God's Dealings with the Canaanites.
By H. L. H.
With such an awful manifestation of divine power and justice as was afforded by the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host, we might easily infer that the world, when made acquainted with the facts pertaining to his destruction, would yield at once to the superior claims of God, and cease forever to interpose themselves as obstacles to the performance of his purposes. Such an inference, however, is unwarranted by analogy and unsustained by fact. Instead of this, those very people who were thus delivered from Egyptian tyranny, were some of them forgetful of the God of their salvation, and rebellious against the rock of their strength. The carcasses that filled the graves of lust, or that rotted in the wilderness during Israel's lengthy sojourn there, are but another indication of the downward proclivity of man, and of his deep-rooted unwillingness to yield appropriate obedience to the God of heaven and earth. But, leaving Israel for the present, we follow the report of Pharaoh's overthrow, and mark its moral influence upon the inhabitants of adjacent countries. A judgment so terrible as that inflicted upon Pharaoh could not long remain unknown. The tidings of a deliverance like that vouchsafed to Israel could not be kept secret. The knowledge that this emancipated host were destined to inhabit Canaan, was by no means withheld from the parties interested. It was no secret that Canaan was promised to Israel, or that they were coming to possess it. Long before, Abraham had been informed that when the iniquity of the Amorites was full, his children should return from Egypt and dwell in Palestine. "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance—when he separated the sons of Adam—he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." This definite purpose had been announced for hundreds of years. This land, of all the earth, was reserved by Jehovah as his heritage, the abode of his chosen people. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was a virtual notice to the nations of Canaan to leave the territory in which they had only been tenants at will, until the time of the promise should come. The miracles connected with Israel's exode were sufficient to convince any who would reason, that resistance to Israel and Israel's God would be alike impious and futile. But they would not receive the lesson. Thus, when the spies, Caleb and Joshua, went up to examine the land, the King of Jericho immediately sent for them, no doubt on purpose to destroy them. The general impression produced upon any whose minds were open to learn the truth, may be inferred from the words of Rahab to the spies:—"I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites that were on the other side of Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard those things, our hearts did melt; neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and in earth beneath." With such convictions as these, resting upon a basis of such stubborn and recent facts, there was but one reasonable course for the inhabitants of that land. They should submit, or emigrate from the territory to which others had a prior claim. But they would do neither. The only alternative was to resist the power of Almighty God himself. This they undertook, and in the strength of frail mortality, entered the lists, determined to oppose the will and thwart the purposes of Jehovah. But such endeavors were vain. The arrangements of God cannot be modified by the rebellion of a few wrongheaded men. His counsel shall stand. The car of his purpose must rush along its appointed track. Those who resist, resist at their peril; those who acquiesce have peace. The nations of Canaan resisted—they were overthrown. Their judgment was severe, but justly merited. There is a certain class of men who, for the sake of covering up their own faults, and excusing their non-compliance with Divine law, or for some similar purpose, take infinite pains to make us believe that the Bible is a fiction, its author a cunning knave, and its God a fiendish monster of cruelty. One of their hackneyed objections to the Bible is this:—"Can it be true that a merciful God would destroy the nations of Canaan, as is related in the Old Testament? We don't believe in such a God." Well, let us reason together. Who makes noxious reptiles and venomous insects? The God of nature, is it not? Very well, if venomous insects should drive the inhabitants of a country out of her borders who would be to blame? No one, except the God of nature I suppose! Well, the kings of the Amorites were driven out, not with the sword or the bow of Israel, but by swarms of hornets which infested the land—sent, Moses says, by Jehovah—infidels would say by the laws of nature. Now, what is the difference? These are the recorded facts. If God sent the hornets, then it was certainly right for Israel to possess the land—and if nature sent them, the case is not altered one jot that I can discern. In either case their title is equally good, and the cavil is good—for nothing. But it is asserted that there were others of the inhabitants of Canaan who afterwards were expelled from its borders by force. This is very true, and to be able to judge of the propriety of the act, we must note a few striking traits in their characters. Among these were the following. In the first place, they were gross and abominable idolaters, who would not worship, obey or serve the Most High God, having perhaps views and conceptions of his character in accordance with those of their modern sympathizers. Second: they were firm believers in the essential elements of modern "spiritualism," and practiced necromancy, or pretended to divine and reveal secrets by means of intercourse with the departed; and were thus guilty of the abominable practice of leaving the living God to consult dead men. Third: there were many of them who were fully developed "spiritual mediums," or in ancient phraseology "consulters of familiar spirits," "diviners," and "wizards," who like the "medium" at Endor, professed to bring up dead men for the accommodation of backsliders and God-forsaken rebels like king Saul. Fourth: they were, as it became idolatrous heathens and "progressive" spiritual believers to be, freed from the restrictions which God had placed upon the lustful propensities of their nature, and were consequently at full liberty to develop their ideas of "free love" and "passional attraction." Fifth: their principles of "free love" not only allowed adultery and fornication, but also incest, and all nameless licentious practices of the most revolting character; and quite as free as ever I heard of being advocated in any modern spiritual newspaper, or by any speaker in a spiritual convention. Sixth: they not only begot children in shameless and promiscuous debauchery, but those same children were murderously burned in the fire by their ungodly parents. These were some of the precious traits of character belonging to that reprobate and besotted race which God destroyed. A race scarcely possessed of one solitary recorded virtue, and not exempt from one single imaginable vice. A race debauched, polluted, licentious, and idolatrous. A race progressive, but progressive toward perdition. This was the race of whose presence God purged the world, when their iniquities were full. These the men whom the land vomited forth. And if Israel had imitated their examples, the reddest bolts from Sinai, or the most lurid fires of Sodom, would have been tame compared with the retributive vengeance which would have been visited upon them. But these men—who would have suffered capital punishment in any land where there is to-day the semblance of a decent law—these men, who had forfeited their lives a dozen times—those men who had done ten times more mischief than their necks were over worth—these men who had seized on one of the fairest spots beneath the sun, and turned it into an ulcerous brothel of whoredom and a den of crime and blood—these ancient murderers of their own children—these heathenish "spiritualists" and "free lovers" of olden times—these are the men for whom the gentlemen infidels, spirit-rappers, and Bible haters of the present day, generally, plead. Ah! they pity the poor Canaanites. They blame Moses. They find fault with Joshua. They rail at God. They plead for these villains, cut-throats, and Sodomites. They palliate the stinking lecherousness of these unholy scoundrels! They, who have learned all they ever knew of God or goodness at their mother's knee, or from the Bible, the hymn-book, or in the Sabbath-school, rail at Jehovah for wiping out such a plague-spot as this from the universe. Why is all this sympathy? Are they partial to such courses? Are they spiritualists and necromancers? Are they "free lovers" too? Is it "a fellow feeling" that makes them so "wondrous kind"? If so, I excuse their indecent assaults upon God, and truth, and righteousness. But if not, I ask some reason why men speak evil of the things that they know not of. To return, these were the men that entered into a controversy with Almighty God. Their efforts were idle. The waters of Jordan receded before their approaching foes; the ramparts of Jericho fell in utter ruin at their presence; the sun and the moon stood still that the work of retribution might go on; the hail from heaven battered their routed legions in the dust; the stars in their courses fought against the enemies of God: all elements combined to effect their overthrow; the ancient river Kishon swept away the fleeing fugitives; and the sword of a righteous avenger exterminated the race. Thus closed the controversy which God had with the nations of Canaan. It closed as all others have closed, not by submission, arbitration, or accommodation; but by stern judgments which punished the rejection of unnumbered mercies and the vilest prostitution of the best of temporal blessings and favors, and which left on record the same awful lesson which the world had previously refused to learn, that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It taught man that God's providence would move upon the appointed path of divine purpose and promise, and that those who opposed, opposed to their own destruction. It taught them that a warfare with Jehovah was a most unequal strife, and that man must submit to the divine will or perish in disobedience. This was the lesson written for their instruction—alas that, to the present hour, men should have failed to learn it, and refused to obey it. Great Controversy by H. L. H.