said to Abraham. Now the seven nations were to be utterly exterminated. They had seen how God was with the seed of Abraham, to whom their land had been given in promise; yet they had neither repented nor attempted to join themselves to the holy people, and so at length sentence is issued, those people themselves being the executioners. That is how the case stands."

"I beg your pardon, mamma, for interrupting you," said Stewart, "but why do you call those Israelites a holy people? I don't see that they were holy at all. They were always rebelling and losing faith; besides, Moses himself called them a stiff-necked people."

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Yes; but he also called them an holy people,' as you will see if you turn to Deut. vii. 6, and I take it that he meant just a separated, dedicated people. Remember how he says, 'The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people to Himself.' He willed them to be holy, and taught them how to be so. If you look back a verse or two, you will see that this was the reason why they were not to intermarry, or

have any intercourse with these seven nations that were greater and mightier than themselves. It was lest they should entice them to follow their own idolatrous practices, which practices, you know, were full of all kinds of abominations, as you will see by Deut. xviii. The practices which they were to avoid are there named. They were not to make their sons and daughters to pass through the fire,-in other words, burn them alive. They were not to have anything to do with enchanters, or wizards, or witches, etc. It was because of these abominations Moses told the people that the Lord drove these nations out from before them."

"But then," Martin said, "our objecting friends are always saying that such a training as this was certain to produce a nation of bloodthirsty wretches."

"But it didn't," replied Mrs. Conway, emphatically; "their whole history shews that it didn't. Remember they did not even fully carry out these injunctions: some of the Canaanites were left, after all, and left as we know to be thorns in their sides' for a long time afterwards. Besides, at what period of their history were the Israelites ever reckoned a bloodthirsty people?" "One more objection, please," continued Martin ; "and this is my own idea. If idolators then were to be punished with death,-and idolatry seems to have been these people's great crime,-what about the question of religious persecutions?"

"Ah!" she replied, "I am glad you thought of that, because I should like you to be clear on this point, though you rather anticipate. This was the law for the Jews; but as regards the Canaanites, the reason assigned for their extermination is simply their iniquity. Afterwards, as you say, idolatry was to be punished with death; and the key to that puzzle I take to be this :---these Israelites were God's own chosen people; they were under His