y were by God's free grace. Therefore they were not to
boast of themselves, their numbers, their wealth, their armies,
their fair and fertile land. They were to make their boast of God,
and of God's goodness.

He that gloried was to glory in the Lord, and confess that a Syrian
ready to perish was their father Jacob, when the Lord had mercy on
him, and made him the head of a great tribe, and the father of a
great nation; that not themselves, but God had brought them out of
Egypt with signs and wonders; that they got not the land in
possession by their own bow, neither was it their own sword that
helped them, but that God had driven out before them nations greater
and mightier than they.

This they were to remember, because it was true. And this we are to
remember, because it is more or less true of us. God has put us
where we are. God has made of us a great nation; God has discovered
to us the immense riches of this land. It is he that hath made us,
and not we ourselves.

But more. You will see that Moses warns them that if they forget
God, the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, they would
go after other gods.

He cannot part the two things. If they forget that God brought them
out of Egypt, they will turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.

Now why was this?

Why should not the Jews have gone on worshipping one God, even if
they had forgotten that he brought them out of the land of Egypt?

Some people now-a-days think that they would, and that they might
have very well been what is called Monotheists, without believing
all the story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the passage of
the Red Sea, and the giving of the law to Moses.

Such men may be very learned; but there is one thing of which they
know very little, and that is, human nature. Moses knew human
nature; and he knew that if men forgot that God was the living God,
the acting God, who had helped them once, and was helping them
always, and only believed about there being one God far away in
heaven, and not two, that THAT sort of dead faith in a dead God
would never keep them from idols. They would want gods who WOULD
help them, who WOULD hear their prayers, to whom they could feel
gratitude and trust; and they would invent them for themselves, and
begin to worship things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath,
because they had forgotten their true friend and helper, the living
God.

And so shall we. If we forget that G