The book of JOSHUA contains the conquests of the Israelites over the seven nations, and their establishment in the promised land. Their treatment of these conquered nations must appear to you very cruel and unjust, if you consider it as their own act, unauthorized by a positive command: but they had the most absolute injunctions, not to spare these corrupt people--"to make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy to them, but utterly to destroy them." And the reason is given--"lest they should turn away the Israelites from following the Lord, that they might serve other gods[16]." The children of Israel are to be considered as instruments in the hand of the Lord, to punish those whose idolatry and wickedness had deservedly brought destruction on them: this example, therefore, cannot be pleaded in behalf of cruelty, or bring any imputation on the character of the Jews. With regard to other cities, which did not belong to these seven nations, they were directed to deal with them, according to the common law of arms at that time. If the city submitted, it became tributary, and the people were spared; if it resisted, the men were to be slain, but the women and children saved[17]. Yet, though the crime of cruelty cannot be justly laid to their charge on this occasion, you will observe in the course of their history many things recorded of them very different from what you would expect from the chosen people of God, if you supposed them selected on account of their own merit: their national character was by no means amiable; and we are repeatedly told, that they were not chosen for their superior righteousness--"for they were a stiff-necked people, and provoked the Lord with their rebellions from the day they left Egypt."--"You have been rebellious against the Lord," says Moses, "from the day that I knew you[18]." And he vehemently exhorts them, not to flatter themselves that their success was, in any degree, owing to their own merits. They were appointed to be the scourge of other nations, whose crimes rendered them fit objects of Divine chastisement. For the sake of righteous Abraham, their founder, and perhaps for many other wise reasons, undiscovered to us, they were selected from a world over-run with idolatry, to preserve upon earth the pure worship of the one only God, and to be honoured with the birth of the Messiah amongst them. For this end, they were precluded, by Divine command, from mixing with any other people, and defended by a great number of peculiar rites and observances from falling into the corrupt worship practised by their neighbours.