with an utterly different lesson, to the written history of any
other nation in the world.

And yet it is this which makes the history of the Jews the key to
every other history in the world. For in it Jesus Christ our Lord,
the living God who makes history, who governs all nations, reveals
and unveils himself, and teaches not the Jews only, but us and all
nations, that it is he who hath made us, and not we ourselves; that
we got not the land in possession by our own sword, nor was it our
own strength that helped us, but thou, O Lord, because thou hadst a
favour unto us; that not to us, not to us is the praise of any
national greatness or glory, but to God, from whom it comes as
surely a free gift as the gift of liberty to the Jews of old.

I say, the history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church,
and of every nation in Christendom.

As with the Jews, so with the nations of Europe; whenever they have
trusted in themselves, their own power and wisdom, they have ended
in weakness and folly. Whenever they have trusted in Christ the
living God, and said, 'It is he that hath made us, and not we
ourselves,' they have risen to strength and wisdom. When they have
forgotten the living God, national life and patriotism have died in
them, as they died in the Jews. When they have remembered that the
most high God was their Redeemer, then in them, as in the Jews, have
national life and patriotism revived.

And as it was with the Jews in the wilderness, so it has been with
them since Christ's resurrection. They fancied that they were going
at once into the promised land. So did the first Christians. But
the Jews had to wander forty years in the wilderness; and
Christendom has had to wander too, in strange and bloodstained
paths, for one thousand eight hundred years and more. For why? The
Israelites were not worthy to enter at once into rest; no more have
the nation of Christ's Church been worthy. The Israelites brought
out of Egypt base and slavish passions, which had to be purged out
of them; so have we out of heathendom. They brought out, too,
heathen superstitions, and mixed them up with the worship of God,
bearing about in the wilderness the tabernacle of Moloch and the
image of their god Remphan, and making the calf in Horeb; and so,
alas! again and again, has the Church of Christ.

Nay, the whole generation, save two, who came out of Egypt, had to
die in the wilderness, and leave their bones scattere