have another league of wicked kings against Israel, just as if nothing had happened.

MAMA. And nothing can happen which, to those whom God has judicially abandoned to a reprobate mind, will prove a sufficient or seasonable warning.

MARY. But, though it says here "it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might destroy them utterly," you explained to me before (about Pharaoh) that God hardened nobody, only left them to themselves, when incorrigibly wicked.

MAMA. And what does the verse go on to infer might have been the result of a different conduct; of humbly suing for peace, like the inhabitants of Gibeon, instead of "coming against Israel in battle ?"

MARY. Oh! they might perhaps have "found favour." That seems to say if even Canaanites could have repented, God had not quite shut the door of mercy on them. But we hear of none that did, Mama, and yet there were Canaanites, you put me in mind, living in Judea in our Lord's time.

MAMA. Yes, Mary; in consequence of that very different and unsanctified spirit of toleration by which the Israelites were prompted, not only to spare the lives of God's impenitent enemies, but

to make with them unhallowed alliances, to imitate their idolatries, and adopt their vices.

It is the best answer to the favourite remark of scoffers, on the supposed ferocity with which the execution of God's decrees must have inspired the Iraelites, that in every possible case these unwilling executioners were but too ready to frustrate or evade their wholesome severity; while to those disposed to question its necessity, a standing reply has been furnished in the greedy adoption, by these too lenient conquerors, of every error and enormity for which God had commissioned them to sweep the Canaanites from the contaminated earth.

As a proof of this, we have only to remember that it was, in after ages, the worship of that very

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Queen of heaven" (or the moon), the favourite goddess of the Canaanites, which chiefly moved God to lead into captivity the descendants of those very Jews; whom at His command, we have seen the false deity of Canaan compelled to assist, by her "handmaid" light, in the slaughter of her own deluded votaries.

MARY. I am quite satisfied now, Mama, that it was right to cut off those wicked people, but it seems cruel to hurt the poor horses. Why were they to be lamed by the Israelites?

MAMA. Simply because no less decisive mea

sure would have prevented that proud and stiffnecked people from placing then (as they afterwards did) all their confidence "in chariots and horses, and not in the Lord of Hosts." It is thought, too, that in the prohibition to "multiply horses," God had the further merciful view of preserving, for the maintenance of the " many thousands of Israel," that large portion of the produce of a limited territory which, in later times (under their ostentatious kings), was usurped by their innumerable establishments of horses. I am glad to call your attention to these particulars, to shew you, (thanks to the learned men who have patiently investigated the subject,) the foundation not only in Divine authority, but even in worldly wisdom, of many of the most apparently insignificant and arbitrary precepts of the Mosaic dispensation. Nothing could appear more natural or immaterial than that the conquerors of Canaan should keep alive and appropriate the horses of their enemies. But if (as we know was the case) by so doing, they either encroached unduly on human subsistence in a thickly peopled country, or, what was far worse, came to substitute "trust in chariots and horses," for confidence in an Almighty defender, even our finite understandings can be made at once to perceive the propriety of the sacrifice. If not a sparrow falls to the ground without the permission of

our Heavenly Father, sure we are, or may be, that the slaughter of a whole host of unoffending animals was not enjoined or permitted but for wise and sufficient reasons.

Let us treasure up and apply the example, when a prohibition, at first as little understood by us, comes athwart our own wayward tastes and inclinations; and acquiesce in this, as in greater matters, in the arrangements of Him who alone knows "what is good for man all the days of his vain life, which he spendeth as a shadow."

MORNING SIXTH.

LESSON. Joshua Chapter xviii. to verse 10th; Chapter xxi. from verse 41st to the end; Chapter xxii.

MARY.

We have left out some chapters, I see, Mama: they seem full of nothing but names of places, and, for that reason, I suppose, you have made me pass them over.

MAMA. Yes, Mary; because I thought our time might be more profitably employed, than in the mere enumeration of the districts assigned by Joshua to the various tribes of the children of Israel. Yet, as we learn that this division took place (though by lot) under the immediate sanction and superintendence of God, it will furnish us with a wonderful corroboration of the prophetic spirit imparted by Him to his servants Jacob and Moses, to compare (on the authority of learned men) the exact conformity between the actual inheritance of each of the twelve tribes, and that predicted to them by the dying patriarchs. Look back and see what is said at the xlix. chapter of