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True Education
you live in your land.” “Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his
brethren; the Lord is his inheritance.”
Deuteronomy 12:19
;
10:9
.
By Faith to Conquest
The truth that as a person “thinks in his heart, so is he” (
Proverbs
23:7
), finds another illustration in Israel’s experience. On the borders
of Canaan the spies, having returned from searching the country,
made their report. The beauty and fruitfulness of the land were
lost sight of through fear of the difficulties they perceived. The
walled cities, the giant warriors, the iron chariots, daunted their
faith. Leaving God out of the question, the multitude echoed the
decision of the unbelieving spies, “We are not able to go up against
the people, for they are stronger than we.”
Numbers 13:31
.
Two, however, of the twelve who had viewed the land, reasoned
otherwise. “We are well able to overcome it” (vs. 30), they urged,
counting God’s promise superior to giants, walled cities, or chariots
of iron. Though they shared the forty years’ wandering with the
doubters, Caleb and Joshua entered the Land of Promise. As coura-
geous of heart as when he set out from Egypt, Caleb asked for and
received as his portion the stronghold of the giants. In God’s strength
he drove out the Canaanites, and their vineyards and olive groves
became his possession. Though the cowards and rebels perished
in the wilderness, the men of faith—Caleb and Joshua—ate of the
grapes of Eschol.
No truth does the Bible set forth in clearer light than the peril of
even one departure from right—peril both to the wrongdoer and to
all whom his influence shall reach. Example has wonderful power,
and when cast on the side of the evil tendencies of our nature, it
becomes well-nigh irresistible.
The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous
life of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast; it is that life
which otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble, but in
which one sin is fostered, one vice indulged. To a soul struggling
in secret against some giant temptation, trembling upon the very
verge of the precipice, such an example is one of the most powerful
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enticements to sin. People who, endowed with high conceptions
of life, truth, and honor, willfully transgress one precept of God’s