ve it them, and that the Bible speaks truth, when it
says that not man, but God gave them their law.

No doubt man would have done it differently. But God's ways are not
as man's ways, nor God's thoughts as man's thoughts.

And God's ways have proved themselves to be the right ways. His
purpose has come to pass. This little nation of the Jews,
inhabiting a country not as large as Wales, without sea-port towns
and commerce, without colonies or conquests--and at last, for its
own sins, conquered itself, and scattered abroad over the whole
civilized world--has taught the whole civilized world, has converted
the whole civilized world, has influenced all the good and all the
wise unto this day so enormously, that the world has actually gone
beyond them, and become Christian by fully understanding their
teaching and their Bible, while they have remained mere Jews by not
fully understanding it. Truly, if that is not a proof that God
revealed something to the Jews which they never found out for
themselves, which was too great for them to understand, which was
God's boundless message and not any narrow message of man's
invention--if that does not prove it, I say--I know not what proof
men would have.

But now I have told you that God bade these Jews to look for
blessings in THIS life, and blessings on their whole nation, and on
their children after them, if they obeyed and served him. Does God
NOT bid us to look for any such blessings? The Jews were to be
blessed in THIS world. Are we only to be blessed in the next?

To that the Seventh Article of our Church gives a plain and positive
answer. For it says that those are not to be heard who pretend that
the old Fathers, i.e. Moses and the Prophets, looked only for
transitory promises--i.e. for promises which would pass away. No.
They looked for eternal promises which could not pass away, because
they were according to the eternal laws of God, which stand good
both for this world and for all worlds for this life and for the
life everlasting.

Yes, my friends, settle in your hearts that the book of Deuteronomy
is meant for you, and for all the nations upon earth, as much as for
the old Jews. That its promises and warnings are to you and to your
children as surely as they were to the old Jews. Ay, that they are
meant for every nation that is, or ever was, or ever will be upon
earth. If you would prosper on the earth, fear God and keep his
commandments; and know and