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Patriarchs and Prophets
were to signify their acceptance of the terms of the covenant and give
their assent to the blessings or curses for its observance or neglect. The
law was not only written upon the memorial stones, but was read by
Joshua himself in the hearing of all Israel. It had not been many weeks
since Moses gave the whole book of Deuteronomy in discourses to the
people, yet now Joshua read the law again.
Not alone the men of Israel, but “all the women and the little ones”
listened to the reading of the law; for it was important that they also
should know and do their duty. God had commanded Israel concerning
His statutes: “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart
and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they
may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your
children, ... that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your
children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give
them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.”
Deuteronomy 11:18-21
.
Every seventh year the whole law was to be read in the assembly
of all Israel, as Moses commanded: “At the end of every seven years,
in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles,
when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place
which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their
hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children,
and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that
they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all
the words of this law: and that their children, which have not known
anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye
live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.”
Deuteronomy
31:10-13
.
Satan is ever at work endeavoring to pervert what God has spoken,
to blind the mind and darken the understanding, and thus lead men
into sin. This is why the Lord is so explicit, making His requirements
so very plain that none need err. God is constantly seeking to draw
men close under His protection, that Satan may not practice his cruel,
deceptive power upon them. He has condescended to speak to them
with His own voice, to write with His own hand the living oracles.
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And these blessed words, all instinct with life and luminous with truth,
are committed to men as a perfect guide. Because Satan is so ready to
catch away the mind and divert the affections from the Lord’s promises