their baggage. Then they stood before
Israel and said, "We have come from a far country; look at our
clothing, it is worn out; and at our shoes, they are in holes; and at
our bread, it was fresh when we started, it is musty to-day."

And Joshua said, "We will make them hewers of wood and drawers of
water," and they were saved from death but they served in bondage. Let
this be remembered always that deception inevitably means bondage. One
is in bondage to his conscience, for it constantly reproves him. He is
in bondage to the one he has deceived, for he can never stand honestly
before him. He is most of all in bondage to his sin, for he will
surely be found out.

The Amorites were against the children of Israel and they were a great
company. It is in connection with their struggle against this power
that the text is written.

I

The Israelites started in this conflict with a mighty power against
them, as we have seen. But so have we. There are first of all the
tendencies of our old nature against which we must fight, for just as
with the law of gravitation if I take my hand away from a book or a
stone it falls to the floor or the ground because this law pulls it
downward, so there is a law in my members and has been in the life of
every man since Adam's day pulling me away from the true to the false.
It is for this reason that it is easier to do wrong than to do right,
to be untrue than to be true. Then there is against us the very world
in which we live. Its atmosphere, its business, even its social life
is tainted with that which is sinful or to say the least questionable,
and he who lives in the world and is in any sense of it has a hard
battle to fight. But there are two special things which are against us.

First: The sins which we have encouraged. It may be in the beginning
very small, but Satan is perfectly satisfied if he can have the least
hold upon the life of the one whom he wishes to wrong. I read in a
Chicago paper the story of a woman who was making a heroic struggle
against an awful curse. She had become addicted to the use of
morphine. For fourteen years she was a consumer of the drug.
Apparently she could not shake off the habit. Building up a resistance
to the action of the drug, her system became accustomed to enormous
quantities of it. She could not eat, nor sleep, nor work without it.
Most of her scanty earnings went to purchase it. She was a seamstress,
and by toiling many