2. As already argued, the moral effect upon Israel of being made the executioners of God’s righteous justice may be presumed to have been naturally wholesome. But not to push this argument――we may at least maintain, 3. That seen historically――estimated in the light of the facts of the case, this method _was morally impressive, instructive, elevating, wholesome_. Recur to the first war――that against Amalek; and to the scope it gave for illustrations of prayer, and to the sense it inspired of their relations to their covenant God. Turn to the record of the war against Moab and Midian (Num. 25 and 31). Mark its powerful protest against the lewdness involved in those forms of idol-worship, and note how Phineas arose to the sublime grandeur of the emergency and made a record for himself and for his whole tribe indeed in the history of the nation (Num. 25: 11–13 and Mal. 2: 4–7). Study the wars of Joshua and the moral heroism developed there, and ask if any generation of Israel appear on the page of her national history, exhibiting a truer consecration to God or a more conscientious devotion to his will. And what shall we say of Deborah and Barak, and of the heroism that shines and gleams in the record of their achievements, or of the piety that flavors their triumphal song? The same may be said of the wars under David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and of the songs of praise and of proud triumph in Israel’s God which gave expression to the moral results of those wars and victories. That man reads the history of the heroic age of Israel very imperfectly who does not see in it ample demonstration that staunch obedience to God in this matter of war against the idolatrous, corrupt Canaanites, fostered piety, developed Christian heroism and toned up the standard of morality. When they compromised, accepted tribute, and tried their own policy of living side by side with such idolaters instead of God’s policy of vigorous extermination, then came disaster, religious decline, and most perilous moral corruption.