_JOSHUA'S CHARGE TO THE PEOPLE._
JOSHUA i. 10-18.
God has spoken to Joshua; it is now Joshua's part to speak to the
people. The crossing of the Jordan must be set about at once, and in
earnest, and all the risks and responsibilities involved in that step
firmly and fearlessly encountered.
And in the steps taken by Joshua for this purpose we see, what we so
often see, how the natural must be exhausted before the supernatural
is brought in. Thus, in communicating with the people through the
_shoterim_, or officers, the first order which he gives is to "command
the people to prepare them victuals." "Victuals" denotes the natural
products of the country, and is evidently used in opposition to
"manna." In another passage we read that "the manna ceased on the very
morning after they had eaten of the old corn of the land" (chap. v.
12). This may have been a considerable time before, for the conquest
of Sihon and Og would give the people possession of ample stores of
food out of the old corn of the land. The manna was a provision for
the desert only, where few or no natural supplies of food could be
found. But the very day when natural stores become available, the
manna is discontinued. One cannot but contrast the carefully limited
use of the supernatural in Scripture with its arbitrary and unstinted
employment in mythical or fictional writings. Often in such cases it
is brought in with a wanton profusion, simply to excite wonder,
sometimes to gratify the love of the grotesque, not because natural
means could not have accomplished what was sought, but through sheer
love of revelling in the supernatural. In Scripture the natural is
never superseded when it is capable of either helping or accomplishing
the end. The east wind helps to dry the Red Sea, although the rod of
Moses has to be stretched out for the completion of the work. The
angel of God knocks Peter's chains from his limbs and opens the prison
gates for him, but leaves him to find his way thereafter as best he
can. So now. It is now in the power of the people to prepare them
victuals, and though God might easily feed them as He has fed them
miraculously for forty years, He leaves them to find food for
themselves. In all cases the co-operation of the Divine and the human
is carried out with an instructive combination of generosity and
economy; man is never to be idle; alike in the affairs of the temporal
and the spiritual life, the Divine energy always stimulates to
activity, never lulls to sleep.
A little explanation is needed respecting the time when Joshua said
the Jordan must be crossed--"within three days." If the narrative of
the first two chapters be taken in chronological order, more than
three days must have elapsed between the issuing of this order and the
crossing of the river, because it is expressly stated that the two
spies who were sent to examine Jericho hid themselves for three days
in the mountains, and thereafter recrossed the Jordan and returned to
Joshua (ii. 22). But it is quite in accordance with the practice of
Scripture narrative to introduce an episode out of its chronological
place so that it may not break up the main record. It is now generally
held that the spies were sent on before Joshua issued this order to
the people, because it is not likely that he would have committed
himself to a particular day before he got the information which he
expected the spies to bring. In any case, it is plain that no needless
delay was allowed. Half a week more and Jordan would be crossed,
although the means of crossing it had not yet been made apparent; and
then the people would be actually in their own inheritance, within the
very country which in the dim ages of the past had been promised to
their fathers.
Yes, the people generally; but already an arrangement had been made
for the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh on the
east side of the river. How, then, were they to act in the present
crisis? That had been determined between them and Moses when they got
leave to occupy the lands of Sihon and Og, on account of their
suitableness for their abundant flocks and herds. It had been arranged
then that, leaving their cattle and their children, a portion of the
men likewise, the rest would cross the river with their brethren and
take their share of the toils and risks of the conquest of Western
Canaan. All that Joshua needs to do now is to remind them of this
arrangement. Happily there was no reluctance on their part to fulfil
it. There was no going back from their word, even though they might
have found a loophole of escape. They might have said that as the
conquest of Sihon and Og had been accomplished so easily, so the
conquest of the western tribes would be equally simple. Or they might
have said that the nine tribes and a half could furnish quite a large
enough army to dispossess the Canaanites. Or they might have
discovered that their wives and children were exposed to dangers they
had not apprehended, and that it would be necessary for the entire
body of the men to remain and protect them. But they fell back on no
such after thought. They kept their word at no small cost of toil and
danger, and furnished thereby a perpetual lesson for those who, having
made a promise under pressure, are tempted to resile from it when the
pressure is removed. Fidelity to engagements is a noble quality, just
as laxity in regard to them is a miserable sin. Even Pagan Rome could
boast of a Regulus who kept his oath by returning to Carthage, though
it was to encounter a miserable death. In the fifteenth psalm it is a
feature in the portrait of the man who is to abide in God's tabernacle
and dwell in His holy hill, that he "sweareth to his own hurt, and
changeth not."
One arrangement was made by these transjordanic tribes that was
perfectly reasonable--a portion of the men remained to guard their
families and their property. The number that passed over was forty
thousand (Josh. iv. 13), whereas the entire number of men capable of
bearing arms (dividing Manasseh into two) was a hundred and ten
thousand (Num. xxvi. 7, 18, and 34). But the contingent actually sent
was amply sufficient to redeem the promise, and, consisting probably
of picked men, was no doubt a very efficient portion of the force. The
actual fighting force of the other tribes would probably be in the
same proportion to the whole; and there, too, a section would have to
be left to guard the women, children, and flocks, so that in point of
fact the labours and dangers of the conquest were about equally
divided between all the tribes.
Here, then, was an edifying spectacle: those who had been first
provided for did not forget those who had not yet obtained any
settlement; but held themselves bound to assist their brethren until
they should be as comfortably settled as themselves.
It was a grand testimony against selfishness, a grand assertion of
brotherhood, a beautiful manifestation of loyalty and public spirit;
and, we may add, an instructive exhibition of the working of the
method by which God's providence seeks to provide for the
dissemination of many blessings among the children of men. It was an
act of socialism, without the drawbacks which most forms of socialism
involve.
God has allowed many differences in the lots of mankind, bestowing on
some ample means, for which they toiled not neither did they spin;
bestowing, often on the same individuals, a higher position in life,
with corresponding social influence; setting some nations in the van
of the world's march, bestowing on some churches very special
advantages and means of influence; and it is a great question that
arises--what obligations rest on these favoured individuals and
communities? Does God lay any duty on them toward the rest of mankind?
The inquiry in its full scope is too wide for our limits; let us
restrict ourselves to the element in respect of which the
transjordanic tribes had the advantage of the others--the element of
time. What do those who have received their benefits early owe to
those who are behind them in time?
The question leads us first to the family constitution, but there is
really no question here. The obligations of parents to their children
are the obligations of those who have already got their settlement to
those who have not; of those who have already got means, and
strength, and experience, and wisdom to those who have not yet had
time to acquire them. It is only the vilest of our race that refuse to
own their obligations here, and this only after their nature has been
perverted and demonized by vice. To all others it is an obligation
which amply repays itself. The affection between parent and child in
every well-ordered house sweetens the toil that often falls so heavily
on the elders; while the pleasure of seeing their children filling
stations of respectability and usefulness, and the enjoyment of their
affection, even after they have gone out into the world, amply repay
their past labours, and greatly enrich the joys of life.
We advance to the relation of the rich to the poor, especially of
those who are born to riches to those who are born to obscurity and
toil. Had the providence of God no purpose in this arrangement? You
who come into the world amid luxury and splendour, who have never been
required to work for a single comfort, who have the means of
gratifying expensive tastes, and who grudge no expenditure on the
objects of your fancy:--was it meant that you were to sustain no
relation of help and sympathy to the poor, especially your neighbors,
your tenants, or your workpeople? Do you fulfil the obligations of
life when, pouring into your coffers the fruits of other men's toil,
you hurry off to the resorts of wealth and fashion, intent only on
your own enjoyment, and without a thought of the toiling multitude you
leave at home? Is it right of you to leave deserving people to fall
peradventure into starvation and despair, without so much as turning a
finger to prevent it? What are you doing for the widows and orphans?
Selfish and sinful beings! let these old Hebrews read you a lesson of
condemnation! They could not selfishly enjoy their comfortable homes
till they had done their part on behalf of their brethren, for
wherever there is a brotherly heart a poor brother's welfare is as
dear as one's own.
Then there is the case of nations, and pre-eminently of our own. Some
races attain to civilization, and order, and good government sooner
than others. They have all the benefit of settled institutions and
enlightened opinion, of discoveries in the arts and sciences, and of
the manifold comforts and blessings with which life is thus enriched,
while other nations are sunk in barbarism and convulsed by disorder.
But how much more prone are such nations to claim the rights of
superiority than to play the part of the elder brother! We are
thankful for the great good that has been done in India, and in other
countries controlled by the older nations. But even in the case of
India, how many have gone there not to benefit the natives, but with
the hope of enriching themselves. How ready have many been to indulge
their own vices at the cost of the natives, and how little has it
pained them to see them becoming the slaves of new vices that have
sunk them lower than before. Our Indian opium traffic, and our drink
traffic generally among native races--what is their testimony to our
brotherly feeling? What are we to think of the white traders among the
South Sea islands, stealing and robbing and murdering their feebler
fellow-creatures? What are we to think of the traffic in slaves, and
the inconceivable brutalities with which it is carried on? Or what are
we to think of our traders at home, sending out in almost uncountable
profusion the rum, and the gin, and the other drinks by which the poor
weak natives are at once enticed, enslaved, and destroyed? Is there
any development in selfishness that has ever been heard of more
heartless and horrible? Why can't they let them alone, if they will
not try to benefit them? What can come to any man in the end but the
well-merited punishment of those who out of sheer greed have made
miserable savages tenfold more the children of hell than before?
We pass over the case of the early settlers in colonies, because there
is hardly any obligation more generally recognised than that of such
settlers to lend a helping hand to new arrivals. We go on to the case
of Churches. The light of saving truth has come to some lands before
others. We in this country have had our Christianity for centuries,
and in these recent years have had so lively a dispensation of the
gospel of Christ that many have felt more than ever His power to
forgive, to comfort, to lift us up and bless us. Have we no duty to
those parts of the earth which are still in the shadow of death? If we
are not actually settled in the Promised Land, we are as good as
settled, because we have the Divine promise, and we believe in that
promise. But what of those who are yet "without Christ, alienated from
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world"? Have we no
responsibility for them? Have we no interest in that Divine plan which
seeks to use those who first receive the light as instruments of
imparting it to the rest? Infidels object that Christianity cannot be
of God, because if Christianity furnishes the only Divine remedy for
sin it would have been diffused as widely as the evil for which it is
the cure. Our reply is, that God's plan is to give the light first to
some, and to charge them to give it freely and cordially to others. We
say, moreover, that this plan is a wholesome one for those who are
called to work it, because it draws out and strengthens what is best
and noblest in them, and because it tends to form very loving bonds
between those who give and those who get the benefit. But what if the
first recipients of the light fold their hands, content to have got
the blessing themselves, and decline to do their part in sending it to
the rest? Surely there is here no ordinary combination of sins!
Indolence and selfishness at the root, and, with these, a want of all
public spirit and beneficent activity; and, moreover, not mere neglect
but contempt of the Divine plan by which God has sought the universal
diffusion of the blessing. Again we say, look to these men of Reuben,
Gad, and Manasseh. They were not the _élite_ of the race of Israel.
Their fathers, at least in the case of Reuben and Dan, were not among
the more honoured of the sons of Jacob. And yet they had the grace to
think of their brethren, when so many among us are utterly careless of
ours. And not only to think of them, but to go over the Jordan and
fight for them, possibly die for them; nor would they think of
returning to the comfort of their homes till they had seen their
brethren in the west settled in theirs.
And this readiness of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh to
fulfil the engagement under which they had come to Moses, was not the
only gratifying occurrence which Joshua met with on announcing the
impending crossing of the Jordan. For the whole people declared very
cordially their acceptance of Joshua as their leader, vowed to him the
most explicit fidelity, declared their purpose to pay him the same
honour as they had paid to Moses, and denounced a sentence of death
against any one that would not hearken to his words in all that he
commanded them.
Joshua, in fact, obtained from them a promise of loyalty beyond what
they had ever given to Moses till close on his death. It was the great
trial of Moses that the people so habitually complained of him and
worried him, embittering his life by ascribing to him even the natural
hardships of the wilderness, as well as the troubles that sprang
directly from their sins. It is the unwillingness of his people to
trust him, after all he has sacrificed for them, that gives such a
pathetic interest to the life of Moses, and makes him, more than
perhaps any other Old Testament prophet, so striking an example of
unrequited affection. After crossing the Red Sea, all the marvels of
that deliverance from Pharaoh of which he had been the instrument are
swallowed up and forgotten by the little inconveniences of the
journey. And afterwards, when they are doomed to the forty years'
wandering, they are ready enough to blame him for it, forgetting how
he fell down before God and pled for them when God threatened to
destroy them. Moreover, his enactments against the idolatry they loved
so well made him anything but popular, to say nothing of the
burdensome ceremonial which he enjoined them to observe. The time of
real loyalty to Moses was just the little period before his death,
when he led them against Sihon and Og, and a great stretch of fertile
and beautiful land fell into their hands. Moses had just gained the
greatest victory of his life, he had just become master of the hearts
of his people, when he was called away. For Moses at last did gain the
people's hearts, and those to whom Joshua appealed could say without
irony or sarcasm, "According as we hearkened unto Moses in all things,
so will we hearken unto thee."
In point of fact a great change had been effected on the people at
last. Moses had laboured, and Joshua now entered into his labours. The
same thing has often occurred in history, and notably in our own. In
civil life how much do we owe to the noble champions of freedom of
other days, through whose patriotism, courage, and self-denial the
hard fight was fought and the victory won that enables us to sit under
our vine and under our fig tree. In ecclesiastical life was it not the
blood of the martyrs and the struggles of those of whom the world was
not worthy, who wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and
caves of the earth, that won for us the freedom and the peace in which
we now rejoice? What blessings we owe to those that have gone before
us! And how can we better discharge our obligations to them than by
hastening to the aid of those who have but emerged from the period of
struggle and suffering, like the Christians of Madagascar or of
Uganda, whose fearful sufferings and awful deaths under the merciless
rule of heathen kings made Christendom stand aghast, and drew a wail
of anguish from her bosom?
The unanimity of the people in their loyalty to Joshua is a touching
sight. So far as appears there was not one discordant note in that
harmonious burst of loyalty. No Korah, Dathan, or Abiram rose up to
decline his rule and embarrass him in his new position. It is a
beautiful sight, the united loyalty of a great nation. Nothing more
beautiful has ever been known in the long reign of Queen Victoria than
the crowding of her people in hundreds of thousands to witness her
procession to St. Paul's on that morning when she went to return
thanks for the rescue of her eldest son from the very jaws of death.
Not one discordant note was uttered, not one disloyal feeling was
known; the vast multitude were animated by the spirit of sympathy and
affection for one who had tried to do her duty as a queen and as a
mother. It was a sight not unlike to this that was seen in the streets
of New York at the centennial celebration of the inauguration of
George Washington as first President of the United States. One was
thrilled by the thought that not only the multitude that thronged the
streets, but the representatives of the whole nation, gathered in
their churches throughout the land, were animated by a common
sentiment of gratitude to the man whose wisdom and courage had laid
the foundation of all the prosperity and blessing of the last hundred
years. Are not such scenes the pattern of that spirit of loyalty which
the entire race of man owes to Him who by His blood redeemed the
world, and whose rule and influence, if the world would but accept of
it, are so beneficent and so blessed? Yet how far are we from such a
state! How few are the hearts that throb with true loyalty to the
Saviour, and whose most fervent aspiration for the world is, that it
would only throw down its weapons of rebellion, and give to him its
hearty allegiance! Strange that the Old Testament Joshua should have
got at once what eighteen hundred years have failed to bring to the
New Testament Jesus! God hasten the day of universal light and
universal love, when He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the
river to the ends of the earth!
"One song employs all nations, and all cry
'Worthy the Lamb, for He was slain for us'!
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy,
Till nation after nation taught the strain
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round."